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I watch some. How could that not be racially stereotypical? It's clearly a stereotype, as you said yourself, and it's clearly applied to an entire race. I'm not

I watch some. How could that not be racially stereotypical? It's clearly a stereotype, as you said yourself, and it's clearly applied to an entire race. I'm not sure I could think of a better example of a racial stereotype. You can argue over whether or not it's offensive, but that's not what I'm asking.

mistermann 10y ago
It's culturally stereotypical, not racially stereotypical. > it's clearly applied to an entire race Clearly? How so? You likely think I am playing a game of semantics, but I genuinely think if we keep playing this game of trying to find reasons to be victims, things will never get better, even if that is what all parties want! The reason I brought up comedians is because they seem to allow normal people a view into this world, where we can admit that black people in the south eat a lot of fried chicken. Know why? Because it's cheap, and delicious! Do some racist rednecks still say things like that with an intent to cause harm? Yes, and what should we do? Laugh at them for using such an old, tired, irrelevant, pathetic joke of an attack. Because really, it's really nothing more than that, the rest of "what's there" is often purely in our minds. We're telling helpless teenagers that don't know any better over and over that a huge portion of the population hate them because of their race, and it is simply not true! We seem determined as a society that racism lives on forever, and it is really unfortunate. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgSQDQC0qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgSQDQC0qc What should New Zealander's do here, fire up the navy for a show of force off the coast of Sydney? Or should they crack a smile and say "good on ya mate"? Will we forever think of people who have a different color of skin than us...or actually, to be more precise, that have non-white skin, because that's what it's really about, isn't it, thinking that people who are non-white are "different" and must be handled with extreme caution. I reject that completely.
- burkaman 10y ago
  All I can say is that it is true. Look at this article, and please try to ignore the provocative headline, I just can't find a better presentation of the data: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-mo... You can explore the data yourself here: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&subjects=Blacks&years=2014&yrmax=2014&yrmin=1972 https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&... As you can see, 15% of white people think black people are more unintelligent than intelligent. 35% think they're more lazy than hardworking. 25% wouldn't want a relative to marry a black person. 20% wouldn't want to live in a half black neighborhood. And this is just people with conscious biases that they're willing to report on a survey. We can argue about what counts as "a huge portion", but these percentages represent tens of millions of people. There's so many ways to show that racism is still a huge deal in America, but it's really easy to think "I'm not racist, I've never seen anyone be racist, these people must be making it up". I doubt I'm going to convince you with this comment, but it's stereotypes all the way down. The idea that only old rednecks are racists is itself a harmful stereotype, because it simply is not true.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Thanks for that, it's a very interesting article. That's the type of thing we should be reading in the newspaper and sharing on Facebook and cordially discussing (as you and I are, I hope) so we can determine where we actually stand on this matter as a society. Race relations are very complex, it involves (imho) deep-seated biological cruft leftover from years of evolution, racist teachings in the home (like many other people, I grew up in a home of so-called "racists"), etc. If we are going to live in non-segregated societies, we just have to work through this together. I think a lot of those numbers from your article are just going to keep going down over time, partially as older people die off, and otherwise just as people realize, from being physically near people of different cultures on a regular basis, that yes in fact they are different (contrary to what the media and various other busybodies tell us), but it's just fine the vast majority of the time. And, sometimes it isn't - there is nothing saying that the level of cultural harmony between various combinations of cultures must always equal the same value, it's a preposterous assertion. I believe there are numerous paths one can take to reducing the various "isms" we have in our societies. OP has chosen the name and blame approach. I'm fine with that, provided it is based in fact. Is that a successful approach, we'll likely never know. Here's another approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw In this case we do have a bit of insight into the reactions of the "host culture": https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_immigrants_into_canada_this_is_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_... Seems generally pretty positive! I'm going to try to remember to look into what the general opinion in the physical community where these dudes live is, but then how do you know people are telling the truth? That's the benefit of anonymous forums, at least people tend to be more honest. I just thing we as a society are really not going about this in anywhere near an optimal manner, for no good reason.

mistermann 10y ago

It's culturally stereotypical, not racially stereotypical. > it's clearly applied to an entire race Clearly? How so? You likely think I am playing a game of semantics, but I genuinely think if we keep playing this game of trying to find reasons to be victims, things will never get better, even if that is what all parties want! The reason I brought up comedians is because they seem to allow normal people a view into this world, where we can admit that black people in the south eat a lot of fried chicken. Know why? Because it's cheap, and delicious! Do some racist rednecks still say things like that with an intent to cause harm? Yes, and what should we do? Laugh at them for using such an old, tired, irrelevant, pathetic joke of an attack. Because really, it's really nothing more than that, the rest of "what's there" is often purely in our minds. We're telling helpless teenagers that don't know any better over and over that a huge portion of the population hate them because of their race, and it is simply not true! We seem determined as a society that racism lives on forever, and it is really unfortunate. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgSQDQC0qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgSQDQC0qc What should New Zealander's do here, fire up the navy for a show of force off the coast of Sydney? Or should they crack a smile and say "good on ya mate"? Will we forever think of people who have a different color of skin than us...or actually, to be more precise, that have non-white skin, because that's what it's really about, isn't it, thinking that people who are non-white are "different" and must be handled with extreme caution. I reject that completely.

burkaman 10y ago
All I can say is that it is true. Look at this article, and please try to ignore the provocative headline, I just can't find a better presentation of the data: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-mo... You can explore the data yourself here: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&subjects=Blacks&years=2014&yrmax=2014&yrmin=1972 https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&... As you can see, 15% of white people think black people are more unintelligent than intelligent. 35% think they're more lazy than hardworking. 25% wouldn't want a relative to marry a black person. 20% wouldn't want to live in a half black neighborhood. And this is just people with conscious biases that they're willing to report on a survey. We can argue about what counts as "a huge portion", but these percentages represent tens of millions of people. There's so many ways to show that racism is still a huge deal in America, but it's really easy to think "I'm not racist, I've never seen anyone be racist, these people must be making it up". I doubt I'm going to convince you with this comment, but it's stereotypes all the way down. The idea that only old rednecks are racists is itself a harmful stereotype, because it simply is not true.
- mistermann 10y ago
  Thanks for that, it's a very interesting article. That's the type of thing we should be reading in the newspaper and sharing on Facebook and cordially discussing (as you and I are, I hope) so we can determine where we actually stand on this matter as a society. Race relations are very complex, it involves (imho) deep-seated biological cruft leftover from years of evolution, racist teachings in the home (like many other people, I grew up in a home of so-called "racists"), etc. If we are going to live in non-segregated societies, we just have to work through this together. I think a lot of those numbers from your article are just going to keep going down over time, partially as older people die off, and otherwise just as people realize, from being physically near people of different cultures on a regular basis, that yes in fact they are different (contrary to what the media and various other busybodies tell us), but it's just fine the vast majority of the time. And, sometimes it isn't - there is nothing saying that the level of cultural harmony between various combinations of cultures must always equal the same value, it's a preposterous assertion. I believe there are numerous paths one can take to reducing the various "isms" we have in our societies. OP has chosen the name and blame approach. I'm fine with that, provided it is based in fact. Is that a successful approach, we'll likely never know. Here's another approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw In this case we do have a bit of insight into the reactions of the "host culture": https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_immigrants_into_canada_this_is_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_... Seems generally pretty positive! I'm going to try to remember to look into what the general opinion in the physical community where these dudes live is, but then how do you know people are telling the truth? That's the benefit of anonymous forums, at least people tend to be more honest. I just thing we as a society are really not going about this in anywhere near an optimal manner, for no good reason.