We Are All Racists
...and the colour of your skin has nothing to do with it. Check out your friends, family or the neighbors next door. How do you see them in respect to their abilities, genes, charisma, education? Do you happen to “favour” some but not others? Where do we exactly draw the line between preference and bigotry? Sure, we are never bigots ourselves—is always the other fellow. Everyone defends their right to have a preference. The issue emerges when those who are less prefered, group together and start pointing fingers.
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Here is how wikipedia defines racism
Racism is a product of the complex interaction in a given society of a race-based worldview with prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems (e.g., apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices.
Does really the addition “race-based worldview” make any difference? What if it was education-based worldview? How about Body Mass Index-based world-view? How about face-symmetry? Breast size? Bank Account? School? Employment? Injuries?
Admittedly race and women’s rights are still fresh in human history and still get much attention but most of the fuss was never about Women Rights or Black Rights. Heck, the majority of "rights" were given right after the white-male population got slaughtered in WWI & WWII. We needed new folks to help with the economy and along with the rights came the civil obligations.
Social Justice Warriors (SJW'S) of any era asking for “rights” when in fact they demand privileges. If one has the numbers on their side they can actively pursue anything through the democratic mechanism. You have zits? Some special kind of "disability"? Something “offends” you in any way? Just find the numbers, initiate political action and take advantage of your collective electoral vote to force your will on the rest.
Just to demonstrate the absurdity of this let’s consider those who need special rights because they are fat. Since many people in the western world are obese they can actively group together and demand special privileges for having the “disability” of not knowing when to stop eating. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 50 years from now we have special benefits for virtual reality addicts or immobility benefit for those who are glued to their computers and are unable to move. We can classify anything as a "problem" or "addiction" as long as the collective is strong enough to enforce the shilled ubsirdity.
You see, the problem is not the rights themselves but how people feel entitled one way or another to demand things from other people—because apparently numbers justify social necessity. It's a modern version of warfare; a kind and rather "civilised" one. Some people feel entitled to some of your money because some other people identify with their needs. Sounds legit right?
What do we do? We form groups demanding things from one another. Everyone that does not want to gives us stuff because we are in a special group is a “bigot racist”. Obviously our group is more disadvantaged than the other group. I mean, look at those case studies! Don’t they make you emotional you heartless monster?
Let’s say one owns a cosmetics company. They would mostly hire people with a clear and beautiful face so they can make more sales. Same thing happens to companies who prefer mostly wealthy-tier offsprings that attended ivy league universities. Patterns show that these people will most likely generate more profit. Are they discriminating towards poor people who did not attend these universities?
Bigotry and racism can shift in any side of society and most of the time we don’t even realise it. Even hippies are not immune to this. If a tie shows up in a hippy drum circle, he would most likely be looked down and with suspicion. Should that high class tie create a support group for political action against hippy discrimination?
We are all victims of bigotry one way or another because of a simple evolutionary mechanism; pattern recognition. It is how our brain is hardwired in order for us to make distinctions when it comes to images, letters, concepts and formulas.
Pattern recognition is the oldest trick in the book, the one that made us survive through the hardships of our constantly changing environment. All animals possess it one way or another but humans have developed a unique repertoire that incorporates much more elaborate sets of patterns. In humans sometimes is the characteristics of other humans that don’t seem to abide to the majority. For example people in the past used to be prejudiced about gingers. In Asia light skinned people are considered high class. The skin colour indicates that one does not work in the fields, getting roasted from the sun. In the west it is the exact opposite. Tanned people have the luxury to go to tanning salons and beaches thus they are considered to have a higher social status.
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Our subconscious divides people into different groups for ridiculous reasons. Skin colour is just one arbitrary set that we decided to be obsessed with. Club members, video-gamers, sports fans, even neighborhoods and schools develop insider circles discriminating against one another. Racism is nothing more than the manifestation of people that prefer something in respect to something else. KKK supports that they believe in the power of the white race. This is considered dangerous because of the past hate crimes. Ironically we have no problem with the exhibition of national pride even if national armies have slaughtered billions in comparison with the victims of slavery. Now imagine trying to explain this to an african-american soldier that is parading his national pride in the Middle East.
People will start bashing people that threaten their livelihood. Often the equation of bigotry can be as simple as that. Fat shaming for example comes easy considering how much of a burden obese and overweight people are on the system. People are literally paying for other people’s foul habits. Skin colour racism emerged simply because societies did not have many other pattern sets to base their social structures. Thus they felt entitled over other groups of people to the point of owning them through physical force.
