Race and Racism

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

Decided to start this thread after my reply in the Oscar 2016 thread started going way off topic. So to kick this off we'll use the issue of "no black people nominated at the Oscars" and I'm sure that will bring us around to other issues as new stories arise. As the mods would probably say, keep it civil, and that goes for me too.

Off to the races! (See what I did there? Ok, no more bad puns.)

Why is it so important for black people to get nominated above all other ethnic minorities? Why weren't there any Asians nominated? What about Arab people? Or Indians? Or Native Americans? No one complains when those groups aren't nominated.

Our society is becoming ever more obsessed with skin color. What happened to MLKs dream of judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin?

If we're all just people, if we want to be equal, what difference does it really make if a black person gets nominated or not? At the end of the day they're just a person who didn't get nominated. Tons of people who may have deserved it did not get nominated, but we somehow only notice if that person's skin has some "color" (in quotations because white people also have a color). It's dehumanizing. Can't we see this? Can't we see how we've created a form of inverted racism?

This mentality that only sees black people as victims of white oppression is what is keeping us in arrested development. It still perpetuates a view that they are inferior. It is a form of white supremacy, except in this inverted version white people feel guilty for being superior and they virtue signal by flagellating themselves for being white with this notion of "privilege" as if having a good life is a bad thing. As if white people don't have to work for anything and success and money just rains from the sky.

"White privilege" is just a modern/secular equivalent of original sin. It's a classic religious guilt complex. If you're white you bare the burden of all the crimes of all white people in history. It is a collectivist view of race that seeks to put all people of the same race into neat little homogeneous categories. It is the anti-MLK. The notion of "white privilege" throws MLK's dream out the window and drops a nuclear bomb on it.

If white and black people can't disassociate being black from being a slave or from being oppressed how can we end all this racially charged non-sense? I'm not suggesting we forget history, but we need to move on. That isn't to say there aren't racial inequities that need to be addressed, but complaining about not having a multi-millionaire successful black person in the film industry nominated for a golden trophy is absurd and is a distraction to any genuine cause of social justice.

Sorry if that was a bit rant-y.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Interesting topic for Americans.  What ever happened to the "great melting pot".

To a certain extent, I think some rather loud "black" voices get too much attention, and they seem to want to operate separately from the rest of the country.  This is a kind of separatism that often results in revolutions in some areas.  If they want to be Americans they should shut up and be Americans.  There should be no such thing in a country that advocates pluralism as a black-American, an Hispanic-American, etc.  Hyphenation is a fatal thing, but then patriotism of any kind leads to isolationism.

Here in the frozen north we don't wear our nationality on our sleeve because we don't need to do so.  Why do Americans go around reciting the Pledge of Allegiance like a mantra?  Are they that insecure?

The people of the United States had better get their act together.  If they don't hang together, they will hang separately.  It is time to phase out all that angst from the War Between the States, and all pull the oars in the same direction lest the ship of state founder on the rocks of isolationism and ignorance.

[Meg 368]

2 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

I

The people of the United States had better get their act together. 

 

You have made your feelings on this known on an abundance of occasions.   We get it.  Enough already.   Please stop beating that drum.   Preaching about it isn't going to help.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@Meg:  Sorry, just couldn't resist the opportunity.  I really hope things improve after the election.  The current divisiveness is painful to see.

[LexusInfernus 908]

9 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

Why is it so important for black people to get nominated above all other ethnic minorities? Why weren't there any Asians nominated? What about Arab people? Or Indians? Or Native Americans? No one complains when those groups aren't nominated.

Well it is interesting that you say that. I don't think the issue with the Oscars is really that there no black people nominated, the problem is that only white people are nominated. Had there been more non white people nominated, but no black people, I think the protests would have been less, and it would have given the argument that 'black people in the movie just werent involved in enough good stuff this year' a lot more weight than it has now. 

9 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

Our society is becoming ever more obsessed with skin color. What happened to MLKs dream of judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin?

What people are obsessed about is how in 2016 people are still getting judged to a significant extent just on the color of their skin, to the point that police are more likely to shoot you have you have a dark skin. We would all love to go to a point where people only get judged on their character, but the fact is that we aren't even close of getting there. 

9 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

If we're all just people, if we want to be equal, what difference does it really make if a black person gets nominated or not? At the end of the day they're just a person who didn't get nominated. Tons of people who may have deserved it did not get nominated, but we somehow only notice if that person's skin has some "color" (in quotations because white people also have a color). It's dehumanizing. Can't we see this? Can't we see how we've created a form of inverted racism?

Yes, but the suspicion being leveled at the Academy Awards is that they excluded people from getting nominated on the basis of their skin, not on their actual merits in regards to their role in the movie industry. And sure, if racism was truly dead, if black people and white people were truly equal in our society, then a year where no black people get nominated wouldn't be a problem. But again, we don't live in such a society, racism is a thing that has a significant impact on a lot of non white people in all aspects of their life, and as a result no one will buy the argument that only white people were good enough to get nominated this year. 

9 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

This mentality that only sees black people as victims of white oppression is what is keeping us in arrested development. It still perpetuates a view that they are inferior. It is a form of white supremacy, except in this inverted version white people feel guilty for being superior and they virtue signal by flagellating themselves for being white with this notion of "privilege" as if having a good life is a bad thing. As if white people don't have to work for anything and success and money just rains from the sky.

In relation to race, privilege is not the notion that some people have a good life. Its the notion that some people are treated more positively by society than others. Again, look at how the police and justice system interacts with White people and how it interacts with Black people, and notice the massive difference. Black people are more likely to get shot, more likely to get arrested, more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes as white people, etc. So when we are talking about white privilege, we are not talking about white people being richer or having a better life, we are talking that they are far less likely to have an encounter with the police and that when they do have that encounter, they have a much bigger chance of walking out of that counter alive and unharmed. 

Noting these problems, noting that black people are victims of this system is not the same as acting like they are inferior, and this inequality is the result of their inferiority. Obviously black people are not inferior, given the same opportunities and the same treatment as white people, they can achieve the same things as white people. But they don't get the same opportunities and they aren't treated the same. And that is problematic. 

9 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

"White privilege" is just a modern/secular equivalent of original sin. It's a classic religious guilt complex. If you're white you bare the burden of all the crimes of all white people in history. It is a collectivist view of race that seeks to put all people of the same race into neat little homogeneous categories. It is the anti-MLK. The notion of "white privilege" throws MLK's dream out the window and drops a nuclear bomb on it.

