Racism by degree

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Polls here are anonymous right?
racism is not a PC trait
what is the question that pegs someone as a racist?
"is race important?" doesn't work a non racist could say "yes there are allot of racists out there"
"are you a racist?" would only bring in a portion (those have the rare mixture of being racist, self aware and honest)
so what is the question?

Polls are anonymous but not when you have to textually answer the questions.

Word you questions right, neither obfuscate their meaning nor compose them as leading. If you don't write your questions clearly and honestly, you will get less than accurate responses.

exactly so what is the question?

"Are the races different in any meaningful ways?"

Yes or no.

I think that's about as accurate as you'll end up getting. Non-racists won't consider skin pigments, eye shapes and so forth to be meaningful.

Ah, but then I would be caught on the racist side because I think that black women have aesthetically superior fat distribution.

I think we are barking up the right tree but something more specific, a finer blade, something about morality.

"race" as currently used is not well defined. Are there meaningful and consistent differences physical and mental between the Ainu as a unit and the !kung as a unit? No doubt. But across what American [or country of your choice] individuals or law recognize as "races"? Not, I fear meaningful.

More to the point - is it possible to identify someone as NON-racist? How do you measure resistance to the Green Monkey syndrome - which I fear is pan human and affectsa all "races" ands religions and political parties.

Race is nothing. Culture and values are everything.

ruveyn

Yet values can and often do include skin color, hair length, preferred team, occupation, place or residence, dialect, and other of the myriad shades of pithecine green,.

Q. Why is race based affirmative action needed?

A (racist): because some races need help to achieve equal outcomes.

A (nonracist): it's not, people of all races are capable of making it on their own.

Spoken like a true racist.

Unless the non-racist is a medical professional who needs to take somebody's race into consideration when considering what things they are most at risk for. "Meaningful" is a contextual word. Acting as though race (and the genetics that go with it) has no bearing on heritable conditions or responses to enviromental conditions is dangerous to patients.


I don't think there is one pat poll question that will divide everybody up neatly into racist/not-racist. For that matter, I don't think there are two discrete groups that everybody can be sorted into whereby they are 100% racist or 100% not-racist. I think there are a lot of people (myself included) who have a very complex relationship with other peoples' race and their own and don't sort so easily into is/is not.

Thus I like Philologos' answer, which acknowledges that this is not such a simple thing to do.

You just couldn't resist pulling that out of your sleeve huh?

Yeah... Sometimes I can't help myself, and I go for the low hanging fruit.

He just wants to hide the fact that he would pick the racist answer.

I think both of you are not really parsing this out and are given knee jerk reactions. But dissect both of these and it isn't as simple as either of you have presented.



The question? Why is race based affirmative action needed?

Two possible answers given:

1) Because some races need help to achieve equal outcomes. Psycohist lables this a racist answer, dionysian says that labeling is spoken like a true racist. But it could really go either way. Does the person believe that some races need help to achieve equal outcomes because they have flawed genetics that disadvantage them? That is racist- and Psycohist is right. Does the person believe that some races are disadvantaged by a history of racist discrimination against them? That's not racist and dionysian is right.

2)It's not, people of all races are capable of making it on their own Does the person believe that genetic advantages that could help in the workplace are distributed evenly across races? That's not racist and Psycohist is right. Does the person believe that there's currently no such thing as racial discrimination or cultural disadvantage and people who think they have been discriminated against probably did something to deserve it? That is racist and dionysian is right.


There are no simple answers. And people who are really devoted to parsing things out could give far more than the 4 answers I gave above.

Last edited by Janissy on 10 Jun 2011, 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.