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
You can acknowledge differing degrees of evil without trying to quantify evilness, so this whole conversation is s little bit of a misrepresentation of my point.
For example, we can recognize that Trump is less evil than Hitler without trying to put a number next to their names. In turn, that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t evil, or anything like that.
Edit: sorry, yeah this may fit elsewhere better.
Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 7th 2018 at 10:39:19 AM
They should have sent a poet.
In the name of being honest
Still, I think that ranking the morality of bad people by their body counts isn't a good practice - and in keeping with the thread's subject, I think I can offer a relevant example: the SS Turkestan Legion.
In the autumn of 1941, the Red Army began sending its Central Asian troops to combat units for the first time. These men and women - Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and many others - were the black sheep of their units. Many of them barely spoke Russian, which immediately made them targets for harassment and brutal hazing. Too many of them were left out of training sessions, including for things as simple as firing their rifles. They were given humiliating and burdensome tasks far more often than their Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian comrades, subjected to political lectures denigrating their cultures, and frequent assault. Some commanders went as far as sending their Central Asian troops on suicidal assignments to get them killed in order to get ethnic Russian replacements.
Naturally, many of them decided to run. But to where? Their Turkic features stuck out in the middle of European Russia. The frontline was chock full of security units and few of them trusted the military justice system enough to help them escape their ordeal. So many of them - about 16,000 in all, throughout the war - did the unthinkable. They ran to the Germans.
Now, keep in mind: the vast majority of these people had no genocidal ambitions. None of them had raised arms against the Soviet state, despite having millions of their countrymen die in collectivisation-induced famines years before. And none chose to be born into a background that made them targets for systemic racism and discrimination. Maybe some of them were genuinely sympathetic to the Nazi ideology; still, the vast majority just wanted to escape. So they threw in their lot with some of the worst murderers, plunderers and torturers in history - all because they thought it was their best chance at survival. The SS Turkestan Legions were deployed to France and Italy, where they were subjected to the same harsh treatment by the Nazis, and eventually surrendered to the Western Allies en masse.
When we look back at history from the macro level, it's probably quite obvious that Hitler's genocidal ideology was worse than Stalin's. The destruction he brought was more widespread, the bodies delivered at an unmatched rate, the whole campaign sickening in its sadistic glee. But zoom in close enough and the lines quickly blur together. Seventy-plus years on, we know for sure that Stalin was the lesser evil - but it would've been too easy to think otherwise if you'd suffered under the Soviet system before encountering the German one. And that about sums up my feelings on this genocide olympics. When you're comparing mass murderers, you're ultimately not comparing morality; you're comparing the random accidents of fate that determined the scope and circumstances of their crimes.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
In the name of being honest
Anyway, palate cleanser: Sir David Attenborough says something racist.
His new series, Dynasties, will mention the pressures affecting wildlife, but Attenborough makes it clear that it will play them down. To do otherwise, he suggests, would be “proselytising” and “alarmist”. His series will be “a great relief from the political landscape which otherwise dominates our thoughts”. In light of the astonishing rate of collapse of the animal populations he features, alongside most of the rest of the world’s living systems – and when broadcasting as a whole has disgracefully failed to represent such truths – I don’t think such escapism is appropriate or justifiable.
It is not proselytising or alarmist to tell us the raw truth about what is happening to the world, however much it might discomfit us. Nor do I believe that revealing the marvels of nature automatically translates into environmental action, as the executive producer of Dynasties claims. I’ve come to believe it can have the opposite effect.
For many years, wildlife film-making has presented a pristine living world. It has created an impression of security and abundance, even in places afflicted by cascading ecological collapse. The cameras reassure us that there are vast tracts of wilderness in which wildlife continues to thrive. They cultivate complacency, not action.
You cannot do such a thing passively. Wildlife film-makers I know tell me that the effort to portray what looks like an untouched ecosystem becomes harder every year. They have to choose their camera angles ever more carefully to exclude the evidence of destruction, travel further to find the Edens they depict. They know – and many feel deeply uncomfortable about it – that they are telling a false story, creating a fairytale world that persuades us all is well, in the midst of an existential crisis. While many people, thanks in large part to David Attenborough, are now quite well informed about wildlife, we remain astonishingly ignorant about what is happening to it.