That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of white privilege. 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

I understand both sides, the people who think that all this outrage is unnecessary, and those that find it necessary. While I understand, I do not agree with the latter.
78 people won the Oscar for Best Actor, 15 were black. This is about 20%. In addition to white there are not only blacks, they do not have to win 50% of the time. There are numerous other ethnic groups that won less often than blacks and none of them is making scandal. Any black deserved to win this year? If not, what's the problem?
Here in Brazil some black students invade classrooms during class to be preaching hate speech. Yes, those who do this actually hate whites. They often say that whites owe them the soul. This is absurd. Blacks can offend everyone, but you can not say anything against them or you are racist. This is happening worldwide from what I've seen.
Here our left and corrupt government managed to make a strategy used in the Middle Ages to perpetuate itself in power. They put men against women, straight against gay, white against black, poor against rich. Make all against all, let them fighting with each other and control an entire country. Obama, in my view, is a left-wing bastard and is trying to do the same.
Here public universities will reserve 50% of vacancies for blacks. Research has shown that the scores of black people is proportionally equal to whites. So why do they need those reserved vacancies?? Most of these policies are extremely racist and put the black as inferior. The truth is that the black vitimists only protest for what suits them. I'm sure the vast majority of black people do not agree with this vitimism.

As I said to the Borg few days ago, our world is becoming more unbearable each day.

BTW, Milton Gonçalves is a very famous black actor here, and what he said about the Oscar this year: If no black has been indicated, it is because none deserved.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ A good point.  The policy of "divide and conquer" has been well known for a long time.  The terror factions are quite well aware of this.

"Tit for tat:  This for that.  You kick my dog: I kill your cat."  -- an old chant against the idea of an eye for an eye. 

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
                 Mohandas K. Gandhi.
 

[krbe 193]

5 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

78 people won the Oscar for Best Actor, 15 were black. This is about 20%.

Completely disproportional. No more!

5 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

Here in Brazil some black students invade classrooms during class to be preaching hate speech. Yes, those who do this actually hate whites. They often say that whites owe them the soul. This is absurd.

Indians (of the West and South -- i.e. the Americas) were human, and their souls as immortal as those of the Europeans. Consequently, the enslavement of them were forbidden. Africans, on the other hand, were fair game -- presumably on the basis of a lack of soul.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

1 hour ago, krbe said:

Indians (of the West and South -- i.e. the Americas) were human, and their souls as immortal as those of the Europeans. Consequently, the enslavement of them were forbidden. Africans, on the other hand, were fair game -- presumably on the basis of a lack of soul.

After our stupid government and our slut president encourage this mass division, they invented terrible nicknames. They say we are the owners of Casa Grande (Big House, it was the name where the rich slave owners lived), they also say that in the near future they will dominate society through the spaces reserved for them and will make us pay. So I ask again, make us pay what? No one today has slaves. If they say I own the big house and I reply that they live in slave quarters, guess who will be arrested?
The only thing I'm trying to say is that racial prejudice exists and that is undeniable, however a small group of black vitimists is harming a legitimate movement, and they are only managing to do this thanks to political interests.
So no, I don't owe my soul to a stupid vitimist.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

All this racial violence is really starting to become endemic in the Americas.  I think we dodged a bullet with our Truth and Reconciliation Commission's recommendations and their acceptance by the current government.  Our pursuit of a cultural mosaic is turning out to be a fine policy.  Now we have to solve a large number of problems that exist among the indigenous peoples, especially those isolated in the north.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I think scientifically speaking no race is to any great degree superior or inferior to another, whereas some cultures could be argued to have more virtues than others.

However discrimination itself is natural and healthy. I would consider a fit and pretty black girl with a degree superior to an overweight layabout white man.

But a strong and respectably attired white man with a degree would be superior to a unhealthy and uneducated black person.

Character, or judging based on ones virtues or perceived virtues of behaviour, is a more acceptable and pc form of discrimination.

Do we not practice discrimination by placing criminals in jails and letting law abiders live freely?

The problem with acting and entertainment is that it is not an industry like mining or retail or farming where what matters is your attitude and knowledge. 

We want to see pretty actresses and well dressed men, not everyday Joes who we wouldn't be surprised to see working at Walmart.

But there are plenty of black people who are good actors.

However it seems silly to complain they only make up a percentage of nominations. That is unless there is reason to suspect bias was involved.

I have only seen one film this year so do not know how many performances were by other ethnicities than whites but in The Force Awakens the stormtrooper Finn was acted well, so if Rey is nominated I am sure he will be too.

Another thing is that all acting is good these days. Too good even, it becomes almost unrealistically precise. Few films on the big screen are not profesional and well made.

So I presume the percentage is because there are more whites in the industry, or happened to be in the better films.

At any rate I agree it is silly to judge someone on their ethnicity, though I think discrimination itself is healthy and normal.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I don't know about others opinions in this matter but I find members of other groups quite often fascinating, often with new information to add to my pile of [useless?] information.  My data base is getting quite large, and retrieval is getting slower.

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

Well it is interesting that you say that. I don't think the issue with the Oscars is really that there no black people nominated, the problem is that only white people are nominated. Had there been more non white people nominated, but no black people, I think the protests would have been less, and it would have given the argument that 'black people in the movie just werent involved in enough good stuff this year' a lot more weight than it has now.

That's shifting the goal post now that I've brought it up. First it's "no black people nominated", now it's "only white people". What next? Too many white people?

I ask you again, is Alejandro González Iñárritu white? (Answer: no = not only white people nominated)

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

What people are obsessed about is how in 2016 people are still getting judged to a significant extent just on the color of their skin, to the point that police are more likely to shoot you have you have a dark skin. We would all love to go to a point where people only get judged on their character, but the fact is that we aren't even close of getting there.

So many factors that go in to this. If African Americans commit a disproportional amount of crime, which they do unfortunately, they will disproportionately have encounters with police and thus be disproportionately shot. This isn't something that can be judged on a whole, you have to go case by case. If you commit a crime, if you get aggressive around police, you run the risk of being shot. I believe police in America should show more restraint when it comes to drawing their weapons and I think that is a huge problem, but as it stands now, anyone, white or black, runs the risk of being shot in an encounter with police, it just so happens African Americans have more (per capita).

And fine, if police shootings is your issue that's great. It's a worthy cause. But the Oscars? Really? (I'm not accusing you of picking the Oscars as an important issue, but in the press it has been raised as one)

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

Yes, but the suspicion being leveled at the Academy Awards is that they excluded people from getting nominated on the basis of their skin, not on their actual merits in regards to their role in the movie industry. And sure, if racism was truly dead, if black people and white people were truly equal in our society, then a year where no black people get nominated wouldn't be a problem. But again, we don't live in such a society, racism is a thing that has a significant impact on a lot of non white people in all aspects of their life, and as a result no one will buy the argument that only white people were good enough to get nominated this year.

Feels over facts. Suspicion and accusation are not evidence . This is guilty until proven innocent. The Justice Inquisition.

Who did they exclude from getting nominated because of their skin color? Idris Elba's Beast of No Nation unfortunately can't qualify for an Oscar because it was a Netflix film that didn't open in theaters. Besides I don't even know how good his performance was in that film.

Can you honestly say that you know whether or not a black person's work was good enough to be nominated this year?

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

In relation to race, privilege is not the notion that some people have a good life. Its the notion that some people are treated more positively by society than others.

