crank wrote:
As I explained in an earlier post, we are all still benefitting from this history. Right now, we just fought real hard to shirk responsibility for our past contributions to climate change, not wanting to have to cough up any $$ to help some of the poorest areas on the planet that contributed nothing to the problem but are suffering the worst of it right now. Partly I think we should all feel plenty of shame in how little this history is even acknowledged. You still hear Brits who claim what a wonderful thing it was for the India that they came there to bring them civilization, christianity, and English. There is shame in living such lies, it's too bad most folk prefer to live in a more comfortable, self-satisfied, and ignorant, bubble.

My response to this sort of thinking is that if we're really concerned with solving problems rather than placing blame, then what we will do becomes a much greater concern than what our predecessors have done.

There's nothing ignorant about refusing to take responsibility for the actions of persons other than myself. And there's nothing shameful about benefiting indirectly from such actions as long as I didn't condone or facilitate them. Someone would benefit regardless of how history went down and somebody would probably have gotten the shaft. That's history and cannot be changed. What can be changed is the present and the future, but they'll probably look a lot like the past as long as we let ourselves remain mired in the blame game rather than working to come up with a viable plan which ensures that as few people get shafted in the future as possible.

Interestingly, from both of our perspectives, it's possible for the other to appear ignorant. It looks pretty ignorant to me to get mired in ancestral sin hoodoo rather than actively working to divorce ourselves from patterns which are harmful to work for a more egalitarian future. I don't see us moving on as long as we're holding grudges. And it's bullshit to point out that I'm only saying that because I'm white and the whites came out on top. Even if some other "race" had managed to get the upper hand, the fact would remain that we cannot move forward as long as someone's holding grudges.

Also, as I've said elsewhere, expecting a given behavior from someone because of the color of their skin is racist bullshit. This is just as true for expecting me to feel ashamed because I'm white as it would be if you expected someone else to feel ashamed because they're not white. Anything else is hypocritical racist bullshit.

Sendraks wrote:

Nicko wrote:Perhaps you haven't considered that what I'm saying goes both ways.

Oh I have, but within the context of the western world, "black pride" makes sense and "white pride" doesn't precisely because of the context.

Nicko wrote:The positive associations you have with the term "black pride" are precisely because the term was adopted by those connected with the civil rights struggle etc. Had the term been successfully appropriated by "Uncle Toms" to mean a black person having the "pride" to condemn other black people as lazy, shiftless ... you know the drill, then no self respecting black person would use the term.

I agree.

To put it another way, in nations around the world where the local black populace hasn't been on the receiving end of white oppression (I'm struggling to think of any, but lets pretend such a place exists), then concept of "black pride" would be every bit as meaningless as "white pride" is in the western world.

Except "white pride" is not meaningless. It has a meaning, it's just not inevitable that the term had to have that meaning.

I think you see some necessary connection between sign ("black pride", "white pride") and signifier (civil rights movement, white supremacy movement). No such necessity exists, it's just the way it turned out.

To try and explain this with a - hopefully - emotionally neutral example, ask yourself what a red octagon "means". In both our countries, that's a stop sign. But that doesn't mean there's some necessary "stop" quality inherent in a red octagon. It's just the symbol that has been attached to the concept through association.

I'm not making a historical or sociological point - I think we're in agreement in those areas here - I'm making an observation on the semiotics of the terms.

Can we use bigotry and lose the race shite......half your points are convoluted as you are trying to insert a "race" element when it is merely group on group bigotry....

There are lots of examples of bigotry of caucausians against other nominal Causians tho the the Irish were "black Irish" and portrayed so..





kinda hard to square that with reality



- almost any population group you care to look at ...it's there....

the Irish everywhere for a good long while, The Swedes and Norwegians, Jews everywhere and still, then non- Caucasian the caste system in Indian, Japan versus Koreans ( still going after 400 years ), Zulu versus everyone especially Bantus, French Catholics versus Hugenots ( still active in some areas, Arab versus S Sudanese, China versus Falon Gong to the tune of harvesting their organs, on and on.....

Lose the fucking idea of race in humans and realise bigotry and discrimination is rife and needs to be addressed all the time.
Hell slavery is alive and well in some areas.

Treat it as an aspect of human nature ( tribalism, nationalism etc ) that needs to be kept in control.

and don't get me started on Aztecs versus others, Plains Indians versus several tribes they used for slaves, any number of first nations versus other first nations also involving slavery.

do I even want to persue where that drawing came from and what it was used for?
or should I just file it under "wankers in history" and be glad we are here now, while realising that there still is a fair way to progress to?

