A Tribute to the Persecuted White, Hetero, Man

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
I'm going to start off by saying that anyone who begins their post with so juvenile a statement as "You are an idiot" has severely weakened the credibility of the content of their post.

Now, to the discussion at hand:

Programs like Affirmative Action no longer have a place in our society for a number of reasons:

1. It simply doesn't pay to be racist in hiring practices today. Companies now look for the most talented people they can find because they cannot afford to have incompetent people running their operations. Capitalism is overtaking racism.

2. While quotas and the like are not part of AA, they are part of the mindset AA creates. All you must do is look at the recruitment programs at major universities and the military in the US to realize this. These institutes either openly use quotas or support some type of program to give minorities and/or women an edge over equally or better qualified caucasions and males. While this is not the intention or spirit of AA and other programs and laws like it, it has been the demonstrated effect.

Capitalism is eradicating racism??

So what utopian society is this that you live in? I would like to go and live there.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by orange
Urban schools are an absolute joke in America, half the people would be better off attending K-4 and then working for the rest of their lives - they'd make more money in the long run.

Okay, apparently I am going to have to explain this to you in terms that a four year-old could understand.

It is incorrect to say all urban schools are terrible.
Many American urban schools are terrible, as I said before.
Some urban schools are highly successful.
Are the urban schools all terrible in places such as Nashville or Seattle, or Atlanta?

Think before you write.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
1. It simply doesn't pay to be racist in hiring practices today. Companies now look for the most talented people they can find because they cannot afford to have incompetent people running their operations. Capitalism is overtaking racism.

You're living in a dream world. If capitalism eliminated racism then we would have eliminated racism in the workforce years ago. Capitalism today is no different than capitalism 25 years ago.

American newspapers have had a AA policies for the past 25 years, and yet the majority of these newspapers have not achieved equality in their hiring practices and more than one third do not employ minority journalists.

Your theory might work in a perfect world, but not in the real world.

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
2. While quotas and the like are not part of AA, they are part of the mindset AA creates. All you must do is look at the recruitment programs at major universities and the military in the US to realize this. These institutes either openly use quotas or support some type of program to give minorities and/or women an edge over equally or better qualified caucasions and males.

Without AA, under-qualified white males tend to get jobs over qualified minorities and women are denied jobs. That's the problem with racism: the white male is seen as having some special ability and is put ahead of minorities and women who are actually better qualified.

A prime example of this are fighter pilots. Women tend to have faster reflexes and faster reflexes are one of the most important requirements for modern air combat, but the male-dominated air force considers women to be inferior even though they can have superior attributes. Felame fighter pilots have to be far above average just to be considered on par with mediocre male pilots.

[TCO]

Tingkai, you're talking out of your ass regarding fighter pilots.

I lived with an F-14 pilot.

[Kirnwaffen]

So what utopian society is this that you live in?

What dark, paranoid, ultra-racist society do you live in? My point was that racist hiring practices don't benefit corporations. That, in combination with a general shift in views on race in the US means that employers will seek out better qualified employees regardless of race. It isn't Utopian, it just makes sense.

Without AA, under-qualified white males tend to get jobs over qualified minorities and women are denied jobs.

And with AA, under-qualified minorities and women tend to get jobs that would otherwise be handed to a caucasion male who is qualified. How is this any better? The fact is that AA is doing little or nothing to improve the situations of minorities. Simply reserving jobs for them isn't the answer. Improving inner city schools, where there are high concentrations of minorities, is a far better answer than quotas.

As for women in the military, the basic reason that so few of them make it is because of the rigorous physical standards. That isn't to say that they are inherently weaker, but their bodies are built differently, which could leave them vulnerable in extreme combat situations. Actual discrimination in the military is quite exaggerated.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by GP
Tingkai, you're talking out of your ass regarding fighter pilots.

I lived with an F-14 pilot.

What do you disagree with:
a) that female fighter pilots face discrimination; or
b) that women have better hand-to-eye coordination?

[Shi Huangdi]

"No, it's not considered acceptable. But that doesn't make it persecution either."

If it's made legal



"Most of that, frankly, was amongst the nobility, who as we both agree weren't all that Irish."

It was not mostly directed against the Nobility. They massacred all sorts of people. They often massacred the sick and the wounded, destroyed schools, ordered priests to be murdered. Sir Peter Carew was far worse then the Spanish Duke of Alva, he went as far as to massacre women and children.

"Would that happen to be the Ulster Rising of 1641? That would be the one where Irish Catholics went out and massacred Irish Protestants?"

