IF jews == a race THEN Israel is a racist construct which practices ethnic cleansing
IF jews=/= a race THEN anti-semitism doesn't exist, because you can't be racist to people who aren't a race
Really bored of hearing Israelis say "Accusing us of racism is anti-semitic" when it makes no logical sense.
Apartheid isn't really apt, apartheid means racial segregation. What the Israelis practice is segregation by killing people or forcing them out of their country and segregating them in a different country - thats the definition of ethnic cleansing.
there's some missing stuff in that truth table
condition: (jews = race)
condition: (jews != race)
impact on israel atrocities:
israel does atrocity
israel does atrocity
impact on anti-semites:
still discriminators
still discriminators
people critical of israel MUST be anti-semitic
false
false
ALL jews are israeli and/or support israel
false
false
"semitic" itself draped in mythology and pseudoscience from the 1700s.
if you convert to judaism, are you changing your race?
prejudice and discrimination and segregation can exist outside of racial motivation and be directed against many more things and groups.
if you want to talk ancient or even contemporary semitic-speaking people, you're going to have to cover more turf.
IF jews == a race THEN Israel is a racist construct which practices ethnic cleansing
IF jews=/= a race THEN anti-semitism doesn't exist, because you can't be racist to people who aren't a race
Really bored of hearing Israelis say "Accusing us of racism is anti-semitic" when it makes no logical sense.
Apartheid isn't really apt, apartheid means racial segregation. What the Israelis practice is segregation by killing people or forcing them out of their country and segregating them in a different country - thats the definition of ethnic cleansing.
The jews pretty much are a race, its very hard to be considered jewish if your mother wasn't, they've made Israel into a monoracial theocracy and thoroughly brutalised anyone else.
A common response to what I mentioned about a Jewish State being a racist concept is "20% of Israelis are Arab and have equal rights."
Meanwhile, 15% of America is black and also have equal rights. And they complain bitterly about discrimination. I find it hard to believe that they face no discrimination at all and are happy living in an explicitly "not them" state.
Israelis get very offended when you compare their system to an apartheid state. But all an apartheid state is is a more extreme force of racism. Every place in the world has racism to some degree and the features of Israel are exceptionally racist. Maybe they need a new word to more accurately describe what they are. But they certainly aren't where we are in terms tolerance.
I think the reason why so many young Americans do not like Israel is because they compare our situation here with Israel and Israel comes off looking incredibly bad.
That said, I totally accept a racist state existing. Everyone is a little racist...myself included. But accepting Israel for what it is is very different than forcing Americans to support it with our wealth and thoughts and prayers.
Poseidon wrote:
Why don't you criticize Arabs and Palestinians for their racism?
Because I so plainly reject their world view that I don't need to go into detail about it. Their supporters also aren't using their well earned economic power to silence opposition.
It also isn't just Americans who look at the situation and see disturbing parallels. The NYT had an article about how people in China also are looking at the situation and coming to similar conclusions in absence of cancel culture.
NYT wrote:
As China Looks to Broker Gaza Peace, Antisemitism Surges Online
China’s state-run media has blamed the United States for deepening the crisis, while perpetuating tropes of Jewish control of American politics.
A Chinese state broadcaster recently hosted a discussion page on Weibo stating that Jews controlled a disproportionate amount of U.S. wealth. Many of the responses were replete with antisemitic stereotypes and comments downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust.
Jewish people definitely own a disproportionate but well earned amount of wealth and political power. It is what it is but some people act like you are stupid if you acknowledge it.
So anyway, why doesn't the US govt have a mandatory advisory body of native americans they have to run everything past?
We have all kinds of advisory councils on stuff. Though apparently, they could use more potency since we can still run any leaky, toxic pipeline through their lands we want.
People will say that they get to have casinos where casinos probably wouldn't be allowed, so not only is racism over but it's racism in their favor. I'd think most would rather have their people's land back, but we have to work with what's actionable y'know! More token gestures, and more water-table-poisoning pipelines it is.
That article is a neat microcosm - jumping in with accusations of racism in line one.
Hey I know, hear me out.
Wouldn't it be great if african-americans had their own house of congress? America could change its constitution and add an extra house just for african-americans, then you'd have:
House of Representatives Senate House of African-Americans
If you don't think thats a great idea you're a racist.
A sweeping investigation began in early 2022 as a narrow probe into officers who allegedly cheated on college tests to obtain salary raises. FBI agents dug into the cheating scandal and opened a “Pandora’s Box” of unethical and criminal behavior among officers, a source told KRON4.
talk about overturning rocks. stripping wallpaper only to discover the rot goes all the way into the foundation.
"45 out of 100 officers" "field goal kicked his head"
A Texas woman has been charged with threatening in a voicemail to kill the federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, DC, over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Abigail Jo Shry called the chambers of Judge Tanya Chutkan on August 5, and left a voicemail message threatening to “kill anyone who went after former President Trump,” according to a criminal complaint.
The death threats also allegedly included racist comment against Chutkan, who is Black. Prosecutors said in court filings that Shry called the judge a “stupid slave n***er” in the voicemail.
Shry is charged with Transmission in Interstate or Foreign Commerce of any Communication Containing a Threat to Injure the Person of Another. She is being held in detention pending trial, according to court documents, and a bond hearing has been set for September 13.
“If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b*tch,” Shry said in the message, according to the complaint. “You are in our sights, we want to kill you.”
Investigators said in the complaint that Shry continued her threats in the recording, saying: “You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
On August 8, Shry admitted to Department of Homeland Security special agents that she made the call to Chutkan’s chambers but that she “had no plans to travel to Washington, DC or Houston to carry out anything she stated,” the complaint said.
CNN has reached out to the public defender’s office in Houston that is representing Shry.
CNN has also reached out to a representative for Chutkan. As previously reported, security for the district judge had been increased in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC.
Shry, according to the complaint, also made “a direct threat to kill Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee, all democrats in Washington D.C. and all people in the LGBTQ community.”
CNN has reached out to the office of the Texas Democrat for comment.
This story has been updated with additional information.
probably that social conservatism is more or less to conservatism what fiscal conservatism is to conservatism. variants, schools, subtypes depending on who's categorising. using your previous post as a brush, by american standards people might consider you a moderate conservative or a right-leaning democrat.
imo on your previous, "judge not by color of their skin but by the content of their character" (paraphrased) to dismiss racism as a generations-spanning institution still in living memory and in practice may be an abuse of the quote. parts of my country are literally shutting down classes and banning books that try and discuss these things fairly and objectively. how on earth is the country supposed to realise unification and integration with some of these old attitudes still in place and even defended?
if you were six when this photograph was taken, you'd be in your 70s today.
The Reagan Administration last week filed its first school-desegregation suit, then immediately resolved it by approving a desegregation plan for elementary schools in Bakersfield, Calif., that will rely totally on voluntary student transfers.