Yes, some people are treated more positively, some people have more and thus can give their children more. I don't deny "privilege" exist. Do some white people have privilege compared to some black people? Of course. But saying "white privilege" implies it's something all white people have, that isn't true and you can't prove it. It's a massive generalization that is used to quash discussions about race, push white people out, and make them feel guilty.

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

Black people are more likely to get shot, more likely to get arrested, more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes as white people, etc.

All explainable through how people interpret stats. Again, African Americans, due to soci-economic and possibly sub-cultural factors, commit a disproportionate amount of crime. It only stands to reason they get arrested more, shot more.

As with receiving harsher punishments you'd really have to look at the data to see if that stat is accurate. The notion that black people receive harsher sentences than white people doesn't account for the differences between the people. They have committed the same crime, but they aren't the same person. See the difference?

For example, take a white person and a black person. They both commit exactly the same crime, a minor offense, but the black person has a criminal record and the white person does not. The black person will get a longer sentence. This would be recorded as a black person receiving a longer sentence for the same crime.

And I'm not denying that there have been cases where African Americans were victims of racist judges.

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

Noting these problems, noting that black people are victims of this system is not the same as acting like they are inferior, and this inequality is the result of their inferiority. Obviously black people are not inferior, given the same opportunities and the same treatment as white people, they can achieve the same things as white people. But they don't get the same opportunities and they aren't treated the same. And that is problematic. 

I didn't mean inferior genetically or inherently. I meant it just like you mean it. The view that I was talking about was a view that sees all black people as inferior socially. It is still a way of looking down on them. As if all black people around the world, from country to country, inhabit the same social status and have the same experience as African Americans.

How do you know who got what opportunities? By saying "they don't get the same opportunities and they aren't treated the same", you've just collectivized and put all black people from all over the world in the same box. From this perspective they're all the same to you. They may look different, they may have different names, jobs, and personalities, but their experience of being poor and mistreated is universal.

You see a black person and you think to yourself (unconsciously): "oh that guy's so unfortunate because he doesn't have the same opportunities" and you make that assumption based on the color of his skin. That's the kind of inverted racism I'm illustrating. You don't know what opportunities that black person may or may not have, but you assume he or she is bellow you on a social scale merely because of the color of their skin. It's a stereotype is it not? Black person = poor person. In people's minds the two things can't be disassociated.That's what needs to be transcended.

Also, you have to distinguish which black people we're talking about. Are we talking about Americans? Brits? French? Spaniards? Brazilians? Jamaicans? Zimbabweans? Somalians? South Africans?  Does the lack of "black people" at the Academy apply specifically to African Americans due to their position on this privilege scale? All the stats you're using and inequities you're citing are American. Not all black people in Hollywood are American. Idris Elba who grew up in England surely did not have the same experience as Will Smith growing up black in America.

On 1/22/2016 at 11:12 AM, LexusInfernus said:

That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of white privilege. 

I don't think it is. When people use the line "check your privilege" it is exactly what I'm talking about. It is denying a person's experience or facts and denying them a voice simply because of their race or gender which, in the context of how that attack is used, is white and male. No matter the content of a white person's character they bare the sin of the social status of black people.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

20 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

They put men against women, straight against gay, white against black, poor against rich.

...

The only thing I'm trying to say is that racial prejudice exists and that is undeniable

So you say that racial predjudice exists, but when someone brings attention to it or wants to improve the situation, then they are divisive? Gay people are divisive when they want to be integrated into society with equal rights? Women are divisive when they want the same treatment as the rest of society? Poor people are being divisive when they want to integrate themselves with normal society instead of living on the fringes in poverty? Rich people spend huge amounts of money to further increase their wealth, knowing that it has a negative effect on poor people, and for creating and protecting that status quo, they are unifiers and the poor people are divisive? When a woman wants equal pay or wants to do a job in a traditionally male field, and a man refuses to hire/pay her, he is a unifier, and she is divisive? 

You can't acknowledge that the status quo is bad, and then say that the people trying to change the status quo are divisive evil-doers who are trying to divide and conquer. 

Politics and history in Brazil and the US are very different, so I don't doubt you when you say that there is corruption and bad intentions. But here the vast majority of people supporting those causes have good intentions and have the goal of unity and equality. But it also depends on what your own politics are because you're saying the same thing that right wingers in the US do.

I don't know very much about the current oscars situation, although I have a hard time believing that not a single black person was worthy of being nominated (let alone win) for two years in a row. But hollywood has a long standing problem with diversity that still exists today. For what it's worth it's brought attention to the issue which isn't normally thought about, and the academy changed their membership rules to be a little less of an old boys club. It's 94% white, 2% black, 2% latino, 77% male, with an average age of 64. But only 66% of americans are white (and because of how the government counts people this includes arabs, who are culturally not considered white).

 

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

12 minutes ago, Jasoncw said:

So you say that racial predjudice exists, but when someone brings attention to it or wants to improve the situation, then they are divisive? Gay people are divisive when they want to be integrated into society with equal rights? Women are divisive when they want the same treatment as the rest of society? Poor people are being divisive when they want to integrate themselves with normal society instead of living on the fringes in poverty? Rich people spend huge amounts of money to further increase their wealth, knowing that it has a negative effect on poor people, and for creating and protecting that status quo, they are unifiers and the poor people are divisive? When a woman wants equal pay or wants to do a job in a traditionally male field, and a man refuses to hire/pay her, he is a unifier, and she is divisive?

It all depends on the tactics you use. Nothing inherently divisive about bringing attention to an issue. If you try to bring attention to racism by saying all white people are guilty for perpetuating it then you are being divisive.

12 minutes ago, Jasoncw said:

I don't know very much about the current oscars situation, although I have a hard time believing that not a single black person was worthy of being nominated (let alone win) for two years in a row. But hollywood has a long standing problem with diversity that still exists today. For what it's worth it's brought attention to the issue which isn't normally thought about, and the academy changed their membership rules to be a little less of an old boys club. It's 94% white, 2% black, 2% latino, 77% male, with an average age of 64. But only 66% of americans are white (and because of how the government counts people this includes arabs, who are culturally not considered white).

Yes, Hollywood is predominantly white and male because white men started the film industry. The Rap industry is predominantly black and male because it was started by black men. So what?

If anything Hollywood has always been on the forefront of pushing forward race relations. It's one of America's most liberal industries. The fact that they made these changes show how they're willing to bend over backward/bend the knee for diversity of color and sex.

Again this is the anti-MLK. True diversity is about ideas, not skin colors. The content of people's character, not the color of their skin. You can have a room, 50% white, 50% black, but if everyone in that room thinks exactly the same there is no real diversity.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Recently there has been a culture of divisiveness in Canada fostered by the then incumbent Conservative Party leadership.  A funny thing happened in the last election in October.  The Conservatives were chucked out in a landslide that brought the third-place Liberal Party to power with a majority.  This means that like the Conservatives before them, who also had a majority, they can do what they damned please.

What they've been doing in the three months in office so far is so damned pleasing to the Canadian public that several slips have already been overlooked even after being pointed out by the media.  I suppose having a charismatic leader (Justin Trudeau) and a rather solid, gender balanced cabinet is one of the big factors in ending a lot of the divides that the previous government fomented.

