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
Student of Story
Trust me, I know. I'm just feeling done with America's particular brand of shit. Every place in the world is a shit sandwich, but some of them use significantly less shit and have better side dishes. 
Plus, as a 36 year old guy who has spent most of my life on the edge of poverty, without healthcare, and is looking at my first real chance for economic stability, it would be nice to grow old in a place where I won't spend my entire life in hopeless debt due to a hospital visit, and where the economy isn't going to be tanked by a Narcissist Manchild whose cabinet wants to declare the very life and existence of half my friends and family a crime.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
If Trump tanks America's economy, he takes the rest of the world (and the Anglosphere in particular) with it. There's no escape from the bad decisions of the American electorate.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Oh, bother.
Trump voters pretty much fucked everyone over. The only cold comfort I can take in this mess is that "everyone" includes them too.
edited 5th Dec '16 7:01:49 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
In the name of the POWER, I will punish you!
Not that they'll care. They're all high on victory now and will gladly accept whatever horrors his crew of degenerates have in store for them so long someone with brown skin hurts worse.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellas
Oh lord. I've been dealing with a thread right on the forums in Writing Block about a person's superhero concept. I told the poster that one of their characters had REALLY Unfortunate Implications as a white teenager who draws manga, is bullied for being a "weeaboo," but gets a magical notebook that brings his art to life and is literally said to be The Chosen One (of many, but still).
The writer doesn't seem to want to change anything about that concept. Not by reversing it to an Asian-American who loves WESTERN comics, or just making him a manga fan of literally any non-white ethnicity so they can bring "you're not black/Native/Hispanic enough" into the bullying. They have thanked me for my input, but... actions speak louder than words, man. At best, you're waffling about it, and at worst you haven't done anything.
I'm going to wait until the story gets online before I start judging it, but I don't have very high hopes.
I JUST saw Moana and now I have to deal with reality again. 
It's such a beautiful movie—the whole "lost culture" thing is SO RELEVANT to me as a Filipino, it gave me the last nudge to get a book on indigenous Filipino tattoos, and I finally have a Disney Princess who looks like me after two decades of waiting. (Mulan is awesome, but she's a pale and straight-haired East Asian, which gives this tan and wavy-haired Southeast Asian a lot of cultural baggage.)
edited 7th Dec '16 5:23:29 PM by Sharysa
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic or rude, but I'm pretty sure this counts as importing drama.
I'm not intending to import it. Maybe I should have gone "venting about this" so people didn't think I wanted to discuss it a lot.
Also
The aggrieved white portion of his voterbase, anyways. I don't mean to downplay the size of that voterbase or the implicit approval of his bigotry that comes with voting for Trump, but a number of his "anti-establishment" or just ignorant supporters appear to be turning on him already
. note There's nothing to indicate that this is super representative of his voterbase since this is a pretty small sample size on the internet, but I can only hope there's enough of them that there's a significant dent in his turnout for 2020.
edited 7th Dec '16 5:42:04 PM by Draghinazzo
I have absolutely no problem laughing my ass off at those Trumpgrets.
We fucking TOLD people this would happen, and now it's happening.
edited 7th Dec '16 6:06:41 PM by Sharysa
I see people voting for Trump, then saying things like "I really depend on the ACA, I hope it doesn't change."
This might sound coldhearted, but I have no sympathy for those people. I have no sympathy for someone who throws a grenade into their own house, then goes "gee, I sure hope that doesn't go off."
One element of hope is that if these people are really that gullible, we theoretically might be able to woo them back next time. Assuming we still have functioning elections in four years - and I'm not sure we have those now.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
That's reeeeaaally wishful thinking.
Yea, these people dont give a shit and are just going to do the exact same thing next time. :/
I mean any one with half a brain could have seen it this time, yet they did it any way.
edited 7th Dec '16 7:39:14 PM by Imca
I have SOME amount of pity for the people who are mostly just ignorant, but only so far since they thought it was acceptable to elect an incompetent boor for...less than savory reasons. There's a pretty systemic problem of ignorance in America and this is just a culmination of it.