I was about to write a sarcastic comment, but mebby I'd rather choke on it

Likely best left as dust along with phrenology and "race" in humans.

Move on to predator control at all levels.

The worst situation for me was Rwanda and the Belgian influence

History of Hutu – Tutsi Relations
“The true cause of the Rwandan Genocide was the negative influence of the European colonists on the relationship of the Hutus and Tutsis”

The troubled and complex dynamics of the relationship between the Hutu and the Tutsi far outdate the Rwandan Genocide. One must look back to the 14th century, when the Tutsi first arrived in Rwanda in order to understand how tensions between both sides culminated in a genocide.

https://modernhistoryproject2012.wordpr ... relations/

Charters of RIghts and Freedoms can go a long way to reducing the incidence and consequence of systemic bigotry but it implies a justice system that is devoid of the same mind - set....not always easy to achieve....look at France and its chequered history of bigotry and many levels ( and ongoing - Algerians etc )

When do we ever even HEAR of this being invoked....

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 General Assembly resolution 217 A as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declarat ... an-rights/

Nicko wrote:Except "white pride" is not meaningless. It has a meaning, it's just not inevitable that the term had to have that meaning.

As I said, repeatedly, it is about the context.

Without context, the phrase "white pride" is meaningless but then so is any other form of "pride". And no, the context doesn't have to be "racial" it can be anything, although that doesn't necessarily mean that it will generate a "meaningful context." If history had been different, we could easily have had hundreds of years of oppression of white people by black people. There is nothing inherently oppressive about the nature of white people after all and last time I checked, black people are still human and equally capable of oppressing people as whites are.

Nicko wrote:I'm not making a historical or sociological point - I think we're in agreement in those areas here - I'm making an observation on the semiotics of the terms.

And I agree with you. I think Macdoc's post about this really being about "group on group" bigotry, is bang on. Race is just an excuse, oppression can be about anything. Heck "ginger pride" could be a thing. As I recall there was a Nemesis the Warlock story fro 2000AD a brief side plot about how the human supremacists on Termight decided that, because they no longer hated aliens, they were going to oppress freckled people instead.

However, we are discussing this within the context of racial oppression and it is within that context that "black pride" is a meaningful statement and "white pride" does not mean anything at present beyond "being proud of skin colour" which is not, in and of itself, a terribly meaningful thing.

Boys
6 years old....no girls allowed

12 years old ...well maybe

16 years old....please come and visit our hideaway ....

Every generation starts fresh.....then comes the "education" in bigotry.




Irish kid throwing a Molotov cocktail at British troops.

Macdoc wrote:Likely best left as dust along with phrenology and "race" in humans.

It was all an inevitability, as was slavery and Colonialism, given the nature of most humans. Wherever we are now and wherever we end up, it will be as a consequence of what we've been through. The same principles apply even to science, where we progress upon the back of our mistakes.

... I wouldn't condemn mankind's past mistakes in any domain, as our hope resides in evolving from them. I wouldn't mind, but human society as a whole is on the verge of being completely fucked, so 21st century humans have enough on their plate without scoffing at their ancestors.

Macdoc wrote:
Every generation starts fresh.....then comes the "education" in bigotry.

I don't think this is necessarily true. I've seen kids behaving in a markedly distrustful manner regarding novel dress or other novel appearance. Children are pattern-sensing machines just as much as the rest of us, if not more so, and are just as likely to lend undue significance to superficial differences as adults.

I remember when my son was suddenly and surprisingly racist for a bit. Black people looked different, he didn't like them for it. It took some work and exploration to bring him around to the idea that the differences were superficial and he ought to look past them.

Many studies say you are wrong....

Racism learned

New research suggests prejudices may form at a much earlier age, but it also offers hope that biases can be unlearned

By James H. Burnett III GLOBE STAFF JUNE 10, 2012

ANTHONY RUSSO FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

New research suggests prejudices may form at a much earlier age, but it also offers hope that biases can be unlearned

For more than four decades, the notion that racism and physical prejudice don’t fully develop in humans until the teen or adult years has been at the root of research into racism. Popular scientific belief had been that children, who only develop the ability to express racial preferences at around age 3, gradually develop those preferences over time and only cement them well into their teen years.