[…]
Civil-rights groups were quick to condemn the settlements, claiming that voluntary measures such as magnet schools generally work only when crafted as part of comprehensive plans requiring mandatory student reassignments.
But in defense of such agreements, William Bradford Reynolds, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Administration “continues to believe that school systems can be desegregated by voluntary means that eliminate racial isolation and improve education programs.”
“Mandatory busing is not acceptable,” Mr. Reynolds said at a press conference in Washington to announce the signing of the agreement with the Bakersfield schools.
if you were six in 1984 while people were still arguing about segregation, you'd be in your 40s today.
if you were six while trump was pushing segregationist rhetoric in the last few years, you'd still be in school today (doing drills for the next school shooting).
--
depending on who you ask, 'defund the police' might mean shifting money from police to social services to do the jobs police shouldn't even be responsible for, addressing social issues like education, housing and poverty, health and mental health care. or it could mean comprehensive police reform. either way, police reform and upscaling social services are something usa is in desperate need of.
"Meet the NYC Theater Teacher Who Stood Up to ‘Anti-Racist’ Activists at the Height of the Moral Panic of 2020"
Meet the teacher who ruined his life for conservative clout.
Earlier this year, while working as a visiting teaching artist at a New York City public high school, theater director Kevin Ray pitched a potential lecture about plays involving magical realism, since his students were reading a book of that genre at the time.
If he had to pitch it to someone it meant that it wasn't part of the curriculum. I never had to pitch a lesson on World War 2. I did pitch a lesson on LGBT and 9/11.
“They didn’t want that,” Ray told National Review. Instead, the teachers asked Ray to develop and teach a workshop on “Theater and Toxic Masculinity,” he said.
“I refused to do that because I believe criticizing and demonizing teenagers based on their identity is cruel bullying,” Ray said. He was transferred to a different class over his objection, and no one at the school explained to him what New York state academic standard would be fulfilled by teaching so-called toxic masculinity in an English Language Arts class.
Nobody gets transferred over one thing. I would bet a decent amount of money that this guy had issues with his directors for awhile. I would bet he probably made his views on 'woke' or whatever quite public.
The theater nonprofit that placed Ray in the high school agreed that teaching about toxic masculinity was an inappropriate use of his talents. But the teachers’ insistence that he focus his lesson on progressive grievance politics suggests the moral panic around race that followed the murder of George Floyd still holds sway in New York City’s K–12 education system, particularly in cultural spaces such as the performing arts.
Huh? He was hired by a nonprofit? Never heard of that before. The people who got him the job thought it was appropriate. What an ingrate.
When the wave of progressive racial activism crested in the summer of 2020, Ray was working with New 42, a leading performing-arts group whose mission is to get young people interested in theater. The organization leaned hard into the leftist preoccupation with diversity, equity, and inclusion that dominated cultural institutions across the country in those early months of the pandemic, demonizing “whiteness” in its communications with employees and creating a hostile workplace in the process, according to a complaint Ray filed in federal court.
Guy teaches in the most diverse school district in the country and is shocked that the people there are interested in diversity and inclusion. He should have never taken the job.
“We acknowledge how essential it is for us to re-think and dismantle white-centered practices that have been embedded in our nonprofit for decades and have caused harm and pain,” reads the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging” page on New 42’s website.
Again, know the politics of your bosses.
This preoccupation with rooting out racism came to define Ray’s experience at New 42. For many months, he documented a hostile environment laced with insults, stereotypes, and race-based discrimination packaged as “anti-racism,” according to the complaint, first published by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a nonprofit that represented Ray in the suit.
Guy opposes the existence systemic racism as a concept but also believes he was systemically racially abused. Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot doesn't it?
This preoccupation with rooting out racism came to define Ray’s experience at New 42. For many months, he documented a hostile environment laced with insults, stereotypes, and race-based discrimination packaged as “anti-racism,” according to the complaint, first published by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, a nonprofit that represented Ray in the suit.
In over 70 emails exchanged between staff, countless workplace training sessions, and other interactions with his colleagues, Ray watched as an obsession with race corrupted New 42’s educational mission.
As the incidents mounted, Ray sent a letter to the New 42 human-resources department, but instead of helping him navigate a difficult situation, they immediately “hired attorneys to investigate,” he said. Rather than putting a stop to what he saw as illegal discrimination, the company retaliated by refusing to give him any further work assignments, according to the complaint.
Again, I would like to hear this guy's views on the systemic racism that the blacks complained about forever.
This article goes on for longer but you get the idea. I don't doubt that the organization had little patience for conservative cultural values. But I don't need to go very far back in time when America's cultural institutions were hostile to anything not white. I would hope that this guy realized how much it sucks when it happens to you but considering he made such a big deal about it in the first place, I doubt he learned anything.
That's a stretch. A bit on the same wavelength as "I have a black friend so I can't be racist." If a black cop beats up a black man, that doesn't absolve police of institutional racism, nor the confrontational attitude towards the public, bad attitudes in the force, problematic training. Documented, videotaped, recorded.
Sure, don't fight the cops, but that doesn't proof you against getting your shit kicked in or straight up murdered if they're in the mood.
so a number of the french football team have disabled their social media after receiving torrents of racist abuse and hatred from ... french football fans. (the same thing happens to the england team with depressing predictability, and is heavily racially coded: when harry kane duffed his penalty sky-high over the bar, ending england's chances, people were full of sympathy; not so for the young black britons at the last Euro finals, who were pilloried in the press and national conversation mercilessly for weeks.)
France players Kingsley Coman and Aurelien Tchouameni have been subjected to online racist abuse after missing their penalties in the World Cup final. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/64031272
where's larssen's expressions of concern over this aspect of football fandom? racist abuse and bullying over an eenie weenie ball game? the usual questions from the 'far right' about their 'frenchness' and their qualifications for ciizenship, despite the majority of the team being born in france, or at least nativised since pre-school and pre-sporting age, and being proud of their dual-nationality?
why isn't this behaviour 'dangerous nationalism'? even their german club has to post public statements condemning it. and no, it's not whataboutery or diversion, either: toxic behaviour when winning or when losing can be threatening to 'democratic' politics and the public discourse of a nation, surely? why is it always about minor acts of property damage and street vandalism with you cultural conservatives, as posing the greatest risk to society?
i think it's hilarious how people of larssen and dilbert's persuasion present themselves as the 'rational guy in the street', 'saying it for how it is', and talking earnestly (or, in the case of dilbert, petulantly as ever) about the 'structural' issues inherent in the moroccan immigrant community. when, wouldn't you know, the biggest threat to domestic politics and law-and-order in places like Germany and France are posed by the far-right.
in the same week as the world cup news non-stories about a few burnt cars and clashes between underclass migrants and the heavy-handed police forces that routinely cuff them and demean them ... the german police literally busted a conspiracy to stage a far-right coup, implicating dozens of officials in the securit state, special forces/military-types, mid-tier judges and lawmakers, and even a zany pantomime pretender of a prince. you don't hear a peep of it from the 'official concerned' letter-writters of bf2s, however, with their brows forever furrowed at brown people or the supposed 'dangers' posed by 'wokism'. no, the machinations of the far-right and their quite literally deadly plans are all somehow understandable; or, by circuitousness of reason, all the 'fault' of those unruly migrants for turning them that way, anyway.
the reichburger movement in germany is a bigger threat than islamism or islamist terrorism. that's per the german state's own admission, who are normally extremely reticent to mention or confront anything about radicalism or racism in the state/police forces. germany's official policy is to blind itself to this stuff normally. but this sort of thing is too salacious and too fucking outrageous to be ignored.