The choice here was the status quo, which had lost its status, and a promise of "sunny ways" which are pretty much the opposite.  This is the second consecutive election in which a major political shakeup has occurred in Canada.  This time, the cabinet choices are rather good: The Minister of Defense is a retired serving soldier (general officer) who has had three tours in Afghanistan;  the Minister of Justice is an indigenous tribal chief from the west coast who is a practiced lawyer, and a woman;  The Minister of Veterans Affairs is a quadriplegic who has clearly been there and done that, and so it goes.

One thing about the Westminster model is that changes like this happen like a lightening strike, and the Liberal wave was not really predicted by the pundits and other political watchers.  You never know what will happen when people are confronted with a ballot.

The main point here has been the change in government attitude to our biggest racial problem.  Like most of the Americas, we've treated our indigenous people very poorly over the last couple of centuries.  Now, with the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission highlighting the attempted genocidal approach of previous governments with these original Canadians, the present government has set in motion all the necessary things to implement the dozens of recommendations in that report.  The really quiet one is that the Minister of Justice is an indigenous lawyer who happens to be a chief of her tribe.  Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be an interesting ride.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

First rap is not an industry, it's one of many genres. Second, the music industry (the artists too, but more specifically the record labels/publishers/etc.) is very very white, regardless of genre. 

Rap is definitely predominantly black, but there are also white rappers around. Billboards "hot rap songs" chart has at least a few white rappers on it, and people like Macklemore and Eminem are top sellers. There's a lot more diversity in rap then there is in rock or country. R&B is also a traditionally black genre which has even more diversity than rap. Electronic music is also a black genre which is probably the most racially integrated genre ever.

And the issue of racial genres is a very complex one, but basically they exist in the first place because of segregated culture. Black churches exist because white churches wouldn't let them in. Black neighborhoods/cities exist because white people refused to live with them. BET exists because the rest of film and television do not include black people. Clothes, speech, food, music, and everything else associated with different social groups are different between whites and blacks because of segregation. Black and white people in the US very rarely have personal relationships with each other. There are many children in the US who have literally never even seen a black person before even though there are hundreds of thousands of them living 20 miles away. It's a complex phenomenon but marginalized groups will form their own sub-cultures as a response to their marginilization. When integration occurs parts of the sub-cultures are no longer needed while other parts morph into something new. BET (I'm using BET as an example rather than rap because rap has too many white people in it) is acknowledgedly race-based, and the people who think that BET is racist for it fail to understand that the rest of television is also race-based (for complex reasons, and not necessarily malicious ones), it just doesn't acknowledge it.

 

I think it's incorrect to say that liberals are incapable of having racial bias or are incapable of participating in racially biased systems/institutions (I know, I know  ). There was a to-do recently about Bernie Sanders where he was asked about reparations for black people, which he doesn't support, which isn't the problem because very very few people are for it. But he said he *totally* supported the thought, but didn't support reparations because they would be divisive and getting legislation for it would be pragmatically impossible. This is a man who has purposefully divisive rhetoric and who's entire campaign is non-pragmatic. But when it comes to addressing race, this supposedly very liberal candidate descends from la-la land and suddenly applies strict rules of reality, and then immediately goes back to campaigning about how he's going to have massive massive wealth transfers from rich people to poor people because of their historical and ongoing oppression... Or there was a great example where liberal champion Matt Damon shows us the individual decision making process directly on video that leads to movies having race issues. 

 

And yes, true diversity *is* about ideas. And people's ideas are marginalized based on skin color! And the content of people's character is being assumed to be certain things because of skin color! That's the whole point of this!!  Unless you're saying that's how it already is and all of those stats and maps and personal experiences are all just completely unrelated coincidences.  

[LexusInfernus 908]

2 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

That's shifting the goal post now that I've brought it up. First it's "no black people nominated", now it's "only white people". What next? Too many white people?

If only white people are nominated than by definition not enough black people are nominated. 

Quote

I ask you again, is Alejandro González Iñárritu white? (Answer: no = not only white people nominated)

That depends on how you define white. Are Italians white? Spanish? Portugese? There isn't actually a set definition of what counts as white. Is it based on the classification of Caucasian? Because if thats the case, then that guy is white. If you go by skin pigment alone, then it becomes more touchy, though a lot of people could still argue he is white (just more tanned). If you base it of nationality, then no, the guy is a Latino. 

Quote

So many factors that go in to this. If African Americans commit a disproportional amount of crime, which they do unfortunately, they will disproportionately have encounters with police and thus be disproportionately shot. This isn't something that can be judged on a whole, you have to go case by case. If you commit a crime, if you get aggressive around police, you run the risk of being shot. I believe police in America should show more restraint when it comes to drawing their weapons and I think that is a huge problem, but as it stands now, anyone, white or black, runs the risk of being shot in an encounter with police, it just so happens African Americans have more (per capita).

First of all, the claim that black people commit disproportionaly more crimes is inaccurate at best. First of all, black people are police much more heavily, which means that if a black person and white a person both commit a crime, its more likely the police will catch the black guy, but not the white guy. Worse, this creates a positive feedback loop, because in the crime statistics it will appear as if black people have committed more crimes because they got arrested for more crimes, resulting in more police resources being spend on policing black people. 

Take for example the old stop and frisk policy. The NYPD did that to so many African Americans they would have stopped and frisked the entire African American of NY community at some point. Obviously if you do that you are going to find reasons for sending people to prison. You might catch someone with a joint, or a weapon or with outstanding fines. For a black person, that is far more likely to mean prosecution and jail, for a white person, there is plenty of documented evidence that the police will simply warn them not to do that and send them on their way. 

And young black males are 9 times more likely to get shot by the police than anyone else in the US. That has nothing to do that they are supposedly more violent per capita. 

Indeed, the narrative that black people commit more crime is nothing more than victim blaming. Rather than stop for a second and consider the possibility that Racism in America is a real, major and deadly problem, its much easier to just pretend that black people commit more crimes and that it is therefor logical they go to jail more often and get shot more often.  

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And fine, if police shootings is your issue that's great. It's a worthy cause. But the Oscars? Really? (I'm not accusing you of picking the Oscars as an important issue, but in the press it has been raised as one)

It is also an important issue. It signifies that racism is a major problem in America's biggest cultural product, which indicates that society still has a major issue with race and in turn it reinforces the existing problem with race through whitewashing and under representing a number of ethnic minorities in the US. It reinforces the idea that being white is the standard, the norm by which everything gets measured. Racism is an issue, the Oscars are a symptom of that, just like the way the US justice system mistreats a lot of black people is another symptom. Racism must be addressed, and the best way to expose it is through pointing out all the problematic symptoms that are so clearly visible.  

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Can you honestly say that you know whether or not a black person's work was good enough to be nominated this year?

