Do hyphenated-Americans contribute to racism?

[Mac1958]

What does that have to do with you making reference to me calling Rotatilla a silly white boy?

Just pointing out your racist's ways. So you calling anyone a racist is like "pardon the expression" "The pot calling the kettle black. You have lost all credibility

There are kettles in many different colors, including white.

Why are you focused on black kettles? Hmmmm?

Please tell me that you're just kidding.

That you're mocking the PC Police.

Please.

.

 

[Pogo]

No. You've been saying that the simple act of noting or acknowledging differences is where racism begins. And I disagree with that; it isn't. Where racism begins is where value judgment is introduced into those differences. But until that optional bridge is crossed, if it's crossed at all, the simple noting of differences is in itself innocuous.

It does look like you're trying to backtrack from where you were last night.

I'm not backtracking at all. I'm saying exactly the same thing I have been the entire time. Perhaps you are simply getting closer to understanding it.

No, it looks to me like you're trying to massage. Here's what I started with:

The fundamental idea behind the hyphenation is the same as the fundamental idea behind racism: we are different, you and I.

"You are inferior" is built on "you are different."

-- And I disagree with both of those.

Do not Italians, women, Asians and lefthanded people, as groups, all have differences from the greater whole? Of course they do. Saying so does not in any way imply that any one of them is inferior.

Now we can attach our own prejudices to any one of those, or any combination. But that is in no way derived from a simple acknowledgment that "Italian" is different from "Irish". To go around pretending we have no differences to me is just not honest.

Pogo, you have the structural advantage in the debate with Mathbud because you can apply precision to the language he used when he first laid down his thought. Look at what he wrote after the first sentence.

"You are inferior" is built on "you are different." You can't think someone is inferior to you without first thinking they are different from you. The more importance you place on that difference that you have recognized, the more misunderstanding, intolerance, and hate you invite.
​

That "more importance" is the value judgment you're focusing on. I agree with you that this is the stage where the action originates but I also see his point - if you knock out the foundation of difference, then you make it impossible to attach a value judgment to something that doesn't exist. I understand his point, I just think it's operational only in the realm of the abstract.

I think you guys are talking past each other. You can hold him to account for his thoughts when they were off-the-cuff or you can ask him what his position is now that he knows exactly what you're focused on. I'm not really seeing what the fundamental difference in play is here.

In the first quote, I assumed that there were unstated conditions which applied, specifically that difference has social meaning. That's how I read it. I didn't take him at his word that racism arises only from difference.

Anyways, enough of being peacemaker. To your comment - you call the value judgments prejudices, so are you implying that prejudices are bad, that they don't reflect reality, that they're irrational. Can a value judgment be negative and also correct?

What I read him saying is that the simple act of articulating a difference --- all by itself -- creates racism. I'm just taking his words at face value. Now I understand he then tries to morph that meaning with red herrings about "importance" but that's completely a separate issue. The way he tries to state it they are the same thing. And I disagree with that.

That's the point of contention here --- whether seeing a difference and then appending a value judgment to that difference is one act, or two. I say it's two; he says they're one.

Again it's impossible to inject a prejudice into one entity among several if you do not first acknowledge that there are multiple entities that are different from each other. So to make the statement that you cannot have racism with out first noting differences, that statement has no meaning. You must acknowledge differences in order to simply count more than one entity in the first place. You cannot have two separate entities until you acknowledge that 5 is different from 8. Noting that does not in itself ascribe a superior/inferior relationship; it merely establishes that there are two numbers that are not the same thing. If you want to ascribe a hierarchy, that's a separate step.

I agree we're lost in minutiae here. But this is kind of crucial to understanding how it works.

 

[Rikurzhen]

What I read him saying is that the simple act of articulating a difference --- all by itself -- creates racism. I'm just taking his words at face value. Now I understand he then tries to morph that meaning with red herrings about "importance" but that's completely a separate issue. The way he tries to state it they are the same thing. And I disagree with that.

