Stop Racism!

[Brewmeister]

The problem back in the '60s (and even today) is that it's way to easy to circumvent anti-discrimination laws.
I am vehemently against affirmative action in principle. However, AA seeks to establish a baseline that is 'closer' to a balance than anti-discrimination laws could achieve alone.

For example let's assume I am an employer in a lower middle class area where the demographics are about 50% white & 50% assorted minorities. However my company employs only 5% minorities.
On the surface it appears that I am racist. But if you look at my immaculately kept hiring records, all of the minorities I rejected were for legitimate reasons: Lack of transportation, not enough experience, poor employment record, health risk (smoker), etc... On paper, none of these minorities were rejected for being a minority.
Dig a little further & find out that all my job postings were in a local paper delivered to the 'white' side of town. 80% of the interviews were white applicants. Job fairs were held at the same place & time as KKK rallies. All circumstantial, but you get the point.
In steps the law & says I have to increase my minority staff to a conservative 25%. Appealing to my better sense of capitalism, I'm going to make sure I'm selecting the best qualified minorities and placing them in positions where I'll the the biggest ROI. The law doesn't prevent me from rejecting someone who is not qualified for the job, and it also doesn't prevent me from recruiting minorities from elsewhere when there are not enough qualified locals. It simply forces me to put aside my prejudices when making some of my hiring decisions.

Is it perfect? not in the least. But it's a lot closer than it was.

As for eradicating racism, I've done my part. On the last 2 Censuses (Censi?), I entered:
Race:Human
And I plan to do the same next year. Wanna join me? We should start a movement!! :scruff:

 

[Venetia]

it's not only race, either.
checking off what race you are is exactly the same as entering your birthdate and your sex. in a perfect world, none of these fields would be necessary. but since people tend to steer toward being discriminatory, a kind of compromising balance had to be struck.

 

[friend]

I've pretty much read an interesting article on child race discrimination.

Parents who took part in the survey stopped it after the surveyers asked them to have race talk with their child. The parents are uncomfortable and want their children to be "color blind"

turns out those children themselves say "Blacks are bad" and "Whites are good" in a little question paper for these children

I really wish whites would at least fall for a little bit, so they won't get all so "high" in the "race tree"

 

[pandemikk]

I would like to see the source of this information where "whites are good" and "blacks are bad" supposedly happened.

I would also like to know how diverse the kids were in culture, I mean, were they a bunch of rednecks?

 

[MogFan]

Racism is pathetic. We are all humans, all with a drive to live. Why bother about races? Sure, the skin color is different but so what? It does'nt mean a shit. Why should we discriminate others when we might be bad ourselves? I think it was probably the way the children are being brought up and how they are going to bring up their children. We should put an end to racism soon. It may become a cause of future racial riots. All in all, racism is totally stupid. Only idiots would say others are less humane than they are.(Excepting gangsters and alot of other kind of cruel people.)

 

[friend]

msn.com

i guess its in the archive now, its a few weeks ago.

This post adds no value to the conversation

-You sir, did not read the whole conversation and therefore won't understand what I just said, I just replied to a guy because he wanted a source, now go hide in a corner and -never mind-

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

It's also funny that racist people often never experienced racism themselves, at least that's what I've discovered.

Hah!

Majority races aren't the only ones who have the capacity for racism, dearie. For me, "daddy wouldn't like me dating darkies," "you sure are darker than you looked in that black-and-white photo in the 'about the author' section," and of course my personal favorite, the ubiquitous "dumb Hawaiians who aren't good for anything but heavy physical labor" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Leaving those little islands in the middle of the ocean and seeing the corners of continental US has made has made me jaded. that and black people Seriously--until I met actual black people and Haoles Caucasians and Asians from the continental US, I, too, was of the naíve mindset that "hey everybody is equal and just wants to be treated that way!" Nah, they just want to step on you to get their way, and they'll fit perfectly into their stereotypes in the meantime.

