Thread: things like this are keeping racism alive.

Originally Posted by tkdyo

this part to no one in paticular: I do wonder though, why is racism against a white person reverse racism? Shouldnt it still just be racism?

To answer your second question first: Yes, it is still just racism. That's why I will often use the phrase "reverse racism is still racism," because many people like to try to separate it from "normal" racism.

But to answer your first: What makes it "reverse" racism is the ideology that "since we as a people (blacks) were wronged, first, then our return racism, toward the race that oppressed us, is justified." There are many blacks that live under this sort of philosophy, and I can't completely blame them for being that misguided, but that's exactly what it is; misguidance. To me, it is holding onto a hatred and refusing to make amends with a generation that is (as a majority) so far beyond that initial wrong-doing that to hold that strict a grudge is about as bad as the "normal" racial prejudice (from whites, back then) that sparked the whole thing.

Every person is an individual, and races are not teams. They are just biological classifications. No race has ever acted together as a single unit. Not even anywhere near it. Disliking a person because of skin color is extremely absurd.

I have to mention the most outrageous and funniest racist comment I have ever heard of. It might have never been said, but it still illustrates what racism really is. My brother's friend claims he knew somebody who said he hates Chinese people because of Pearl Harbor and that they should know that we have not forgotten what happened in Vietnam. I think that preposterous comment puts a magnifying glass on how all racism works.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

They are just biological classifications.

I agree with what you are saying UM, but actually human races cannot be classified genetically. There are a few genes (seven, I think) that control skin color, but within the genome there is more variation within races than between them. For example, since people evolved and have been in Africa for so long, there is extreme genetic variation within "black" people; and any one particular dark-skinned person may actually be closer genetically to a light-skinned person than another dark one.

That's why the recent unfortunate comments by a prominent scientist (even if he did help discover the structure of DNA half a century ago when his mind was still intact) make no sense at all.

I don't know if things like Black History Month are bad or not. I do feel like, Why do they have to act like we need to celebrate it specially?; like there's few enough things we can just think about it once a year.

I think we can all admit who invented every kind of music worth listening to tho.

You know I agree. It shouldn't EVEN be a question; wether or not black people are any good or not. For fucks sake we're people trapped on a huuuuge round object; And this is how we treat eachother?

You know the advertisement you mentioned was what they call "Politically Correct" A.K.A. hypocritical. They tried to compensate for all the evil done to and thought about black people by showing "black inventions".

Off course this is just fueling a fire. Aware or unaware. Well dude have you seen African culture? Off course they have good stuff. Have you seen European Gothic and Mediterranean culture? Off course they've got good stuff. Have you seen Native American indian cultures? off course they'vre got great stuff. Have you seen persian and arabic culture? Great stuff they've got.

But all of these people, because they are people, have bad stuff too. And guess what: A reasonable conclusion is that ethics are not related in any way to Ethnicity/Race; Off course they're not. And the add you mentioned does put that in doubt again. All you need to draw that conclusion is an I.Q. of at least 80.

It's time we started judging eachother on PERSONALITY, instead of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or anything else besides personality. Individuality and individual responsibility is far fetched in this misguided, frustrated world.

Racism and everything it encompasses are, what I call, tales for the lowly intelligent. That simple. Designed by the Dominator-authorities of our modern, western civilisations to keep us working class and lower class people so busy with fighting racial warfare that we tend to forget who's our REAL enemy; Those forces that devide and rule us.
Well we see how well it works don't we?

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

I agree with what you are saying UM, but actually human races cannot be classified genetically. There are a few genes (seven, I think) that control skin color, but within the genome there is more variation within races than between them.

Race is still a biological classification. Are you saying there is no such thing as race? That finding would end a lot of the world's problems. What would you say a race is?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Race is still a biological classification. Are you saying there is no such thing as race? That finding would end a lot of the world's problems. What would you say a race is?

After many many many many more years, perhaps we will all be the same race.

And I hear we're supposed to turn into hermaphodites??? lol

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Race is still a biological classification. Are you saying there is no such thing as race? That finding would end a lot of the world's problems. What would you say a race is?