That's the point of contention here --- whether seeing a difference and then appending a value judgment to that difference is one act, or two. I say it's two; he says they're one.

And this is why I noted that you have the structural advantage in the debate. He wrote his thoughts in reaction to whatever was going on up thread and didn't realize that they'd become the topic of debate. I hate getting caught in that position myself.

That point of contention - let's just ask him whether he disagrees now that we're in the minutia of the issue.

Again it's impossible to inject a prejudice into one entity among several if you do not first acknowledge that there are multiple entities that are different from each other. So to make the statement that you cannot have racism with out first noting differences, that statement has no meaning. You must acknowledge differences in order to simply count more than one entity in the first place. You cannot have two separate entities until you acknowledge that 5 is different from 8. Noting that does not in itself ascribe a superior/inferior relationship; it merely establishes that there are two numbers that are not the same thing. If you want to ascribe a hierarchy, that's a separate step.

The sense I got from his argument, which I have already stated I thought to be too abstract, was that if we could just see each other as humans rather than as members of racial groups, then we've knocked out the differences and so there is nothing to hang the value judgments on. This is a common belief of people - "we're all humans" and "I belong to the human race, the only racial group" etc. I don't actually believe these people live this way, so I take them as speaking to ideals. When you say "that statement has no meaning" you're referring to the real world. These example statements that I highlighted speak to a world of ideals. That's where his argument is rooted, or so it seems to me.

I agree we're lost in minutiae here. But this is kind of crucial to understanding how it works.

I don't get the sense that Mathbud disagrees, but the surest way to resolve that is for him to answer a direct question.

 

[Mathbud1]

And this is why I noted that you have the structural advantage in the debate. He wrote his thoughts in reaction to whatever was going on up thread and didn't realize that they'd become the topic of debate. I hate getting caught in that position myself.

That point of contention - let's just ask him whether he disagrees now that we're in the minutia of the issue.



The sense I got from his argument, which I have already stated I thought to be too abstract, was that if we could just see each other as humans rather than as members of racial groups, then we've knocked out the differences and so there is nothing to hang the value judgments on. This is a common belief of people - "we're all humans" and "I belong to the human race, the only racial group" etc. I don't actually believe these people live this way, so I take them as speaking to ideals. When you say "that statement has no meaning" you're referring to the real world. These example statements that I highlighted speak to a world of ideals. That's where his argument is rooted, or so it seems to me.



I don't get the sense that Mathbud disagrees, but the surest way to resolve that is for him to answer a direct question.

I don't disagree with what Pogo is saying. I never have. If I disagreed, I would have stated that.

The problem is that what Pogo is saying doesn't address what I am actually saying, it addresses what Pogo thought I was saying in the first place.

Does saying, "a house is built on a foundation," mean that a house is a foundation? Or that building a foundation means that you have automatically built a house on it? Could you build a barn on that foundation instead? Could you build an office building?

Pogo needs to stop assuming that I said acknowledging difference is racism or that acknowledging difference automatically leads to racism. That is NOT what I said. Every argument Pogo has laid out is based on that false assumption that that is what I said.

I emphatically DO NOT advocate pretending that there are no differences between people. Pretending that only disconnects you from reality. There are differences. We absolutely must acknowledge that there are differences. Having acknowledged that there are differences, we THEN have a choice to make: how much importance are we going to give those differences. How much significance are we going to attach to those differences.

My contention is this: if we choose to give a great deal of importance to those differences, we are choosing to divide ourselves. Not giving importance to the differences is NOT denying that the differences exist.

 

[Rikurzhen]

I emphatically DO NOT advocate pretending that there are no differences between people. Pretending that only disconnects you from reality. There are differences. We absolutely must acknowledge that there are differences. Having acknowledged that there are differences, we THEN have a choice to make: how much importance are we going to give those differences. How much significance are we going to attach to those differences.

