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sebster wrote:Except racism has more than one meaning. The meaning you give there is the most common in the mainstream, but hardly the only meaning.

But there's another meaning that is heavily used in academia, referring to how social structures have placed certain races higher than others. That is, white groups had considerable political and economic power to shape systems locally and internationally, and they've shaped systems that have seen them take more power. In this sense, reverse racism has a meaning, whenever a system is put in place that causes power to flow away from the majority and towards minorities it is reverse racism.

So 'academia' (whatever that means) has redefined a term that has a well known and ordinary meaning, thereby obfuscating their works in the minds of the consuming public. Seems like a good gig if you can get it.

Sounds like "racism" has been redefined to mean "white racism." While I agree that there is such a thing as "reverse white racism," that's actually the same thing as what most people would call "racism." If the term has really been defined so that only white people can be racist, then obviously we need to look for another word other than "racism" to describe what is going on.

Would 'racial bigotry' be acceptable, or can only heterosexual white males be bigots now?

sebster wrote:So, if we actually want to have positions decided on ability and skills we need to introduce systems that nullify those racist effects.

I don't see how this supports one-race-only scholarships?

Because, you know, white people can't also be from a family that doesn't have college grads, with single mothers whose father is in prison, that dropped out of high school to support their family or just out of being rebellious I guess?

Target those who are in poverty by... targeting those who are in poverty. Not by targeting minorities in specific. Not all minority families have a legacy of poverty, not all families who have a legacy of poverty are minorities.

schadenfreude wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've always thought the "join the military" line was total bs. It gets me that completely rational, sane people can say that being trained to kill people is a reasonable solution to anything.

Newsflash: Most people who join the military don't volunteer to be infantry. I can't say I knew anybody when I was on a submarine who joined to kill people. Seeing as how just about everybody who works in nuclear power and commercial airline pilots have a military background by your logic just about every nuclear power plant operator and commercial airline pilot are irrational/insane people.

There are two mistakes in your post. Please take a moment to identify them.

All right, let's try this again.

1. I never said everyone volunteered to be infantry, said that they were merely trained to kill people.

2. I said that people saying joining the military purely for college credit wasn't reasonable. I never said anyone was insane.

Offended ain't a great color on you.

schadenfreude wrote:
What are the federal regulations on privately funded scholarships?

His parents can afford to send him to school, but they are in no way legally required to. When I was in the military I knew quite a few guys from very affluent and religiously fanatic families who were completely estranged from their family by the age of 18 because they didn't drink their parents cool aid. Which brings me to this.

Most privately funded scholarships use either the FAFSA, or some in-house variation of it; meaning that a child that is estranged from their parents can effectively be regarded as having a family income of zero.


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biccat wrote:
So 'academia' (whatever that means) has redefined a term that has a well known and ordinary meaning, thereby obfuscating their works in the minds of the consuming public. Seems like a good gig if you can get it.

Wait, racism has a well known and ordinary meaning? Then why is the word so often used to describe the resentment of religious, political, and national groups?

Honestly, I've always found racism to have one of the single most disputed meanings in the English language, and that's before we even get into the academic conversation.

biccat wrote:
Sounds like "racism" has been redefined to mean "white racism." While I agree that there is such a thing as "reverse white racism," that's actually the same thing as what most people would call "racism." If the term has really been defined so that only white people can be racist, then obviously we need to look for another word other than "racism" to describe what is going on.

Would 'racial bigotry' be acceptable, or can only heterosexual white males be bigots now?

That's not quite what Sebster was talking about, though the definition you're using here also exists. There are large segments of scholarship on race and gender that claim racism as something that can only be perpetrated by white people or, more mildly, that it only ever has been perpetrated by white people.

Of course, those both come out of critical race theory, which takes as its mission the elevation of all races to equality, which means a lot of their work is nothing but rhetoric for intellectuals.

biccat wrote:So 'academia' (whatever that means) has redefined a term that has a well known and ordinary meaning, thereby obfuscating their works in the minds of the consuming public. Seems like a good gig if you can get it.

