Let's talk about Racism

[Jamshyd]

Also about English:

American English is an an entirely different language from British English and is diverging more each year. We have the most accommodating language on the planet with the most words and fastest incorporation of foreign vocabulary of any language on the planet.

Please provide reference for your claim that American English is "an entirely different language from British English".

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

your hypothetical situation fails because you wouldnt be able to break into my house let alone touch me. Youd be dead as a door knob before you got half way down my drive way cause im white and thus im smart enough to protect myself and my property, so that i can prosper and become more powerful.

This made me LOL, because last time I heard someone saying basically this, he was pointing his finger violently at some dude in Jerry Springer's audience, while Steve Wilkos gradually pushed him back. Just thought I'd share that. :D

Do you really think that all the most powerful nations just happen to be founded by whites by what, accident??

It's not an accident. But nor does it have anything to do with genetic differences at the population level. Europe and Japan became the predators, and pretty much everyone else the preyed upon, because these places were geographically and ecologically the most fertile ground for the incubation of human cultures with well developed infrastructures of trust and resource movement/management (and therefore, warmongering and exploitation of weaker and less well organized peoples).

The wealth and poverty of human nations is well modeled as the same bag of seed strewn on a wide variety of terrains and soils.

 

[aanallein]

Please provide reference for your claim that American English is "an entirely different language from British English".

You are serious? One simply has to go to England or parts of Scotland or Ireland to hear extreme differences. Here's a wiki article on it -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences

Maybe entirely different language was strong but the two are very different. I cannot even understand a lot of scottish/irish people.

 

[Jamshyd]

Standard British English and standard American English (and standard Kiwi English, and standard ozzie English, and standard South African English) are all mutually intelligible thus making them different dialects of the same language.

Go find any introductory Linguistics text and read it. You'll find this to be a very pertinent point. Yes there are some exceptions to this rule, but English is definitely NOT one of them.

 

[aanallein]

^ k sorry its a diverging dialect (i have not taken intro linguistics, sorry). the point I was arguing was just showing how american english is quickly incorporating foreign vocabulary and is very accommodating while many other languages are not ( recently read an article on how american english is one of the fastest growing languages because so many new words from other languages are readily adapted to it.

i have also met 1 person from ireland and 1 person from alabama that i could barely comprehend (and a lot of people say californian's have a hard accent to understand when i talk to them). i've had better conversations in my extremely limited spanish with people than i had with those 2 individuals. written english may be mutual intelligible but spoken english isn't always very intelligible.

 

[ebola?]

Off-topic

american english is quickly incorporating foreign vocabulary and is very accommodating while many other languages are not

1. The vast majority of English's foreign borrowing occurred prior to the great vowel shift, when roughly 40 percent of our lexical items were borrowed from French (IIRC, during Anglo-Saxon occupation of French people living in what is now the UK, prior to the Medieval period).
2. Other languages do not? No way! Languages diversify and hybridize much as do species of organism.
...
I'll give more later...I have to finish grading papers for...sociology of race!

ebola

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

The idea that languages are discrete entities is as much a social fiction as the idea that races and ethnicities are discrete entities. In the grand scheme of things, both are as amorphous and ever-changing as the blobs in a lava lamp.

 

[asphyx]

http://yun.complife.ru/100facts.htm

Whites > Blacks

 

[aanallein]

Off-topic



1. The vast majority of English's foreign borrowing occurred prior to the great vowel shift, when roughly 40 percent of our lexical items were borrowed from French (IIRC, during Anglo-Saxon occupation of French people living in what is now the UK, prior to the Medieval period).
2. Other languages do not? No way! Languages diversify and hybridize much as do species of organism.
...
I'll give more later...I have to finish grading papers for...sociology of race!

ebola

Sorry I had just recently read an article in CCN that said exactly those things - that english is rapidly incorporating vocab from other languages (faster than most other languages), many languages are not growing, and english has the most words of any language. I didn't take a class in it and I'm not some kind of linguist. I just read it on CNN. So maybe its right or wrong but that's where I saw it.

 

[ebola?]

Meta-conversation:

Quick observation: it seems that a lot of people are neglecting to respond to one another, likely resulting in people talking past one another, rather than genuine conversation. I say that we keep the dialogue going, so that we each (and all) may learn from one another.

Back on-topic:

Not too much What do you expect, it was friday night, and I was preparing for my weekly klan meeting! That's all us southern white folk do round deez' parts.