My contention is this: if we choose to give a great deal of importance to those differences, we are choosing to divide ourselves. Not giving importance to the differences is NOT denying that the differences exist.

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

 

[House]

What does that have to do with you making reference to me calling Rotatilla a silly white boy?

Just pointing out your racist's ways. So you calling anyone a racist is like "pardon the expression" "The pot calling the kettle black. You have lost all credibility

There are kettles in many different colors, including white.

Why are you focused on black kettles? Hmmmm?

Please tell me that you're just kidding.

That you're mocking the PC Police.

Please.

.

Read my follow-up that was posted shortly after.

If that doesn't tell you all you need to know, there's no helping you.

 

[Pogo]

I emphatically DO NOT advocate pretending that there are no differences between people. Pretending that only disconnects you from reality. There are differences. We absolutely must acknowledge that there are differences. Having acknowledged that there are differences, we THEN have a choice to make: how much importance are we going to give those differences. How much significance are we going to attach to those differences.

My contention is this: if we choose to give a great deal of importance to those differences, we are choosing to divide ourselves. Not giving importance to the differences is NOT denying that the differences exist.

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

"She"? What's the point of calling me "she"?

I didn't address that question because I didn't think that's what Mathbud was saying (and still don't). Or if it is what he meant it's not what he wrote. So I stayed on point of pursuing what he actually posted.

Your citations here of underwear, music, criminality, welfare, parenting etc -- these are cultural stereotypes, not racial characteristics. Of course choosing to see them as racial rather than cultural would get you into a whole 'nother can o' worms. And perhaps that's part of the problem that is racism. Perhaps that's a whole lot of it.

We ran into that same kind of conflation recently with a couple of threads on female genital mutilation and "honor killings", where some tried to make them religious issues rather than cultural ones. What does it mean? Perhaps the masses find it easier to blame social phenomena they don't understand on race or religion so they can declare a simple black/white dichotomy: "this race is bad" or "that religion sucks" instead of trying to actually grok the cultural foundation underlying them. A path of less resistance.

?

 

[Rikurzhen]

I emphatically DO NOT advocate pretending that there are no differences between people. Pretending that only disconnects you from reality. There are differences. We absolutely must acknowledge that there are differences. Having acknowledged that there are differences, we THEN have a choice to make: how much importance are we going to give those differences. How much significance are we going to attach to those differences.

My contention is this: if we choose to give a great deal of importance to those differences, we are choosing to divide ourselves. Not giving importance to the differences is NOT denying that the differences exist.

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

"She"? What's the point of calling me "she"?

I didn't address that question because I didn't think that's what Mathbud was saying (and still don't). Or if it is what he meant it's not what he wrote. So I stayed on point of pursuing what he actually posted.

Your citations here of underwear, music, criminality, welfare, parenting etc -- these are cultural stereotypes, not racial characteristics. Of course choosing to see them as racial rather than cultural would get you into a whole 'nother can o' worms. And perhaps that's part of the problem that is racism. Perhaps that's a whole lot of it.

We ran into that same kind of conflation recently with a couple of threads on female genital mutilation and "honor killings", where some tried to make them religious issues rather than cultural ones. What does it mean? Perhaps the masses find it easier to blame social phenomena they don't understand on race or religion so they can declare a simple black/white dichotomy: "this race is bad" or "that religion sucks" instead of trying to actually grok the cultural foundation underlying them. A path of less resistance.

?

Now that I know that you're a dude, I won't make the mistake of thinking you're a chick. I had to choose one, the dart landed on chick.

I tried to distinguish between cultural markers and markers which have basis in our genetic heritage and so are not very easy to remedy. The IQ gap hasn't budged in the last half century and the movement that happened in the previous half century can't be replicated (malnutrition in America isn't a problem - all our kids are getting the proper amount of micronutrients in their diets and so there aren't any nutrition related effect on cognitive development any more) and so the consequences which fall out from this fact and there for us to deal with. What the parents of 1955 saw as jungle music and negro music has passed through the mainstream and is now cliche as popular culture embraces rap. No one is looking at Little Richard singing Tutti Frutti and locking up their white daughters to protect them from his gyrating hips.