The biggest danger of political violence in Germany today comes from right-wing extremists. The group around Reuß was typical of the Reichsbürger in that many of its members had connections to the state security apparatus. There were enough current and former special forces, police officers and politicians that they might well have succeeded, for a while at least, in their plan to shut down large parts of Germany’s power supply and storm the Bundestag. The death toll would almost certainly have been high.
The internal security services believe there to be as many as 23,000 Reichsbürger, but say that only around 5 per cent are right-wing extremists. This is baffling. How can there be a moderate version of the claim that the peace agreement signed after the Second World War was illegitimate? What would a centrist version be of the position that German democracy is prima facie invalid, and either the National Socialists or the monarchy should be restored to power? It may be true that only a small percentage of the Reichsbürger are potentially violent terrorists, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t all right-wing extremists.
there's people in germany literally plotting 'false flag' operations, people with military training and weapons/ammo, which they're intending to blame on 'leftists' or 'wokists'. one of the main plotters in this (frankly farcical) coup attempt was a person of mixed heritage who was hoping that his surname and biographical details would 'cause the media to home in on his migrant status'.
then you've got useful idiots like larssen ignoring all of it, and getting oh-so-terribly-concerned over the behaviour of football fans of a migrant background. nothing said about the violence or street fights from white fans. nothing said about the nationalistic, far-right invective spent on players of colour by white fans. you just could not make this shit up. rather than actually recognizing any of these very real threats and harms to democratic society, they'd rather accuse me of being 'racist against whites' and 'trying to stop whites from campaigning for what they want'. like what? a return to the imperial german/british/french (you choose) state and a reversal of the last 70 years of history? lmao a reasonable campaign.
overexcited football fans in the slums: 'dangerous nationalism'. but you won't see a peep about the above. derp derp derp.
erm i have plenty of sensitivity for 'working-class white english people', which is why i vote for left-wing parties and constantly talk about inequality, redistributive economics, social democratic welfare statism, etc. i believe, quite uncontroversially, that working-class whites have more shared material interests in common with migrant workers than they do with the elites running society. hence, i'm not drawn on your divisive and spurious racism and xenophobia. being sold this stuff by alarmist news headlines and buying into societal catastrophe narratives is one of the oldest tactics in the press baron/elite class playbook.
you holding moroccan immigrants to standards that you don't apply to white people, either because you're selectively ignorant of it or because you hold them to higher standards and carry some sort of misguided notion, of expecting them to be on their best behaviour, is just not good enough.
how is it deflecting to point out that the police's deployment brings problems of its own, particularly with their history of policing in these communities? it's directly relevant to the tinder-box dynamics. the french police are notorious for being heavy-handed and breaking heads. even dilbert has made reference to it here on this forum before, in another context. again, do better and think harder.
'only moroccans were rioting': again, i don't see any riots. i see small isolated pockets of fans clashing with police. and it's not only been moroccans who have been disorderly during the world cup. there were outbreaks of fighting from england fans ffs!
the idea that i'm 'racist towards whites' by pointing out incredibly well-documented football hooliganism and poor behaviour by brits abroad is just hilarious.
you keep ranting about western identity politics as if i give a shit about it. strange. that's your bugbear, not mine. i am really not passionate about gender, sexuality, race, etc, beyond reading and listening to what these groups have to say and giving them the time of day. i'm not marching for it or carrying a little subscriber badge.
although you do sound like someone on the jordan peterson–ben shapiro axis when you keep making out it's the greatest threat facing civilization.
Whats funny is that uziq and people like him have no trouble lumping white people together, but go bananas when its done to brown people. White nationalism bad, brown supremacy good, all white gun-owning males are the same etc.
Funnier still that when he had the chance to explore lefty multiculturalism he instead chose to live in a monoracial, monocultural, highly conservative misogynist nation dependent on heavy industry - probably far whiter and more intolerant and less multicultural than anywhere in Europe or America.
Where next? Lagos? Addis Abbaba? Port-au-Prince? Yeah probably not. Multiculturalism is fine when you want a kebab, otherwise no.
"White people bad brown people good," the same reductive, dilbertian song and dance. So many posts in so many threads, blah blah blah.
Like, who complains about it not being socially acceptable to be a racist. Do you really want to be a vocal racist that bad? Zero imo, a prime opportunity for white people to pick up personality traits that don't involve being a complete boor. Same people who complain about not being able to say the n-word, lmao, give it a rest.
You're a hypocrite, and as racist as anyone else, that is all.
Racist against who, exactly? White people? You are literally a pot calling things black right now, aren't you? I, the 'racist hypocrite,' as pointed out by the racial pseudoscience promoting, Indian/black/Chinese hating, immigration-skeptic Australian transplant. It's really funny hearing you speak of your knowledge of South Korea, the southeast asian country almost as far north as Mongola. ROFL. Endlessly complain about how people talk about historic and ongoing racism some more. IT's AlL iN tHe PaSt!
"Brown people, all they're good for is falafel." -dilbert
What you need to learn is that you can perfectly well talk about ethnicity and ethnic groups without it immediately veering into provinciality and racism or Dilbertism. Completely avoiding the topic for fear of the idea that you'd immediately be chastising the whole community is such tiresome BS. There's obviously something going on in the way of social mobilisation and calls to rioting specifically in parts of the moroccan community, across borders, that is markedly different from and problematic compared to literally every other ethnic (minority) group involved in the world cup. Acknowledging this amounts to recognition of basic fact. Or do I need to roll a whole oak barrel of fermenting grapes your way?
Dilbertism is a thing now? I have entered the Lexicon, this is fantastic.
Whats funny is that uziq and people like him have no trouble lumping white people together, but go bananas when its done to brown people. White nationalism bad, brown supremacy good, all white gun-owning males are the same etc.
Funnier still that when he had the chance to explore lefty multiculturalism he instead chose to live in a monoracial, monocultural, highly conservative misogynist nation dependent on heavy industry - probably far whiter and more intolerant and less multicultural than anywhere in Europe or America.
Where next? Lagos? Addis Abbaba? Port-au-Prince? Yeah probably not. Multiculturalism is fine when you want a kebab, otherwise no.
“my god you’re actually obsessed with me”.
no, i don’t lump ‘all’ white people together? where have i done this? go on, find an example.
it’s just so funny how vexed you two are getting over this. when football hooliganism has been a subculture for decades. can you show me any black or indian firms of violent fans? it is an almost exclusively white working-class phenomenon. but a few bins set on fire in response to the world cup is a ‘structural problem’. hahahah.
