First thing's first: KEEP. THIS. SHIT. CIVIL. If you can't talk about race without resorting to childish insults and rude generalizations or getting angry at people who don't see it your way, leave the thread.
With that said, I bring you to what can hopefully be the general thread about race.
First, a few starter questions.
- How, if at all, do you feel your race affects your everyday life?
- Do you believe that white people (or whatever the majority race in your area is) receive privileges simply because of the color of their skin. How much?
- Do you believe minorities are discriminated against for the same reason? How much?
- Do you believe that assimilation of cultures is better than people trying to keep their own?
- Affirmative Action. Yea, Nay? Why or why not?
Also, a personal question from me.
- Why (in my experience, not trying to generalize) do white people often try to insist that they aren't white? I can't count the number of times I've heard "I'm not white, I'm 1/4th English, 1/4th German, 1/4th Scandinavian 1/8th Cherokee, and 1/8th Russian," as though 4 of 5 of those things aren't considered "white" by the masses. Is it because you have pride for your ancestry, or an attempt to try and differentiate yourself from all those "other" white people? Or something else altogether?
edited 30th May '11 9:16:04 PM by Wulf
V
Then how about one "race"note that has multiple cultural (and nationalist) groups?
Of course there are differences, that's how people are — let alone differences between countries. It is a fatal mistake to assume that every country has the same racial history as the US, that different minorities can't be racist towards each other, and that people some call "white" can be racist towards others that some would think are identical...
edited 18th Dec '14 4:17:42 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
Nemesis
Lazybanshee, it strikes me that you're angling for a fight, looking for opponents. That's not what we're about on these forums. I'd suggest that you look elsewhere for that fight, on this topic and others (e.g. GG) that I've seen you talking about.
We don't like restricting or banning people, but the road you're on leads to that eventually if you don't change course.
A brighter future for a darker age.
HGW XX/7
I'm enjoying the new perspective to be honest. He isn't being discourteous.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
Nemesis
It's not so much the perspectives as the feeling of someone itching for a fight that raised my hackles there.
Keep it civil and there won't be problems.
A brighter future for a darker age.
If we're still allowed to reply to lazybanshee, I'd like to address a few things he said.
- Toxic Masculinity does not exclude the equal existence of toxic femininity, nor the argument that BOTH are complicit in homophobia. A large contingent of feminists believe that toxic masculinity and toxic femininity both exist.
- You're using a logic called "Survivorship Bias", which basically goes: "If I can overcome this problem to my own level of satisfaction, then X problem either doesn't exist or isn't significant enough to talk about".
Who Am I?
Lazybanshee's larger point about not being dogmatic regarding beliefs you have derived from your own personal experiences would still stand, regardless. He's putting "microaggression" in that category, which is the aspect of his argument most worth disputing.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Was that his/her "larger point"? I couldn't really tell between the snark and unsubstantiated ridicule of my previous post.
And besides that, Silas already covered the problem with that statement here
.
edited 18th Dec '14 9:28:35 AM by KingZeal
Who Am I?
I didnt understand Silas' point. What do multiple ethnicities have to do with it? If I'm shoved by someone on a train, what difference does it make that the rest of the car is more or less diverse?
And the whole point is that the microaggression has to go unexplained (unless you can somehow interview the person who shoved you).
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
I linked the wrong post, actually. I meant this one.
As far as I'm concerned, lazybanshee's reply didn't really address this. S/he went off on an unrelated tangent about diversity that has nothing to do with Silas's point.
Who Am I?
Oh, that one. Silas post is phrased as if he was disagreeing, but actually if you read between the lines he's merely rephrasing things. Relying on lived experiences rather than fact based provable occurrences was precisely the original point.
Lazybanshee then went on to claim that the social sciences have a history of promoting conclusions that are less than empirically supported, which is also demonstrable. He then chose to put "toxic masculinity" within that category. The larger point that people often makes assumptions regarding offensive experiences they have had is a strong one, I think, regardless of whether or not you agree with his specific examples.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
A nice butterfly
So, I have a sort of stupid question.
I seem to be incompetent in the way of "I do not know how else to get my point across" but with a personal example. I am pretty pale skinned, though far from looking nordic due to bone structure. My accent is hard to place as well due to several years of exposure to online gaming chats and movies
So it is only when someone asks me "Wait...where are you from?" that I wonder just how many cases of "he LOOKS white enough but isnt!" may have happened elsewhere. In my case i do not think I have suffered bad treatment after revealing that I, indeed, was not a local but I just wondered if it may have happened or if it is common or something the sorta "Looks -ish, but isnt, so lets hate them now"
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Do what I do and have a different answer and accent for everyone who asks. I'm a mutt when it comes to genetics and my accent is completely fucked from moving around the country and watch foreign stuff so much..
Kinda fun actually. Convinced this one dude I was from Kazakhstan cause I had a beard.
edited 18th Dec '14 9:57:02 AM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?
HGW XX/7
I pretend to be Irish to avoid irritating tourists in Edinburgh.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
"Read between the lines"? I would prefer if he confirmed that, because based on the context, I'm pretty sure he was disagreeing.
So does hard science, period.