You can't define race using "biology" (genetics), that's what I'm saying. There is a spectrum of skin color and other visible features such as eye shape, hair texture, etc. There are no place to draw the lines. People blend into each other (like if you go from northern India to southern, there is a gradual darkening of the skin. Some people in southern india are very, very dark-skinned; while the northerners are pale.) The few genes that code for skin color do not define the whole spectrum, and actually would put people who are less related to each other overall together, if you just look at those genes. So it doesn't make any sense.

Race is a societal construct. There are no "genetic definitions" of race. Yes it should end a lot of the world's problems, but do you think telling people that there is no genetic definition of race will make a difference?

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

You can't define race using "biology" (genetics), that's what I'm saying. There is a spectrum of skin color and other visible features such as eye shape, hair texture, etc. There are no place to draw the lines. People blend into each other (like if you go from northern India to southern, there is a gradual darkening of the skin. Some people in southern india are very, very dark-skinned; while the northerners are pale.) The few genes that code for skin color do not define the whole spectrum, and actually would put people who are less related to each other overall together, if you just look at those genes. So it doesn't make any sense.

Race is a societal construct. There are no "genetic definitions" of race. Yes it should end a lot of the world's problems, but do you think telling people that there is no genetic definition of race will make a difference?

It is true that there is a skin color overlap between and among races. When I get a lot of sun, I am darker than a fairly high percentage of people who are considered "black". But what usually defines race is ancestry. There has been a lot of racial mixing in the U.S., so the lines among racial divisions are getting blurred. But when the races were much more isolated, the skin and hair differences were very distinct. Whatever race from back when the distinctions were much more solid is the primary source of what race you are considered to have. But that gets really iffy when your primary ancestry is one thing and your looks are lopsided in the other direction. Lenny Kravitz and Slash are both half black and half white. But Lenny looks black and Slash looks white, so most people would say that Lenny is black and Slash is white. I am not certain, but that is probably what they have on their driver's licenses. I think the same would be true even if they were both 75/25. I don't know what the full test is, but is seems that ancestry is considered first, but looks can override that if they are one-sided enough, though there are exceptions even to that.

I am part Native American. I look a good bit like it when I've gotten enough sun, but ordinarily I look much more like my Scotch-Irish ancestors. But I have a cousin and an uncle who look like they came straight off a reservation. The cousin has just as much native ancestry as I have, but he could pass for full blooded native. I couldn't. And his brother, who is also my cousin and has the same degree of native ancestry, has blonde hair and blue eyes. It is amazing that they have the same two parents.

So racial definitions are getting very blurred and moving somewhat in the direction of being a nonsense concept. But I think we are still at a point where most people are so clearly one way or the other, usually by ancestry as well as looks, that race still exists. It will be cool when trying to define race becomes such a clusterfuck that people forget all about race. That will probably eventually happen in the U.S.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I am part Native American. I look a good bit like it when I've gotten enough sun, but ordinarily I look much more like my Scotch-Irish ancestors.

See, I knew we were cousins.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

So racial definitions are getting very blurred and moving somewhat in the direction of being a nonsense concept. But I think we are still at a point where most people are so clearly one way or the other, usually by ancestry as well as looks, that race still exists. It will be cool when trying to define race becomes such a clusterfuck that people forget all about race. That will probably eventually happen in the U.S.

Yes that will be cool; but I think it will take enough generations that we won't live to see it unfortunately.

What I was trying to explain was that you can't take any one group of people and seperate them out genetically. Of course you can look at someone and see that their ancestors were from Africa or Asia, but since there are no "dividing lines" genetically, when divisions between people are based on skin color, it may group people together who are less related than some people outside of the group; likewise, outside of the group there are some people more genetically related to those inside, even without interbreeding between groups. Since people have been evolving in Aafrica for so long, there is much more genetic diversity (like 10 times more, don't quote me) so there are some people of obviously African ancestry who are no more related to some others in Africa than an average European, and an African may be more related to Europeans genetically than other Africans.

Dark skin evolves very quickly in people when they move from one climate to another; I've read estimates that it may take as short a time as 10,000 years. That's how you can get such a wide variation of skin color, while other characteristics stay the same. That's also why it doesn't make sense to divide people up by skin color, because altho it is something easily noticable, it is something that literally is only skin deep. (Not that you should divide people up at all; I meant that figuratively.)

I know it's hard to say that race doesn't exist, based on everything we see happening because of it, but genetically, it doesn't.