Heh...er, please don't use straw-men to discredit your opposition. Frankly, people over-blow the cultural differences between the North and South (of the US).

This is one of those touchy subjects and I'm goin to have to slowly bow out, not in defeat, but in a agree to disagree sort of way. Your astute, quirky responses give me an intellectual hardon, and I just can't compete sir.

Thanks...possibly undeserved, but thanks. I try not to view these exchanges as competitions (but I can't really avoid doing so to some extent). Rather, they're chances to learn by engaging 'the other'.

I know that I talk bizarrely, so I'm happy to try and paraphrase what remains unintelligible (this goes for anyone).

So Ive had to deal with blacks all my life would that qualify me to pass judgement on the whole race?

Ummm...you bring up some complex issues with your standoffish attempt to justify your views.
1. I believe that everyone is 'qualified' to pass judgment on anything (at least in their minds). At the same time, everyone can expect critical scrutiny of his or her views from others.
2. No, I don't think that your are 'qualified' to make such a generalization ("qualified" in the sense that you cannot do so with logical validity or empirical adequacy)...even in terms of central tendencies of group-members. Your sample is too narrow and biased, and your observations are subject to expectancy bias. They also remain superficial, reifying race, failing to penetrate down to the causal processes that lead to it.

1. I think african americans have had plenty of time to clean their act up, they cannot blame slavery and racism for their problems anymore, I know plenty of blacks that have nice families and good jobs, why? because they struggled...

This may include a great deal of overlap with what I've already said to you...but my points appear to remain unaddressed.

1. In what sense have African Americans had enough time to throw off the shackles of racism, particularly structural and institutional? Our social institutions function such to reinforce and reproduce prior disparities. Hell...African Americans STILL face severe discrimination when purchasing housing.

Perhaps your point would hold more credence if racism were truly addressed at some point.

2. While most racial disparities may be explained via continued structural racism, much of the African American cultural response thereto is maladaptive, complicit in reproducing structural racism. Thus, critique is necessary as well, but imminent critique tends to be far more fruitful.

3. Now, effective individual strategies differ from expositions of conditions or good policy-strategies. In the short term, the individual subject to racism succeeds more readily by taking responsibility than by placing blame, even if the latter is legitimate.

The whites who supposedly keep the blacks down had to go through the struggle of immigrating and many were poor and starving when they came

1. White immigrants benefited from a long-standing process of de-ethnification, whereby whites are now unified as 'generic'. In short, there is no continued structure of oppression against Germans, French, etc., as African Americans currently face.

It must also be noted that white immigrants, for the most part, faced none of the systematic exclusion from education and labor market that African Americans faced.

Indeed, such immigrants benefited from white privilege upon arrival.

2. Gah! As I've argued, individual whites, for the most part, hold little responsibility for continued racial oppression. Rather, the culprit at hand is a racist system.

the africans sold their own people into slavery

This has no bearing on America's racist regime.

if any of them (or you if your reading mr. sharpton) get your ass a boat ticket and go the fuck back.

1. er...wut? If any of them what?
2. Should descendants of European settlers secure tickets to Europe?

Blacks are racist toward whites. PERIOD.

Period? More like "ellipsis"... As I argued before, context matters. African American prejudice against whites functions vastly differently from white racism from a position of privilege.

You never hear a lawsuit because a black owned business wouldn't hire a white...

Actually, there have been numerous successful lawsuits brought forward on such grounds (Brown et al. 2003).

The majority of black owned businesses will hire a black over a white with the same credentials...

Citation?

Black people exclude themselves!!!! They are the racists!!! They set up their own churches, set themselves apart by celebrating Black History month...etc...

Okay...I've already made this point in a couple ways...I'll try it this way: you would most likely do the same if you faced systematic exclusion from power and wealth on the basis of ascribed identity.

Such separatism is a compensating response to oppression, an attempt to launch an ethnic project to gain power.

I love it, don't get me wrong, but they use the word nigga so much... and it's supposedly so offensive, but only when said by a white, thats such bullshit, that proves that they are fucking overdramatic.

I've already said this...but...context matters for matters of meaning too. When you say "nigger" (or even "nigga"), it holds entirely different import from when the term is exchanged by two African Americans (on friendly terms with one another).