What you need to learn is that you can perfectly well talk about ethnicity and ethnic groups without it immediately veering into provinciality and racism or Dilbertism. Completely avoiding the topic for fear of the idea that you'd immediately be chastising the whole community is such tiresome BS. There's obviously something going on in the way of social mobilisation and calls to rioting specifically in parts of the moroccan community, across borders, that is markedly different from and problematic compared to literally every other ethnic (minority) group involved in the world cup. Acknowledging this amounts to recognition of basic fact. Or do I need to roll a whole oak barrel of fermenting grapes your way?
Dilbertism is a thing now? I have entered the Lexicon, this is fantastic.
Whats funny is that uziq and people like him have no trouble lumping white people together, but go bananas when its done to brown people. White nationalism bad, brown supremacy good, all white gun-owning males are the same etc.
Funnier still that when he had the chance to explore lefty multiculturalism he instead chose to live in a monoracial, monocultural, highly conservative misogynist nation dependent on heavy industry - probably far whiter and more intolerant and less multicultural than anywhere in Europe or America.
Where next? Lagos? Addis Abbaba? Port-au-Prince? Yeah probably not. Multiculturalism is fine when you want a kebab, otherwise no.
like i said, larssen, you’re clearly not paying very much attention if you think this is conspicuously poor behaviour or problematic from the morocco fans.
again, i’m not denying that there are specific elements that are using the football as an excuse to break shit and vent frustration. but they’re a fraction of a fraction and it hardly takes deep analysis to wonder why a bunch of ghettoised migrants in belgium or wherever want to throw stones at a platoon of riot police deployed in their neighbourhood.
there was ca. 25,000 people on the champs elysées alone that night. they detained ~150 people city-wide. but you’re telling me there’s a yuuuuge brewing problem in the moroccan community? this is the biggest immigrant group in france ffs. stop reaching.
i’ve seen more damage and more violence and affray in bristol city during a derby weekend between bristol city and bristol rovers football fans. mounted police on horseback being knocked over. shops and pubs destroyed. people seriously wounded. etc. this is people destroying their own city. please stop acting like native whites are this virtuous and civilised group. it’s really embarrassing man.
if it’s ‘champagne socialist’ of me to prefer not to challenge an entire ethnic group on their ‘loyalty’ because a few teenagers got excited at a semi-final, then pass me the fucking magnum of bollinger, baby. you sound like an insipid tabloid-tier cultural commentator.
There's a difference between incidents and structural issues. Philly burning after they win the superbowl, a derby riot, a riot in canada - they would be comparable if the people in question would be rioting after every game played by their team, across cities and borders. Riots occurred in 3 seperate countries with their own socioeconomic contexts, simultaneously, after every game.
Don't lump me in with the resident forum troglodyte because I dare say a community can exhibit toxic behaviours. As though you're committing a taboo by pointing out that a subset of the moroccan community is guilty of destroying property, rioting and picking fights with the police - structurally. Even if you want to deflect to other riots resulting after sports games then too media headlines would undoubtedly say something like 'arsenal hooligans riot in London' and 'Police prepare for the next arsenal game' but in that case I'm sure denotion of the group would be unproblematic. It's the very fact that it's an ethnic identity which makes you gulp down that whole bollinger. If arsenal fans would start fires in london after literally every single game, not just in London but in multiple cities across multiple countries, you'd have no issue whatsoever pointing out that there's deeply problematic elements within the arsenal 'fanbase.'
What you need to learn is that you can perfectly well talk about ethnicity and ethnic groups without it immediately veering into provinciality and racism or Dilbertism. Completely avoiding the topic for fear of the idea that you'd immediately be chastising the whole community is such tiresome BS. There's obviously something going on in the way of social mobilisation and calls to rioting specifically in parts of the moroccan community, across borders, that is markedly different from and problematic compared to literally every other ethnic (minority) group involved in the world cup. Acknowledging this amounts to recognition of basic fact. Or do I need to roll a whole oak barrel of fermenting grapes your way?
Uziq your entire rhetorical strategy here is to either deflect, placate or just state straight nonsense. No, riot police weren't deployed pre-emptively to then pick a fight with the moroccan supporters. It is a fact that the supporters went out in the streets - after they won mind you - and started destroying things. This was one of several scenes in Belgium and the other countries:
There's no way to feign blindness to the fact that there's subsets of the moroccan population which interpreted the games in a way that led them to be 'jubilantly violent' in the streets where they live. Accepting this, analysing it, and calling it out as being wrong and harmful to community relationships is not racism.
You wouldn't see Belgian-born French people trashing Brussels if the French won a game against Belgium. The whole notion is bizarre. Or ethnically Dutch people lighting trash cans, bicycles and other stuff in London if they happened to lose a game against the English. It's beyond obvious in their action that they hold grievances and are (ab)using the games to express those violently.
The bizarre nature of it all is underlined by the fact that it's happening in THREE countries at the same time, and that no other minorities in Europe who are arguably in similar or worse socioeconomic positions - Senegalese, Tunisians, Iranians - were rioting after their countries' games. On top of that it's especially bad sport to hold violent get togethers after winning a game.
She probably didn't show up expecting the Spanish Inquisition (no one ever does). I would feel kind of shell-shocked as well.
I won't say that the resignation was strictly necessary, but the whole ill-considered thing could have just ended if the old lady relented when Fulani said she was a British national, no? Is she senile or not? If not, maybe she should have kept up with the times, considering her position, no?
The palace described the remarks as "unacceptable and deeply regrettable".
A spokesperson for Prince William said "racism has no place in our society".
"The comments were unacceptable, and it is right that the individual has stepped aside with immediate effect," they said.
Ms Fulani said she did not want to see Lady Hussey "vilified".
Where are your complaints about the palace's response? Dilbert makes a remark about black people, you make a remark about her attire. Is it any wonder Fulani was concerned about getting blasted by the fallout?
Would be tempting to just answer with one of these and probably be close enough.
The late Queen's lady-in-waiting Lady Susan Hussey has apologised and resigned after she repeatedly asked a black British charity boss where she was "really" from.
Ngozi Fulani, a charity founder, was questioned about her background at the charity event at the palace on Tuesday.
Ms Fulani, said she was "totally stunned" by Prince William's godmother's comments.
The palace described the remarks as "unacceptable and deeply regrettable".
A spokesperson for Prince William said "racism has no place in our society".
"The comments were unacceptable, and it is right that the individual has stepped aside with immediate effect," they said.
Lady Hussey, 83, was a close confidante of the late Queen and accompanied her at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh last year.
She was a key and trusted figure in the Royal Household for decades, and part of her latest role had involved helping to host occasions at Buckingham Palace.
