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
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
edited 1st Jul '16 6:58:57 PM by DrunkenNordmann
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Black comedy as in dark comedy, or black comedy as in black people comedy?
edited 1st Jul '16 7:01:12 PM by hellomoto
The former. Though there are probably dark jokes about black people somewhere.
The law in the night
Ahem.note
edited 1st Jul '16 7:09:55 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges
Oh, that. I'll call them 'dark comedy' and 'dark jokes' from now on, to avoid confusion.
Personally, I find dead baby jokes less offensive than racist jokes. The former is more gory, but everyone already knows it's wrong to kill babies, and that dead babies in reality are a sad thing. The shared understanding is already there. For racism, not so much.
Speaking of shared understanding... yea, I can see how stuff like context can affect what's meant to be a funny joke. For an audience who has seen (say) a comic-artist who is very much against racism, if they see a character in that comic make a racist remark, they will know/assume the artist is intentionally making the character racist, and that the artist is using the racist remark as way of showing "see how stupid this remark is?". But if someone new to the comic stumbles upon a new comic strip and sees the same character making the same remark without its context...
edited 1st Jul '16 7:19:12 PM by hellomoto
Grr... <3
...They are probably going to assume the same thing.
A work must stand on its own without context normally.
As much as it sounds like you are coming from a place of concern, I must ask if if is worth the censorship. Because censorship is inherently wrong.
Likewise, as much as I understand what you are saying about Unfortunate Implications, most fiction media, including jokes, is about fictional worlds. Jokes can rely on stereotypes to construct their fictional worlds, and can be funny even to one who does not believe the utilised stereotypes. This is the phenomenon of willing suspension of disbelief.
It is probably not worth jumping down the throat of a person for laughing at a genuinely funny joke simply because the joke is also unrealistic.
Sometimes the racist part is not funny thing but how far a joke can get, the all "Oh no, you didnt!" can make a good joke sometimes.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
belongs to the hurricane
One of the main problems with accusations of racism is that we're conditioned to see racism (and other forms of intolerance) as only being true if people are completely open and spell it out for you, and that being a "racist" automatically makes you a HORRIBLE PERSON (TM) and completely others you from any kind of decency. Additionally, and maybe this is just me, but a lot of people seem to be under the impression that racism is exclusively about stuff like races being inferior to one another or disliking people from a race exclusively, which leaves out other spectrums of behavior and ideas like stereotypes.
The reason why "but so many of my friends are x" gets used so much is that I get the impression that, intellectually, many people do legitimately believe that people of all races are equal and deserve equal treatment, and that they don't blindly hate someone just because of their ethnicity. Which goes back to what I said earlier about how people define racism and how it isn't a black and white thing.
The truth is that we're bombarded by so much stuff that it's not particularly surprising that a lot of people might carry one or two racist beliefs without knowing it. And while obviously that's not good, it's not like people can help the environments they're born into and grow up in. It's essentially like any other negative trait about yourself, which you can acknowledge and work on. It doesn't define the entirety of what you are.
Grr... <3
I think that might be just you for that middle one. But overall, there may be some value in ignoring the loudest part of the conversation if you want to see what is actually going on, as racial supremacy is not the only form of racism. In fact, it is not the most common form, or even the worst.
The most common form is probably casual racism, which is likely a mostly subconscious undercurrent of racism in the world. One which produces microaggressions, and other low visibility problems.
The worst is dehumanising racism.
And everyone here probably has a few racist beliefs. There are thousands of racist beliefs that can be held. No one on earth lacks prejudice.
Censorship? We know censorship is wrong, we don't want to do that. That doesn't mean racist jokes should be automatically tolerated or encouraged, and arguments against racist jokes shut down on the basis of 'just a joke'. Applying this to sexism, it's like trying to choose between 'censor every female character who reveals a certain amount of skin', and 'don't ever talk about the many games where every female character is the same body shape and does the Boobs-and-Butt Pose'.
PUN! 
edited 2nd Jul '16 12:27:40 AM by hellomoto
United Earth
Watching that Chris Rock piece just made me very, very depressed. The guy, and his audience, seem to assume that accepting welfare is a moral failing, that jobs are something you get, and that Mellencamp is bad music.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
That's kinda why he stopped doing it, as mentioned earlier.
It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.