It was the original meaning of the term, actually, going back to the original studies into why white people had come to dominate the world.

The simpler definition came in as the subject entered the mainstream, as it came to look at the subject in terms of individual actions, not society as a whole.

Sounds like "racism" has been redefined to mean "white racism."

No, it's the simple acknowledgement that the system as a whole favours white people over other ethnicities.

Would 'racial bigotry' be acceptable, or can only heterosexual white males be bigots now?

You're deliberately misreading the point to make it into something you can more easily argue against. That's very lazy.

Everyone can be bigoted. The point is that the system as a whole, which matter a whole lot more than the actions of one person here or there, through a whole combination of reasons, works to favour certain races over others.

It is in that context that the term reverse racism has meaning. Do you understand now?


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Melissia wrote:I don't see how this supports one-race-only scholarships?

Because, you know, white people can't also be from a family that doesn't have college grads, with single mothers whose father is in prison, that dropped out of high school to support their family or just out of being rebellious I guess?

Target those who are in poverty by... targeting those who are in poverty. Not by targeting minorities in specific. Not all minority families have a legacy of poverty, not all families who have a legacy of poverty are minorities.

This was my first post on the subject, "I'm a little iffy on scholarships for minorities, because the defence of them typically involves the recognition that black folk generally come from poorer economic situations, and so should be given assistance. I kind of think that the middleman should just be cut out and we should instead recognise the economic situation by itself."

So as you can see I agree with you. My issue here is with people trying to use scholarships for minorities to try and claim that there's actually a bias against white folk, when the scholarships are actually just a step towards addressing the actual systemic bias towards white people and against most minorites.

Alas to be poor and white is terrible. I know this is a American based issue. But I will have a very hard time getting into a college.

Whereas if I had a drop of Native American blood in me. I wouldn't even have to sweat it. :(

Shadowbrand wrote:Alas to be poor and white is terrible. I know this is a American based issue. But I will have a very hard time getting into a college.

Whereas if I had a drop of Native American blood in me. I wouldn't even have to sweat it. :(

Are you not graduating High School? Based on (an admittedly brief) search, it seems that based on your self stated location, there is an open admissions community college (college of new caledonia) and a public university (University of Northern BC) near you. UNBC, according to their website, offers admission to BC and Yukon High School grads with averages of at 65% in five Grade 12 classes. I don't' know much about Canadian high schools, but if you're not putting up D-Pluses in the US, you're college choices are limited, but that's more your own fault.

So, maybe I missed something, because it seems like there are several options for even borderline students close to you.

Generally speaking, FAFSA is more than enough for local state colleges here as well, but then Texas has in the past done a great job funding its public colleges (not so sure if they're going to continue what with the naff tea party crap going around though-- education is the first to go any time some republican gets a not so bright idea in their head about cutting the budget).

sebster wrote:You're deliberately misreading the point to make it into something you can more easily argue against. That's very lazy.

Wait, I'm the one who is "deliberately misreading the post?"

You're the one who proposed the idea that only white people can be racist. Therefore, the idea of a "non-whites only" scholarship can never be racist.

Using such a definition, you avoid the difficult moral question about whether we should treat all 'races' equally or whether certain people should have preferential treatment afforded to them solely based on the color of their skin.

BTW, the only site I found that described the history of racism as you suggest was a white supremacy website (which I'm reluctant to take at face value, even when discussing a historical account). Not that there aren't other sources out there, but I'd love to see some support for that.

sebster wrote:So as you can see I agree with you. My issue here is with people trying to use scholarships for minorities to try and claim that there's actually a bias against white folk, when the scholarships are actually just a step towards addressing the actual systemic bias towards white people and against most minorites.

Why can't it be both?

edit : mixed up edit & quote buttons

biccat wrote:
Using such a definition, you avoid the difficult moral question about whether we should treat all 'races' equally or whether certain people should have preferential treatment afforded to them solely based on the color of their skin.