In other situations involving different people, the relatives of a zero-filter old woman will do something like surreptitiously catch an offended person's eye and make the 'loopy' gesture over their temple. Maybe long-retired suburban moms are just held to lower standards. But if an old person realizes their social blunder and takes responsibility, I don't want to take that from them. I don't consider myself an ageist. Sucks to be someone who torpedoes their own decades of effort just because they wanted to make someone uncomfortable, though.
Ms Fulani, in an interview with the Independent website, said the issue was "bigger than one individual. It's institutional racism".
"I was in shock after it happened and anybody who knows me knows I don't take this kind of nonsense," she said.
"But I had to consider so many things. As a black person, I found myself in this place where I wanted to say something but what happened would automatically be seen as my fault, it would bring [my charity] Sistah Space down.
"It would be 'oh, she has a chip on their shoulder'."
Ms Fulani said she did not want to see Lady Hussey "vilified".
An eyewitness to the conversation, Mandu Reid, told BBC News that Lady Hussey's questions had been "offensive, racist and unwelcoming".
The leader of the Women's Equality Party said she had felt a "sense of incredulity" about the echange in which Ms Fulani was interrogated about where she was from, even though she had already explained she was born and lived in the UK.
Rings true, the victim concerned that they'll be made the villain. Justifiable concern that the older woman would be coddled. That she herself would be flayed in the public eye and told to grow a thicker skin.
I don't even know how many different anecdotes I've read of this near exact sort of conversation.
I think you used the word 'skills' wrong, you meant bandwidth.
i don’t personally have the skills to run a publishing house, you know
Yet the CEO does.
no, i meant skills. the number of people still there are a tiny proportion. people on H1-B visas necessarily aren’t very senior or experienced, either; those people have, you know, better visas.
musk has caused an exodus of all the staff in his company who essentially have the option to take their labour elsewhere. i didn’t say anything about the remaining people being bad at their jobs. least of all because of their race and ‘fake resumés’. this is your usual bullshit.
you karma’s me ‘nice casual racism’ where there was none. meanwhile you low-key celebrate the heir of an apartheid fortune who is consistently against worker rights and all for asking people to ‘hardcore’ for his white man’s gain. but okay i’m the one who is introducing suspect ethics via the backdoor.
i work with and interact with teams in india everyday. don’t project when accusing me of casual racism. i treat my colleagues with respect. you are a toxic little slug.
the CEO absolutely does not have the expertise to single-handedly run a publishing house. LMAO what the fuck are you smoking. you think the CEO has an expert grasp of copy-editing, typesetting, legal and copyright permissions, graphic design, web infrastructure and databases/archiving/indexing, marketing, current trends in AI and machine/deep learning, institutional politics and current debates around open access, etc? and this is a relatively medium-tech publishing house, not fucking rocket science.
you buying into the genius polymath narrative is just sad dweeby nerd wish fulfilment in your part. elon is a boardroom and funding round grifter. that’s his skill set.
uziq asked for an example of a political party 'based around racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc'
I gave him one.
The Religious Zionist Party is opposed to any territorial concessions, to Palestinian or Syrian claims for land. Some members support the annexation of the entire West Bank, though the official policy of the Jewish Home parliamentary faction, of which the party was aligned between 2013 and 2019, only supports annexation of Area C of the West Bank, which makes up 63% of land in the West Bank.[43][44] The party is opposed to recognition of same-sex marriage on a religious basis.[45] The party advocates for increased funding for Torah study and religious education.
In rabbinic literature, a heavy emphasis is placed on Torah study[1] for Jewish males, with women being exempt.
There's a big fat overlap between this and cancel culture
"This person voted Republican/Democrat, lets get them fired from their job at Burger King"
Obviously its undesirable for people to have opinions but what can you do?
uziq wrote:
all this post-2000s communications act stuff is targeted at social media age, a thin-skinned era in which people post online transparently under their real names and 'real' identities. this is a 90s era web1.0 creation. get onboard or get off the train, cuck. we post under USER HANDLES here, we have forum AVATARS, we form fictitious CLANS which in no ways resemble real-life guilds or militias.
If inciting people to commit suicide were a crime, and it should be, you'd still be in prison.
where has anyone been arrested for their political views?
is there a political party based around racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc? i believe they are classified as ‘hate groups’, not official political parties (even if the overlap might be depressing).
‘inciting people to commit suicide’. people have been arrested for this. it has happened. people have trolled the chats of live streamers who are clearly in a crisis and depressive episode. people have egged on suicide and have rightfully been arrested for it.
calling you a fucking idiot for peddling vaccine suspicion, conspiracy theories, anti-scientific racist rubbish, und so weiter, is not actively encouraging your suicide. get a grip. you fucking little pansy drip-nosed live at home cuck idiot!
anyway, apparently there's discord servers for plods in which to get access you have to even show your cop credentials.
apparently these discord servers are 4chan levels of toxic. far-right rhetoric, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia -- the chef's selection of liberal outrage, naturellement. but it does seem that this is an established trend within the police force, and i do think it is overwhelmingly of public interest in a way that, say, private mesasages between private citizens on whatsapp are not. these people are entrusted with 'keeping the peace' and protecting our freedoms, and yet they seem to be forming a 'fifth column' of idiocy instead.
is it too much to expect that our police officers exhibit good moral standing? especially when these same people are routinely accused of institutional racism, institutional homophobia, abuses of power ... and are implicated in people dying in custody, women being kidnapped and raped, etc.
'in my view' i prefer politics of hope and with constructive, positive visions for the future, not paranoiac, gun-toting, 'there will be a civil war if i don't get my way!' authoritarianism, which appeals to you because you're part of the majority power-holding group and have never had to fight for anything except filling out a TA application form.
If Mexicans were swarming down I'm sure they'd be electing someone else.
you mean like biden getting elected in america and the 'build the wall' people losing?
South America is moot, they have different pressures and problems from Europe.
hmm this is strange. i thought racism was innate and biological? if there's a genetic basis to hating people who aren't like yourself, why is it that the second biggest democracy on earth just chose an option of inclusivity? and you're fretting over sweden, pop. 10.5 million? i'd say they are moot, in the human scale.
it's a well observed sociological phenomenon that any incomer to a group may adopt the most vicious and vociferous of said group's attitudes. it's a way of proving that they fit in and that they're as good as the rest of them; and even a defense mechanism against their own feelings of inadequacy and subaltern status. an unfortunate dynamic that we've seen playing out, time and again, throughout history. the raj itself had many sepoys.
so because racism exists in some societies or political ideologies, it's a biological iron law with some mysterious 'essence' in genes, right? honestly, your intelligence and reasoning is woeful.
requires a test for what? the simple fact is that you can buy antibiotics without a prescription from a retail worker. stop prevaricating. your racism is lazy and inane.
Covid did come from a lab, various other pandemics have come from asian meat production.
How is that impoverished people's faults?
