12 ms·

> Not to mention, a large majority of the US population is xenophobic and/or racist. Prove it. I'm well-travelled (within and outside the US) and I disagree e

by mjolk 10y ago

> Not to mention, a large majority of the US population is xenophobic and/or racist. Prove it. I'm well-travelled (within and outside the US) and I disagree entirely. Stop spewing libel about the American pubic.

mgkimsal 10y ago
> I'm well-travelled You're in the minority of US citizens. Doesn't necessarily prove the earlier point, but your rebuttal, qualifying yourself as "well-travelled", explicitly makes your perspective that of a minority's view. How is it "libel" to label a majority of a population something? If our regulations are a reflection of the population's positions (arguably, they are), then we're definitely afraid of people from other countries.
- tombrossman 10y ago
  > Doesn't necessarily prove the earlier point, but your rebuttal, qualifying yourself as "well-travelled", explicitly makes your perspective that of a minority's view. Look at it this way: 'mjolk' could be well travelled within the United States and have a very good idea of Americans sentiments. Therefore (s)he could be confidently expressing a true statement. Also, being a minority voice is not an indicator of how truthful or accurate someone is. When people believed the Earth was flat, were the minority of thinkers who decided it was round any less credible? You are right about the word libel though, it's the wrong word in this instance. I can't think of a better substitute better than 'generalizing' though.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    I picked "libel" because I consider it damaging to the reputation of the US to be painted as categorically racist/xenophobic. For what it's worth, I wasn't in love with the word choice, but I've not had a recent exchange in which one side is shouting "racist" and something productive come about -- and I should be working :)
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    > Look at it this way: 'mjolk' could be well travelled within the United States and have a very good idea of Americans sentiments. fair point - hadn't considered that angle. And yes, being in the minority doesn't necessarily make you right or wrong. Being "well-travelled" still strikes me as being tied in with a degree of wealth/power/autonomy that the average person doesn't have, and it may be harder to truly understand the 'average' citizen when you're in a position to travel (internally and internationally?), which most people aren't. Much like I think it's pretty hard for most multi-millionaires (especially 2nd and 3rd generational ones) to represent my interests or understand my real concerns in elected offices.
- mjolk 10y ago
  > You're in the minority of US citizens. Oh come off it -- I said within and outside of the US as a suggestion that I've met many people and that my view isn't representative of a 10km radius. Americans even have other cultures built into their language and core identities (self-identifying as Irish-American, Italian-American, Native American, African-American). If you have a serious suggestion for how to improve something, make that suggestion and don't try to legitimize it by spewing insults as a smoke screen for a half=baked thesis. > How is it "libel" to label a majority of a population something? Because you're peddling an offensive fiction. > If our regulations are a reflection of the population's positions (arguably, they are), then we're definitely afraid of people from other countries. You can start by proving this. How are "we definitely afraid"?
  - graycat 10y ago
    Recently on Hannity, Newt Gingrich just calmly tossed off "politics is sublimated civil war" or some such. Well, the last campagn looked tough, maybe like a case of civil war but rarely actually significantly physically violent -- e.g., the two sides were not actually firing muskets at each other. But somehow there were a lot of accusations of racism, sexism, ..., etc. without references, details, rational support, evidence, examples, etc. It was as if the speaker was just trying to please, get the support (in the civil war) of people who would agree, for whatever reason. Then the speaker was willing to offend people who wanted evidence or disagreed. So, the campaign went. Now people are still passing out various, broad and/or narrow, accusations of racism, etc. without evidence, references, examples, etc. Okay, I'll chip in an example: Not too difficult to find is http://spectator.org/64643_when-trump-fought-racists/ http://spectator.org/64643_when-trump-fought-racists/ which claims to be from November 13, 2015, 9:00 am on how some years ago Trump worked hard in the wealthy area Palm Beach, FL to eliminate racism in the private clubs. So, apparently the situation had long been for rich WASPs or some such and others need not apply. In the fight Trump opened his club, and before he was done he filed a lawsuit. According to the article, basically he won; at least on the surface, and, at least in public policy statements or some such, now all the clubs in Palm Beach admit while ignoring race. So, that's some evidence that Trump fought racism. My point: In the campaign such evidence was mostly ignored. So, there were lots of accusations of racism, etc., but without any serious evidence. The US knows very well what good evidence is. We use only good information, evidence, etc. in mechanical engineering of airplanes, ships, buildings, bridges, etc., in electrical and electronic engineering, in computer science, e.g., a proof that heap sort runs in O( n ln(n) ), in law, medicine, science, military technology, etc. But in the civil war of politics, somehow the accusations go without evidence. So, with the low level of evidence, the accusations grow wilder. I shut out such accusations and occasionally posted blog and feedback entries and wrote e-mail letters of protest at the lack of evidence. I tried to push back; I saw no evidence of success. But I remain surprised at the number of people who apparently believe the commonly given accusations, give no evidence, and apparently have seen no evidence. The good news is that accusations with no evidence should fly about like a wet paper airplane. The bad news is that apparently too many people are quite prepared to spout and/or believe really bad accusations with no significant evidence at all.
