Racial controversy

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Lars-E
What is your issue with race Caligastia? I've seen plenty comments from you in different threads. Aren't you a sort of a new age Urantia guy? That stereotype would say "we're all equal" etc.

I actually do think we are all of equal spiritual worth, and that is what really matters. What gets me is how excited y'all get about trying to prove that our transient, superficial "monkey bodies" are all the same.

[gsmoove23]

Because of the real dangers of those schools of thought which have played time and time again in human history. Certainly enough evidence for that. No one has outlawed it, or at least not where I am, people are just tired of listening to it.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
Because of the real dangers of those schools of thought which have played time and time again in human history. Certainly enough evidence for that. No one has outlawed it, or at least not where I am, people are just tired of listening to it.

I would have thought that the history of the last century shows that it is egalitarian ideologies that pose a deadly danger. Communist regimes are way out ahead of the rest in terms of the death and human misery they have caused.

Questioning racial equality is outlawed in France. People have been convicted for doing so. People have also been convicted for saying that immigration leads to more crime.

If you are one of that majority (I presume) of people who you say are "tired of listening," then why are you bothering to take part in this thread?

[gsmoove23]

I said 'people', I enjoy arguing with ignorant buffoons.

I wasn't talking about the last century alone, but thats a good one equating Stalinist Russia and other authoritarian regimes with arguments for racial equality.

You've found another idea that lead to a lot of suffering but you haven't addressed the fact that racism and ideas of inherent racial differences has lead to an enormous amount of suffering throughout history, many times justified by a wealth of 'scientific' evidence.

[Ramo]

Googled some.
Couldn't find proof or even any studies.

That's because it's trivial. Anthropologists know there aren't any differing selection pressures on intelligence or agressiveness in humans between environments where they've lived, therefore, there are no differences on these traits between "races." There's no point in having studies on the matter since no self-respecting anthropologist would assert that there exist differences in selection pressures on these traits. Just like we don't see refutations of creationism in peer reviewed biological academic journals.

They are conserned.

Yep. Interesting that it also has a direct rebuttal to Cali's post:

[quotIn the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.

Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.

Historical research has shown that the idea of "race" has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields argue that "race" as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.

From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.

As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.

Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences among the "racial" categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes.

Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic, and political inequalities among their peoples. During World War II, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler enjoined the expanded ideology of "race" and "racial" differences and took them to a logical end: the extermination of 11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the Holocaust.

"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features together in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.

At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture." Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are.

It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.

How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.
[/quote]

In other words, race is a fundamentally unscientific concept; rather, it's a cultural concept. Furthermore, it has racist connotations.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
I said 'people', I enjoy arguing with ignorant buffoons.

I wasn't talking about the last century alone, but thats a good one equating Stalinist Russia and other authoritarian regimes with arguments for racial equality.

You've found another idea that lead to a lot of suffering but you haven't addressed the fact that racism and ideas of inherent racial differences has lead to an enormous amount of suffering throughout history, many times justified by a wealth of 'scientific' evidence.

I did not "equate" Stalinist Russia with arguments for racial equality. In fact I did not even specifically mention Stalinist Russia at all. I merely pointed out that regimes professing an egalitarian ideology caused more death and suffering in the last century than ones with an inegalitarian ideology. Obviously, I would recognise that someone can believe in various forms of "equality" without this leading to such things as the Soviet gulag or the "liquidation of the bourgeoisie." You, if you are honest, will recognise that believing in inequality does not automatically lead to people being "exterminated."

As for racism, I would say that people have been racist throughout history, everyhere at all times, and always will be. This is because it is in human nature to be racist, i.e. to be ethnocentric and prefer your own kind. "Fighting racism," i.e. trying to eradicate the natural human tendency to prefer one's own kind, is like "fighting selfishness," i.e. fighting the natural human tendency to look out for one's own personal interests. It's an impossible fight against human nature, inevitably embraced by countless charlatans and hypocrites.

A radical socialist/communist might not like the fact that you cannot eradicate individual wealth-seeking. An "anti-racist" might not like the fact that people persist in preferring to live with their own kind. But they would do better to bow to human nature, and accept that the world will never live up to their "ideal" of perfection. Trying to forcibly implement ideologies that run contrary to human nature is destructive. "Anti-racism" is one such ideology.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by Caligastia
A radical socialist/communist might not like the fact that you cannot eradicate individual wealth-seeking. An "anti-racist" might not like the fact that people persist in preferring to live with their own kind. But they would do better to bow to human nature, and accept that the world will never live up to their "ideal" of perfection. Trying to forcibly implement ideologies that run contrary to human nature is destructive. "Anti-racism" is one such ideology.

We can always try.

Communist ideas, while well-meaning, have destructive side-effects. That is why they cannot be supported.

Anti-racist ideas, however, have no such side-effects. Their only effect is good.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by ranskaldan


We can always try.

Communist ideas, while well-meaning, have destructive side-effects. That is why they cannot be supported.

Anti-racist ideas, however, have no such side-effects. Their only effect is good.

Whatever it might be in the minds of some people, "anti-racism" is in reality basically a virulent, destructive form of racism against against whites. It targets white nations and communities for destruction by slowly, by degrees, breaking down their pride, their feeling of their own uniqueness, their sense of kinship, their collective memory, and essentially everything that makes a people a people. Things which have always been considered natural and good everywhere in the world, like a love of and desire to preserve and advance one's own people, are transformed by anti-racist propaganda into some kind of ultimate evil when displayed by whites.

I call that destructive.

[One_Brow]

Originally posted by Caligastia
As for racism, I would say that people have been racist throughout history, everyhere at all times, and always will be. This is because it is in human nature to be racist, i.e. to be ethnocentric and prefer your own kind. "Fighting racism," i.e. trying to eradicate the natural human tendency to prefer one's own kind, is like "fighting selfishness," i.e. fighting the natural human tendency to look out for one's own personal interests. It's an impossible fight against human nature, inevitably embraced by countless charlatans and hypocrites.

It is in human nature to distrust those who are different, the "outsiders", and skin color is an obvious difference *if* the base group has a homogeneous skin color.

People who gorw up in neighborhoods where various degreees of skin color exist do not temd to use skin color as a marker of outsiders. Thus, one of the best wayus to combat racism is to ensure to as large a degree as possible that groups within which children belong do not have a homogenous skin color.

[One_Brow]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Whatever it might be in the minds of some people, "anti-racism" is in reality basically a virulent, destructive form of racism against against whites. It targets white nations and communities for destruction by slowly, by degrees, breaking down their pride, their feeling of their own uniqueness, their sense of kinship, their collective memory, and essentially everything that makes a people a people. Things which have always been considered natural and good everywhere in the world, like a love of and desire to preserve and advance one's own people, are transformed by anti-racist propaganda into some kind of ultimate evil when displayed by whites.

I call that destructive.

"Anti-racism" targets everyone.

Their is nothing about your skin color that ties you to a group of people unless you yourself put value in such a tie. There is no uniqueness, no sense of kinship, no collective memory, etc. that applies to any partial spectrum of skin color unless you choose for it to be there. Further, there is no reason that we can't all carry on traditions from various cultural groups, when we so desire.

Anti-racism only seems like an attack to people who belong to a arbitrarily-determined group that has used its advantages (in wealth, numbers, etc.) to segregate out other groups. It is no threat at all to those who do not accept racist principles.

By the way, the reason that "a love of and desire to preserve and advance one's own people" is considered evil is becasue "one's own people" is already more "advanced" than any other "people". So, this "love" and "desire" becomes simply a selfish attempt to kepp other "people" from attaining what "one's own people" already have.

[One_Brow]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Anyone saying "there is no such thing as race" (the comment I was responding to) IS implying that race is a figment of other people's imagination, in the same way that someone saying "there is no such thing as the Man in the Moon" is implying that the Man in the Moon is a figment of other people's imagination.

No, of course, I don't believe that anyone really BELIEVES that races do not exist. I just seek to point out that they are stating something that they do not really believe themselves.

I believe that races, among humans, do not exist. I believe there is no such thing in reality as race. I believe that the tranformation of skin color into "race" is a figment of people's imagination.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Caligastia
There are no races...right

Has it occurred to you that you need to prove your positive? Rolling your eyes does not count as proof.

Originally posted by Caligastia
Still, are you prepared to apply this line of reasoning with any degree of consistency? If so, then the next time blacks claim they deserve compensation for past injustices, you can enlighten them by saying "What nonsense! When are you are people going to understand that blacks do not exist?".

That doesn't work. Blacks doesn't exist as a biologically distinct group, but certainly exist as a group whose ancestors originated from somewhere else. The same label can have differnent meanings.

Originally posted by Caligastia
Can I now look forward to seeing you prove your intellectual integrity by applying your "race does not exist" theory to all human groups who make claims to collective identity?

Collective identity are not always based on genetics. As a matter of fact, it rarely does.

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Whatever it might be in the minds of some people, "anti-racism" is in reality basically a virulent, destructive form of racism against against whites. It targets white nations and communities for destruction by slowly, by degrees, breaking down their pride, their feeling of their own uniqueness, their sense of kinship, their collective memory, and essentially everything that makes a people a people. Things which have always been considered natural and good everywhere in the world, like a love of and desire to preserve and advance one's own people, are transformed by anti-racist propaganda into some kind of ultimate evil when displayed by whites.

I call that destructive.

People have different views of what their own people are. I have white skin but I hardly consider white people my people. I'm Irish-American and not that long ago I would have been discriminated against by members of the white race in the US and Britain. Same if I were German, Polish or any number of different cultural groups in white America. In the Balkans racism relies on everything but skin colour I think. So what group are we trying to 'advance' today?

The 'natural' human reactions you talk about are as natural through history as warfare, rule of the strong, religious oppression and other human follies. There is nothing dangerous when the only means you use to 'stamp out' these ideas is education, persuasion and the occasional UN sponsored military intervention.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Caligastia
This is because it is in human nature to be racist, i.e. to be ethnocentric and prefer your own kind. "Fighting racism," i.e. trying to eradicate the natural human tendency to prefer one's own kind, is like "fighting selfishness," i.e. fighting the natural human tendency to look out for one's own personal interests. It's an impossible fight against human nature, inevitably embraced by countless charlatans and hypocrites.

No Caligastia, it's YOUR nature to segregate, prejudge, and stereotype.

Human nature is to get along and love. Put a bunch of three year olds on a playground. Will all the blacks start fighting all the whites? No. The children of slaves and masters played harmlessly untill they aged and society intoduced segregation.

A little while ago there were French and German races. Now they've WILLINGLY joined the same country (just about).

Caligastia, you are on the loosing side of history.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by gsmoove23


People have different views of what their own people are. I have white skin but I hardly consider white people my people. I'm Irish-American and not that long ago I would have been discriminated against by members of the white race in the US and Britain. Same if I were German, Polish or any number of different cultural groups in white America. In the Balkans racism relies on everything but skin colour I think. So what group are we trying to 'advance' today?

The 'natural' human reactions you talk about are as natural through history as warfare, rule of the strong, religious oppression and other human follies. There is nothing dangerous when the only means you use to 'stamp out' these ideas is education, persuasion and the occasional UN sponsored military intervention.

I see, you agree that we are talking about natural human instincts here, but you think that every means, including military intervention, should be used to stamp them out!

Unfortunately, this is pretty much the way our rulers throughout the West think too, and unless things change we can look forward to spending a lifetime watching the "stamping out" of natural human instincts. Pardon the unflattering comparison, but your mentioning that you are "Irish American" reminds me of the character in Orwell's 1984 called O'Brien (although I don't think the Irishness of his name was particularly significant). He was the interrogator at the "Ministry of Love" who told Winston Smith: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever."

No, I don't imagine that you yourself are really the kind of totalitarian bully that image evokes. You just sound like your thinking has been thoroughly programmed by people who are. You sound like you've been so deracinated and denatured by propaganda that you don't even really know who you are, and it's certainly clear that you do not understand the meaning of the word "kinship."

Perhaps, in spite of your denial of the importance of ethnic identity, you nevertheless feel some sense of identity as an "Irish American." If so, you are simply contenting yourself with a few crumbs of factitious "identity" accorded to you in the artificial world of "multiculturalism" that now exists in America. As your own words suggest, this media-fashioned "identity" seems largely to revolve around the fact that, on the grounds of past discrimination against the Irish, you are granted the right to proudly proclaim, in between trips to the shopping mall, "my ancestors were the White ******s of America." Wow, big deal! This might, if you are very lucky, qualify you for some partial exemption from the universal White guilt trip!

Have you ever considered the notion of actually being part of a free people, who not only have a past, but also a future? As things stand, unless they stand up for their own interests, "Irish Americans", the Irish in Ireland, and every other White nation or community on Earth will progressively die out as their lands are occupied by other peoples who breed more rapidly and (quite naturally) look out for their own group interests. These other peoples generally know who they are. They also know that you are a White man, even if you don't.

There will never be an end to conflicts between ethnic groups. Such conflicts are inevitable whenever radically different groups inhabit the same territory. The only thing that will disappear is any ethnic group (such as Whites) who have lost their sense of identity and solidarity with each other.

Instead of displaying this natural solidarity, you choose to babble on about "skin colour" and how insignificant it is, just as you have been trained to do. You entirely overlook the fact that skin colour is just one of a whole host of visible biological differences that physically identify human groups with common ancestry. By your reasoning, one might almost think that the only link between the Irish, the English, the Germans, the Dutch, etc., is that they happen (as if by accident) to have a skin tone generally referred to as "white." The truth is, of course, that all these national groups are nearly physically indistinguishable in every way because they have common ancestors. They are all therefore so biologically close to each other that we cannot tell them apart. On the other hand, you can meet people from Japan or China whose skin is as white as yours, but you will immediately recognize from their facial and other physical features that they belong to a different racial group. And the differences are not just physical: they have developed different cultures and different ways of life which are distinct from ours, which are an expression of the fact that, taken as a group, they are genetically different from us. Cultures and ways of life do not spring up by magic. They are products of particular human groups or peoples, i.e. biological entities. If you want to preserve them, you have to preserve the people who gave rise to them. That means that they must have their own lands where they can live according to their own culture. This is as true for the European peoples of the World as it is for the Asian peoples and everyone else.

Anyway, carry on denying your own roots and crusading against "racism" if it makes you feel good to think that you will receive a pat on the head for it from our rulers (or even perhaps, if you are Christian, from the Big Guy in the Sky himself). Just don't be surprised if other people see the world as it really is.