Most, if not ALL, academia "has a history" of promoting non-empirical conclusions. Academia is a continually-improving field.
So with that said, social science methodology has improved, some data has been verified and more empirical data has been implemented.
Except lazybanshee both says that personal experience and statistics are unreliable forms of data.
Let's assume that's true. Okay, so . . . what, then? Is this just saying that academia, in itself, can't be trusted? So then what type of data is lazybanshee offering to supplant it?
edited 18th Dec '14 10:09:29 AM by KingZeal
A nice butterfly
...can most tourists even tell the difference between british accents? >>
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Well, to a degree.
Liverpool sounds like nothing else on the Islands for example.
That was the one place I went where I couldn't understand a damn thing they were saying. I used German and Hindi to get around there because otherwise it was as if I was in the Twilight Zone.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur
Who Am I?
I once pretended to be Italian in Rome in order to pick up tourist girls. It almost worked. Yes, I am ashamed of this.
@Zeal: Sometimes you go for the third option: "I dont know."
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Which suspiciously sounds similar to "Let the status quo stand".
Who Am I?
Oh come on. It's ok to admit that you dont know something. To quote you: "There is an objective truth." If you want the movement to win then it has to remain on the side of truth. To assume you are right when you dont know it harms the cause much more that it could ever help.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Except that the standard you're proposing for "Not knowing" is an unsatisfiable fallacy.
"Science has been wrong, so therefore never believe any conclusion is right" preemptively rejects any data presented because of the possibility of it being wrong.
So you rather point to very obscure and overall, unimportant instances and say "YOU CAN'T PROVE IT ISN'T RACISM!!! SO ASSUME IT IS!" instead of saying, "Well that was an asshole moment. Let's get back to something with more impact and is more clear cut like prison population, stop and frisk, and how the predominately minority schools magically get shafted in budget disbursement."
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur
Er...NO, Gabrael.
"We see no evidence that it was racism, but let's just keep incident in mind in the event of other data."
edited 18th Dec '14 10:31:19 AM by KingZeal
I find that information related to the social sciences is often rejected too easily on the basis that it's not 100 percent fool-proof, and Zeal already explained one of the problems with this line of thinking.
To me, it's a case where someone asks for an inch, and they end up taking a mile. You have 65 scholarly peer-reviewed studies and essays on racism in the criminal justice system? Well, I can't accept your information as conclusive because you only have 65 and not 66. Also, that information can't be trusted because of this one time I was discriminated against. Also, I have black friends who don't have a problem with it note . Et cetera, et cetera.
The transit example used in that Salon article wasn't a very appropriate illustration of her point, but pardon me if I get more than a little concerned over the fact that people use these analytical and journalistic missteps to denounce entire sociological concepts that have been verified time and time again.
edited 18th Dec '14 10:33:27 AM by Aprilla
A procrastination in of itself
O man, Zeal is advocating against reeding between the lines, I never thought I'd see the day. 
He is also completely right, I was disagreeing. My understanding of lazybanshee's point is that s/he takes issue with people taking their personal experiences and projecting them onto the world as an undeniable reality. The point of contention for me is the idea that that is where the majority of social science theories come from, which is what lazybanshee seems to be suggesting.
In fact that's my issue with a lot of lazybanshee's point, s/he is making a lot of assumption based upon personae experiences and projecting them to be the ultimate way reality is. I know I've never run into the kind of widespread intellectual failure and dogmatic insistence that lazybanshee believes infests feminism (well okay I've run into the dogma stuff once but I consider that a fringe case), now I could be wrong but that's something we should explore.
O and lazybanshee, if you'd like to continue the discussion on toxic masculinity could we shift to one of the sexism threads? This is OTC and I'd like to avoid derailing.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
What's wrong with feminists? If you don't agree with their dogmatic beliefs, it must be from insufficient understanding, rather than from sufficient understanding.
I understand toxic masculinity well. I've read Kimmel and friends thank you very much.
And yes, one of the statements that are included in the toxic masculinity theory is that homophobia is called by toxic masculinity. Which of course explains jack shit about women often being primary perpetrators in homophobia, but at least it's not as bigoted and homophobic and condescending as an extremely common and mainstream feminist belief that homophobia is a form of misogyny.
It's an unfalsifiable theory still. It's impossible to disprove. Just like the patriarchy theory. And both are not scientific for that reason. I tend to find rational explanations for occurrences instead.
There are undeniable cultural differences inbetween different ethnicities within the borders of one country, USA I assume seeing how insanely Amerocentric your ideology is. You think people assume that Asians are good at math because their narrow eyes are able to read long sentences better?
I'm ethnically Jewish, and when people find that out in real life, they start pestering me with silly and at times too personal questions. My reaction is not whining about first world problems like "microagressions". My reaction is that of not caring, because I a) am over twenty b) experienced actual hardship.
But that's in real life, on the internet when I disagree with the socjus I'm a WASP until I post timestamped pictures of myself atop a mountain of shekels playing with a dreidel. Which, to be honest, is a racist as shit assumption to make, considering how often it backfires...
edited 18th Dec '14 1:40:32 AM by lazybanshee
I joined the police just to kill people.