- panzagl 10y ago
  Prove that the average US citizen is more xenophobic and racist than any the average citizen of any other country then. I think you'll find the opposite. The US deals with these issues in the open, something Europe is only now being forced to do.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    It doesn't matter if the US is more or less xenophobic than someone else. It matters that the the US is xenophobic. Just because other countries are indeed racist doesn't make it OK for the US to be.
CaptSpify 10y ago
The US is statistically racist: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-an... That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more. Things are getting better, but we are far from done with this fight. Anecdotally: I've lived on the west-coast, and the midwest/south. In both areas I have seen blatant racism take place both culturally by individuals, and systematically by police. As an American, I ashamedly disagree that this is at all libel.
- mjolk 10y ago
  Huffington Post is garbage. That link is full of correlation or data points and then ascribing racism.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    > That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more.
- vaadu 10y ago
  The Huffington Post, really? They are nothing more that DNC staffers with bylines.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    > That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more.
- ftrflyr 10y ago
  +1 For Huffington Post nonsense. That is your first problem. Stop reading that garbage.
  - 10y ago
odbol 10y ago
You don't need to travel far to encounter racism in the U.S. Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day. My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." I've seen people of color get discriminated against in the workplace. My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist. But anecdotes are not proof. Here's hard data on racism in the U.S.: - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop-and-frisk-by-the-numbers/#59a65fe0fb47 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop... ) - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-carolina-voting-rights-law/493649/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca... ) I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen.
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  I used to be in the "But I'm not racist and most of my friends aren't, so most people shouldn't be racist, right?" camp. Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. We've got a long way to go.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. Which is why I don't use Facebook and don't have many friends. Most Americans are huge racists and bigots.
- pm24601 10y ago
  The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I put myself in social situations as much as possible with people of other races and deal with the vague uncomfortableness. I probably still am racist - but at least I am pushing myself.
diego_moita 10y ago
> Prove it. Latin american here. From our perspective, the last presidential election is all the evidence we need. But, in all truth, many Latin American countries are even more racist than the US.
- mjolk 10y ago
  What specifically was racist in the US presidential election? Keep in mind that the parent comment stated "a large majority of the US population is xenophobic and/or racist".
  - zardeh 10y ago
    Many Americans voted for a candidate who has catered racist supporters and put forth a variety of xenophobic policies and made even more statements in that regard. As a simple example, our current president campaigned on a wall to keep out "rapist" Mexicans and to prevent anyone who was Muslim from entering the country because they were terrorists. Those are both explicitly xenophobic statements. They "showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries". Still, about 60 million people voted for him, which means that to those 60 million, either his statements were a good thing, or they were minor enough downsides as to be ignored.
    - refurb 10y ago
      Jesus Christ. The President said that people from Mexico have come to the US and committed crimes including rape. Is that untrue? If it is true, should we be letting them in? He also said that he would block any immigration from Muslim countries until those people could be fully vetted. You only need to look at the Paris, German and UK attacks to see the consequences of not doing that. Neither of those sound all that unreasonable to me.
      - viraptor 10y ago
        That's not what he said though. Specific quote: (you can find many sources) > They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people. Which is a much stronger claim than what you wrote. > Is that untrue? If it is true, should we be letting them in? It's true that some people moved from country X to country Y and committed crime Z, for almost any chosen X, Y, Z. Yes, US should be letting people in. Just as other countries should be letting Americans in. We don't have ability to read minds and predict the future. The best alternative you have is past statistics and unless you've got statistics that show rape is a really disproportionate between country X and the US, (and even that needs a lot of context besides numbers) this claim is just repeating bad stereotypes. Or in case you want a specific example that works the other way: "Americans are child murderers (just look at school shootings) and drug abusers (look at number of jailed for drugs) and some, I assume, are good people. Other countries shouldn't let Americans in if they don't want those problems."
herbst 10y ago
Never been to the U.S. but in my travels it turned out americans are pretty racist and xenophobic. Coming from Switzerland where i thought people are racist i was kind of shocked