Today we are more civilised but still follow the same pattern. Instead of being owned by one individual, many people throw 1/3 of their day or more into a job that barely sustains them alive. Slaves in the past were provided with food and shelter and had their occasional outings. Today wage slavery is not that much better since many are even risking staying homeless.
Racism is not necessarily a problem. It seems to be only when it is framed by political correctness. It becomes a problem when we wish it to be a problem. For example today some academics have expanded their view about racism to include any aspects of individuality and independence. Not supporting affirmative action or welfare programs will mark one as a racist. Back in 1700 Americans did not consider themselves racist since slaves always existed. Today a similar stance is held towards other groups who constantly invent sub groups in order to feel special or distinguished from the rest. The LGBT community for example (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) has evolved into a LGBTTTQQIAA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally, Pansexual, Agender, Gender Queer, Bigender, Gender Variant, Pangender). If you are not familiar with this clusterfuck then you are likely to be considered an “ignorant cis” and be treated much like a racist. Word definitions are not crafted by dictionaries but by popular opinion. Don’t be surprised if in the future we get bitcoin-phobic or ethereum-ignorant or Pancrypto. Groupies will distill any common characteristic for political favouritism.
If we want to delve even deeper into the issue, research has shown that people will react immediately negatively, almost unconsciously when it comes to words like “angry”, “criminal”, “poor”, rather than black skin or white skin. Even more interestingly, people will react more positively when it comes to “light” concepts in respect to “dark” and it won’t matter whether one is racially black or white. The main reason for this was rather our evolutionary path. Daylight offers life, clear view of predators, warmth. The darkness of the night is often associated with danger, fear, death. This is why halloween makes more “sense” at night rather than day.
The title choice for this article had two reasons. I was aware of the negative connotation the word “racism” has and the flash-backs of mainly “black” references that would spring to one’s unconscious. By now though (hopefully), one would evaluate things from a different perspective. This small linguistic experiment shows how easy it is to craft meaning through words into one’s mind. How palpable the human mind is in respect to how it perceives the environment. We are hardwired to experience the world through a very simplistic auto-piloted mechanism. It might sound counter intuitive but we need to accept that, in the end, we are all racists at heart. It is part of being human.
Unfortunately, the reason why people start to think "racism" is acceptable and even good, is because the definition of racism is blurred. The only definition that truly makes sense in a broader perspective, is that racism is the term applicable to a belief in morality being merely an uncontrollable result of a specific genetic lineage.
It's an incarnation of determinism (another term constantly misused) pure and simple. To be specific, the pitiful try to use ones chemical predestination as "proof" or "argument" for ones superiority - which actually fairly often, very ironically, is accompanied by the idea that the racist should be given power...
-The way I use the terms, understanding "racial" differences is not the same as racism. For example, a physician taking into account the family history of his patient when prescribing him a medicine is not a racist. Neither is the asian man who based on science makes a decission to be more careful not to overconsume alcohol.
humans themselves blurred it to serve a primal pattern recognition instict. i explain this in the article
And they are. Those who discriminate in regards to any attribute seem to distinguish value. For example one could be racist against Steemit and not Bitcoin even if Steemit is better at many things. The fact that Bitcoin came earlier though, dominating the market gives it a "Race" advantage
i never said those are racist attributed. those are merely classifications for another purpose. Marrying someone because he is physician though or assuming the asian is better at math rhymes along racist attributes.
You don't seem to make proper distinction between cooperative behaviour and collectivism - as well as between concept creation and mistaken bias.
As this would likely take many hours to deal with, I'm giving up this conversation.
Depends on what asian you are talking about: the asian man in the example or the asian in general? And better than who exactly? If someone was to accept scientific data (if there was such available) showing that people with Asian descent tend in average to be better at math (or have a higher IQ) than people made up of different biological backgrounds, that would make that person racist? Sorry for the hypothetical question, because I have not read enough about the topic to have a definitive answer in regards to the correlation between physical and psychological traits, but all I'm trying to point here, whether it would be for anthropometric, cultural reasons or else, is that if there was revealed to be something about ''the asian is better at math'', I wouldn't label this along racist attributes because of the appreciation (better, more, less or not than) that would happen in this case to reflect reality about only one single trait. I believe what we are talking about here is racialism not racism, even if some dictionnaries seem to see the two words as interchangeable (erasing as a result the former à la 1984?), I can't help but to make a distinction between the ideas of ''we are different as groups'' (racialism) and ''we are superior as a group'' (racism).
