Will racism ever be over?

Use this forum to discuss the August 2021 Philosophy Book of the Month, Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream by Dr Frank L Douglas
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Sculptor1
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Sy Borg wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:20 am
Sculptor1 wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:07 am
Sy Borg wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:03 am
Sculptor1 wrote: April 8th, 2022, 5:32 am
Well you would say that wouldn't you?
My nail hitting comment is not refuted by this response, unless you want to address the point I have made.

Out of interest - do you have any dogs?
Our family includes a dog and I have many local canine friends.

Prejudice against some does not mean prejudice against all, a point that's so clearly evident that it shouldn't have to be said. It's a bonkers notion that prejudice against one type of entity means prejudice against all.

A simple example, a local groodle that gets aggressive with brown boxers. There's a local black boxer, no problem. But when a brown boxer turns up to the park then the owner has to take his dog away. Another example, compare employer attitudes towards Chinese migrants as compared with Sub Saharan African migrants. Certainly anyone familiar with dogs knows that many small breeds are much intimidated by large dogs.

It happens all the time - people and animals having hangups about particular groups or individuals.
Learned behaviour, not natural, and easily overcome.
Good luck with that one.
Easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZKGzxl3Ekw

You are missing what is blindingly obvious, that dogs not only overcome breed differences but species differences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWNIcf9ftI
I'd hate to live in your world.
How do you feel about black people?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Sy Borg »

Sculptor1 wrote: April 8th, 2022, 7:08 am
Sy Borg wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:20 am
Sculptor1 wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:07 am
Sy Borg wrote: April 8th, 2022, 6:03 am
Our family includes a dog and I have many local canine friends.

Prejudice against some does not mean prejudice against all, a point that's so clearly evident that it shouldn't have to be said. It's a bonkers notion that prejudice against one type of entity means prejudice against all.

A simple example, a local groodle that gets aggressive with brown boxers. There's a local black boxer, no problem. But when a brown boxer turns up to the park then the owner has to take his dog away. Another example, compare employer attitudes towards Chinese migrants as compared with Sub Saharan African migrants. Certainly anyone familiar with dogs knows that many small breeds are much intimidated by large dogs.

It happens all the time - people and animals having hangups about particular groups or individuals.
Learned behaviour, not natural, and easily overcome.
Good luck with that one.
Easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZKGzxl3Ekw

You are missing what is blindingly obvious, that dogs not only overcome breed differences but species differences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWNIcf9ftI
I'd hate to live in your world.
How do you feel about black people?
I'd hate to live in your world, because you don't understand what is said to you.

In the end, we - including other animals, plants, fungi, microbes, fluids, rocks and gases - are parts of the Earth. The Earth is undergoing rapid changes and extinctions due to the activities of H. sapiens (of any shade of brown), as opposed to other agents of change - glaciation, asteroids, volcanic activity and cyanobacteria.
Gertie
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Gertie »

Humans evolved many of our social (trust, bonding, caring, cooperative) traits in a tribal setting, which resulted in extending our circle of care from ourselves, to kin and fellow tribe members via neurobiological bonding mechanisms. And outsiders more likely to be identified with threat or competition.

There's no simple tribal or racist gene, our brains are super complex and learning is a key feature of humans too, but we've carried over a tendancy towards ingroup/outgroup behaviours which can be triggered in all kinds of ways in our modern world. The various ways this can manifest can be addressed on an individual basis of what we come to be triggered by, by awareness and what reinforces particular biases in sometimes subtle ways. Crudely speaking, we're tribal by nature, but how that manifests is flexible, and can be overcome.

Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes classroom experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujvpuQXNfvc
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Sculptor1
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Gertie wrote: April 9th, 2022, 6:25 am Humans evolved many of our social (trust, bonding, caring, cooperative) traits in a tribal setting, which resulted in extending our circle of care from ourselves, to kin and fellow tribe members via neurobiological bonding mechanisms. And outsiders more likely to be identified with threat or competition.