But new research not yet published by Mahzarin Banaji, a renowned Harvard University psychologist, brain researcher, and racism and physical prejudice expert, and colleagues suggests that even though they may not understand the “why’’ of their feelings, children exposed to racism tend to accept and embrace it as young as age 3, and in just a matter of days.

“We have known for a very long time that children process information differently than adults. That is a given,’’ says Banaji. “But what has changed, where racism and other prejudice are concerned, is that we had far over-calculated how long it takes for these traits to become imbedded in a child’s brain. It’s quite shocking really, but the gist of it is that 3- and 4-year-olds demonstrate the same level and type of bias as adults. This tells us that children ‘get it’ very, very quickly, and that it doesn’t require a mature level of cognition to form negative biases.’’

good for you for explaining to him, better yet multi-cultural friends go a long long way.

Macdoc wrote:
good for you for explaining to him, better yet multi-cultural friends go a long long way.

I agree that a more diverse group of friends would be a superior bulwark against budding bigotry. Not an easy thing to manage for an introvert in Utah. My group of friends tends to be very small, and the natural sampling bias of my State prejudices my selection toward the vanilla to the extent that I'd have to be a little bit racist in the other direction just to manage some diversity.

I think these studies you mention run up against the same problem as any other study of the development of complex ideas in children. There simply isn't any humane way to devise an experiment which would allow us to discern what is "nature" and what is "nurture."

So I assert without any decent evidence that children can naturally become bigots while you assert without any decent evidence that the opposite is true. We are at an impasse. I assume that my son came by his budding racism of his own accord (he certainly can't have gotten it from me) but there is no reason he can't have picked the idea up from some kid at the daycare, or from one of his other relatives, or from some other random encounter.

I am no less out of the bounds of rational discourse when I assert my position than you are when you assert yours.

Some times tribalism is necessary for the purpose of self preservation and not all of it is therefore
rooted in prejudice and discrimination but all prejudice and discrimination is rooted in it however

Let's put it flat .....kids learn....got it now ??? Or are you taking the stance its some sort of instinct

-----------------------------

BTW some one asking about Caucasian versus Caucasian......ask a Mormon around 1850 how that works.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:
I agree that a more diverse group of friends would be a superior bulwark against budding bigotry

I do not have friends but online I debate anyone regardless of their views and that includes people who have very extreme views indeed. I absolutely refuse to turn any one away just because of that since by judging them I become within my own mind a worse human being for having done so. Also the only way to deal with prejudice is to confront it. I myself have had my own prejudices confronted by others who lost no time at all in educating me about why particular views I held were so unacceptable and am now a better person as result of it. But this is an eternal work in progress since I am only human and
so really cannot afford to become complacent. In my time I have been prejudiced towards blacks and trans and fat people
I now consciously and deliberately avoid being prejudiced towards any one as much as is humanly possible. I have debated amongst others a fascist and a couple of paedophiles if memory serves so my tolerance is holding out. But I can not afford
to become complacent for if I do I then lose my moral bearing and so become a worse human being as a consequence of it

Macdoc wrote:Let's put it flat .....kids learn....got it now ??? Or are you taking the stance its some sort of instinct

Absolutely children learn. They learn from their parents and relatives, from their peers, and by noticing patterns on their own. It is the latter type of learning which can result in bigotry independently of learning it from others. Show me a society without bigotry. If it is learned, or cultural, we should be able to find one. The fact that we cannot do so argues strongly that it naturally emerges from the way our brains work. It's a flawed sort of reasoning in that we now live in an era where isolated social systems are difficult to find, but it's the only humane way to try to tease out the "nature" from the "nurture" with any sort of objectivity.

The only difference between our two stances is that I've erected mine in response to yours. I will abandon mine if you soften yours, because the only rational conclusion in the face of available evidence is to conclude nothing about this subject at all.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

Macdoc wrote:Let's put it flat .....kids learn....got it now ??? Or are you taking the stance its some sort of instinct

Absolutely children learn. They learn from their parents and relatives, from their peers, and by noticing patterns on their own. It is the latter type of learning which can result in bigotry independently of learning it from others. Show me a society without bigotry. If it is learned, or cultural, we should be able to find one. The fact that we cannot do so argues strongly that it naturally emerges from the way our brains work. It's a flawed sort of reasoning in that we now live in an era where isolated social systems are difficult to find, but it's the only humane way to try to tease out the "nature" from the "nurture" with any sort of objectivity.