Like, even assuming there was little to no racism behind the vote, the guy's still totally unqualified for the job by any reasonable metric. For example, I don't like Paul Ryan and I especially don't like Mike Pence, but they ARE politicians, if ones with terrible or just plain wrong views. Trump has about as much political experience as anyone posting on this forum.
It's as if someone wanted to vote for Kanye West as President if he talked a big game about "changing things up" and "draining the swamp". And I'm sure if he had run in this cycle he would have likely won, too.
Speaking of Kanye my respect for him has significantly dropped since the revelation that he would have voted for Trump. To bring that around back to the main topic, I think it's a good example of showing that minorities aren't monoliths, in both the good ways and bad.
I don't have any sources for this off-hand, but I'm under the impression a number of minority voters held their nose and voted for him because of his promise to bring back job. They're getting it extra raw from this administration.
edited 7th Dec '16 9:46:48 PM by Draghinazzo
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Web2.0_IRL: Two white Catholic school students expelled for racist texts are suing for $1 million
The lawsuit accuses Marist High School and two officials at the private Catholic school of unjustly expelling the students over text messages that were meant to be private. The complaint, filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of the girls and their fathers, acknowledges that the comments were “at most, racially insensitive” and argues that the school used the girls as “scapegoats” amid social media backlash over the comments.
The girls, both minors, are identified only as Jane Doe and Jane Roe in the complaint; their fathers are identified as John Doe and John Roe.
Larry Tucker, the Marist High principal, and Beth O’Neill, one of the private school’s deans, are named as defendants.
According to the complaint, the two girls and 30 other students were part of a group exchanging text messages in which they talked about the Black Lives Matter movement and a protest following the Nov. 5 shooting death of a black man in Chicago.
Joshua Beal, of Indiana, was shot by an off-duty police officer during a confrontation in Chicago’s Mount Greenwood neighborhood, where Marist High School is located — and where Black Lives Matter was planning a protest. Police said Beal was shot after he didn’t drop his weapon.
Threats of a protest prompted school officials to cancel classes. Leading up to that announcement, one of the students sent a tweet that said the Black Lives Matter group would bring members of the Gangster Disciples, a street gang from Chicago’s South Side, to “to kill all white kids” in Mount Greenwood in retaliation for Beal’s death, according to the complaint.
“I F—— HATE N——,” one student wrote.
“HAHAHAHA,” responded another.
“same,” another message read.
“there’s a difference between black people and n——, f— the n——,” another said.
The names of the students who sent the texts were redacted in court records.
But according to the complaint, someone from the group took photos of the texts and posted them to the high school’s official Facebook page. Someone also shared the images on Twitter and tagged Tucker, the principal.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Steven Glink, did not respond to a request for comment. But he told the Chicago Tribune that the messages were altered and that context was removed so that they looked “more incriminating” than they actually were.
He said that someone had a “personal vendetta” against the girls.
Tucker and O’Neill later decided to suspend the plaintiffs and three other girls who were part of the group text, the complaint says.
On Nov. 7, Tucker and O’Neill wrote a letter to parents, saying they were “devastated” by the controversy sparked by the texts, which they said “contradict” the school’s mission.
They also wrote that school officials had met with a “diverse group of student leaders” for a “meaningful dialogue” about the situation.
Three days later, they wrote a second letter telling parents that the two girls had been expelled.
It’s unclear whether the three others who were suspended were also expelled. A school representative said officials would not comment, citing the pending litigation.
Tucker and O’Neill also said in their letter that school officials had contacted experts on “diversity awareness, education and training.”
“It is our plan to have them help our community learn and grow from this event,” the letter states.
The texts and the school’s decision to expel the students became the subject of pitched conversations on social media.