Why is it my problem?
lots of epidemics or small pandemics have come from american and australian food production, too. nice racism, there.
really this is every bit as illiterate and dumb as you ranting about india's approach to antibiotics ... whilst australia, the UK, the US, et al face the exact same problems with antibiotic resistance and ease of access.
scientists and engineers frequently don’t exercise restraint even in their own professional domains. how many examples are there of disaster, human or environmental or otherwise, when those lot are left to self-regulate?
dilbert talks about professional bodies of accreditation in engineers as if that’s got everyone on their best behaviour at all times. as if money and greed and laziness and negligence and power and corruption and all these things don’t sneak in to non-arts pursuits at all – to say nothing about engineers (such as himself) being just as capable of nurturing toxic political ideology or dodgy social ideas (ahem ahem 'scientific' racism and eugenicism). it’s just laughable. shall we replace the parodic, stereotypical (cod-)humanities exemplar johnson with the stereotypical (cod-)scientific eugenicist? that would be such a better outcome for democratic society.
how many times has the automobile industry been affected by mass recalls and scandals? how many buildings have burned down or collapsed because someone shorted the testing and regulations? even prestigious, internationally renowned engineer cadres like VW aren't immune from this.
less sensationally, but arguably more damaging in the long view: look at the consequences of poor self-regulation in the chemicals industry, or in agribusiness, or in pharmaceuticals. you’re telling me there wasn’t a single scientist or engineer with a conscience who could have whistleblown about Teflon? about organophosphates? about neonicotinoids? about Oxycontin? a lotttt of STEM people involved in the R&D (and management levels) of these industries. a lot of people seemingly whose silence, or complicity, has been bought and sold.
zoom-in to granular detail on any one of those above case studies and you will see catastrophic failures of self-regulation and restraint in science. take neonicotinoids, for example. we left it to agribusiness and major chemical companies like bayer to safety test and risk assess their own marvellous replacements to the environmentally toxic previous tech. what’s the result? fast forward 2 decades and we are facing the collapse of insect life on the planet and the largest-scale extinction event arguably ever. wow; noble science!
or what about dupont chemical when faced with evidence that it’s ‘forever chemicals’ were coming off their utensils and ending up in groundwater and human bodies, in high quantities. faced with an existential crisis – a class action lawsuit and a PR bomb that would have sunk them forever – they instead sued the farmers with dead herds of cow into oblivion, muzzled dissent, and paid off the local regulators. we don’t even know what their latest replacement chemical formulas do because it’s proprietary. we just have to take their word for it that it’s safer than the last lot.
the moral brilliance of science! untainted by money or greed or power!!! and i'm not arguing, here, that science shouldn't have given us better pesticides or improved crop agriculture: i'm saying that many bright scientists involved in the regulation and approval of this stuff, in the political aspects of managing their field, people who weren't directly employed by corporations like bayer, could see that the statements of its safety and evidence supplied were insufficient and still gave it a pass because of the power+influence+reach of said corporations. because of the consensual pressure. these are precisely the sorts of difficult, political decisions, working in the shaded grey areas, away from the brilliance of black/white, right/wrong answers, that dilbert thinks STEM experts can handle no problemo.
a long catalogue of systemic failures within a self-regulating STEM brain industry to 'exercise restraint', here.
OK good. Open borders migration with India would be calamitous, and there'd be no chance of being readmitted to Europe in any form if that were allowed.
LMAO. i love how brexiters like you
But I'm not a brexiter you stupid hipster, so your paragraphs of ranting fall flat.
But the fact is people who voted for brexit are going to be mightily pissed to see their country flooded with indians.
yes, it's an irony that stupid brexiters voted to leave the EU common market, nonsensically to service their xenophobic dog-whistling racism.
turns out all they god rid of was the martas and marieks who were looking after their granny down at the local dementia home.
turns out they got rid of the packs of romanians who were picking their kale and carrots and keeping the prices low.
but, again, we're going to have to import this immigration from somewhere. it's all very well putting up union jack bunting and shouting 'gord save the king' repeatedly, but that's not going to patch the hole blown in the economy by brexit. and all those bitter-supping faragists down at the local pub in Kent aren't racing northwards to take minimum wage jobs and hard itinerant labour.
you continually rehearse the talking points of european fascists and brexiters but then always proclaim 'i'm not one of them!' the fact is that you have been muddying the waters of the brexit debate by ranting about blair and 'labour multiculturalism' for years. but leaving the EU was never going to do a single thing to combat multiculturalism, was it? unless you meant 'taking back control' to mean giving control to a future party of fascists who were going to deport millions and millions of british citizens who have been here for generations. derp.
coming from you, who seems to privilege his own experience and point-of-view above everything else, to the point of saying that half the world's population need to go and die off somewhere quietly for your peace of mind and continued consumption ... that's pretty rich.
what's the difference between some poor victorian churchman in 1860 being confronted with a bit of dinosaur found in devon and you, the racist, being presented with actual scientific understanding on genetics today?
even when it comes to this strictly materialist, scientific-truth-is-the-only-understanding view of things, which was limited even when the positivists tried it for size in the 1880s, you're not acquitting yourself very well. your scientific knowledge is largely bogus and emotionally, preferentially selective. being a capable engineer evidently doesn't give you any qualification to discuss matters of biology, chemistry, or even vast tracts of physics, really. let alone to judge people's entire worldviews and ways of life.
and, beyond that, there is much in human experience and meaning that goes beyond objective facts. i'm no proponent of the supernatural or fantastical myself, but if religion helps people with deeper emotional truths and helps them towards being a better, more ethical, more empathic human being, who am i to quarrel? for every sickened fundamentalist who uses religion as a wedge for hatred, there's a bitter ingrown cucked engineer misusing science for his racism. DERP.
Article complaining about conservatives complaining about cities.
To a certain degree, disgust and mistrust for the American city, laced with bits of antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism, dates back to Thomas Jefferson. When Vance says “the professors are the enemy,” he’s quoting Richard Nixon. In April, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton complained: “They want to make you live in downtown areas, high-rise buildings, walk to work or take the subway … They want to get you out of your pickup truck, out of your SUV, out of your home in the suburbs where you can have a backyard with your kids.” That’s the rhetoric of the Agenda 21 conspiracy. (I wish Democrats wanted anyone to get out of their pickup truck!)
The senator is correct. 💯 I do in fact want to take away their pickup trucks.
But you engineered parts for the military, and profit from oil.
Anyway, "the philosophy of the X-Men, Avengers," etc. in what limited capacity those are didn't spawn from nothing, re: uzique's mention of antecedents which I would've brought up in my own post had we not already been over this.
Even now the 'politics' of comic book characters parallel real-world changes. X-Men are regarded as allegorical for real-world issues. A mutant commits suicide because they can't take life "outed" as a mutant. Or simply ejected from their home and community to go live out on the street. Gee, I wonder where else we see that?