Well you got me there, I don't watch enough films, and the only film I saw this year that had a major role for a black person was Star Wars. Though that in itself my point to a problem Hollywood has, that is that they simply don't give enough roles to non white actors. It is what I talked about with the Ghost in the Shell movie. Hollywood had an excellent chance there to cast some Asian actors, but instead they gave all the lead roles to white actors. Well if you consistently do that it should be no wonder that only white people get nominated. And fine, in that case the Academy isn't to blame. 

Anyways, google some suggestions, there have been plenty of people who have weighed in on who could have received nominations. Perhaps you see people in that list that you haven't thought about? 

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Yes, some people are treated more positively, some people have more and thus can give their children more. I don't deny "privilege" exist. Do some white people have privilege compared to some black people? Of course. But saying "white privilege" implies it's something all white people have, that isn't true and you can't prove it. It's a massive generalization that is used to quash discussions about race, push white people out, and make them feel guilty.

Again, incarceration rates alone prove that it exists. Again,a white personis more likely to get off easier for a crime than a black person who committed the same crime. Does that mean they ALWAYS get off easier? No, but the odds are stacked far more favorably for them. 

In the workplace it also exists. White people get jobs easier and are more likely to get promoted. 

https://hbr.org/2014/01/white-people-do-good-things-for-one-another-and-thats-bad-for-hiring/

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-workforce-is-even-more-divided-by-race-than-you-think/281175/

https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

White privilege is an undeniable fact. 

And really, it makes white people feel guilty? Aww, we wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of white people now would we. The white man's ego is so easily bruised, the mere idea that perhaps they live in a society where everything is stacked in their favor is just unbearable. If peoples feelings matter that much, think about how the people who don't have everything stacked in their favor must feel when they get passed over for promotions, have a harder time finding a job or get stopped by the police again. 

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All explainable through how people interpret stats. Again, African Americans, due to soci-economic and possibly sub-cultural factors, commit a disproportionate amount of crime. It only stands to reason they get arrested more, shot more.

No they don't. Or really, we don't know. Crime rate statistics are unreliable. 

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As with receiving harsher punishments you'd really have to look at the data to see if that stat is accurate. The notion that black people receive harsher sentences than white people doesn't account for the differences between the people. They have committed the same crime, but they aren't the same person. See the difference?

For example, take a white person and a black person. They both commit exactly the same crime, a minor offense, but the black person has a criminal record and the white person does not. The black person will get a longer sentence. This would be recorded as a black person receiving a longer sentence for the same crime.

Thats true, one of them is black, the other is white, and that alone is good enough reason why black people receive about 20% harsher punishments. 

http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/black-americans-given-longer-sentences-than-white-americans-for-same-crimes?news=843984#.tzalfkfg6ey.facebook

Look, in some individual cases I'm sure there are good reasons why a black person gets a harsher sentence for the same sort of crime as a white person. But now we are talking about averages, and individual cases cannot account for why black people get harsher punishments on average.

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How do you know who got what opportunities? By saying "they don't get the same opportunities and they aren't treated the same", you've just collectivized and put all black people from all over the world in the same box. From this perspective they're all the same to you. They may look different, they may have different names, jobs, and personalities, but their experience of being poor and mistreated is universal.

I wasn't talking about ALL black people in the world. I was talking about African Americans. And I think I cited plenty of sources that prove that African Americans don't get the same opportunities white people get. Are their experiences universal? Even for just African Americans? No, they aren't. But that doesn't mean there aren't some things that repeat often enough that you can discern a pattern. 

Furthermore, you'd have a point if it was just me saying that African Americans get less opportunities that others. Thats me imposing the status of victim on African Americans. However, I'm not the first to say it, nor am I the only one to say it nor are it only white people that say it. 

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You see a black person and you think to yourself (unconsciously): "oh that guy's so unfortunate because he doesn't have the same opportunities" and you make that assumption based on the color of his skin. That's the kind of inverted racism I'm illustrating. You don't know what opportunities that black person may or may not have, but you assume he or she is bellow you on a social scale merely because of the color of their skin. It's a stereotype is it not? Black person = poor person. In people's minds the two things can't be disassociated.That's what needs to be transcended.

Well yeah, I told you I was racist. That is part of it. That said, the counter to assuming that every black person is some poor sod who never got any chances in life is not to assume that they all got the same opportunities as me. The counter is to make no assumptions about that person at all, and let them tell you what their life was like and what their experience was like. 

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Also, you have to distinguish which black people we're talking about. Are we talking about Americans? Brits? French? Spaniards? Brazilians? Jamaicans? Zimbabweans? Somalians? South Africans?  Does the lack of "black people" at the Academy apply specifically to African Americans due to their position on this privilege scale? All the stats you're using and inequities you're citing are American. Not all black people in Hollywood are American. Idris Elba who grew up in England surely did not have the same experience as Will Smith growing up black in America.

Very true. Each country has their own forms of racism and the experiences are unique in each country. 

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I don't think it is. When people use the line "check your privilege" it is exactly what I'm talking about. It is denying a person's experience or facts and denying them a voice simply because of their race or gender which, in the context of how that attack is used, is white and male. No matter the content of a white person's character they bare the sin of the social status of black people.

Again, that sentence is so misused at this point it lost all meaning. 

What it used to mean is to tell someone who is talking about their experience as a privileged person as if it was the experience of everyone in the country/world and use their experience to deny the experience of others (black people aren't discriminated against because I'm not discriminated against) to stop for a moment and 'check their privilege' aka think for a moment how their experience is perhaps not all that common and that other people have other experiences that are equally valid and worth listening to. 

It happens to white males more often because they happen to be some of the most privileged people in North America and Europe which is incidentally where most white males live. 

[CapTon 592]

I've typed up two rants for this thread, and then deleted them both. I'm just going to say this and then be on my merry way:

The police are not targeting blacks. Blacks are NO LONGER the victims of white oppression; blacks are the victims of their own oppression. The amount of racism in this country has gone down tremendously since the 60's. Blacks AND whites commend MLK for bringing light to an ACTUAL issue. Barack Obama has done absolutely nothing to help blacks. In fact, he's made things worse by basically giving people the okay to burn buildings down over the frustration of nonexistent issues.

[Duke87 1,070]

The focus tends to be largely on blacks over other non-white races because they were actively enslaved for multiple centuries and then actively treated as inferior by law for a century after that. Today, the law says all races have equal rights, but the African American community retains a large socioeconomic handicap as a legacy of those centuries of oppression. Which, in a country where economic mobility is statistically fairly low for the developed world (despite common belief to the contrary), has not sorted itself out in a couple generations and won't for many more unless deliberate action is taken to fix it.

The legacy also remains that people were taught for centuries that blacks are inferior. As a result of the civil rights movement, we have stopped explicitly teaching this and have declared it unacceptable to openly teach this, but this hasn't stopped people from continuing to believe it, on at least some subconscious level. When you look at the fact that large socioeconomic gaps still exist along racial lines, combined with the large number of stereotypes out there which remain often adhered in popular media to and often joked about in private, no one needs to be explicitly taught to have a negative view of blacks. Hell, you can tell people all you want that they're not supposed to have such a view, they will develop one anyway based on what they see and hear on TV, in the news, etc.