If you believe you are a "white" or "black" person then you're racist because you believe in the concept of race. If you don't believe in the concept but choose to fight the effects then you may be an anti-racist. This means, you aren't a white or black person, but just a person who loves people (not just white or black people). So if you embrace a human identity above all else then you don't need "race consciousness" to be an anti-racist.
At the same time, you can care about the fate of people who look like you or who came from a similar background as you without having to internalize race identity. You don't have to see yourself internally as a white or black person to care about or love white or black people. The point is, human rights are the issue, not rights for blacks or whites, but for human beings. If you feel one group has an unfair advantage due to racism then it's not racist to give an advantage to the underdog.
So scholarships for people who live the black life, and black experience, is valuable if you know people in these perspectives have it harder in our society. The same goes for supporting women, or children or any other disadvantaged group in society. The belief in helping the disadvantaged does not require race specific consciousness.
My point is, what matters isn't the ideologies, but the outcomes. A person can totally be racist, believe in race consciousness, be pro white or pro black or pro woman or pro man, but still create good outcomes for all genders, all races, in spite of the fact that they have a preference. What it means is, you can do good for your group while also doing good for humanity as a whole.
So even people who are racist can be an asset for humanity. It all depends on how their racism is expressed and what form it is. It's like with viruses or diseases, some are mild, some are beneficial, some are so bad they destroy the host, and memes are very similar to viruses, and race ideology (and gender ideology) are memes.
I would tend to agree that racialism is not the same as racism.
just another political/ strategic concept instrumentalized by politics to control people/power, by fear
you are not making any sense. rephrase
Excellent post. I agree. I've occasionally been known to say things like "You cannot defeat racism by using racism", or "You cannot defeat bigotry with bigotry". My more common statement though is "You either want equality or you want special treatment. You cannot have both because they are mutually exclusive."
Resteemed!
Great comment until the last statement because sometimes equality can only be achieved through special treatment.
A simple example would be that you don't give the same size meals to a 6 ft person that you give to a 5ft person because you'll either be starving one or over-feeding the other. Another would be spending more time with a slower child or hugging baby boys more than girls because they have fewer nerve endings and need more hugs to obtain the same mental stimulation.
If special treatment is required then that is not equality. They are mutually exclusive. Equality means being treated the same as everyone else. Special treatment is NOT being treated the same so it is not equality.
However, there are some exceptions and that may be what you are thinking about. Equal pay. Is a doctor making $250/hr the same as a guy making $10/hr. No they are not. Yet equality is about starting out with equal opportunity. The choices you make and the consequences of those choices are not something we should be focusing on.
When it comes to Racism that involves skin or other traits that you cannot change. In such a case you want to be treated equal. Special treatment just is like riding a see-saw it will eventually tip the racism the other direction. People WANTING special treatment or believing they deserve it doesn't have anything to do with equality. Which is why it is called "Special" treatment. Meaning they are treated different from other people. As long as we have people that think they need or deserve special treatment then educating racism, and other forms of bigotry out of us is impossible. The special treatment simply fuels the fire. You either want to be treated the same as everyone else, or you believe you are special and deserve some form of treatment that everyone else does not get. I will not endorse this. I see it as a huge part of the problem.
However, your examples about needs due to things beyond your control are a no brainer. When it comes to racism and bigotry though you either want special treatment or you want equality. You cannot have both.
Equality might not be a good concept. It's a flawed concept. We don't need to give people equal treatment in every area. Under the law we do. But we don't need to always follow that rule because there are times where equality might lead to a less good result for self and the majority of others. So it really should be a matter of what outcome it could generate.
No brainer huh? Like that rare gift common sense. You have constructed your world in a very black and white way and you clearly define your, "needs due to things beyond your control" in a very narrow way to include merely some of the physical aspects of life.
Actually, No I haven't. I was speaking about Racism and Bigotry. The examples you provided had nothing to do with racism or bigotry. They were examples of where equality cannot function yet they had nothing to do with racism or bigotry which was the topic and the areas I mentioned. With regards to those topics you either want equality or you want special treatment. If you wish to expand it beyond the context of the discussion then you have a valid point.
Well, it is of course, up to you whether or not you want to extrapolate by applying my examples to your discussion. It shouldn't be that difficult to see skin colour as creating a need, "due to things beyond your control", the need being fair treatment across the board but in lieu of that, special treatment occasionally to create some balance overall. It might be helpful to your understanding if you didn't make the assumption that people want special treatment when, if fact, all they want is to be treated like a regular joe. The powers-that-be provide the special treatment and maybe they go about that in the wrong way but the underlying concept is fine.
exactly. very well put
I am a racist. I hate trash. White trash, Trailer trash, Black trash, Green trash.