To your remark about choosing to see something as racial rather than cultural, I suppose the dividing line for people falls on how changeable the attribute is. Single motherhood is changeable - blacks could go back to embracing marriage and then this cultural marker falls away. Blacks are not going to raise the mean intelligence of their population from IQ 85 to IQ 100 and match white Americans. So what do you do when confronted by the issues which fall out from this - when black kids are bused into your neighborhood's school and the school quality begins to decline. What reactions are legitimate, how does racism get defined here?

 

[House]

Wait... time out...


Pogo isn't a she?

 

[Pogo]

Wait... time out...

Pogo isn't a she?

Oh bite my crank. Even the cartoon character was never a she. What are you trying to say exactly?

I emphatically DO NOT advocate pretending that there are no differences between people. Pretending that only disconnects you from reality. There are differences. We absolutely must acknowledge that there are differences. Having acknowledged that there are differences, we THEN have a choice to make: how much importance are we going to give those differences. How much significance are we going to attach to those differences.

My contention is this: if we choose to give a great deal of importance to those differences, we are choosing to divide ourselves. Not giving importance to the differences is NOT denying that the differences exist.

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

"She"? What's the point of calling me "she"?

I didn't address that question because I didn't think that's what Mathbud was saying (and still don't). Or if it is what he meant it's not what he wrote. So I stayed on point of pursuing what he actually posted.

Your citations here of underwear, music, criminality, welfare, parenting etc -- these are cultural stereotypes, not racial characteristics. Of course choosing to see them as racial rather than cultural would get you into a whole 'nother can o' worms. And perhaps that's part of the problem that is racism. Perhaps that's a whole lot of it.

We ran into that same kind of conflation recently with a couple of threads on female genital mutilation and "honor killings", where some tried to make them religious issues rather than cultural ones. What does it mean? Perhaps the masses find it easier to blame social phenomena they don't understand on race or religion so they can declare a simple black/white dichotomy: "this race is bad" or "that religion sucks" instead of trying to actually grok the cultural foundation underlying them. A path of less resistance.

?

Now that I know that you're a dude, I won't make the mistake of thinking you're a chick. I had to choose one, the dart landed on chick.

I tried to distinguish between cultural markers and markers which have basis in our genetic heritage and so are not very easy to remedy. The IQ gap hasn't budged in the last half century and the movement that happened in the previous half century can't be replicated (malnutrition in America isn't a problem - all our kids are getting the proper amount of micronutrients in their diets and so there aren't any nutrition related effect on cognitive development any more) and so the consequences which fall out from this fact and there for us to deal with. What the parents of 1955 saw as jungle music and negro music has passed through the mainstream and is now cliche as popular culture embraces rap. No one is looking at Little Richard singing Tutti Frutti and locking up their white daughters to protect them from his gyrating hips.

To your remark about choosing to see something as racial rather than cultural, I suppose the dividing line for people falls on how changeable the attribute is. Single motherhood is changeable - blacks could go back to embracing marriage and then this cultural marker falls away. Blacks are not going to raise the mean intelligence of their population from IQ 85 to IQ 100 and match white Americans. So what do you do when confronted by the issues which fall out from this - when black kids are bused into your neighborhood's school and the school quality begins to decline. What reactions are legitimate, how does racism get defined here?

I'm not sure from where you're pulling this "IQ" canard, or what the dubious value of such a measure is anyway. I'm distinguishing between stereotypes driven by cultural traditions versus (imaginary) traits driven by race. Are you suggesting that there exist intelligence limitations by race? That somehow black brains are different?

That's the distinction being delineated.

 

[Mathbud1]

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

I guess you would have to decide if you think they are behaving badly because they are black or if you think they are behaving badly and they are black.

If you don't see their behavior as being caused by their race, can it be racist to criticize their behavior?