Hawaii has a culture of racist humor. I enjoy it very much, as does everyone else who was born and raised there. Everyone knows that the incredibly racist stereotypes you're joking about are both entirely true and entirely a joke at the same time. If I told the joke about the dumb Portugese guy, or the Filipino who eats dogs, or the wealthy Caucasian, or black people and welfare checks, or the tight-pursed Chinaman on the mainland, I'd get shot. ... Not so much if I told a joke about the lazy Hawaiian who sits on his porch and smokes weed and drinks Heinekens all day because the only people who would care about the punchline would laugh.

The only thing that makes racism bad is that people make it bad. I might dislike a racial group on the whole now that I've become bitter from my personal interactions with them, so this philosophy no longer applies to me, but if racism was cultivated as a culture of humor rather than a culture of hate, I don't think a discussion about it would matter much.

Of course if this is based on negative attributes people oppose it but what if we say, all black people are very smart, all asian people have great hair and all white people are very friendly. Is this still considered racism?

in conclusion maybe you should look into examples that aren't made-up on the spot

 

[Feldschlacht IV]

One observation that I've always noticed is that many people who swear up and down not to be racist, and generally appear to really not be racist, the game changes completely when it comes to interracial relationships. For example, there are many white guys who are totally cool with black people, until they see a black guy dating a white girl, and then they're absolutely disgusted. I've been told by more than one white person that they wouldn't date a white girl who dated a black guy in the past.

 

[Truly else]

Isn't it Ironic that all the yanks in this thread are saying (paraphrased) "I'm not racist, not like those southerners..." and the like?

Anywho, Racism is, IMHO, generated by the same instinct in a person as the "uncanny valley," which was intended to help humans recognize the sick / disfigured, allowing the evasion of potential infection and the like, by making anything that looks close to human without looking like any human you've ever seen seem eerie and disturbing. Oops.

 

[moog]

if you cant take a stereotype with a hint of salt then something is seriously wrong

ive got the whole YOU LIKE CHICKEN or WANT GRAPE SODA thing all my life but i also look mexican so i got mexican jokes (im not mexican)

no need to stop it, just ignore it. its no big deal socially.

 

[sojournen]

You know.......I'm probably opening up a can of fucking worms here.........but.............and it's a big BUT, I get sick and tired of people being all like, stop prejudice, stop racism. I myself am not racist, I have raised my children to be color and culture blind as much as humanly possible. But I have a rant.

Special days for "sects" of people.

IE Gay pride day................Black/Chinese/etcetcetc Power groups.

I'm tired of all this crap already, and I'm not that old. Jeezus, it's like we're are trying to vaporize barriers by putting up more. You know, if we elected to have hetero pride day, people would be up in arms, if we had white pride day, we'd be shit all over.

And don't even get me fucking started on the "special" privileges of Native Americans and shit. I AM part aboriginal. I elected NOT to get my status because that stuff is wrong. It adds to the segregation issues of the world. And I made point of explaining that to my kids as well.

Stuff happened in the past to some groups of people. Get over it. It was terrible, it was wrong, but by clinging to it to obtain special privileges for different groups, essentially weakens the effort to diminish racism and prejudice. It leeches the system, and causes people who are ineligible for these "special privileges" to envy, and then in turn, resent those who receive them.

I definitely vote to remove race from any questionnaire. I once wrote down on one Human, and put a box with a check next to it to validate my point.

I mean, celebrate your history and shit, but either make it fair for everyone, which is damn near impossible, or stop making it a national event, or a leech off real social equality.

I apologize in advance for any offense I may have caused.

 

[Truly else]

You know.......I'm probably opening up a can of fucking worms here.........but.............and it's a big BUT, I get sick and tired of people being all like, stop prejudice, stop racism. I myself am not racist, I have raised my children to be color and culture blind as much as humanly possible. But I have a rant.

Special days for "sects" of people.

IE Gay pride day................Black/Chinese/etcetcetc Power groups.