No, that's entirely false. Such a definition exists in order to answer that difficult moral question.

biccat wrote:
BTW, the only site I found that described the history of racism as you suggest was a white supremacy website (which I'm reluctant to take at face value, even when discussing a historical account). Not that there aren't other sources out there, but I'd love to see some support for that.

Search for critical race theory, or just poke around the abstracts in racial studies journals for ten minutes.

Melissia wrote:And are they?

Almost certainly* yes.

Frankly I've dealt with minorities more than I have white people outside of my extended family.

This really isn't relevant to what I'm talking about. I'm talking about much larger cultural forces, what we see in our media, who we see as our leaders, what we read in our history books, the actions of the others around us who have been collectively influenced by those things. Even when we challenge the ideas presented to us by these avenues and think about them critically they're still having an effect on more subtle reactions and subconscious parts of our decision making.

And even then, there's plenty of minorities which don't depend on physical race either that get just as much discrimination. Many "races" are more culturally defined than physically anyway, such as people who are born to two black parents but have fair skin-- are they black, white, purple, gold, chocobo?

They're nonwhite. If they are white-enough looking they might be able to "Pass" somewhat. Chances are they've been surrounded by people strongly affected by the biases in our culture, those people affect them, the way they interact with people is different had been influenced by people with different experiences, people pick up on that and will react differently to a certain extent.

That's even assuming you'd consider me white, as based off of my physical features (I don't know my lineage due to being adopted and not wanting to really go open up that history) I could very well have a strong hispanic heritage myself-- and what about people who are part white, part black? Part hispanic, part asian? I have a friend who was descended from a Japanese mother and a Chinese father, and is married to a black soldier. What would you consider their child, if they choose to have one? Would they be racist against everyone else too? Meh at your assumption.

I myself of am mixed descent. My father was white, my mother was black. I'm very fair-skinned, and have a mixture of facial features. My hair is distinctly grows into an afro, if left to do so.

I am nonwhite. I can "Pass" with a short hair cut. Do I actively catch the biases against me? Rarely. Do I actively catch the biases against the darker members of my family? Less Rarely. Do I actively catch the biases I hold? A little less rarely, but still pretty rarely.

I'm not talking about anything remotely close to the surface of interactions.

I'm talking about the kind of thing where if you had two people with the exact same qualifications and said the same things in the interview the white would seem "Friendlier" or "More Trustworthy", for some reason. The thought wouldn't be "Oh. He's white, white people are trustworthy", the exact same words and gestures would just get interpreted differently. Sometimes this gap in perception is big, sometimes it's small. However, it's often pivotal.

All racists are people, but not all people are racists... the overly simplistic assumption that everyone is racist is just meh.

All people are people. We can't think about every little decision we make, we'd be overwhelmed in an instant. In the same way we don't consciously calculate every single gram of force we need to shift across each muscle fiber to walk, we don't actively think about every little thing about people that is influencing how trustworthy we think they are, how smart we think they are, how attractive or how component we think they are. We pick up on a lot of signs on a signals on a subconscious level, race is one of them and one of the more powerful ones.

EDIT: I don't have links to any of the studies on stuff off-hand like this but searching around for terms like "Reflexive Racial Bias" or "Implicit Racism" or similar should turn up information. It's something that's shown to affect most people, regardless of their racial or class background. At least to a certain extent, if I recall correctly minorities were less biased against themselves in this regard, but still generally biased. At least among Americans anyway.

Chongara wrote:All people are people. We can't think about every little decision we make, we'd be overwhelmed in an instant. In the same way we don't consciously calculate every single gram of force we need to shift across each muscle fiber to walk, we don't actively think about every little thing about people that is influencing how trustworthy we think they are, how smart we think they are, how attractive or how component we think they are. We pick up on a lot of signs on a signals on a subconscious level, race is one of them and one of the more powerful ones.

What exactly are you basing this on? Everyone is a little bit racist and we don't even know it. So who knows it? How do they know it? Is it the theory infallable? Why is the racism only one-way?