On the other hand would it be racist to criticize actually bad behavior even if it really was caused by their race?

 

[Rikurzhen]

I'm not sure from where you're pulling this "IQ" canard, or what the dubious value of such a measure is anyway. I'm distinguishing between stereotypes driven by cultural traditions versus (imaginary) traits driven by race. Are you suggesting that there exist intelligence limitations by race? That somehow black brains are different?

That's the distinction being delineated.

What canard? The IQ Gap is one of the most solid social science findings, it's been replicated countless times, it's been studied up the wazoo. No one in psychology disputes the existence of the gap anymore, the only debate remains on the cause of the gap and the environmentalists are steadily losing ground to the hereditarians.

The value of intelligence is far from dubious. IQ touches on life - health outcomes correlate with IQ, so too does education, income, crime, etc.

You're sounding like an environmental determinist, where the genetics of race has no social consequence whatsoever and every attribute which intersects with racial variation has a cultural cause. I thought this nonsense was dead and buried last century. Am I reading you correctly? You accept evolution, don't you, or are you arguing from a creationists perspective?

Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, get with the times man, yes blacks are different - they're the only pure, homo-sapiens left on the Earth.

Brain size differences. Intelligence 31 (2003) 139–155

African-descended people (Blacks) average cranial capacities of 1267 cm3, European-descended
people (Whites) 1347 cm3, and East Asian-descended people (East Asians) 1364 cm3. These brain size differences, containing millions of brain cells and hundreds of millions of synapses, were hypothesized to underlie the race differences on IQ tests, in which Blacks average an IQ of 85, Whites 100, and East Asians 106. The validity of the race differences in brain size, however, continues to be disputed. In the present study, the race differences in brain size are correlated with 37 musculoskeletal variables shown in standard evolutionary textbooks to change systematically with increments in brain size. The 37 variables include cranial traits (such as jaw size and shape, tooth size and shape, muscle attachment sites, and orbital bone indentations), and postcranial traits (such as pelvic width, thighbone curvature, and knee joint surface area). Across the three populations, the ‘‘ecological correlations’’ [Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger] between brain size and the 37 morphological traits averaged a remarkable r=.94; r=.94. If the races did not differ in brain size, these correlations could not have been found. It must be concluded that the race differences in average brain size are securely established. As such, brain size-related variables provide the most likely biological mediators of the race differences in intelligence.​

 

[Pogo]

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

I guess you would have to decide if you think they are behaving badly because they are black or if you think they are behaving badly and they are black.

Exactly. That's the distinction I think is crucial.

If you don't see their behavior as being caused by their race, can it be racist to criticize their behavior?

On the other hand would it be racist to criticize actually bad behavior even if it really was caused by their race?

Good question. It goes to what we mean by the word "racism". In another recent thread where somebody tried to float the myth that the word was invented by Trotsky, we delved into its earlier usages back to the 19th century. I'll try to dig it up if I can remember where the thread was but basically it originally meant a race (or geo-social class of people) coalescing around their own identity. A kind of tribalism if you like, and ergo a neutral term. Today we mean it as "racial prejudice".

If one could demonstrate that something actually is a product of or influenced by race (as some things are; sickle cell anemia, lactose intolerance, a host of other medical propensities) then it could not be called "racist" to note those characteristics in the sense of prejudice that we use the word today. I've sat through a ton of medical lectures enough to know the doctors and medical researchers compiling such data are not doing so out of any kind of prejudice. Of course, comparative data on medical propensities is an entirely different ballgame from ascribing actual behaviour to race; at that point we veer off into concepts of free will, nature vs. nurture and predestination.

That's where this other guy here with his bell curve though (really?), just smacks of somebody looking for any contrived data that will fit his social agenda.

I'll try to find that etymology. And I wonder why the OP hasn't returned to defend.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

I guess you would have to decide if you think they are behaving badly because they are black or if you think they are behaving badly and they are black.