I agree. Children develop a little "tribalistic" instinct early on, as part of bonding with the family unit. Anything outside the family unit that is different is, potentially, something to be afraid of until the child is properly socialised to deal with such things. It is a perfectly natural response to an individual being comfortable with the familiar and fearful about the unfamiliar. If a child comes from a family that is very limited in their worldview and social circle, even without that family expressing any overt bigoted views, they are at risk of forming negative views about the unfamiliar.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

crank wrote:
As I explained in an earlier post, we are all still benefitting from this history. Right now, we just fought real hard to shirk responsibility for our past contributions to climate change, not wanting to have to cough up any $$ to help some of the poorest areas on the planet that contributed nothing to the problem but are suffering the worst of it right now. Partly I think we should all feel plenty of shame in how little this history is even acknowledged. You still hear Brits who claim what a wonderful thing it was for the India that they came there to bring them civilization, christianity, and English. There is shame in living such lies, it's too bad most folk prefer to live in a more comfortable, self-satisfied, and ignorant, bubble.

My response to this sort of thinking is that if we're really concerned with solving problems rather than placing blame, then what we will do becomes a much greater concern than what our predecessors have done.

There's nothing ignorant about refusing to take responsibility for the actions of persons other than myself. And there's nothing shameful about benefiting indirectly from such actions as long as I didn't condone or facilitate them. Someone would benefit regardless of how history went down and somebody would probably have gotten the shaft. That's history and cannot be changed. What can be changed is the present and the future, but they'll probably look a lot like the past as long as we let ourselves remain mired in the blame game rather than working to come up with a viable plan which ensures that as few people get shafted in the future as possible.

Interestingly, from both of our perspectives, it's possible for the other to appear ignorant. It looks pretty ignorant to me to get mired in ancestral sin hoodoo rather than actively working to divorce ourselves from patterns which are harmful to work for a more egalitarian future. I don't see us moving on as long as we're holding grudges. And it's bullshit to point out that I'm only saying that because I'm white and the whites came out on top. Even if some other "race" had managed to get the upper hand, the fact would remain that we cannot move forward as long as someone's holding grudges.

Also, as I've said elsewhere, expecting a given behavior from someone because of the color of their skin is racist bullshit. This is just as true for expecting me to feel ashamed because I'm white as it would be if you expected someone else to feel ashamed because they're not white. Anything else is hypocritical racist bullshit.

I essentially agree with most of that. The disagreement is over what you are calling a blame game and I see as acknowledging the reality of the past. You say we can't move forward as long as we're holding a grudge, and I say we can't move forward without recognizing how we got to where we are. I sure hold no grudges, I'm a huge benefactor of many of the most appalling actions of the past. As to feelings of shame, I can't help that, it seems rather a human reaction, no different than finding out my parents, or my brother was a serial killer. I wouldn't have any blame or responsibility, but I'd have strong feelings along those lines just the same. Or when Gohmert opens his mouth, I feel a tinge of shame as a fellow Texan, and as a fellow human being.

In this particular case, it's the denial in our culture of this past that shames me to some extent, because this is the culture I live in, that I am a part of, I can't divorce myself enough to not feel that shameful actions by fellow Americans taints me also. Maybe it shouldn't intellectually, but it does emotionally.

crank wrote:The disagreement is over what you are calling a blame game and I see as acknowledging the reality of the past. You say we can't move forward as long as we're holding a grudge, and I say we can't move forward without recognizing how we got to where we are. I sure hold no grudges, I'm a huge benefactor of many of the most appalling actions of the past. As to feelings of shame, I can't help that, it seems rather a human reaction, no different than finding out my parents, or my brother was a serial killer. I wouldn't have any blame or responsibility, but I'd have strong feelings along those lines just the same. Or when Gohmert opens his mouth, I feel a tinge of shame as a fellow Texan, and as a fellow human being.

When my father went to jail on Federal charges for human trafficking and running brothels, I didn't feel any shame about it because I didn't do it. So perhaps your way of thinking is simply strange to me. I am ashamed of what I have done wrong. I do not buy into the sins of the father bullshit. My parents may have shaped me, but I've spent longer now beyond their care than I ever spent being raised by them. If I cannot be my own person now, I cannot ever be so.

It's not at all topical, but those charges against my father were dropped. It was his wife who was doing it and set him up as her patsy. She's since fled to China, which is uncomfortable for my Dad as he'd really like to divorce her.

I am no more proud now that those charges were dropped than I was before they were dropped because, again, I didn't do those things.