In short - if I don't know that I'm racist because the signs are too subtle for me to pick up, how do you know that I'm racist.

biccat wrote:

Chongara wrote:All people are people. We can't think about every little decision we make, we'd be overwhelmed in an instant. In the same way we don't consciously calculate every single gram of force we need to shift across each muscle fiber to walk, we don't actively think about every little thing about people that is influencing how trustworthy we think they are, how smart we think they are, how attractive or how component we think they are. We pick up on a lot of signs on a signals on a subconscious level, race is one of them and one of the more powerful ones.

What exactly are you basing this on? Everyone is a little bit racist and we don't even know it. So who knows it? How do they know it? Is it the theory infallable? Why is the racism only one-way?

In short - if I don't know that I'm racist because the signs are too subtle for me to pick up, how do you know that I'm racist.

Basically you just get lots of data. Record the reactions people have to others in various situations, controlling for variables in the people they're interacting with and see how race bears out as a factor in their reactions. You can also look at how people with similar backgrounds have fared in similar situations, where the only major variable was race.. that's a bit less sound though.

Like I said, I don't have the studies off-hand but they shouldn't be too hard to find.

Chongara wrote:I'm talking about the kind of thing where if you had two people with the exact same qualifications and said the same things in the interview the white would seem "Friendlier" or "More Trustworthy", for some reason.

I wouldn't.

There are people who have inherent underlying racist beliefs. Then there are people who overcome them. The idea that noone can overcome them is frankly offensive to me.

Melissia wrote:

Chongara wrote:I'm talking about the kind of thing where if you had two people with the exact same qualifications and said the same things in the interview the white would seem "Friendlier" or "More Trustworthy", for some reason.

I wouldn't.

There are people who have inherent underlying racist beliefs. Then there are people who overcome them. The idea that noone can overcome them is frankly offensive to me.

Why do you find it offensive? What I'm talking about here isn't people being horrible, ignorant or hateful. Just being human and subject to the same processes that help us cope with every other part of our extremely complex environment and behaviors. I think that being open to the possibility that my behaviors are influenced by factors I'm not always aware of (race or otherwise), helps me to stay vigilant in remaining critical of my own beliefs, opinions and ideas.

I mean sure, I'll concede it's perfectly possible that some people have completely transcended their cultural conditioning. There are a lot of people in the world. If you have, you're a better person than me. I'm just not sure it's a judgment that anyone is qualified to make about themselves.

Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

I personally find it to be morally offensive that Pluto isn't a planet.

Is that a good metric to judge its planet-hood by?

Right, because that analogy has relevan-- wait no it doesn't.

Melissa wrote:Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

I don't believe that's what he's saying...if I get his point it's that there are basic underlying factors in many people that result in an unintentional "Knee Jerk" thought process.

I'm not even sure that's entirely true... I mean, society and culture are more similar to a mixture than a solution, to use chemistry nerd terms. For some parts of society this might be true... yet for another part it isn't necessarily true.

Melissia wrote:Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

Since you're a person that boasts of not caring if she is misinterpreted, and showing little interest in preventing offense in others, I'm not sympathetic to your plight.

He's not saying you can't improve yourself. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it's impossible to overcome racial, ethnic, and cultural biases, but it would be extremely difficult, as their effects and manifestations can often be extremely subtle.

The broader point isn't that any one person has or doesn't have subconcious racially based reactions. It's that the vast majority of people do, and that has a tangible and disproportionate effect on minorities.

Melissia wrote:Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

I never claimed that one can't improve oneself and become a better person.

What I've claimed is that cultural conditioning is pervasive, subtle and powerful and that it is (overwhelmingly) unlikely that any of us have even come close to overcoming it entirely, or even mostly. We can still try and be better people and find ways to work around the challenges there are in doing so, but some of the challenges will likely always exist at least to a certain degree.

Melissa wrote:I'm not even sure that's entirely true... I mean, society and culture are more similar to a mixture than a solution, to use chemistry nerd terms. For some parts of society this might be true... yet for another part it isn't necessarily true.