Exactly. That's the distinction I think is crucial.

If you don't see their behavior as being caused by their race, can it be racist to criticize their behavior?

On the other hand would it be racist to criticize actually bad behavior even if it really was caused by their race?

Good question. It goes to what we mean by the word "racism". In another recent thread where somebody tried to float the myth that the word was invented by Trotsky, we delved into its earlier usages back to the 19th century. I'll try to dig it up if I can remember where the thread was but basically it originally meant a race (or geo-social class of people) coalescing around their own identity. A kind of tribalism if you like, and ergo a neutral term. Today we mean it as "racial prejudice".

If one could demonstrate that something actually is a product of or influenced by race (as some things are; sickle cell anemia, lactose intolerance, a host of other medical propensities) then it could not be called "racist" to note those characteristics in the sense of prejudice that we use the word today. I've sat through a ton of medical lectures enough to know the doctors and medical researchers compiling such data are not doing so out of any kind of prejudice. Of course, comparative data on medical propensities is an entirely different ballgame from ascribing actual behaviour to race; at that point we veer off into concepts of free will, nature vs. nurture and predestination.

That's where this other guy here with his bell curve though (really?), just smacks of somebody looking for any contrived data that will fit his social agenda.

I'll try to find that etymology. And I wonder why the OP hasn't returned to defend.

So you've outed yourself as a creationist. This gives me a better fix on you and how to talk to you.

 

[Pogo]

A "creationist"? Moi?

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Do you believe that the importance attached to the differences, the value judgment using pogo's terms, is arbitrary? I asked pogo the same question but I think she missed it.

Instead of speaking in generalities, let me give a specific example. Black kids wearing their pants around their knees. This bugs some people, makes them look unkindly on blacks. This is something I see as being amenable to social propaganda efforts. There are many instances of black social innovations being widely adopted in society and thus normalized. Music, language, single motherhood, fashion - blacks lead and others follow. Most of these attributes don't have much consequence attached to them.

However, if the negative attributes are criminality, social disruption, low intelligence, high welfare use, then these have high levels of impact on other people, that is, they actually make life worse for people. How can these expressions of the group (not the individual) be managed away?

If negative feelings are built on pants around the knees, then big deal, if they're rooted in my kid's school being degraded by too high a proportion of underachieving and disruptive black kids, then isn't there a real world negative consequence falling on people and how do you get them to overlook that consequence? I can choose to overlook the pants at the knee fashion, I can't choose to overlook at the harm that befalls my kid.

So if we define these feelings as racism, as it's popularly used, can racism be rational and well-founded or is it always irrational and emotional?

I guess you would have to decide if you think they are behaving badly because they are black or if you think they are behaving badly and they are black.

If you don't see their behavior as being caused by their race, can it be racist to criticize their behavior?

On the other hand would it be racist to criticize actually bad behavior even if it really was caused by their race?

How do you account for the extremely ignorant and uneducated writings of vile vermin like Rikurzhen?

 

[Rikurzhen]

A "creationist"? Moi?

You're arguing that evolution doesn't apply to humanity. That's creationism. Sure, you may not make appeal to a God, you just pretend that some invisible forcefield exists which makes the human brain immune to evolutionary forces. Creationism of the left rather than creationism of religion.

 

[Pogo]

Now I remember who this guy is. The same clown who started asking me about my family in some aimless quest to connect that to racism, an argument he never quite delivered. -- back to @Mathbud1 here's that etymology I was thinking of. This is a copy of my post from that thread - I'll strip out the quote function so it doesn't go all italic but it comes from here:

>>

racism (n.)
1936; see racist.
racist
1932 as a noun, 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from French racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1871) and racialist (1917), both often used early 20c. in a British or South African context. In the U.S., race hatred, race prejudice had been used, and, especially in 19c. political contexts, negrophobia. --- OED <<

But the earliest English citation:

>> The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.

Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.

Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian...save the man. << (here)

But wait -- there's more. Now how much would you pay...