Shop Owner
I find really difficult to recognize "Intent does not matter when judging an action" to be anything but a weirdly specific appeal to stop the percieved racist and sexist from speaking their minds. Otherwhise it sends me spiralling into the thought of well...If intent doesn't matter, then every woman who chooses to have a career in humanities is doing a disservice to women in STEM fields, every white person who joins a career in which they are the majority above their share of the population is doing a disservice to every other ethnic group, etc... If intent doesn't truly matter, then personal choice doesn't matter either, to choose is to enact your will on the world, it's an ongoing action. it must be judged without your intent.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
Choosing a certain career isn't the same as spouting hate and stereotypes. Seriously.
Shop Owner
What about being mistaken for spouting hate and stereotypes? Is intent not the same there?
*cough* Tim Hunt *cough*
edited 2nd Jul '16 8:16:30 AM by vandro
The law in the night
I don't really know the reliability of the NY Post when it comes to those issues but the YT interviews and the documents posted seem to check their stance in this article.
Elite K-8 school teaches white students they’re born racist
Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it.
They complain the K-8 school of 430 kids is separating whites in classes where they’re made to feel awful about their “whiteness,” and all the “kids of color” in other rooms where they’re taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges.
“Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum,” said a parent who requested anonymity because he has children currently enrolled in the school.
Bank Street has created a “dedicated space” in the school for “kids of color,” where they’re “embraced” by minority instructors and encouraged to “voice their feelings” and “share experiences about being a kid of color,” according to school presentation slides obtained by The Post.
Meanwhile, white kids are herded into separate classrooms and taught to raise their “awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege,” challenge “notions of colorblindness (and) assumptions of ‘normal,’ ‘good,’ and ‘American’” and “understand and own European ancestry and see the tie to privilege.”
The same slides point out that a number of leading private schools across the country also have segregated students by “race-based affinity groups.” It lists several in New York, including Riverdale Country School, Brooklyn Friends School, The Cathedral School, The Calhoun School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School.
Under Bank Street’s “Racial Justice and Advocacy” curriculum, parents say, teachers push white kids to grapple with America’s history of racism. Then they indoctrinate them into thinking “systemic racism” still exists, and that they’re part of the problem and must hold themselves accountable even for acts of racism committed by others.
“One hundred percent of the curriculum is what whites have done to other races,” said another Bank Street parent. “They offer nothing that would balance the story.”
Added the parent, who also asked to go unnamed: “Any questions they can’t answer they rationalize under the pretense of ‘institutional racism,’ which is never really defined.”
The program, these parents say, deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race. Some kids come home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.”
They say white kids are being brainwashed into thinking any success they achieve is unearned. Indeed, a young white girl is seen confessing on a Bank Street video: “I feel guilty for having a privilege I don’t deserve.”
An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers.
Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it. Modal Trigger A slide from the Bank School shows the different goals for white children (right) and “kids of color” (left).
They complain the K-8 school of 430 kids is separating whites in classes where they’re made to feel awful about their “whiteness,” and all the “kids of color” in other rooms where they’re taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges.
“Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum,” said a parent who requested anonymity because he has children currently enrolled in the school.
Bank Street has created a “dedicated space” in the school for “kids of color,” where they’re “embraced” by minority instructors and encouraged to “voice their feelings” and “share experiences about being a kid of color,” according to school presentation slides obtained by The Post.
Meanwhile, white kids are herded into separate classrooms and taught to raise their “awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege,” challenge “notions of colorblindness (and) assumptions of ‘normal,’ ‘good,’ and ‘American’” and “understand and own European ancestry and see the tie to privilege.”
The same slides point out that a number of leading private schools across the country also have segregated students by “race-based affinity groups.” It lists several in New York, including Riverdale Country School, Brooklyn Friends School, The Cathedral School, The Calhoun School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School.
‘One hundred percent of the curriculum is what whites have done to other races. They offer nothing that would balance the story.’ - Anonymous Bank Street parent
Under Bank Street’s “Racial Justice and Advocacy” curriculum, parents say, teachers push white kids to grapple with America’s history of racism. Then they indoctrinate them into thinking “systemic racism” still exists, and that they’re part of the problem and must hold themselves accountable even for acts of racism committed by others.
“One hundred percent of the curriculum is what whites have done to other races,” said another Bank Street parent. “They offer nothing that would balance the story.”
Added the parent, who also asked to go unnamed: “Any questions they can’t answer they rationalize under the pretense of ‘institutional racism,’ which is never really defined.”
The program, these parents say, deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race. Some kids come home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.”
They say white kids are being brainwashed into thinking any success they achieve is unearned. Indeed, a young white girl is seen confessing on a Bank Street video: “I feel guilty for having a privilege I don’t deserve.”