6. Fuck every last one of you who comes and tries to tell me i'm offensive, because i'm not, I love my black friends... I have had sex with a black girl, I love mexicans, I enjoy african american culture! I love rap, but BLACKS ARE RACIST TOWARDS ME!!!!
And like I said I only presented these views to get some positive feedback, so either ban me from BL or respectfully disagree, but call me an idiot and I will, well I won't do shit but laugh at you, and maybe call a random black guy a N---- just to hurt your feelings... Right after he says whats up nigga to his black friend... you double standard carrying pro-racist. lol

Is this to provoke conversation too? Or are you genuinely pissed off?
Really, I'm not sure where you're getting this apparent 'persecution complex' from. Do you think that people here are unnecessarily attacking you (I hope you see why they'd attack your views)?

Also (this goes for several people), repeating your views or putting them forth more aggressively fails to:
1. make said views more correct or
2. convince people of said views.

enough for now...this is pretty time-consuming.

ebola

 

[KStoner6tb]

Heh...er, please don't use straw-men to discredit your opposition. Frankly, people over-blow the cultural differences between the North and South (of the US).


ebola

What part of the country do you live in? Haha I still hear the question "Hey! Do you rednecks still ride horses everywhere?" quite often from the northern peeps. Yes it's more like a sports rivarlry, friendly ribbing type deal, but I can't stand 90% of the people I've met from the north(east)...race is no factor..so what's the term for my ignorant, blind hatred? Something catchy is a plus . Dumbass, ignorant-ass, and jackass are not an option

 

[Jamshyd]

^ That's the thing. There is no word for someone who's disposition toward a discrete cultural group isn't very nice due to negative experiences with a large majority of them.

This is exactly my attitude toward the Thai.

I think it is very possible to develop a distaste for a specific society due to bad experiences directly relating to the structure of said society rather than for the biology of the people who make it, and this has nothing to do with being racist.

And that is actually why I started this thread in the first place - the English language is in desperate need for language to express cultural dissonance without the need to resort to race which can sometimes be irrelevant.

Sadly, the thread had veered way off that I actually stopped posting in it :D

 

[KStoner6tb]

And that is actually why I started this thread in the first place - the English language is in desperate need for language to express cultural dissonance without the need to resort to race which can sometimes be irrelevant.

Sadly, the thread had veered way off that I actually stopped posting in it :D

You gotta step in and set us straight Jam! Keep your mod hand strong :D

 

[Chigger90]

lol

 

[Pharcyde]

And that is actually why I started this thread in the first place - the English language is in desperate need for language to express cultural dissonance without the need to resort to race which can sometimes be irrelevant.

But isnt English the fastest evolving language in the world? So maybe we have or soon will have those new words

 

[Papa1]

And that is actually why I started this thread in the first place - the English language is in desperate need for language to express cultural dissonance without the need to resort to race which can sometimes be irrelevant.

But isn't culture an integral part of race? I didn't know they were separable.

Sorry to argue semantics, but I thought that race was a broad classification that included biology, but also included culture and society. So a generalized dissonance with a culture is a generalized dissonance with aspects of a race, and in that way racist.

I think I'm probably just confused. In short - I'd love to hear more of what you mean.

 

[rstar84]

I tend to agree with those citing economic inequalities as relevant factors in the perceived achievement differential between races – or as I see it, the achievement disparities among social classes (measured economically and educationally). To illustrate the obvious, consider the educational differences between students of affluent suburbs compared to students residing in areas of concentrated poverty.

Is language and language use (the varietal of the language) a factor in terms of educational access and achievement? Generally, for the average person, I think so. I think utilizing the favored or conventionally utilized form of a language (the form that is arbitrarily favored by universities and privileged classes) may help diminish educational inequity for people of marginalized classes by allowing them to have greater access to educational institutions. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I think a positive correlation exists between economic disparity and linguistic drift (i.e. as the forms of English used by marginalized groups drift further from the forms used by privileged groups, so might the economic disparity between the different groups – or, admittedly, perhaps linguistic drift is merely a reflection of the ever-widening economic divide). I recognize that one group’s expression of language is no less valid than another group’s, and not all people of a particular group speak alike, but historically, marginalized groups tend to adopt more of the conventions of the dominant groups than the reverse, not because one form is “better” or “correct,” but because it is useful and practical to do so. If we agree that education can serve as a democratizing or equalizing force, and that universities favor certain forms of linguistic expression, shouldn’t we teach that form to students of marginalized groups?