Guess, I am glad to be a racist. Noone is the same, so how can I possibly treat anybody the same. Most people NEED to be treated differently, and I say this as a sales person who talks to hundrets of people...
One becomes a specie-ist as soon as they think of a thought that is not of their own which leads to racism and more...
It seems like you are equating racism with discrimination and they are not the same thing and in doing so you risk trivialising racism. Sure everyone is discriminatory in their thinking at some point in their life but not everyone will act upon their thoughts to actively discriminate.
However, I think that this is a great article if it causes people to think about themselves in relation to a topic that is generally shrouded by political correctness. I agree that many people who would not consider themselves to be racist, are in fact, racist but because of the stigma involved in being racist they never discover their true feelings because they never ask themselves the right questions and therefore never "grow".
ofcourse they do. its called voting. cheering up for one group over another..etc. i explain it in detail in the article.
Are you sure that everyone votes?
yes i am sure and it doesn't only include civic votes :)
Very sure that on the entire planet you cannot find one person that never votes? Anyway the voting is irrelevant to your assertion that everyone discriminates, you have widened the definition of discrimination to the point where it is entirely meaningless.
Or they can be rational and cheer for whomever is helping them at the time. I don't promote any group which hasn't in the past helped me in some way or which I don't see as being willing to help me. Now, there is strength in numbers, but if you separate by race you actually lower your numbers by dividing the potential size of your group.
That being said, because of basic ignorance, people marginalize their groups. This isn't likely to change any time soon, but just like in prison we can see that the prisoners don't benefit from being divided racially, as they cannot easily protest or organize their labor if they are divided like that.
That's how the initial "racism" connudrum begins. People stat supporting those who are like them or those who help them. Groupies are then formed. this leads to "racism".
irrelevant on one basic correlation. The western civilisaton can say that it advanced by abusing all other races for centuries. the proof is the higher level we are right now.
please. learn to argue
I never said don't support those who support you, or not to support your group, whether it be your affinity group, or ideological group, or whatever.
Help yourself and your group as much as you can, but doing it in a rational way does not require the concept of race. If a bunch of people who look similar to you choose to be part of your group then they are your group, but there is no reason someone has to be in your group MERELY because they look like you as this wouldn't be rational.
Basically, being in the group is earned. Race isn't earned.
again. for the n'th time. i am not talking about skin colour and the conventional way that you the liberal "equal" bullshiter dana perceives reality. that's like the first line of my post. you are either retarded or incredibly stubborn to prove your point.
We aren't all racist. I don't believe in the concept of "race" or "breed". There is no scientific evidence to support it. That being said, we get grouped into categories by threat of violence whether we believe in it inherently or not. Racism exists because enough people are race realists and systematically enforce it through violence to make it a problem.
Ignorance is the problem, not racism. Ignorance is what is behind the problem of racism. A statement like "we are all racist" is in itself ignorant. A more accurate statement is "we are all ignorant" and that is a statement I would agree with. While we are all ignorant, we aren't all ignorant in the same ways, for the same reasons. Race is a particular ideology, but there are others.
Race was invented to justify slavery. It was harder to justify slavery when everyone is human, so by dehumanizing others it made it easier for the "masters" to justify enslaving large groups of people. Merely by saying they aren't part of the 'human' race, and by inventing "breeds" or "races" and treating them like separate species.
This allowed certain people to feel less guilty about how they treated other people. Race beyond this was just differences in appearance, such as lighter or darker skin, hair, different noses, etc, and these differences always existed, and in certain parts of the world a certain type of nose, or hair, or skin tone might be more common, but "race" is an ideology and treats these differences as something significant to the behavior of the person.
Race was invented way before slavery. 32.000 years ago to be exact. You made two comments for saying the exact same thing. No need to do that.
It was harder to justify slavery when everyone is human, so by dehumanizing others it made it easier for the "masters" to justify enslaving large groups of people. Merely by saying they aren't part of the 'human' race, and by inventing "breeds" or "races" and treating them like separate species.
Ancient Egyptians didn't have the word race nor did homosapiens when they were abusing neanderthals to the point of extinction. Your logic is over simplistic. The problem is not the linguistic part. again. read the darn article before you spout SJW mantra.
they are part of the human race. they are just different. much like dogs have different races and each race has different traits. no race is better than another. they are just different. key word here is "different". work on it.
lol. as an anthropologist I can assure you that they didn't always exist. Those traits changed along with the environment over hundreds of thousands of years.
now who is the "ignorant" one? I would advice you not to take your arguments from liberal college campuses. Answers stemming from there do not necessarily reflect reality.