One poster on Facebook said that if her younger sister, who attends Marist, made similar comments, she would “absolutely support and understand expulsion. These girls know better.”
Another described the texts as “poor language selection,” but said expulsion may have been unnecessary.
“Marist leadership is in a tough position,” the person wrote. “Whatever decision Marist makes is bound to be fraught with criticism.”
The plaintiffs claim that the decision to expel the two girls was “arbitrary and capricious,” noting that the group text consisted of 287 messages and that many of the comments had similar language. They also claim the girls were expelled without being formally charged with misconduct or going through a disciplinary process.
The school’s actions, the lawsuit argues, violated policies stating that students will not be dismissed or expelled unless their conduct damages the school’s reputation. The plaintiffs argue that the girls did not violate any policy because their messages were meant to be private, and that they didn’t post anything on the school’s social media accounts.
The incident also resulted in an invasion of the students’ privacy, the complaint alleges, noting that group text was started after the girls participated in a religious retreat known as Kairos, the purpose of which is to allow students to express themselves in a private forum without any fear of retaliation.
The plaintiffs also noted a 2014 incident in which a Marist student athlete, who is black, advocated on Twitter for the killing of white people. The lawsuit claims that the comments were simply glossed over and the student athlete was not disciplined.
The lawsuit claims that the texting controversy ruined the reputation of the girls, who had been “outstanding students,” and affected their ability to attend the college or university of their choice.
The lawsuit requests that each of the girls be allowed to return to school or be given a full refund of the $65,000 their families had paid in tuition, books and other expenses.
They also requested $1 million in damages for invasion of privacy resulting in damaged reputations, emotional distress and public scorn for being labeled as racists.
>“I F—— HATE N——,” >"at most, racially insensitive"
Not enough facepalms in the world.
The $1 million is over the top, but expelling those girls while not even reprimanding the athlete who talked about killing white people is a textbook example of Double Standard.
edited 8th Dec '16 6:41:15 AM by Khudzlin
50 bucks they end up winning the lawsuit.
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
Eh, my money is that their lawyers will find a way to settle this outside of court. Community service is usually the go-to "punishment for the sake of punishment" route for these sorts of cases.
If there's literally a blog called "Racists Getting Fired," it only stands to logic that UNDERAGE racists would get expelled. Seriously, that text conversation is asking for a long-ass suspension at minimum.
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Those text were supposed to be private. They were published by someone else. Firing/expelling people (especially without giving them any chance to explain themsleves) for something they say privately is a straight way to the thought police.
There really is nothing to explain about this. While they had just enough "nuance" to make a distinction of "black people =/= n____" they still expressed a very racist sentiment. That said I do think it's not great to dig into people's private speech in search of incrimination on principle. If that information was obtained via questionable means then yeah I can understand there being an issue.
Jupiterian Local
Being racist is not a protected class. The school (and employers) are fully justified in expelling (or firing) someone for expressing racist sentiment, even if the communication took place privately. Usually they build in a clause in their school/company policy to justify it if they have to. (The phrase used in military context is "conduct unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman".) The specifics of the lawsuit here seems to be that the school may have violated their own policy by not giving the students involved a disciplinary hearing before expelling them, not that they're not allowed to expel someone for saying racist things, even privately.
edited 9th Dec '16 7:31:07 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Protected classes have nothing to do with this. If someone spouts off racist rants at work, I'd be okay for their employer disciplining them (including firing them, provided they did so within the law). But I cannot condone allowing an employer to discipline an employee for private off-work behavior (public off-work behavior is more iffy, depending how much the employee's behavior reflects on the business).
Jupiterian Local
Once a private conversation has been posted publically, it's no longer private. You'd have a point if the school had been sending a private investigator around to check up on its students or something, but that's not what happened. The racist behavior is now public knowledge. The school must react accordingly.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
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If you think you're going to leave racism behind by moving away from America, I have some bad news for you, man.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.