I'm tired of all this crap already, and I'm not that old. Jeezus, it's like we're are trying to vaporize barriers by putting up more. You know, if we elected to have hetero pride day, people would be up in arms, if we had white pride day, we'd be shit all over.

And don't even get me fucking started on the "special" privileges of Native Americans and shit. I AM part aboriginal. I elected NOT to get my status because that stuff is wrong. It adds to the segregation issues of the world. And I made point of explaining that to my kids as well.

Stuff happened in the past to some groups of people. Get over it. It was terrible, it was wrong, but by clinging to it to obtain special privileges for different groups, essentially weakens the effort to diminish racism and prejudice. It leeches the system, and causes people who are ineligible for these "special privileges" to envy, and then in turn, resent those who receive them.

I definitely vote to remove race from any questionnaire. I once wrote down on one Human, and put a box with a check next to it to validate my point.

I mean, celebrate your history and shit, but either make it fair for everyone, which is damn near impossible, or stop making it a national event, or a leech off real social equality.

I apologize in advance for any offense I may have caused.

That is more or less my standpoint, but due to the fact I am a multi-Caucasian "mutt" I would only get a "don't be jealous" stance from people. You sir, I respect.

 

[mawk]

"ditto" posts don't lend a whole lot to threads. you should avoid them unless you have something to add or if the expressed sentiment legitimately brought tears of joy to your eyes.

 

[nikki]

I love how its apparently impossible for black people to be racist. Black comedians get away with making fun of other races (mostly whites) all the time. Some of them, half their act comprises of that sort of thing. Some of it is actually funny! Try turning the table though, like that guy from seinfeld and you end up having to kiss Jesse Jackson's ass on tv.

Honestly, I'd be a liar if I said I never thought or uttered something racist. Its hard to ignore some of the awful stuff that goes on in a big american city, mostly perpetrated by blacks. The whole "thug" culture and all that. Obviously not all black people are gang members, but around here...its really hard to have an objective viewpoint.

Not too long ago, I had to go to a court appearance for a traffic violation and everybody else in the place was black and was obviously familiar with the whole process. One group actually tried to start a fight in the hallway with a lawyer because he had the gall to ask them to sit at another bench so he could talk to his clients more privately, because obviously the lawyer was being racist against them even though he was black. He was probably an uncle tom anyway.

they tried to start a fight
in a courthouse
with a black lawyer

Of course, everyone else in the room thought their behavior was perfectly normal and justified, they didnt bat an eye. Dont even get me started on some of the blatant illegal activity being discussed over cell-phone conversations I overheard while waiting my turn, or the pregnant mother totally ignoring her child because she was busy saying "mm-hmm" over and over on her phone. It was obvious from her attitude, she didnt give a rats ass about that kid, not one little bit. I thought all mothers were hard-wired to care about their kids. Apparently not.

And the unfair favors minorities (meaning anyone who isnt white) really pisses me off. Every city worker here is black. Wouldnt be a problem really, if they didnt always have that "angry black woman" attitude going on everytime you walk up to their counter. You know what Im talking about.

Somehow though, this extremely negative and destructive culture of violence and selfishness is my fault, because of the private thoughts I could not help but think at that moment somehow have oppressed those people.

 

[Gray]

Regardless of what you do, racisim is going to still survive due to one thing - racial diffrences.

I'd like to highlight "diffrences" there, but I can't really because this is a quick post.

Anywho, people are diffrent, and they're going to be treated diffrently due to that diffrence, and there's probably nothing we can do to stop this. However, racisim is probably at it's best stage in a while. Racisim is socialy un-acceptable, the sterotypical image of a racist, blah blah blah..

On that note, racisim exists because races exist, therefore, racisim probably won't be stopped.

 

[Ellie]

I might joke about racism on IRC but in truth any actual racist discrimination is as silly as gaybashing or any other kind of discrimination. It's all fun and games being all "lol kfc", so long as you don't actually I dunno, kick someone from a channel for being black.