Each "race" does not have different traits because race doesn't correlate with genetic differences. A "breed" in a dog such as a Pitbull is not inherently more violent than a German Shepard. It's all in how the dog is trained, not the "breed". Breed is nothing but the physical features of the dog and has nothing to do with how intelligent the dog is, or what traits the dog can have, because dogs have genes and are mixed.
Breeds only exist because humans enforced it into existence but there is nothing more about it than that. If humans like for example pale skin and blue eyes, then the humans mate more with people who have that, and got more of that in certain places, but that is sexual preference toward a particular appearance and nothing more. It doesn't mean that somehow having these physical features reveals anything about the personality of the human because it doesn't.
So of humans force dogs to mate in a certain way so they'll be better at racing? So now we have the grey hound. This doesn't mean the grey hound "breed" can be compared to human "races" because there was no domestication where some master forced humans to mate over thousands of years.
You can bring up Egypt, and slavery, and you can bring up some times where there were arranged marriages, or where there is rape, but the fact is the majority of humans on the earth weren't raped, and every human has ancestors who were slave masters and slaves, so that is moot. In a lab setting, yes you can create races by forcing humans to breed in unnatural patterns, but there is no forced eugenics right now and even if there was, race is still just a social construct which wouldn't exist on it's own without some government, or dictator, or religion or something to enforce it.
how much do you want to bed on that?
other species enforce it as well. this is how the environment works.
oh yes there was. it is called the african savanna ecosystem. the indo-europea..heck even slaves in united states were bread like animals in order to produce the most strong one. dana-edwards. you need to do ridiculous amount of reading. this is like 101 sociology.
actually for hunderds of thousands of years..except the last 6000, humans were raping each other much like other animals do, forcing themselves to breed.
labs exist in the natural environment. you keep using that word "aritficial". i don't think it means what you think it means sunshine.
lol. rich people right now choose traits for their children based on genetic engineering. poor people can't do that.
dana dana dana...you talk so much..you say so little...
I did back up what I say with some sources. You've offered none to support your hypothesis.
So the point? Yes you can remove certain traits from a population if you use a domestication process over a very long period of time, but it took thousands of years to tame dogs, and then hundreds of years more to have what we now call "breeds". Human beings don't have enough control over each other for a long enough period of time to do that, even in the context of slavery there was never that much control over mating.
I could be wrong, and maybe you can show me some documents which support your thesis, but you haven't. If we look at the genetics of black people today, or white people today, we don't see anything genetic which shows any sort of evidence that they have innately different traits.
So unless you believe black people are inherently better at sports (which you aren't saying but you hint at by saying slavery enforced stronger offspring) then you're spouting conspiracy theories and myths without any scientific (genetic) evidence to prove it happened.
Provide some evidence for that.
Bet? I would go with the science no matter what the popular myth has to say. There is no scientific factual evidence to support that Pitbulls are more violent than German Shepards. If we are tracking dog bites, then we don't see that Pitbulls bite people more on average. There is no evidence that any breed of dog is inherently more violent than another.
I just thought about the 5 people I hang out with the most. I am a 5th generation Canadian (England, Ireland, Scotland), Caucasian male. I hang out with:
I wouldn't say that I am racist, but I definitely agree that I have many prejudices .
i think this is irrelevant to the point i am making in the article
Oops, I apologize. Take it as a compliment. Your post got me thinking and I didn't finish my train of thought.
I wouldn't say that I am racist, but I definitely agree that I have many prejudices .
It should instead include people you communicate with online. People hang out offline with whomever happens to be around and most neighborhoods are segregated. It doesn't make someone racist to be in some neighborhood which is segregated.
On the other hand if you have access to all kinds of people and have the choice then if you actively choose to avoid certain races of people that would be evidence of a problem. Do you avoid certain people because they have the wrong race?
You both didn't read the article. I specifically speak about how the conventional meaning of "Race" is not the issue.
dana. for fucks sake. stand up to the level of your rep.
I've quoted parts of your article. It's possible that I just don't agree with you. People with high reps can disagree.
Nop, i specifically even stated the dictionary definition of racism from the second paragraph. You are just trying to go around it to shill your point.
Reputation in here means nothing. Well, it actually means that you are liked from a few people who know how to mine cryptos. nothing else