Parents, moreover, say the classroom segregation only breeds resentment. Younger children, for instance, feel left out when the “kids of color” come back to the main classroom munching on cupcakes they were given in their “affinity group.”
The divisive program is run by Anshu Wahi, a longtime “social justice” activist who’s held the title of “director of diversity” at Bank Street since 2013. She referred questions to the school’s communications office, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Still, Wahi’s radical beliefs come into clear view from recorded conversations with parents, as well as handouts and emails to parents. She believes the answer to racism is teaching white kids to see race in everything — a process called “white racial socialization.”
Forget teaching them to be color-blind — that’s a cop-out, she suggests, an excuse to ignore the hardships of people of color. It’s also a “tool of whiteness” to perpetuate the “oppression” of people of color, according to one paper she recommends parents read.
Wahi believes even white babies display signs of racism, so she encourages parents to talk to their kids about race as early as kindergarten, making them hyperaware of racial differences, and even “examine your own whiteness.”
She defends segregating minority children by race by arguing they need a safe place where they can share their “ouch moments,” including subtle but offensive white comments known as “micro-aggressions.”
An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers.
Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it. Modal Trigger A slide from the Bank School shows the different goals for white children (right) and “kids of color” (left).
They complain the K-8 school of 430 kids is separating whites in classes where they’re made to feel awful about their “whiteness,” and all the “kids of color” in other rooms where they’re taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges.
“Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum,” said a parent who requested anonymity because he has children currently enrolled in the school.
Bank Street has created a “dedicated space” in the school for “kids of color,” where they’re “embraced” by minority instructors and encouraged to “voice their feelings” and “share experiences about being a kid of color,” according to school presentation slides obtained by The Post.
Meanwhile, white kids are herded into separate classrooms and taught to raise their “awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege,” challenge “notions of colorblindness (and) assumptions of ‘normal,’ ‘good,’ and ‘American’” and “understand and own European ancestry and see the tie to privilege.”
The same slides point out that a number of leading private schools across the country also have segregated students by “race-based affinity groups.” It lists several in New York, including Riverdale Country School, Brooklyn Friends School, The Cathedral School, The Calhoun School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School.
‘One hundred percent of the curriculum is what whites have done to other races. They offer nothing that would balance the story.’ - Anonymous Bank Street parent
Under Bank Street’s “Racial Justice and Advocacy” curriculum, parents say, teachers push white kids to grapple with America’s history of racism. Then they indoctrinate them into thinking “systemic racism” still exists, and that they’re part of the problem and must hold themselves accountable even for acts of racism committed by others.
“One hundred percent of the curriculum is what whites have done to other races,” said another Bank Street parent. “They offer nothing that would balance the story.”
Added the parent, who also asked to go unnamed: “Any questions they can’t answer they rationalize under the pretense of ‘institutional racism,’ which is never really defined.”
The program, these parents say, deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race. Some kids come home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.”
They say white kids are being brainwashed into thinking any success they achieve is unearned. Indeed, a young white girl is seen confessing on a Bank Street video: “I feel guilty for having a privilege I don’t deserve.”
Parents, moreover, say the classroom segregation only breeds resentment. Younger children, for instance, feel left out when the “kids of color” come back to the main classroom munching on cupcakes they were given in their “affinity group.”
The divisive program is run by Anshu Wahi, a longtime “social justice” activist who’s held the title of “director of diversity” at Bank Street since 2013. She referred questions to the school’s communications office, which did not respond to requests for comment. Modal Trigger A handout provided to Bank Street School parentsPhoto: Bank Street School
Still, Wahi’s radical beliefs come into clear view from recorded conversations with parents, as well as handouts and emails to parents. She believes the answer to racism is teaching white kids to see race in everything — a process called “white racial socialization.”
Forget teaching them to be color-blind — that’s a cop-out, she suggests, an excuse to ignore the hardships of people of color. It’s also a “tool of whiteness” to perpetuate the “oppression” of people of color, according to one paper she recommends parents read.
Wahi believes even white babies display signs of racism, so she encourages parents to talk to their kids about race as early as kindergarten, making them hyperaware of racial differences, and even “examine your own whiteness.”
She defends segregating minority children by race by arguing they need a safe place where they can share their “ouch moments,” including subtle but offensive white comments known as “micro-aggressions.”
“Bank Street wants to give kids of color a space to talk about shared experiences,” Wahi explained in a parent handout, “because even in society today, people of color are treated unfairly.”