Didn't Superman give a speech against racism once? Or was that Captain America? What would they think of your take on Indians? In what regard would Professor X hold your stance on transgender educators?
it really doesn’t matter and you are pathetically irrelevant.
religion for most people is simply a way of life and a positive structuring force. they don’t spend their time agonising over the empirical veracity of Moses life.
ironically you get more wound up about biblical myths, like the jews supposed travails in egypt, than most practicing religious folk. you really should have studied theology. it occupies a lot of space in your worrisome dome.
as a secular person without religion you use dubiously ‘scientific’ rationales, as a neat substitution of untested and unverified religious faith, to justify ugly social attitudes. racism, sexism, pet mis- hobbies of all stripes. you are evidently unhappy and full of bitterness and scorn for other peoples and other lifestyles (the outsider and counterculture aspects of comics has obviously passed you by; how ironic that you reference x-men, a fictional universe from which you’ve clearly taken no message). your nerdy and maladjusted enthusiasm for children’s entertainments and corporate merchandise trains hasn’t made you any more empathic or understanding of fellow human beings.
your quack scientific ‘rigour’ has really not enriched your life. i’d rather have a humble christian for a neighbour than a person who dunks on refugees and is racist about indians tbh.
What most annoys me about the people who talk up patriotism is how they oftentimes combine it with disdain against wide classes of fellow citizens. I don't know how you can claim to be a patriot but also hate liberals, blue staters, the blacks, the gays, people in cities etc. all at the same time. A lot of professional patriots talk up defending people's freedom while also gravely opposing people making choices to do things with that freedom that they don't personally approve of. If military members want to be treated like an exalted warrior class, they should stay in their lane when it comes to what the artist and academics are up to.
For what it is worth, the current military leadership seems to understand public relations/civil military relations challenge they have. People roll their eyes at the military's attempts at rooting out sexual harassment, homophobia, and racism. But if they don't make the services appealing to modern Americans, the military will continue to have these recruitment problems. The top comment on the article about how white rural men are no longer the gold standard of the military's recruitment was spot on but not for the reason the poster thinks. White males under 18 are at about 20%. Literally not enough of them to staff institutions. In retrospect all of that Reaganism didn't work out.
israel is a de facto and de jure entity now. it was made thus in the late 19th century by britain.
Er, no it wasn't.
Its strange that you: Claim to be a history enthusiast but make stuff up when it suits your agenda
Drone on about multiculturalism and anti-racism but simultaneously support the leading racist monoculture in the world.
israel is a state recognized by the UN and the G7. the only dissenting or abstaining nations from israel's legal nation-state status are the arab world – who do as much in actual fact to help their palestinian fairweather brethren as you do, i.e. absolutely fuck all – and nowhere places like eritrea.
israel is a fact and has been, regardless of your whimpering. if people should 'get over' harms done to them generations ago, why are you still whining about the existence of israel? seems like a contradiction of your own facile principles.
again, this is your moronic thinking being parroted back at you, not mine.
learn some fucking history. there are still people alive who were witnesses to the tulsa race riots. aboriginal communities today still suffer the consequences of australia's forced adoption and socially segregative policies. they were active up until the fucking 1980s, for god's sake.
you are a moral bankrupt on this topic, and you know it. crocodile tears for a religious minority whose very faith you hold in contempt.
you need to grow up and read a history book.
i'm all ears when you want to genuinely talk about the struggles of the colonial oppressed and dispossessed. but you don't want to do that, do you? because it means examining your own privileged position in a settler colony and at the apex of extractive capitalism.
* and i just don't agree with the premise that every group, in the first encounter with an 'Other', reacts badly or with fear or racism or ostracism. there are any number of studies that show kindergartners of all races getting along fine. before they've gained something like that constructed, society-imposed 'awareness' of difference. most kids don't see colour in this way that you and dilbert make out, as if we react to a change of skin tone by reaching for our clubs and spears.
The kindergateners argument is a stupid one. A lot of human and animal instinct doesn't become apparent until maturity. Are kindergarteners interested in sex? Well clearly interest in sex is an unnatural learned behaviour and must be educated out of people.
unnamednewbie wrote:
That racism and sexism have disappeared is not my observation, even from the upper middle class (I imagine a good chunk of 9-11 calls about black men or teens jogging down the street come from wealthy neighborhoods). It's just less socially acceptable these days to come right out and say the racist stuff on your mind.
Exactly, nothing at all has changed, its just people are less overt about it.
Racism/tribalism/cultural supremacy is innate behaviour, if it weren't we wouldn't have separate cultures fighting for supremacy, either they would never have existed or they'd have all died and merged by now.
People like uziq should be grateful for white western cultural arrogance and the aggression to defend it, otherwise he'd be a muslim by now and having a fairly miserable time, or living under the Stalinist or Maoist yoke.
Its still strange that defending your own culture is 'bad mmkay and you're a racist' while at the same time allowing other inferior cultures which are far more racist and intolerant to invade and impose their culture is 'right-on multiculturalism'.
Strange also that people fleeing their failed intolerant cultures don't ditch them at the border.
I am sympathetic to arguments about the importance of culture. Socializing dysfunctional people is what I do. The state is paying me to acculturate kids. That said, the worldview isn't perfect. In practice a lot of racial minorities who did try to assimilate into mainstream white culture in the west were met with extreme violence and prohibition in just living memory. Things are very different today and getting better too though.
are you seriously suggesting that there's a 'pubescence' for racism?
my god, man, you really need to up your scientific reading a bit.
i'm not denying that people can't develop racist views when they mature out of age 4. but that's precisely my argument: that it's created by material factors, by environment, by socialization and society at large. these things are contingent and subject to change. different cultures have different ideas on this very topic.
why you need to make everything into some 'essential', timeless, instinctual thing is beyond me. it's a silly attempt at scientific credibility and a way of avoiding taking responsibility for your toxic attitudes, tbh.
Its still strange that defending your own culture is 'bad mmkay
where have i ever said this? i take a lot of pride in my culture. i don't know if you noticed, but i spent my entire formal education studying it and being very interested in it. such education would have you know that there's more to british or european culture than your silly and rather vague fascistic imaginings.i'm frustrated at times with my home country and think there are things it can do to improve. britain would do well to get over the imperial nostalgia phase which is evidently doing it so much harm now with the patriotic, boorish, brexit stuff. that's all gone and we should get in tune with a new present.
but that's all by the by. the way you make out people who are 'anti-racist', as if that's such a bad thing, to be destroyers of their own culture is just inane. what if i told you ... it's possible to be proud of a country that's inclusive and kind to refugees? make u think mate.
People like uziq should be grateful for white western cultural arrogance and the aggression to defend it, otherwise he'd be a muslim by now and having a fairly miserable time, or living under the Stalinist or Maoist yoke.
so dumb as to almost be beneath comment.
i love it when lunks like you, who never joined the military and has nary been 'aggressive' to another human in his life, for fear of getting bonked on the nose, comes out with this 'defending white civilization' tripe. especially when you invoke those big scary totalitarian ideologies from abroad!
the soldiers who died fighting that stuff were fighting for democracy, not your weird, sexless, ingrown fantasies of ethno-states and 'white supremacy'. i don't know if you noticed that in all your Nazi reading list.