Not that massacres are ever justified but the Protestants often favored the English. The English side was barbaric as usual in this war too- when the Earl of Warwick for instance captured Irish Frigates he would tie them up and throw them into the sea.


"As for Charles II and banning wool exports, I can just imagine the scene in his Court"

Which was of course devestating to the Irish trade, something the wool banning was only a part of.

"Kind of like Bush and Canadian softwood lumber; I seriously doubt Bush hates Canadian lumbermen and wants to persecute them - far more likely that he responded to domestic interests. "

Now that's a dumb comparison. Bush doesn't rule Canada. England did rule Ireland. Bush doesn't have an obligiation for the welfare of Canadian's, a monarch is supposed to look out for the interests of his people. But the wool banning was part of an effort to attack the Irish economy that impoverished the people. Ireland was at one point doing quite well for itself and conducting alot of trade with the European continent- The English stopped that and Ireland was impoverished for a long time.

"James II was ...an idiot."

Perhaps, but certainly a more moral man then many other English leaders before and to come.


"Right, Charles I married a Catholic"

That doesn't make him a Catholic, and in fact he strongly supported the Anglican Church and it's bishops.

"and Charles II was, as I said, a closet Catholic or pretended to be a Protestant."

Unless you are Confirmed a Catholic formally, you are not one. He definitely sympathized with Catholicism but never actually became one until his deathbed.



"I'm sure the Irish regarded the English quite highly as well "

As much as appropriate for a people that had brutalyl subjugated them. But the point is the English viewing the Irish as savage beasts helped fuel their atrocities.


"We obviously have different opinions as to what constitutes "persecution". "

Let's here some other opinions:

"What is being done in Ireland is exactly what we condemned the Germans for doing in Belgium"- Archbishop of Canterbury, 1921

"Things are being done in Ireland with the knowledge and approval, if not under the direction of, Government officials, which would disgrace the blackest annals of despotism in Europe" Asquith while Ex- Prime Minister

"Law and Order has given place to a bloody and brutal anarchy, in which the armed agents of the Crown vioalte every law in aimless and vindictive and insolent savagery. England has departed further from her own standards, and farther from the standards of an nation in the world, not excepting the TUrk and the Zulu, then has ever been known in history before." - General Gough(British)

The British even into the 20th century were killing innocent women and children.

"I'm going to start off by saying that anyone who begins their post with so juvenile a statement as "You are an idiot" has severely weakened the credibility of the content of their post. "

Firstly, I was at liberty to weaken my credibility considering that my opponet had already done the same by playing down some of history's worst atrocities. Secondly, if the heat level at Apolyton debates to hot for you, stop whining and get out of the kitchen. Thirdly, if you weren't a newbie, you might have known that DJ had made racist statements in the past- he said that the Irish, whether north or south, were a plain unreasonable poeple.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
And with AA, under-qualified minorities and women tend to get jobs that would otherwise be handed to a caucasion male who is qualified.

That's your assumption. Do you have any facts to back that up.

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
As for women in the military, the basic reason that so few of them make it is because of the rigorous physical standards. That isn't to say that they are inherently weaker, but their bodies are built differently, which could leave them vulnerable in extreme combat situations.

That's true for ground troops, but less true for other combat arms.

[TCO]

Tingkai,

your statement here: "Felame fighter pilots have to be far above average just to be considered on par with mediocre male pilots."

You are talking out of your ass because you have no study evidence of this, nor are you a fighter pilot, nor have you ever spent much time with any.

I could go on to expose other silly things about your statements (implied idea that hand/eye coordination is the key aspect of being a fighter pilot rather than situational awareness, etc.) but I don't have the energy for that...

Toodle-oo, blowhard...

[Kirnwaffen]

That's your assumption. Do you have any facts to back that up.

If you're an employer faced with the possibility of being accused of violating AA, aren't you going nudge your standards down a bit if it means being able to hire a black individual rather than a white individual?

That's true for ground troops, but less true for other combat arms.

Not in the example you used. Marine combat pilots must go through the same training as the grunts before flight school, and other combat aviators must be able to survive high - G forces and the possibility of being shot down and forced to evade enemy forces. In some ways, the physical demands on a pilot are much higher than on the ground troops.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen

What dark, paranoid, ultra-racist society do you live in? My point was that racist hiring practices don't benefit corporations. That, in combination with a general shift in views on race in the US means that employers will seek out better qualified employees regardless of race. It isn't Utopian, it just makes sense.

If you're aware of the negative stereotypes that whites have of blacks, Hispanics, and so on, then how can you possibly make this claim??