There's no simple tribal or racist gene, our brains are super complex and learning is a key feature of humans too, but we've carried over a tendancy towards ingroup/outgroup behaviours which can be triggered in all kinds of ways in our modern world. The various ways this can manifest can be addressed on an individual basis of what we come to be triggered by, by awareness and what reinforces particular biases in sometimes subtle ways. Crudely speaking, we're tribal by nature, but how that manifests is flexible, and can be overcome.

Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes classroom experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujvpuQXNfvc
I love this experiment.
It shows that there is a tendency to tribal thinking, but that tendency is made of tissue and the tribe is ultimately extendable to encompass all.
SteveKlinko
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by SteveKlinko »

Sushan wrote: August 5th, 2021, 8:10 pm This topic is about the August 2021 Philosophy Book of the Month, Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream by Dr Frank L Douglas

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
          -Dr. Martin Luther King-
(Location 259 of Kindle version)

So in the book, when Frank gets to the US, he experiences instances of racial discrimination that he hadn't in Guyana. Once he was even denied of a prestigious job not because he was not suitable, but because he was black.

The author met with these issues few decades back, but still we see remnants of racism throughout the world. Will racism ever be over? If not, why?
Racism will truly be over when the Race bating and Race Hustling finally stops.
SteveKlinko
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by SteveKlinko »

Race Bating = Race Baiting
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phoney06
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by phoney06 »

I believe that racism can never truly end, but it can be negated to the point where the chances of it popping up again are lower than they previously were.

However, in order to "stop" racism, such as racial slurs, we need to remove what makes them bad.
The words themselves are not bad; it is the connotations around the word that makes us deem it "bad". If we stop using the words for its malicious intent, and stop considering it racist, it will lose its racist connotation.

Words only have power when you give them power.
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Mounce574
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

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Racism will never be over because people focus on it.
I have seen many instances where race became involved when the original issue didn't factor in.
For instance: Kyle Rittenhouse shot 3 men. Suddenly BLM protestors tried to state it was a race issue. He is white. The three men he shot were white. How is this race issue?
Another one: George Floyd died and the police were convicted of murder and it was considered a racially motivated event. But if George Floyd had been a white man with all of the exact same circumstances would that have been the same outcome for the police officers?

Racism is fueled by the media. And the media shows what they think will keep people's attention.
"Facts don't care about your feelings." Ben Shapiro
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." NF from Motto
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Brandodinsson
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Brandodinsson »

I am reading people saying that racism is because of "X" and others saying it is because of "Y". There is more than one reason. It could be upbringing. It could be a traumatic event. In some cases, it is due to competition.

Humans have been classifying things and people since the beginning. What is racism other than a form of prejudice against a classification of people?

One person said that racism will stop when we are all one color. If racism is just one form of prejudice then it is better to ask if prejudice will ever disappear. I say that it won't. Look at the genocide in Rwanda. People were the same race but decided to kill almost a million people in 90 days because they classified the "other" as "cockroaches". Technically, the Irish and the Brits are/were one race, yet England decided to replace the "Native Irish" with settlers, eventually, forcing many to the United States. Some ended up in a prison colony known as the state of Georgia.

If we were all one color, class, religion, and political affiliation would still exist. Some people would have objectionable ears, noses, and ways of thinking.