But because it is not socially acceptable to admit to having this view, people feel a need to deny it. So you'll here things like "but I have black friends" as if that is sufficient for someone to claim they are utopianly colorblind. It's not. Straight talk here: I have black friends and black coworkers and I am fully capable of treating them with nothing less than full respect... but these are people who I know personally. When it comes to judging someone who I know little about other than their appearance I, like a great many white Americans, have been socially conditioned by years of exposure to negative stereotypes to be less trusting of darker skinned people. I really want to be fair to everyone, and so I do my best to fight this tendency as much as I can, but I do not deny that I have it, because it's impossible to solve a problem if you won't admit you have one.

This is the major drawback to it being socially unacceptable to admit to having racial biases. Forcing people to be in the closet about it prevents them from being able to confront it. We really need to stop that or nothing is ever going to improve.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I always found culture and a person's communicative and intelligence levels more of a factor as regards strangers.

I do not believe I have ever treated someone differently purely based on their color or ethnicity, though I admit to discriminating in the usual ways we all do and prefering some people to others.

However language and communication are important. I tend to not trust or treat as a fellow those who are unintelligent or bad at communicating. I am myself not overly social but anyway...

So a foreign person or someone from a non English speaking background I will not be able to treat equally, whatever I think of them. Whereas a fellow white male Briton even if I hate them I treat as an equal simply because I can communicate easily with them, there is no awkwardness and misunderstanding.

But a chav or a labourer of my race I will treat as an inferior to an educated and eloquent foreigner. For me practical discrimination (as opposed to ideal discrimination, what people I like more) is largely based on whether I can easily communicate with a person and whether I can be myself (or who I pretend to be) without awkward cultural issues.

I met a black girl from Toronto once and we discussed housing affordability and urban planning. At the time my neighbours were all fellow poor whites and were smoking weed playing Call of Duty and getting laid. So definitely for me I discriminate more on individual characteristics than race.

I believe in meritocracy as being the rational secular modern way.

But really I think this Oscar thing is a silly fuss. But maybe I should check my privilege. However I am white and I doubt I will ever be a Hollywood star lol

[Skimbo 304]

2 hours ago, Mark_Kochan said:

So a foreign person or someone from a non English speaking background I will not be able to treat equally, whatever I think of them. Whereas a fellow white male Briton even if I hate them I treat as an equal simply because I can communicate easily with them, there is no awkwardness and misunderstanding.

 

So I'm inferior. Cool.

And I'm considered inferior just because I got an accent if I speak english? Because I had to learn that language from bottom up?

 

 

 

My opinion on the topic: Superiority or inferiority isn't something that can be used on humans. Like all mammals we got individuals that are more intelligent than others - like no other mammals we also help the less intelligent to survive. But intelligence can not be defined by education as education isn't acessible vor everyone on the same terms and some of the most intelligent specimen of the human race often fail to handle our education system like our most stupid fellows do. Superiority also cannot be defined by culture as every culture is in a constant process of developing. And I have to say: The culture of african tribesmen is different too ours - but actually the one more substainable cultue on the long terms as it doesn't massiveley destroy our own planet. Which culture is more superior? I don't know. In the end both in a way. Superiority cannot be defined by color, we might have had some million years to differ but in the very beginning all of us where black. And all of us had nothing better to do then climbing for the next banana (evolution experts: I know, no bananas in africa - this is a metaphor). If our today's species would have lived isolated from each other for another few million years, we might be able to tell evolutionary differences. By now that's just the skin color and some minor changes in apperiance. In the end all of us are compartible with each others in reproductive terms. By the way: Considering this topic from that sides, whites got a evolutionary disadvantage, we are less protected against agressive elements of the sunlight than black people.

Superiority by Languages? Actually, english is a quite simple, basic language which features much less options to describe than - for example - czech, which represents a west slavic language using a much whider range of declension to nouns and adjectives than english and a far more flexible word order to better pronounce emphasis, feelings etc. Does this make the language superior? Nope. German also isn't considered superior to english even through it's a very descriptive language offering muh more nouns and adjectives to describe things than english does. The only thing I would consider superior is speaking two or more languages fluently. For example english and espaniol, which well, would give a group superiority which absoluteley isn't considered superior in the general american public.

Superiority as a form of power? Considering yourself superior because you got more power than someone elles - if through legal means, money or simply a higher class of weapon - also won't help you on the long therm - powers can shift. Just have a look in the animal world - especially mammals again - fighting for their females. Once they win, once they loose.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Harking back a few posts, rap???  Rap isn't a music genre, it is more like speaking in rhythm.  It is one way for black people, and some sympathetic persons of other profiles, to express mostly dissatisfaction with their lot in life.  If all the energy that these people expend with rapping were used instead to improve their position, many would find things are not so bleak.  There is too much low vernacular in rap for anyone with any real sense of musical appreciation to like it.

Interracial problems will always exist.  I am a Caucasian (white) but from my point of view every person deserves my appreciation.  Why some people leap to conclusions about others is a matter of culture well delineated in the lyric in South Pacific "You have to be taught".  It is hard to overcome things you learned at your mother's knee.  There has been a great deal of academic and other flapping over this, but people will be people.  At the same time, H. Sap. is a competitive predator.  A tiger with different stripes is likely to be another tiger's prey.

[CapTon 592]

1 hour ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Harking back a few posts, rap???  Rap isn't a music genre, it is more like speaking in rhythm.  It is one way for black people, and some sympathetic persons of other profiles, to express mostly dissatisfaction with their lot in life.  If all the energy that these people expend with rapping were used instead to improve their position, many would find things are not so bleak.  There is too much low vernacular in rap for anyone with any real sense of musical appreciation to like it.

Very true. If blacks chose to stop oppressing themselves and worked to improve their standpoints in society in a positive manner (not burning buildings down and closing streets down), not only would they gain more support from people, but they would probably actually be listened to.

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

If only white people are nominated than by definition not enough black people are nominated. 

That depends on how you define white. Are Italians white? Spanish? Portugese? There isn't actually a set definition of what counts as white. Is it based on the classification of Caucasian? Because if thats the case, then that guy is white. If you go by skin pigment alone, then it becomes more touchy, though a lot of people could still argue he is white (just more tanned). If you base it of nationality, then no, the guy is a Latino.

I don't know how I define white. The definition seems to be flexible now. If Trump attacks illegal immigrants from Mexico he's somehow racist despite the fact that, like Iñárritu, a vast majority of them have European heritage. If there isn't a set definition of what counts as white then this whole idea of white privilege is useless. If a Jew can be white and a Mexican can be white you tell what makes a person white?

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

First of all, the claim that black people commit disproportionaly more crimes is inaccurate at best. First of all, black people are police much more heavily, which means that if a black person and white a person both commit a crime, its more likely the police will catch the black guy, but not the white guy.