In this particular case, it's the denial of in our culture of this past that shames me to some extent, because this is the culture I live in, that I am a part of, I can't divorce myself enough to not feel that shameful actions by fellow Americans taints me also. Maybe it shouldn't intellectually, but it does emotionally.

There may be a general discomfort with talking about that past, but shying away from discussing a thing and denying that thing are two disparate things. As someone who doesn't subscribe to nationalism as extensively as most, this isn't a problem for me. But you cannot be satisfyingly nationalist and think of your country as a shining hero in the world and hold those past atrocities in your head at the same time. The cognitive dissonance from that is simply too much.

Still, this shame thing is silly. You didn't do it. Why are you ashamed? Are you Catholic?

jamest wrote:It wasn't unexpected, and I understand why, but I'm personally disappointed that we (as a RATIONAL forum) just automatically close the door on members who have what we think are deplorable beliefs. Why? Because I don't think that it achieves anything, other than sparing our 'ears' such nonsense [again].

We pat ourselves on the back that "we will not promote racism on this forum" and feel relieved that he/whomever has had to go elsewhere to spew his bullshit. But what if everywhere he goes has the same attitude? That is, he simply gets barred for saying something racist wherever he goes?

While he was barred for racist comments, it seems likely that fundamentally, the ban is is much for being a troll as being a racist.
If such people couldn't find a platform anywhere, it wouldn't seem like a meaningful loss to me. Maybe some of them would grow the fuck up.

jamest wrote:Don't you think that there are members here and elsewhere who are wondering why nobody took him on?

Even in this thread, he was 'taken on' to a greater extent than he deserved, given his obvious trolling nature.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

crank wrote:The disagreement is over what you are calling a blame game and I see as acknowledging the reality of the past. You say we can't move forward as long as we're holding a grudge, and I say we can't move forward without recognizing how we got to where we are. I sure hold no grudges, I'm a huge benefactor of many of the most appalling actions of the past. As to feelings of shame, I can't help that, it seems rather a human reaction, no different than finding out my parents, or my brother was a serial killer. I wouldn't have any blame or responsibility, but I'd have strong feelings along those lines just the same. Or when Gohmert opens his mouth, I feel a tinge of shame as a fellow Texan, and as a fellow human being.

When my father went to jail on Federal charges for human trafficking and running brothels, I didn't feel any shame about it because I didn't do it. So perhaps your way of thinking is simply strange to me. I am ashamed of what I have done wrong. I do not buy into the sins of the father bullshit. My parents may have shaped me, but I've spent longer now beyond their care than I ever spent being raised by them. If I cannot be my own person now, I cannot ever be so.

It's not at all topical, but those charges against my father were dropped. It was his wife who was doing it and set him up as her patsy. She's since fled to China, which is uncomfortable for my Dad as he'd really like to divorce her.

I am no more proud now that those charges were dropped than I was before they were dropped because, again, I didn't do those things.

In this particular case, it's the denial of in our culture of this past that shames me to some extent, because this is the culture I live in, that I am a part of, I can't divorce myself enough to not feel that shameful actions by fellow Americans taints me also. Maybe it shouldn't intellectually, but it does emotionally.

There may be a general discomfort with talking about that past, but shying away from discussing a thing and denying that thing are two disparate things. As someone who doesn't subscribe to nationalism as extensively as most, this isn't a problem for me. But you cannot be satisfyingly nationalist and think of your country as a shining hero in the world and hold those past atrocities in your head at the same time. The cognitive dissonance from that is simply too much.

Still, this shame thing is silly. You didn't do it. Why are you ashamed? Are you Catholic?

I am, was, catholic, maybe some of that still warps my thinking. Maybe I'm conflating emotions, or looking at it metaphorically--the country did shameful things. Mostly it's the denial, and it's an active denial in the US, our past isn't only not discussed, it's purposefully lied about, and actively suppressed. One example that is quite topical at the moment is how little gets acknowledged about slavery, about the horrors of southern racism last century, and the realities of it still today. This is finally, one hopes, changing, but there is still a long way to go. You only have to look at a few threads here to see how many still actively deny how seriously fucked up the law/legal system/cops/courts/prisons are for minorities, especially blacks. If we don't acknowledge the past that lead us to a present where most blacks are seriously economically disadvantaged, we'll continue to have lots of aholes who will blame them for their condition, just watch FauxNews who seem to have regular blame-the-blacks features daily.