A number of white, male CEOs and other white, male executives see blacks as lazy -- as an inherent negative quality of their race.

I could draw up a longer laundry list of what negative perceptions many white, male executives have of minorities, including women, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you're already aware of these misperceptions.

[Kirnwaffen]

I am well aware of the misconceptions, but I believe that you believe them to be far more widespread than they actually are. The world has changed a bit since the days of the Civil Rights movement.

[SuperSneak]

Re: A Tribute to the Persecuted White, Hetero, Man

Originally posted by MrFun


Has there been a long history of persecutions against white Northern Europeans because of their race?

Yes.
Here's a direct quote from an eminent social scientist in America at the turn of the century, referring to the Northern Europeans you speak of:
"The entrance of such vast masses of peasantry degraded below our utmost conceptions, is a matter which no intelligent patriot can look upon without the gravest apprehension and alarm. They are beaten men from beaten races. They have none of the ideas and aptitudes such as belong to those who were descended from the tribes that met under
the oak trees of old Germany to make laws and choose chiefs." Francis Walker, 1896.

Many Europeans were treated like crap here. I'm sure many white immigrants have been treated like crap by other white natives.

How about Henry William Bernhard, a German immigrant who fled Naziism in his home country to come here, only to be persecuted in the US, having his hunting rifle taken away, his dog poisoned, his home vandalized, his movements scrutinized, just for being a German.

I'd get into the Wops, Spics, Micks (oh, that's right, you've given them your blessing) and others that received a poor education, employment or housing based on their status as immigrants, but their mistreatment probably wouldn't fit your broad and generalized interpretation of discrimination.

The point you are missing, Mr. Fun, in all of your youthfully-charged and misguided Jr. Social Scientist/Champion of the
subculture- flavor-of- the-month giddiness, is that persecution is not so much a question of race or color or any silly conspiratorial nonsense, but is a matter of power.

In this world, a lot of power is given to white men. That includes gay men, by the way. With their expendable incomes, gay couples come into a poor neighborhood like the one I live in, buy up a lot of the homes and economically drive the indigenous population out of their historical homes, and into less desireable areas.

But in China, human rights are supressed by Asians. In Africa, by Africans, white and black. In Latin America, by Latinos.
I always find it humorous when I encounter a black neighbor who gives me dirty looks, like I'm his local opressor. Guess what, pal, if I was THE MAN, I wouldn't be living in the inner city !

It is a question of wealth vs. poverty, and brother, there's a lot of poor people of every color out there, and I don't see rich people of color handing out the good life any quicker than rich white people do.

Personally, I find your naive and limited worldview to be both frightening and incredibly misguided. I know a lot of black people who could give a **** about your self-proclaimed "minority" status. I know a lot of grown gay men and lesbian women who would be very dismayed at your attitude. They are just people and don't need any champions...because we're just friends...people that are friends...bottom line.

In my opinion, you are nearly as bad as your garden variety bigot, because you do nothing to bridge gaps, but spend the bulk of your energy making walls.

I don't think you are in any way special because you are gay, or an Iowan or wear glasses, or are educated.
It is the person inside the facade that matters, and your shotgun attacks on a particular segment of the world, just because you need a handy place to hang your sense of specialness on, is absurd. You've fallen for the ploy that the real enemy has played with success over and over and over: keep the masses focused on phantom divisions and the real division of wealth and poverty will be ignored.

You're only just scratching the surface of politics, religion, sociology, psychology, anthropology--it can be a heady time, true.

But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[MrFun]

SuperSneak, that is a nice, long troll you did.
I will be generous and rate it 1.5 out of 10.
I never saw myself as priveleged or special because of my sexual orientation or whatever other inherent status I have.
I'm for equality though.
But I'm sure you're capable of improving in your art of trolling.


Kirnwaffen---
But we can argue until we're both blue in the face, to what extent this has changed.

Our country has set forth great ideals about liberty, equality and humanity beginning with the Declaration of Independence, and we have always had the potential to strive towards these ideals even when they have never been a reality.

Nevertheless, our heritage has allowed us to make progress -- even with some points of falling backward, we then move on further ahead.



I remember one incident with a recording of white executives of the Exxon company spewing racist remarks about a black applicant for an employment position in the 1990's.

That is just one example, but isn't this a representative example -- or do you really think that this is the exception to the norm??

[Kirnwaffen]

It is an exception. There are always exceptions, and I'm sure that you could point out any number of them, but the fact is that there are many more cases where that didn't happen that go unnoticed simply because they are the norm. Hell, if that was the norm, why would it even be put in the news.