>> There is an urban legend that has been floating around for some years now, that the word racist was coined by Leon Trotsky, for the purpose of cowing and intimidating opponents of leftist ideology. In his History of the Russian Revolution Trotsky applied the word racist to Slavophiles, who opposed Communism.

... What the conservatives like to do instead of debunking their enemies' assumptions, which are also supported by mass-media, is to try to find a way to throw an accusation back at them, even a ridiculous accusation based on a specious argument and a flimsy premise. (I believe that this preference for responding with accusations, rather than truth and reason, derives from the fact that staying on the attack means not having to clarify one's own position on touchy matters. For somebody trying to win a popularity contest in the short term, rather than inform and educate for the long term, it makes perfect sense to try to keep one's own positions obscure.) The legend that Leon Trotsky coined the word racist offers a basis for that kind of rhetoric. It seems a silly argument, but they will say something like, If you use the word racist then you are a bad person like Communist mass-murderer Leon Trotsky, because he invented that word!

Did Trotsky really invent that word? No, apparently not. The work in which Trotsky is supposed to have coined that word was written and published in Russian in 1930. I found several examples of the French form, raciste, preceding Trotsky's use of the word by far.

I find pensée raciste (French for “racist thought”) and individualité raciste (“racist individuality”) in the volume of La Terro d’oc: revisto felibrenco e federalisto (a periodical championing the cultural and ethnic identity of people in southern France) for the year 1906.

Je forme des voeux pour la réussité de vos projets, car je suis persuadé que, dans cette fédération des peuples de Langue d’Oc luttant pour leurs intérêts et l’émancipation de leur pensée raciste, le prestige de Toulouse trouvera son compte. (p. 101)

("I express my best wishes for the success of your projects, because I am convinced that, in the federation of the peoples of Langue d’Oc fighting for their interests and the emancipation of their racist thought, the prestige of Toulouse will stand to gain.)

Even Earlier Examples:
....In Charles Malato's Philosophie de l'Anarchie (1897) we find both raciste and racisme:

Nul doute qu'avant d'arriver à l'internationalisme complet, il y aura une étape qui sera le racisme; mais il y a lieu d'esperer que la halte ne sera pas trop longue, que l'étape sera brûlée. Le communisme qui, au début de son fonctionnement, apparait devoir être fatalement réglementé, surtout au point de vue des échanges internationaux, entrainera la constitution de fédérations racistes (latine, slave, germaine, etc.) L'anarchie qu'on peut entrevoir au bout de deux ou trois générations, lorsque, par suite du développement de la production toute réglementation sera devenue superflue, amènera la fin du racisme et l'avénement d'une humanité sans frontiéres. (p.47)

("There's no doubt that before complete internationalism is achieved, there will be a stage of racism; but it is to he hoped that the interim will not be too long, that this step will be rapidly vaporized. Communism, which in its early stages appears to become fatally regulated especially looking at international commerce, will lead to the formation of racist federations (Latin, Slavic, Germanic, etc.) Anarchy that can be seen after two or three generations when, as a result of the development of production, all regulation will become superfluous, will herald the end of racism and the advent of a humanity without borders")

"My lack of god! It's Trotsky!" <<
​

(the closing line is a Monty Python reference)

Malato in the latter passage seems to be using racism in the sense that we would use "ethnic". -- perhaps in a nationalistic sense. Our definition then has become more literal over the years, more personal, and less nationalistic.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Now I remember who this guy is. The same clown who started asking me about my family in some aimless quest to connect that to racism, an argument he never quite delivered. -- back to @Mathbud1 here's that etymology I was thinking of. This is a copy of my post from that thread - I'll strip out the quote function so it doesn't go all italic but it comes from here:

>>

racism (n.)
1936; see racist.
racist
1932 as a noun, 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from French racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1871) and racialist (1917), both often used early 20c. in a British or South African context. In the U.S., race hatred, race prejudice had been used, and, especially in 19c. political contexts, negrophobia. --- OED <<

But the earliest English citation:

>> The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.

Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.

Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian...save the man. << (here)

But wait -- there's more. Now how much would you pay...

>> There is an urban legend that has been floating around for some years now, that the word racist was coined by Leon Trotsky, for the purpose of cowing and intimidating opponents of leftist ideology. In his History of the Russian Revolution Trotsky applied the word racist to Slavophiles, who opposed Communism.

... What the conservatives like to do instead of debunking their enemies' assumptions, which are also supported by mass-media, is to try to find a way to throw an accusation back at them, even a ridiculous accusation based on a specious argument and a flimsy premise. (I believe that this preference for responding with accusations, rather than truth and reason, derives from the fact that staying on the attack means not having to clarify one's own position on touchy matters. For somebody trying to win a popularity contest in the short term, rather than inform and educate for the long term, it makes perfect sense to try to keep one's own positions obscure.) The legend that Leon Trotsky coined the word racist offers a basis for that kind of rhetoric. It seems a silly argument, but they will say something like, If you use the word racist then you are a bad person like Communist mass-murderer Leon Trotsky, because he invented that word!

Did Trotsky really invent that word? No, apparently not. The work in which Trotsky is supposed to have coined that word was written and published in Russian in 1930. I found several examples of the French form, raciste, preceding Trotsky's use of the word by far.

I find pensée raciste (French for “racist thought”) and individualité raciste (“racist individuality”) in the volume of La Terro d’oc: revisto felibrenco e federalisto (a periodical championing the cultural and ethnic identity of people in southern France) for the year 1906.

Je forme des voeux pour la réussité de vos projets, car je suis persuadé que, dans cette fédération des peuples de Langue d’Oc luttant pour leurs intérêts et l’émancipation de leur pensée raciste, le prestige de Toulouse trouvera son compte. (p. 101)

("I express my best wishes for the success of your projects, because I am convinced that, in the federation of the peoples of Langue d’Oc fighting for their interests and the emancipation of their racist thought, the prestige of Toulouse will stand to gain.)

Even Earlier Examples:
....In Charles Malato's Philosophie de l'Anarchie (1897) we find both raciste and racisme:

Nul doute qu'avant d'arriver à l'internationalisme complet, il y aura une étape qui sera le racisme; mais il y a lieu d'esperer que la halte ne sera pas trop longue, que l'étape sera brûlée. Le communisme qui, au début de son fonctionnement, apparait devoir être fatalement réglementé, surtout au point de vue des échanges internationaux, entrainera la constitution de fédérations racistes (latine, slave, germaine, etc.) L'anarchie qu'on peut entrevoir au bout de deux ou trois générations, lorsque, par suite du développement de la production toute réglementation sera devenue superflue, amènera la fin du racisme et l'avénement d'une humanité sans frontiéres. (p.47)

("There's no doubt that before complete internationalism is achieved, there will be a stage of racism; but it is to he hoped that the interim will not be too long, that this step will be rapidly vaporized. Communism, which in its early stages appears to become fatally regulated especially looking at international commerce, will lead to the formation of racist federations (Latin, Slavic, Germanic, etc.) Anarchy that can be seen after two or three generations when, as a result of the development of production, all regulation will become superfluous, will herald the end of racism and the advent of a humanity without borders")

"My lack of god! It's Trotsky!" <<
​

(the closing line is a Monty Python reference)

Malato in the latter passage seems to be using racism in the sense that we would use "ethnic". -- perhaps in a nationalistic sense. Our definition then has become more literal over the years, more personal, and less nationalistic.

So now in addition to being a creationist you're a plagiarist copying from a NAZI website.

 

[Pogo]

So now you're an idiot.

Actually the links are to Google Books, where the originals may be read. That's not plagiarism; those are called "quotes". That's why the titles and authors are specified, and even linked. The translations are mine.

Might you have a point coming sometime soon or what?