“In the recent past,” she added, “children of color in our Lower School have been told by well-intentioned peers that their skin looks like the color of poop.”
Wahi says the school is merely empowering children of color who feel “alienated” and “devalued” in a “dominant white culture.” But some parents fear the school is nurturing resentment among minority pupils and reinforcing perceptions of victimization.
Her extreme diversity program is based on the premise that America is still plagued by “systemic racism,” which she claims she saw first-hand while serving as a juror hearing criminal cases in Brooklyn. She told parents she was shocked to learn that every case involved a minority defendant. In the same May 2015 meeting with parents, she cited the GI Bill as proof of “white privilege,” claiming the popular post-World War II legislation only benefited white soldiers and their heirs, when in fact, black enrollment in colleges exploded under the GI Bill.
Most recently, parents were upset with her airing a documentary film lionizing leaders of the violent Black Panthers movement. On May 31, the Bank Street School screened “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” which depicts Panthers founder and convicted cop-killer Huey Newton as a martyr.
In 2013, moreover, parents expressed outrage over an email from Wahi that seemed to sympathize with Muslim terrorists after the Boston Marathon bombings.
The April 17, 2013, message — “From Anshu, our Director of Diversity and Community: The Boston Marathon — Another Perspective” — advised students and parents to “be mindful of stereotypes and dangerous ideas” regarding “Arabs (and) Muslims.”
It linked to an article titled “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.”
Fostering guilt and inferiority complex on minors. Oh that works so well, it isn't like resentment isn't something that will settle latter on those kids.
It kinda reminds me of Bahar Mustafa.
Inter arma enim silent leges
This is gonna give those "anti-racist is code for anti-white" guys more fuel, isn't it?
It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.
United Earth
It's obnoxious.
Just today, I was talking with a friend of mine in Berlin. She practically quit the radical community, because she was sick and tired of all the aggression, the shaming, the tone policing.
What's the point of fighting against oppression if we become oppressors in the process? We're supposed to be improving each other's comfort and peace of mind, not turn every conversation into a mineflield.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
V
...and if you do that, all that will happen if that people will keep their thoughts to themselves — or just say what they're supposed to say.
Keep Rolling On
It's unfortunately a very common problem among the social justice community, the narrative that regardless of whether it's biological or cultural in origin, that whites as a collective whole are incorrigibly racist, even allies, who should behave as Extreme Doormats towards nonwhites in order to "prove" that they are not harmful. It's pretty disgusting, considering it's basically a Blood Knight "social revenge" mindset that only encourages othering and tribalism when we should be doing the opposite. All it does is get whites to adopt a Then Let Me Be Racist mindset and dig in deeper rather than encouraging pluralism and harmony.
edited 2nd Jul '16 10:43:59 AM by AlleyOop
Yeah, this sort of crap is what drives people towards xenophobic/far-right (usually) politics. Radicalism almost invariably turns ugly and feeds into more (often opposite) radicalism.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
This kind of thing is why I'm not a huge fan of stuff like claiming racism can't be committed by non white people. It breeds this idea that mistreatment of white people is acceptable because they've enjoyed a privileged position.
V
By the way, do people who claim that think that "white" people can't be racist to each other?
belongs to the hurricane
I 100% agree.
While I sympathize with the mistreatment of minorities and the systematic oppression they suffer, I think that it isn't really acceptable to pass that resentment onto other people, especially children. Resentment just breeds more resentment. It doesn't create or lead to anything positive. Our goal should be to make things better for minorities, not to make white people feel guilty for simply having things that everyone else should have.
edited 2nd Jul '16 1:48:49 PM by wehrmacht
And that last part "it encourages people to believe in the racist beliefs required to enjoy such jokes" sound like "in truth, word do have power over people" which is something many argue against the last decade
Wait, 'black' comedy? Is that a thing?
To be honest, I do more or less believe in words having power over people. Especially if
1) The words are repeated over and over, 2) with few to no other words that go against them.
A single story depicting some black people as criminals has little impact. But if many many stories across different genres depict nearly all their black people as criminals (or nearly all their criminals as black people), and almost all of them share the theme of assuming black people are criminals because crimes are in their 'black genes', instead of realizing black people are marginalized by racism, failing to dive into those issues of racism, with almost no stories expressing anything different, and those sort of racist themes get repeated as if they're truth in novels, movies, comedy stand-ups...
Nope. Not alright. We have to start stopping it.
edited 1st Jul '16 6:59:01 PM by hellomoto