What makes Attenborough’s comments particularly odd is that they come just a year after the final episode of his Blue Planet II series triggered a massive effort to reduce plastic pollution. Though the programme made a complete dog’s breakfast of the issue, the response demonstrated a vast public appetite for information about the environmental crisis, and an urgent desire to act on it.
Since 1985, when I worked in the department that has made most of his programmes, I have pressed the BBC to reveal environmental realities, often with dismal results. In 1995 I spent several months with a producer, developing a novel and imaginative proposal for an environmental series. The producer returned from his meeting with the channel controller in a state of shock. “He just looked at the title and asked ‘Is this environment?’ I said yes. He said, ‘I’ve spent two years trying to get environment off this fucking channel. Why the fuck are you bringing me environment?’”
I later discovered that this response was typical. The controllers weren’t indifferent. They were actively hostile. If you ask me whether the BBC or ExxonMobil has done more to frustrate environmental action in this country, I would say the BBC.
We all knew that only one person had the power to break this dam. For decades David Attenborough, a former channel controller widely seen as the living embodiment of the BBC, has been able to make any programme he wants. So where, we kept asking, was he? At last, in 2000, he presented an environmental series: State of the Planet.
It was an interesting and watchable series, but it left us with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Only in the last few seconds of the final episode was there a hint that structural forces might be at play: “Real success can only come if there’s a change in our societies, in our economics and in our politics.” But what change? What economics? What politics? He had given us no clues.
To make matters worse, it was sandwiched between further programmes of his about the wonders of nature, which created a strong impression of robust planetary health. He might have been describing two different worlds. Six years later he made another environmental series, The Truth About Climate Change. And this, in my view, was a total disaster.
It told us nothing about the driving forces behind climate breakdown. The only mention of fossil fuel companies was as part of the solution: “The people who extract fossil fuels like oil and gas have now come up with a way to put carbon dioxide back underground.” Apart from the general “we”, the only distinct force identified as responsible was the “1.3 billion Chinese”. That a large proportion of Chinese emissions are caused by manufacturing goods the west buys was not mentioned. The series immediately triggered a new form of climate denial: I was bombarded with people telling me there was no point in taking action in Britain because the Chinese were killing the planet.
If Attenborough’s environmentalism has a coherent theme, it is shifting the blame from powerful forces on to either society in general or the poor and weak. Sometimes it becomes pretty dark. In 2013 he told the Telegraph “What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land … We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That’s barmy.”
There had not been a famine in Ethiopia for 28 years, and the last one was caused not by an absolute food shortage but by civil war and government policies. His suggestion that food relief is counter-productive suggests he has read nothing on the subject since Thomas Malthus’s essay in 1798. But, cruel and ignorant as these comments were, they were more or less cost-free. By contrast, you do not remain a national treasure by upsetting powerful vested interests: look at the flak the outspoken wildlife and environmental presenter Chris Packham attracts for standing up to the hunting lobby.
I have always been entranced by Attenborough’s wildlife programmes, but astonished by his consistent failure to mount a coherent, truthful and effective defence of the living world he loves. His revelation of the wonders of nature has been a great public service. But withholding the knowledge we need to defend it is, I believe, a grave disservice.
My point was literally that if you say the Soviets are Stalin, then you're being terribad in your arguments.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 7th 2018 at 10:52:27 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Oh, bother.
Edit:
Septimus said we should drop this. So I'm dropping it.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I own a couple of his books. Damn shame he's a bigot.
Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 4:03:36 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
One of my bigger moments of realisation this year was realising just how much pollution was the cause of just 100 companies, and no amount of consumer waste reduction could offset such waste.
Edited by Pachylad on Nov 7th 2018 at 5:48:27 PM
Professional Forum Ninja
Strange that they put it in in the first place. The racist elements were not in previous Smash titles, and had been taken out in G&W titles released in the 00s.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Wow, that article got some people upset (taken from the comments):
It's incredibly unfair to let Frederick Douglas get away with backstabbing her while demonizing for doing THE EXACT SAME THING. She fought for half of America, he fought for a much smaller portion of it. Letting black men down for the sake of white women is awful, but letting all women down for the sake of black men is fine? Bit of a double standard here, don't you find? Neither of them were bad people, they just chose their group rather than the other person's. They didn't have a choice going against a system designed to make them lose.