What if there were no difference in appearance, thought, or even DNA, and the whole world were one person? There would still be intrapersonal conflict. We all share the planet the way a husband and a wife share a home. The best way to handle these issues is to learn the most productive ways of handling conflict with nonviolence.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Sushan wrote: August 5th, 2021, 8:10 pm Will racism ever be over?
Quite possibly. But it will only terminate to make room for a different but equivalent form of discrimination. People can always find differences to highlight and use as a basis for bullying and discrimination. It starts in the nursery playground, and never stops, unfortunately.
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Tegularius
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Tegularius »

One of the most insidious aspects of racism is being nice to those you hate as a group in order to maintain one's public image of political correctness. In most cases the undercurrents of racism are always there regardless of appearance. I have no proof but I think men much more than women are prone to having racist views.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Sy Borg
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Sy Borg »

Racism in the public sphere seems to be swinging like a pendulum yet to find equilibrium, especially in the US. It's strange to see racism re-emerge. My guess is that it comes from the failed promise of a fair and peaceful new world order after WWII, a vision exemplified by shows like Star Trek. It was an optimistic vision of a future where racism was transcended, with technological advances ushering in an age of plenty with ever-increasing leisure time. Instead, the people received outsourcing, mass immigration, failed invasions of sovereign nations, and massively increased inequality. And now a lot of them are being told that they are the reason for most of the world's problems.

Simply, many believe that they were sold a pup. Now some wonder if Hitler and Stalin were right, if nationalism and authoritarianism would be better than skewed democracies. Now democracies are falling like dominoes. It's not a matter that the wealthy got too greedy, it's that societies dropped their standards, being ever more forgiving of dishonesty and selfishness, facilitated by ideologies such as that of Ayn Rand.

This eased the way for the more unscrupulous rich people to double down on white collar fraud, tax evasion and cartel behaviour. Not only were there legal loopholes they could find, but there was no social repercussions. Rather, they were lauded for their high achievements, with no expectation to give back to the society that made their wealth possible. Other billionaires, who might have been more benign, were pushed into a race to the bottom so as to remain competitive.

I see increasing racism as bundled into that "broken contract", the broken promises of a technological utopia. Many struggling people have come to resent what they perceive to be cultural outsiders, taking work, driving up accommodation costs, clogging roads with cars, leading to a growing "they took err jerbs!" attitude.

In a nutshell, the world is becoming ever more overpopulated and resources are ever less equitably distributed, so more ideological splits are inevitable, and that includes the issue of racism. With people increasingly getting in each others' way, it's inevitable that some will blame the problems on outsiders, and parts of the media encourage this
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Sculptor1
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Sculptor1 »

I think humans are equipped with a natural xenophobia, which is a selective trait allowing caution when encountering "others" - be they of another species or other human group.
This caution can be modified by socialisation and learning to bring the "other" to be art of the family.
We take in dogs and other pets, and human groups get larger or smaller according to how satisfactory, useful or emotionally fit the association is.
There are no human races in the sense that they are natural categories, since all humans from anywhere in the world are the same species - they can have viable progeny with one another.
Differences - be it by size, colour, nation, religion have the potential to divide, and the natural xenophobia can come into play, but just the same can be rejected with reason and rationality.
Ignorance and stupidity can be learned and so can tolerance and understanding.

If Hitler can love his dog then even he could have learned to love Jews, homosexuals, disabled, slavs and communists[ all of who he had exterminated.
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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Tegularius wrote: November 9th, 2022, 2:37 pm One of the most insidious aspects of racism is being nice to those you hate as a group in order to maintain one's public image of political correctness.
I tend to see this the other way around. Social pressure to conform is what controls most of us, most of the time. This is an example of that social pressure working positively. I agree it would be better if the person actually changed their ways, but pretending to be nice is a lot better than "strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees".
Pattern-chaser

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Re: Will racism ever be over?

Post by Tegularius »

Pattern-chaser wrote: November 10th, 2022, 11:08 am
Tegularius wrote: November 9th, 2022, 2:37 pm One of the most insidious aspects of racism is being nice to those you hate as a group in order to maintain one's public image of political correctness.
I tend to see this the other way around. Social pressure to conform is what controls most of us, most of the time. This is an example of that social pressure working positively. I agree it would be better if the person actually changed their ways, but pretending to be nice is a lot better than "strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees".
I don't disagree but a "surface stability" upon any kind of breakdown has a tendency to show its true colors as testified by history.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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