I agree with that sentiment..however,I do believe that even the most open minded of individual is still capable of making "race based" assumptions..if you follow me,
It's not that they are "Racist",it's simply that certain "ideas" have become ingrained.

Polonius wrote:

Melissia wrote:Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

Since you're a person that boasts of not caring if she is misinterpreted, and showing little interest in preventing offense in others

That's not true, I do quite a bit of work to make sure I don't offend people. The naughty evil things I'd post if I was completely uninhibited would probably cause me to get banned within about three seconds.

Chongara wrote:
Basically you just get lots of data. Record the reactions people have to others in various situations, controlling for variables in the people they're interacting with and see how race bears out as a factor in their reactions. You can also look at how people with similar backgrounds have fared in similar situations, where the only major variable was race.. that's a bit less sound though.

Like I said, I don't have the studies off-hand but they shouldn't be too hard to find.

Going beyond that there are studies that basically indicate people will always respond differently to differences that are perceived. So simply recognizing that a person is black will make you respond differently to someone that you recognize as white. Even on a logical level the response of classifying two different things in different categories entails a difference in response. This is usually thought to be evidence supporting the idea that racism exists by necessity because the conversation regarding it exists, which was also the reason that lots of early work on racism focused on eliminating it from the lexicon altogether.

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:

Melissia wrote:Because the idea that one cannot improve oneself and become a better human being I find inherently offensive.

Since you're a person that boasts of not caring if she is misinterpreted, and showing little interest in preventing offense in others

That's not true, I do quite a bit of work to make sure I don't offend people. The naughty evil things I'd post if I was completely uninhibited would probably cause me to get banned within about three seconds.

Melissia wrote:I know, and I quite obviously consider that irrational and just don't care.

I think that deciding that the commonly accepted terminolgy is irrational, and not caring about it is mildly offensive to the people in a debate.

I sought out clarification on your point, tried to show you that perhaps you were misinformed, and you simply avoided the rest of the conversation. Chongara was making a fairly nuanced point, which you misinterpreted (probably willfully), and claimed to be offended by it. Sorry, but that's just drama. Not discussion.


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dogma wrote:Going beyond that there are studies that basically indicate people will always respond differently to differences that are perceived. So simply recognizing that a person is black will make you respond differently to someone that you recognize as white. Even on a logical level the response of classifying two different things in different categories entails a difference in response. This is usually thought to be evidence supporting the idea that racism exists by necessity because the conversation regarding it exists, which was also the reason that lots of early work on racism focused on eliminating it from the lexicon altogether.

It's true of nearly any phsycial charcteristic. Height, weight, looks, hair, etc. There is an immediate reaction to a persons physical appearance, which most people easily overcome by seeking out additional information. There is still an immediate, visceral reaction.

Right, because the etymology of the context of specific words as they change over time is perfectly rational.

Polonius wrote:
It's true of nearly any phsycial charcteristic. Height, weight, looks, hair, etc. There is an immediate reaction to a persons physical appearance, which most people easily overcome by seeking out additional information. There is still an immediate, visceral reaction.

The really interesting question is whether or not that visceral reaction can be attributed to environmental causes and, if that's the case, if those causes can ever be completely controlled.

dogma wrote:

Polonius wrote:
It's true of nearly any phsycial charcteristic. Height, weight, looks, hair, etc. There is an immediate reaction to a persons physical appearance, which most people easily overcome by seeking out additional information. There is still an immediate, visceral reaction.

The really interesting question is whether or not that visceral reaction can be attributed to environmental causes and, if that's the case, if those causes can ever be completely controlled.

Probably not completely. There's ample evidence that individuals (both human and animal) will favor aiding a more genetically similar (usually by relation) individual, because that helps pass on at least some of the same genes. I know that genetically there isn't a big different between any given white person and black person, but our lizard brains don't know that.

I think that the genetic impulse is probably incredibly insignificant compared to environmental conditioning.

FITZZ wrote:

I don't believe that's what he's saying...if I get his point it's that there are basic underlying factors in many people that result in an unintentional "Knee Jerk" thought process.

For proof of this go read the Afghan Children thread...