African Americans are policed more heavily in certain areas, areas that tend to be majority black, because there is a disproportionate amount of crime being reported by people (black people) who live in those areas.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

And young black males are 9 times more likely to get shot by the police than anyone else in the US. That has nothing to do that they are supposedly more violent per capita.

If a black male is 9x more likely to be violent than anyone in the US then that stat isn't off base.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Indeed, the narrative that black people commit more crime is nothing more than victim blaming. Rather than stop for a second and consider the possibility that Racism in America is a real, major and deadly problem, its much easier to just pretend that black people commit more crimes and that it is therefor logical they go to jail more often and get shot more often. 

Victim blaming? Really? "Pretend" that black people commit more crime? This is total denial of reality to sustain your world view. Saying that AAs commit more crime isn't blaming them, it's just pointing out a fact. That you think it's "blaming" is quite telling. Sorry if that's inconvenient for the narrative. You're the one pretending here.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Well you got me there, I don't watch enough films, and the only film I saw this year that had a major role for a black person was Star Wars.

To be fair I don't know the answer to my question either and haven't seen enough films this year to make that judgement.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

https://hbr.org/2014/01/white-people-do-good-things-for-one-another-and-thats-bad-for-hiring/

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-workforce-is-even-more-divided-by-race-than-you-think/281175/

https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

If I had to unpack all the BS in those articles I'd be here all day. Did you even read the articles or just the headlines? Just take the 1st one as an example, you can't see the problem in the author's logic? Try for one second to deconstruct it from my perspective and you'll see her rational falls apart within a matter of paragraphs.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

White privilege is an undeniable fact. 

And really, it makes white people feel guilty? Aww, we wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of white people now would we. The white man's ego is so easily bruised, the mere idea that perhaps they live in a society where everything is stacked in their favor is just unbearable. If peoples feelings matter that much, think about how the people who don't have everything stacked in their favor must feel when they get passed over for promotions, have a harder time finding a job or get stopped by the police again.

So do you admit it's a guilt complex?

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

No they don't. Or really, we don't know. Crime rate statistics are unreliable.

You don't know that. You just believe it and are walling yourself off from counter-evidence. How unreliable are those crime rate statistics? Do you even know or are you just saying that because you refuse to believe it? If they turned out to be true it would force you to reconsider wouldn't it?

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Thats true, one of them is black, the other is white, and that alone is good enough reason why black people receive about 20% harsher punishments.

Racism. You've taken my example and reduced it down to the differences between the two people to the color of the skin and not the content of their character as was used in my example. You've just thrown the conditions I gave you right out the window.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Look, in some individual cases I'm sure there are good reasons why a black person gets a harsher sentence for the same sort of crime as a white person. But now we are talking about averages, and individual cases cannot account for why black people get harsher punishments on average.

Well yes it can because those stats are made up from cases of individuals. Like I said, if a black person already has a criminal record he will by default get a longer sentence for the same crime. If that isn't factored in to the stats then the stats don't really tell us much.

Oh, and if you go to the study the article refers to they say that pre-charge characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain about 80% of these disparities. Oopsies.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Well yeah, I told you I was racist. That is part of it. That said, the counter to assuming that every black person is some poor sod who never got any chances in life is not to assume that they all got the same opportunities as me. The counter is to make no assumptions about that person at all, and let them tell you what their life was like and what their experience was like.

I agree, neither assumption is good. How 'bout just looking at people as individuals?

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Very true. Each country has their own forms of racism and the experiences are unique in each country.

Right, but we're talking about the lack of black people being nominated in the context of America. If a black person from any other country gets nominated does it really matter since they don't live under the same conditions as a black person in America? We're concerned there are no black people nominated because of the context of American discrimination against blacks, but if the nominee isn't African American it doesn't really change that.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Saw these quotes this morning, thought they were interesting. I don't know anything about this Thomas Sowell guy but I'm guessing he's black...

57 minutes ago, CapTon said:

Very true. If blacks chose to stop oppressing themselves and worked to improve their standpoints in society in a positive manner (not burning buildings down and closing streets down), not only would they gain more support from people, but they would probably actually be listened to.

Victim blaming! African Americans have no autonomy, don't you know this? They're victims...

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Thomas Sowell is black, yes, he's a classical liberal economist. 

Nonetheless, it's all well and good to discuss "the blacks" here, but I wonder what an input from someone who's experienced that life would be. I know people who've grown up in the heavily-policed areas of L.A. and talk about the unfair treatment by the police. Yes, those areas are more violent and heavier police presence is justified--but that doesn't justify some of the more extreme behavior of the police.

The man who shot up the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs--he shot at the police and managed to kill one of them, yet he was still apprehended alive. If he had been black, I wonder if the same thing would've happened. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old with a fake gun, was gunned down within seconds of the police arriving. Sometimes the police officers involved themselves are black or members of minorities--it isn't necessarily because of "whitey" but because of some subconscious racial bias that unfortunately costs lives. 

Either way, I'm half-white and half-bread and live in a bougie area--I have little to contribute. As usual, I don't think either extreme is wholly right about this (i.e. it's not all "racism" and it's not all "blacks oppressing themselves")--the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. 

3 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Harking back a few posts, rap???  Rap isn't a music genre, it is more like speaking in rhythm.  It is one way for black people, and some sympathetic persons of other profiles, to express mostly dissatisfaction with their lot in life.  If all the energy that these people expend with rapping were used instead to improve their position, many would find things are not so bleak.  There is too much low vernacular in rap for anyone with any real sense of musical appreciation to like it.

 

Oh how I could not disagree with that more. I love rap, and I also love the music of Szymanowski, Messiaen, and Bach. I suppose I must be an anomaly.

[krbe 193]

24 minutes ago, MintberryCrunch said:

The man who shot up the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs--he shot at the police and managed to kill one of them, yet he was still apprehended alive. If he had been black, I wonder if the same thing would've happened. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old with a fake gun, was gunned down within seconds of the police arriving. Sometimes the police officers involved themselves are black or members of minorities--it isn't necessarily because of "whitey" but because of some subconscious racial bias that unfortunately costs lives. 

I believe a general armed police force, coupled with little advanced training, contributes to many police killings. The gun makes it very easy to resolve a threatening situation. If you're unsure of the perpetrator, and you have a gun, and he might have a gun, it's easier to just shoot than to give him a chance to drop it. Also remember -- the repercussions for the police office who shoots is milder than for any criminal who fires the weapon. Assuming a rational criminal and a rational police officer, the officer would be more prone to shoot.

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

Saw these quotes this morning, thought they were interesting. I don't know anything about this Thomas Sowell guy but I'm guessing he's black...

Slightly misquoted in the sense that the radical has aged 10 years and the liberal 5 years since Mr Sowell first had it printed in 1998. The racist is a s young as ever, though.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

African Americans are policed more heavily in certain areas, areas that tend to be majority black, because there is a disproportionate amount of crime being reported by people (black people) who live in those areas.