 

[moonyham]

i concur with the dislike or hate of a culture because of bad experiences. If i hadnt ONLY had physical violence threatened to me by blacks in the streets, then i probably wouldnt be saying that blacks are more violent, more prone to crime, more prone to giving negative input to a situation like asking for a lite.

If asians were the ones trying to intimidate me, trying to jump me with knives and telling me to give me them my wallet and phone or theyll kill me, then id feel the same towards them. Then fact of the matter is, asians and whites dont do this, its blacks who do and therefore thats who i am predjudice against. Im not racist im just realistic, like i said and i do have black mates(infact mates of almost all major ethnicitys) and i know that of course there are blacks who decide to be civilized but at the same time i also know that blacks are the least civilized of all people in almost all instances.

Do you all think there is no genetic correlation, and not a cultural one, that blacks are just less civilized by nature? I mean if you look at tribes and shit in africa.. well to say the least they have some pretty uncivilized methods of life... this was brought with them to where ever they decided to migrate too because its in there genes, not there culture.

All you have to do is look where black people live to see how uncivilized they are.. they have NO respect for there neighbourhoods, they look like dumps with burnt out cars, rubbish and tagging everywhere. White neighbourhoods on the otherhand are generally quite clean and tidy. It doesnt take MONEY to keep your yard and neighbourhood clean, all it takes is some fucking respect and anyone can pick up a piece of rubbish or dispose of rubbish properly, or choose not to tag, and all that stuff.

 

[Jamshyd]

But isn't culture an integral part of race? I didn't know they were separable.

Sorry to argue semantics, but I thought that race was a broad classification that included biology, but also included culture and society. So a generalized dissonance with a culture is a generalized dissonance with aspects of a race, and in that way racist.

I think I'm probably just confused. In short - I'd love to hear more of what you mean.

It is difficult to separate the two with definitions, so I'll attempt to provide such separation implicitly:

Let us for the sake of conventionality say that "black" is a race (and most people would agree that it is).

The black people in the US are part of American society and American culture (and of course, the sub-cultures within, especially the sub-cultures specific to African-Americans). The black people in Ethiopia are part of Ethiopian culture (and the subcultures within it). The black minority in Russia are part of Russian culture (and the subcultures within it...etc). And so on.

The only common denominator between American blacks and Ethiopian blacks is a biological trait - ie. the skin colour. Such classification is what I would consider racial classification.

A racist who thinks black people are inferior would not differentiate between the American blacks or the Russian blacks or the Ethiopians. To that person, it is this biological trait that counts, not the country of origin.

Now, if I come and tell you that I have a problem with Ethiopians specifically, my problem is not that they are black. My problem is that they are part of a society that produces Ethiopian culture, with which I have a problem, and that is why I have a problem with them.

As such, I do not think it is proper to call me a racist.

(Note that I have no problem with Ethiopia, this is just an example).

-----

Now here is an inverse example:

The white people in Italy are part of Italian culture, particularly (let's say) Milanese culture, and all the subcultures that follow. The white people in Finland are part of Finnish culture and all the subcultures that follow. The white people in Greece...etc.

Let's say I'm a white guy from Spain, and I claim that all of the above, like me, are superior to everyone else simply because they are white.

This would definitely make me a racist, merely because I glorified a large group of unrelated people simply because they share my skin colour.

If, however, I say that Spaniards are superior to all others, I am not being a racist. I may be nationalist, ethnocentric or what-have-you, but not a racist.

-----

While it may sound like I am splitting semantic hairs here, I think semantics here is an important matter, since "racist" is a very very loaded word and I see it utilized often (even by myself sometimes) erroneously since there simply isn't any other word to describe it.

On a more personal level (which is what prompted me to start this thread), I've been called a "racist" because I speak rather lowly of Thailand and Thai people due to my experience living and working in that country for a year. Anyone who has taken the time to hear out why exactly am I doing this has conceded that, not only am I not a racist, but that my sentiments are in fact justified. As someone who is actually trained to be a social critic, I have seen some machinations in the structure of Thai society that tend to produce individuals who (assuming they aren't alienated from said society) will without exception act in certain disagreeable ways as a direct result of said machinations. But I'm not about to get into another discussion of Thailand - I just want to demonstrate one of the many examples out there of someone being unfairly called a racist.

I hope this clarifies better?

 

[OpiodSlave]

Racism is retarded. I have a black friend who is one of my best. But, I think...maybe even due too a almost primal instinct, we feel more comfortable with the same race.