* and i just don't agree with the premise that every group, in the first encounter with an 'Other', reacts badly or with fear or racism or ostracism. there are any number of studies that show kindergartners of all races getting along fine. before they've gained something like that constructed, society-imposed 'awareness' of difference. most kids don't see colour in this way that you and dilbert make out, as if we react to a change of skin tone by reaching for our clubs and spears.
The kindergateners argument is a stupid one. A lot of human and animal instinct doesn't become apparent until maturity. Are kindergarteners interested in sex? Well clearly interest in sex is an unnatural learned behaviour and must be educated out of people.
unnamednewbie wrote:
That racism and sexism have disappeared is not my observation, even from the upper middle class (I imagine a good chunk of 9-11 calls about black men or teens jogging down the street come from wealthy neighborhoods). It's just less socially acceptable these days to come right out and say the racist stuff on your mind.
Exactly, nothing at all has changed, its just people are less overt about it.
Racism/tribalism/cultural supremacy is innate behaviour, if it weren't we wouldn't have separate cultures fighting for supremacy, either they would never have existed or they'd have all died and merged by now.
People like uziq should be grateful for white western cultural arrogance and the aggression to defend it, otherwise he'd be a muslim by now and having a fairly miserable time, or living under the Stalinist or Maoist yoke.
Its still strange that defending your own culture is 'bad mmkay and you're a racist' while at the same time allowing other inferior cultures which are far more racist and intolerant to invade and impose their culture is 'right-on multiculturalism'.
Strange also that people fleeing their failed intolerant cultures don't ditch them at the border.
That racism and sexism have disappeared is not my observation, even from the upper middle class (I imagine a good chunk of 9-11 calls about black men or teens jogging down the street come from wealthy neighborhoods). It's just less socially acceptable these days to come right out and say the racist stuff on your mind. Some people even feel resentful about that. A fact not overlooked by politicians, mind, and exploited.
Comparing drunks to toddlers might sound cute to some, but I don't think it's the best analogy.
Are humans born with an innate knowledge of what side of the plate a fork is supposed to sit, or is that a learned behavior?
sorry, but that's ahistorical nonsense. you are arguing that trying to counteract acquired or subconscious biases is 'silly'. erm, what has been happening with gender relations and feminism in the last century and a half or so? there was a 'first mover' and a 'first constructor' of patriarchal systems at one point, no? which we are busy trying to 'unlearn' and deconstruct?
i'm not coming at this from an academic deconstructionist view where i want to play games and throw every concept into artful ambiguity. i just mean, quite literally: as part of 'civics' classes in modern, multicultural democracies, some historical examination and 'sensitivity training' wouldn't go amiss. i would happily recommend any system that tries to improve people's awareness, empathy, basic respect? what's wrong with promoting civility, etc? everyone benefits? taboos are dispelled?
too often in these discussions you kind of shade into the 'the liberal academics have gone too far! i'm too burdened with their guilt tripping!' stuff. like your life is being ruined by this discourse or corrective. it really isn't. we can generally just tweak our institutional processes and 'bake-in' better thinking on topics like race and gender. nobody is being 'forcefully re-educated' or 'sent for reprogramming'. why would anyone refuse so angrily to just treat their fellow students, fellow coworkers, etc, with the basic respect that every human being – in a liberal democracy, anyway – is promised?
the ideal future is one in which people can do away with the topic at all. i look forward to it being of no moment. but we're not going to get there by practicing effortful ignorance of the past and by denying the present ills. we have to work through it.
you and dilbert love pointing towards 'instincts' and claiming that it has universal and deep, irrational foundations. 'racism arises from the group mentality'. well, fine (citation needed).* but we generally tame our baser impulses and learn to conduct ourselves as civil adults in all other respects of our lives, don't we? do you grope yourself uncontrollably when looking at your female colleagues? do you shit your pants when nature calls? part of human maturation out of the childhood of 'impulses and instincts' is towards a self-controlled, self-individuated person. we can exercise a little superego and rational thought, here. this is literally basic textbook freud, lol, in 'civilization and its discontents'.
* and i just don't agree with the premise that every group, in the first encounter with an 'Other', reacts badly or with fear or racism or ostracism. there are any number of studies that show kindergartners of all races getting along fine. before they've gained something like that constructed, society-imposed 'awareness' of difference. most kids don't see colour in this way that you and dilbert make out, as if we react to a change of skin tone by reaching for our clubs and spears.
I never understood how the kindergartners argument ever passed academic scrutiny. So a group of little kids with barely developed brains who for all intents and purposes act like little drunkards can get along, ergo that is the 'natural state' and our tendencies for conflict and tribalism in later life are simply culturally imposed? Come on now.
Uziq, if anything, your reference to the early romans bludgeoning the ginger gauls and celts reminds me of another basic freudian phrase which I dropped here before: the "Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen“. Even the smallest differences among us can be magnified and exploited to foment hatred between groups and this has happened countless times in history and is still happening all over the globe. Yes, of course, it's a socially constructed reality with often identifiable material issues that contribute to this process, but for some reason many people like to entirely separate these facts from the humans who produce these constructs, i.e. it's all just externalised or artificial behaviour. That's frankly a naive point of view, and there's my issue.
That is just when speaking of the minor differences too, what if we move to the "große differenzen" that seem to dominate political discourse of late? I do not mean to imply that we're all destined to be violently in conflict, we are not, and I'm happy as anyone to see that in most western countries overt racism and sexism has mostly disappeared (in middle-upper class circles really). But there's a certain hubris to the notion that we can eliminate these processes and all other conflicts between groups entirely and live happily ever after. Othering, symbolisms, the construction of grand nationalist, tribalist, racial or what have you narratives, geographic delineations, group-norms etc. - all this will continue and inevitably cause friction as various groups new and established end up mired in competition for (political and social) power in the name of equality. And importantly, those of us who have never read about any of this or are dimwittedly unable to wrap their heads around these concepts are often fully committed to maintaining the 'social constructs' that govern their reality, unconsciously or purposefully, perhaps both, overtly or covertly. Maybe I think a little too dimly of my fellow man but I don't expect a future generation to be any less susceptible to these dynamics or more aware of them, whether or not you create compulsory civic classes for preschoolers with lecture segments on racism and sexism (because after all that's when the culture taints these poor children).
Recognising who and what we are not is fundamental to the creation of our own sense of self. We can't help but notice and identify difference, between us and others, or in other groups among themselves. And then a whole host of (un)conscious actions can follow that at worst are discriminatory in their effect. I'm all for preventing that - pushing back against overt racism, sexism or other -isms and asking people to play nice, but christ alive when the topic shifts to the fixation of the teacher's gaze or a topic like microaggressions, can we not at least admit that some very basic and probably wholly unconscious human behaviours are taking place here? Not necessarily all that harmful ones, too?