Except that the intensity of policing does not entirely depend on how many calls get made. With the advent of statistics, policy makers would use them to predict where resources would need to be spend in order to combat the problem. So it are crime statistics that make the police patrol a certain area more often than another. But if more patrols lead to more crimes getting caught and processed into the statistics, then essentially the whole thing becomes a self sustaining circle. You patrol more, you catch more people, you catch more people the statistics say there is more crime, there is more crime, you increase those patrols. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

If a black male is 9x more likely to be violent than anyone in the US then that stat isn't off base.

And here is the racism. Sorry man, but there exists no evidence that suggests black people are more violent than white people. And without such evidence, those police shootings are unjustified, and the result of racism inherent in the American police system. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

Victim blaming? Really? "Pretend" that black people commit more crime? This is total denial of reality to sustain your world view. Saying that AAs commit more crime isn't blaming them, it's just pointing out a fact. That you think it's "blaming" is quite telling. Sorry if that's inconvenient for the narrative. You're the one pretending here.

Its not a fact, its a statistic. Statistics are not facts, they are constructs. What we see is that statistics support the narrative that black people are more criminal and dangerous than white people, but as stated before, that statistic is unreliable because it is the result of a self sustaining circle. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

If I had to unpack all the BS in those articles I'd be here all day. Did you even read the articles or just the headlines? Just take the 1st one as an example, you can't see the problem in the author's logic? Try for one second to deconstruct it from my perspective and you'll see her rational falls apart within a matter of paragraphs.

Thats not an argument. Saying you think those articles are nonsense is fine, but you have to give good reasons for it, point out specific paragraphs that show the article's claims are false. Don't say its nonsense and make me go look for the reasons, because I won't find them. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

So do you admit it's a guilt complex?

No, because regardless of how I feel about it, it exists.

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

You don't know that. You just believe it and are walling yourself off from counter-evidence. How unreliable are those crime rate statistics? Do you even know or are you just saying that because you refuse to believe it? If they turned out to be true it would force you to reconsider wouldn't it?

Look, the problem with statistics like this is that the collection methods are imperfect. Consider this, the perfect murder would never be included in the crime statistics, because no one would know someone was murdered. But it doesn't have to be a perfect crime to not get counted correctly in the crime statistics. In cases of crime where the police have no perpetrators or suspects, we don't know what the color of their skin was. Literally the only way we know what a criminals skin color was is if they get caught and processed through the criminal justice system. That alone means that black people will get counted more often because police bias makes them tougher on black people than on white people. For that we have plenty of hard evidence, its proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. That immediately means that the crime statistics do not give a good oversight of who commits more crime, white or black people. Now, if you use those crime statistics and argue that black people require more policing, because thats what the statistics show, and you start policing them more, they will also catch more, furthering the presence of black people in the statistics. But like I said, thats circular logic. 

So no, those crime statistics, they aren't accurate. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

Racism. You've taken my example and reduced it down to the differences between the two people to the color of the skin and not the content of their character as was used in my example. You've just thrown the conditions I gave you right out the window.

Your example was based on individual differences, like I said, individual differences cannot account for why the average punishment of one group is 20% harsher than the other. It means that on average, if you compare a white person and a black person who are accused of the same type of crime, on average the black person always has reasons that the white person doesn't have, for why the black person should receive a harsher punishment. I don't believe that. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

Well yes it can because those stats are made up from cases of individuals. Like I said, if a black person already has a criminal record he will by default get a longer sentence for the same crime. If that isn't factored in to the stats then the stats don't really tell us much.

Again, in order to get to an average number, it would mean that on average black persons always have reasons like a prior criminal history, for why they should receive harsher punishments. It means that every white criminal is just getting caught their first time, while every black person is getting caught their second time. That is logically not even possible. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

Oh, and if you go to the study the article refers to they say that pre-charge characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain about 80% of these disparities. Oopsies.

Actually, it says this:

The report concludes that sentence disparities “can be almost completely explained by three factors: the original arrest offense, the defendant’s criminal history, and the prosecutor’s initial choice of charges.”

And if you read the paragraphs that come before that, it says that prosecutors tend to go for heavier punishments for black people than for white people. 

1 hour ago, MilitantRadical said:

I agree, neither assumption is good. How 'bout just looking at people as individuals?

If it were only that easy. 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

It would seem that blacks in the U.S. have a higher tendency to form ghettos than any other group except, perhaps, Hispanics.  I don't care what you call such neighbourhoods, but this kind of behaviour promotes exclusivity and the resulting divisiveness.  The authorities respond accordingly and there is some kind of ugly feedback loop in all this.  Mr. Aesop is alive and well still: "Birds of a feather ...". 

There is also the idea that "If we don't hang together, we'll hang separately." left over from several earlier centuries of experience by many peoples who may have started out as minorities.  Yipe!  The thought just struck me.  Are whites a minority in the United States?

[CapTon 592]

19 minutes ago, A Nonny Moose said:

It would seem that blacks in the U.S. have a higher tendency to form ghettos than any other group except, perhaps, Hispanics.  I don't care what you call such neighbourhoods, but this kind of behaviour promotes exclusivity and the resulting divisiveness.  The authorities respond accordingly and there is some kind of ugly feedback loop in all this.  Mr. Aesop is alive and well still: "Birds of a feather ...". 

There is also the idea that "If we don't hang together, we'll hang separately." left over from several earlier centuries of experience by many peoples who may have started out as minorities.  Yipe!  The thought just struck me.  Are whites a minority in the United States?

They might as well be.

If a white man comes from the same neighborhood as a black man, and the white man becomes successful and the black man can't even find a job (hypothetically, no racism involved here), the white man is to blame because, apparently, due to the color of his skin, he basically had a road constructed of gold paved for him. Race does not define opportunity. It is how hard someone is willing to work that defines the opportunities presented. And no, that is not suggesting that blacks don't work hard enough to present themselves with opportunities. I never said that, so don't take it out of context.

Oh, and by the way: the people boycotting the Oscars are actually the racist ones. If all white people are nominated for awards, it's a huge problem and is said to be racism. White people don't deserve to be nominated for those awards, apparently. However, if all black people are nominated for awards, the aforementioned people are perfectly fine with that, and will probably make the argument that black are "finally getting what they deserve". That is racism true to the definition.

And if blacks (in certain areas) commit more crimes than whites, then that's how it is. I feel the same way if it's the other way around, with whites committing more crimes than blacks. That's not racism. That's just accepting a fact. And, to add on to that, if blacks populate an area more than whites, then obviously blacks will commit more of the crimes. That's just common sense. Again, it's the same way if it's the other way around.

Take the east side of Cleveland, for example. Aside from the fact that there is a high crime rate in many East Cleveland areas, blacks heavily populate those towns/suburbs. This is the reason why blacks are the main culprits of the crimes there. Do whites commit crimes in these areas? Yes. Am I being racist with my statements? No.

Where I live, the population mainly consists of whites; this means that whites commit most of the crimes here. Do blacks commit crimes where I live? Yes. Am I being racist with my statements? No.