Honestly, I found the article bizarre as I'm not sure what the gain is in demonizing a woman dead for a century who was in most respects incredibly ahead of her time even when she was being angry/racist.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2018 at 2:32:09 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
The point was to show that Anthony wasn't perfect and to hopefully get more people to stop putting her on a pedestal as we do to far too many historical figures. It's not demonization to point out a person was a lot more flawed than they tend to be shown as.
Oh, bother.
To say nothing of the possible long-term ramifications this has had for minority women to this day. There is still something of a racism issue in feminism these days.
Disgusted, but not surprised
I think linking Susan B. Anthony to the racism of white women is a bizarre leap to make.
That didn't need her.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
In the name of being honest
It's also a cautionary tale for marginalised groups throwing each other under the bus out of short-sightedness. In the glam dankness of the far future, there is only radical intersectionality.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Oh, bother.
It's a stretch to guess that maybe the prejudices of one of the founders of a movement may have influenced future generations of the movement?
Racism is such an ingrained part of American society and particularly Southern heritage, the idea Susan's influence had a major role is pretty crazy to me. Yes. Racism was an integral part of Southern women's life the same way as men (and the North was never far from it).
They brought that to feminism, they didn't need to get it from it.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Oh, bother.
If you're really suggesting that the racist rhetoric and behavior of one of the founders of the movement has nothing to do with the racism issues the movement still has to this day...
When most of the women in the movement with both influence and wealth were in the same racist cultural boat of the period?
Even a leader has a group of lieutenants with their own cultural baggage.
I'm not saying "having a racist leader will have had no effect", here. But, considering most of the power-players within the movement were white women of their time...
Racism, both witting and unwitting, was going to happen. It doesn't excuse it; but, I suspect it was unavoidable. Regardless of who sat at the head of the table.
Because... the movement needed people with money, time and organisational skills to get off the ground — or, it would have repeatedly stalled. And time and money (and being oppressed at home for being female) educated Southern Belles... had. Which is intimately attached to why they had time and money with which to do things and learn organisational skills with in the first place, as well.
Yeah. Slavery and Jim Crow touched everything of that period. Including the fight for women's suffrage. Never forget that.
But, that fight... kinda needed to happen, too? And, you can't take those who fought it out of their time period, whack them upside the head with a modern clue-bat and then plop them back again.
Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 12:17:14 PM
Oh, bother.
There's that and then there's leaving stickers at the person's grave saying "I Voted".
This article was very much a reaction to that kind of hero worship.
Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:00:03 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
So... fighting to give women the right to vote means means absolutely nothing, because she was a racist according to how we currently judge this? And, because she was a racist, it's a terrible thing to celebrate being able to vote by leaving a sticker on her grave?
Gee, I really hope nobody ever judges me solely on my flaws, then. After all, they're way more important than anything else I might do...
Seriously, we can celebrate the great that people have done while also keeping in mind they were flawed human beings who fucked up, too. :/
For all anybody knows, the woman who left that sticker put it there even knowing that. Because... the right to vote is important.
Should I ignore what Ghandi did and never, ever celebrate it, because he was an abusive, sexist asshat like most men of his age and station at the time?
Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:13:50 PM
Oh, bother.
If you've ever thrown black people under the bus for your own causes...it'd be fair to judge you for that.
Good deeds don't make up for bad deeds. That's not really how morality works. It's not like videogames with a karma meter.
Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:10:03 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
I'd like to point out that she apparently wasn't the only one throwing marginalised groups under the bus, and as that comment I quoted attests to male abolitionists allegedly had no problem throwing women under the bus when securing their right to vote.
Of course, given that the recent voting controversy is particularly more discriminatory race-wise rather than gender-wise, there was perhaps more reason to shine on her 'problematic-ness' than Frederick Douglas's
btw
what poetry
Edited by Pachylad on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:10:36 PM
Oh, bother.
And TBF, I don't think we've heard of anyone leaving "I Voted" stickers at Frederick Douglass' grave.
I think that this discussion should continue somewhere else.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman