You definitely have to have an opinion about this

[Theben]

I read it. You're arguing for a "color blind" approach, which I've heard before. Problem is that doesn't work. It assumes that people have had similar experiences in their lives, which they haven't. Wrt the issue of race, this break down (surprise!) on skin color.

FE, blacks become acutely aware of how race/skin color affects their lives at an early age (~4 yrs). Whites, OTOH, generally don't until their late teens. The best example I can give was when my friend was chased by a group of kids for no other reason than she is black. She was 5.

I'm not here to fix people.

It sure seemed that way with rah, but if you prefer to ignore the issue, that's your decision.

[Lancer]

I think Ming got hold of Rah's login and has been posting as Rah.

It's just a theory.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Theben
I read it. You're arguing for a "color blind" approach, which I've heard before.

No. You're still misreading it. I wasn't arguing for a color blind approach, I was arguing for freedom of speech, and more importantly, analysis of statements based on the statements, not the source (in regards to skin color in particular).

That can still exist even if you acknowledge "racial differences".

Problem is that doesn't work.

A "color blind" approach is actually a good way to approach the world from a personal standpoint. If you start worrying about people's race, rather than who they actually are, what they actually do/say, you become part of the problem. It doesn't limit a person from understanding that other people are not "color blind", it just means you yourself do not judge people based on their race.

Enough people personally take a "color blind" approach, and the problem is solved. Some people have to take the step before others obviously, it won't just happen simultaneously for everyone.

It assumes that people have had similar experiences in their lives, which they haven't.

It does no such thing. It assumes that people are who they are, do what they do, say what they say... not that they can be summed up as individuals or lumped together in groups based on preconceived notions based about how people with that skin color are.

FE, blacks become acutely aware of how race/skin color affects their lives at an early age (~4 yrs). Whites, OTOH, generally don't until their late teens. The best example I can give was when my friend was chased by a group of kids for no other reason than she is black. She was 5.

That's irrelevant. You don't have to know something at 5 to speak about it at 32. You just have to know about it at 32.

It's also indicative of the same misconceptions as we are talking about. Either someone understands it, or they don't. Race doesn't mean they will/won't. (Neither does age.)

It sure seemed that way with rah, but if you prefer to ignore the issue, that's your decision.

I get to say what I think. I do so. You (or rah or anyone) can react to that however you want.

I am not ignoring the issue. I addressed it. You are ignoring that fact.

[Theben]

Okay, so you're arguing for freedom of speech from a colorblind standpoint. I don't see how that makes a difference from what I've said. And colorblind is actually a very poor way to approach racial issues, as it reinforces the status quo.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Theben
Okay, so you're arguing for freedom of speech from a colorblind standpoint. I don't see how that makes a difference from what I've said.

It makes a difference because a person (even a racist) could still deal with the subject matter rather than the source. It does not mean a person is colorblind, it means they deal with the actual statements.

And colorblind is actually a very poor way to approach racial issues, as it reinforces the status quo.

No. The status quo (in this instance) is based on people judging others based on the color of their skin. That is the root cause of the problem, and what must be stomped out before the problems will ever be solved.

If you support the rights of everyone, and deal with actual statements rather than the source, regardless of skin color, you certainly do not support or reinforce racist discrimination.

[Lancer]

I'm partially colorblind but it's green/blue, not black/white.

Still, that makes my opinion particularly relevant.

[Aeson]

Sightism!

[Lancer]

When the little green men from Mars are joined by the little blue men from Neptune they will all be equal in my eyes. Something the little blue lazy trailer trash aliens from Neptune should be p r e t t y happy about.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rah
BS, every single white person could stop saying something and I doubt it would make a difference. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.

No man is an island. You aren't responsible for the circumstances of your birth or any number of things that will impact on the path you make in this world.

It would make some difference if everyone stopped being racist tomorrow, but it wouldn't be enough. That's because racism is an historical phenomenon. It's going to require more than saying you are sorry to make it right. Slave labour helped build the United States. Segregation and lack of voting rights provided more cheap labour. Many of these people weren't even able to vote to influence the laws that disadvantaged them.

We aren't talking about hundreds of years ago. The US has only had universal suffrage for just over 40 years. That's well within the lifetime of almost everyone's parents.

All my grandparents were immigrants and were discriminated against because they spoke differently and looked different. They were poor but worked hard to make a better life for the children. But they became americans first and most important. Sure the celebrated their ancestry but being american was more important. I don't hold it against all the others that did the discrimination because they're all (or mostly) dead.
And because of it, I'm an american first who takes personal responsibility for my own condition.

Except you don't. "Personal responsibility" is generally the name we have for things that are easy for wealthy people to do and hard for poor people to do. It has no objective meaning, and isn't even applied consistently anyway. It's a moral ideology being peddled as fact.

Now granted it was easier for our later generations to acclimate because outwardly we appeared more similar, but the principle is the same. We're americans and no one should claim special/american status.

You and your ancestors tended to assume the full protection of the law and as voters were stakeholders in society. Black people weren't. For them, the United States was an alien imposition, because they weren't allowed to participate as full citizens.

All Americans, whether recent immigrants or not, have benefited from a series of crimes committed against black people on grounds of race. Black people benefited too, but this is outweighed by the fact that they were the victims.

Saying "we won't be racist any more" is not good enough. You need to get out your wallets. That's what civilized countries do.

[rah]

Originally posted by Agathon

All Americans, whether recent immigrants or not, have benefited from a series of crimes committed against black people on grounds of race. Black people benefited too, but this is outweighed by the fact that they were the victims.

Please provide a few examples. This generalization that is tossed out is never backed up with anything of real worth. Something recent would be nice.
And saying that some companies made there wealth off the slaves 150 years ago and since they still have influence it counts, is not what I consider relevant.
How does the Indian programmer that just immigrated that I hired benefit from what was done to the blacks?


But yes, racism is tough to stamp out. Now that I'm older I can see that my father sometimes displays a few racist traits but he hid them well when we were young so it wasn't reinforced with us and we got to make our own decisions based on experience. My in-laws were different. My father in law while in public was good, but in private (in front of his children) quite racist. And his sons display some of the same traits. It's going to take many more generations on that side of the family.
So whenever I hear someone spouting off a racist comment I can assume that someone will problaby hear it from their children. Each person must make the decision not to influence their children negatively.

[DinoDoc]

Re race conversations:

Let’s Not, and Say We Did

I shuddered only once while watching Barack Obama’s speech last Tuesday.

It wasn’t when he posed the rhetorical questions: “Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?”

The real question, of course, is not why Obama joined Trinity, but why he stayed there for two decades, in the flock of a pastor who accused the U.S. government of “inventing the H.I.V. virus as a means of genocide against people of color,” and who suggested soon after 9/11 that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

But orators often ask themselves the convenient questions, not the difficult ones. And Barack Obama is an accomplished orator.

Nor was I shocked when Obama compared Reverend Wright, who was using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment, with his grandmother, who may have said privately a few things that made Obama cringe, or with Geraldine Ferraro, whom “some have dismissed ... as harboring some deep-seated bias.”

After all, politicians sometimes indulge in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point. And Barack Obama is an able politician.

And I didn’t shudder when Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright than he could disown the black community. I did think this statement was unfair to many in the black community, and especially to all those pastors who have resisted the temptation to appeal to their parishioners in the irresponsible and demagogic manner of Reverend Wright.

But ambitious men sometimes do a disservice to the best in their own communities. And Barack Obama is an ambitious man.

The only part of the speech that made me shudder was this sentence: “But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.”

As soon as I heard that, I knew what we’d have to endure. I knew that there would be a stampede of editorial boards, columnists and academics rushing not to ignore race. A national conversation about race! At long last!

Of course, memories are short. In 1997 President Bill Clinton announced, with great fanfare, that he intended “to lead the American people in a great and unprecedented [if he did say so himself] conversation about race.” That conversation quickly went nowhere. And just as well.

The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race.

What we need instead are sober, results-oriented debates about economics, social mobility, education, family policy and the like — focused especially on how to help those who are struggling. Such policy debates can lead to real change — even “change we can believe in.” “National conversations” tend to be pointless and result-less.

Or worse. Especially when they’re about race. In 1969, Pat Moynihan, then serving on Richard Nixon’s White House staff, wrote Nixon a memo explaining that “the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’ The subject has been too much talked about. ... We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.” Moynihan, who was reacting against the wild escalation of racial rhetoric on all sides, was unfairly pilloried when the memo was leaked in 1970. But he was right then, and his argument is right now.

Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn’t necessary to end what Obama calls the “racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” — because we’re not stuck in such a stalemate. In fact, as Obama himself suggests in the same speech, younger Americans aren’t stalemated. They come far closer than their grandparents and parents to routinely obeying Martin Luther King’s injunction to judge one another by the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. Problems remain. But we won’t make progress if we now have to endure a din of race talk that will do more to divide us than to unite us, and more to confuse than to clarify.

Luckily, Obama isn’t really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race. He had avoided race talk before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. And despite the speech’s catnip of a promised conversation on race tossed to eager commentators, it’s clear he’s more than willing to avoid it from now on.

This is all for the best. With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Let’s not, and say we did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/opinion/24kristol.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Patroklos]

The best example I can give was when my friend was chased by a group of kids for no other reason than she is black. She was 5.

What makes you think that was the reason, or are you assuming that? Yet another cause for the perpetuation of certain problems within the black community, the assumption that every harship/insult/circumstance is based on racism instead of a thousand other possible things.

[Elok]

Get real, Aggie. Human history is just one long series of betrayals, extortions and abuses, starting when our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. The abuse of black slaves is merely among the most recent and well-known. If we asked for monetary recompense for all of them (assuming we could somehow know the whole history of every bloodline accurately), everyone would be paying everyone else, most people would owe money to themselves, and in the end it'd more or less break even.

Just for example:

-being part Huguenot, I'm owed money by the RCC and descendants of the French crown for denying my ancestors' religious freedom, killing them and driving them into exile.
-as part Scot, part Welsh I'm doubly owed money by the British crown for waging an unjust war of conquest against my ancestral homelands.
-the rest of me is German, which should be receiving money from the Roman Empire for their conquests and, more importantly, from everyone descended from Charlemagne for the horrific religious persecution.
-on the other hand, I also owe the Romans for helping ravage their civilization, and the French part of me probably owes the German, since Charlemagne had a lot of kids.
-You know who else had a lot of kids? Genghis Khan. Like an eighth of the world is descended from the horny bugger. I'm not sure who would inherit, since he razed his enemy's towns to the ground, but they owe big time cash.
-We all owe Serb, since English is hardly the only language whose words for "slave" and "Slav" are very similar.

And so on. Every last one of us is descended from war criminals and tyrants. It's just a matter of which crimes and how long ago. I see no justice in Person A paying money to Person B for crimes A didn't commit and B didn't suffer from. A's kids need to go to college, and they didn't ask to be born of that family.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Patroklos

What makes you think that was the reason, or are you assuming that?

Because she told me?

Yet another cause for the perpetuation of certain problems within the black community, the assumption that every harship/insult/circumstance is based on racism instead of a thousand other possible things.

Who's making assumptions here? Not I.

[Wezil]

Patroklos doesn't make assumptions. Everyone else does.