by mjolk 10y ago

mgkimsal 10y ago

> I'm well-travelled You're in the minority of US citizens. Doesn't necessarily prove the earlier point, but your rebuttal, qualifying yourself as "well-travelled", explicitly makes your perspective that of a minority's view. How is it "libel" to label a majority of a population something? If our regulations are a reflection of the population's positions (arguably, they are), then we're definitely afraid of people from other countries.

tombrossman 10y ago
> Doesn't necessarily prove the earlier point, but your rebuttal, qualifying yourself as "well-travelled", explicitly makes your perspective that of a minority's view. Look at it this way: 'mjolk' could be well travelled within the United States and have a very good idea of Americans sentiments. Therefore (s)he could be confidently expressing a true statement. Also, being a minority voice is not an indicator of how truthful or accurate someone is. When people believed the Earth was flat, were the minority of thinkers who decided it was round any less credible? You are right about the word libel though, it's the wrong word in this instance. I can't think of a better substitute better than 'generalizing' though.
- mjolk 10y ago
  I picked "libel" because I consider it damaging to the reputation of the US to be painted as categorically racist/xenophobic. For what it's worth, I wasn't in love with the word choice, but I've not had a recent exchange in which one side is shouting "racist" and something productive come about -- and I should be working :)
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  > Look at it this way: 'mjolk' could be well travelled within the United States and have a very good idea of Americans sentiments. fair point - hadn't considered that angle. And yes, being in the minority doesn't necessarily make you right or wrong. Being "well-travelled" still strikes me as being tied in with a degree of wealth/power/autonomy that the average person doesn't have, and it may be harder to truly understand the 'average' citizen when you're in a position to travel (internally and internationally?), which most people aren't. Much like I think it's pretty hard for most multi-millionaires (especially 2nd and 3rd generational ones) to represent my interests or understand my real concerns in elected offices.
mjolk 10y ago
> You're in the minority of US citizens. Oh come off it -- I said within and outside of the US as a suggestion that I've met many people and that my view isn't representative of a 10km radius. Americans even have other cultures built into their language and core identities (self-identifying as Irish-American, Italian-American, Native American, African-American). If you have a serious suggestion for how to improve something, make that suggestion and don't try to legitimize it by spewing insults as a smoke screen for a half=baked thesis. > How is it "libel" to label a majority of a population something? Because you're peddling an offensive fiction. > If our regulations are a reflection of the population's positions (arguably, they are), then we're definitely afraid of people from other countries. You can start by proving this. How are "we definitely afraid"?
- graycat 10y ago
  Recently on Hannity, Newt Gingrich just calmly tossed off "politics is sublimated civil war" or some such. Well, the last campagn looked tough, maybe like a case of civil war but rarely actually significantly physically violent -- e.g., the two sides were not actually firing muskets at each other. But somehow there were a lot of accusations of racism, sexism, ..., etc. without references, details, rational support, evidence, examples, etc. It was as if the speaker was just trying to please, get the support (in the civil war) of people who would agree, for whatever reason. Then the speaker was willing to offend people who wanted evidence or disagreed. So, the campaign went. Now people are still passing out various, broad and/or narrow, accusations of racism, etc. without evidence, references, examples, etc. Okay, I'll chip in an example: Not too difficult to find is http://spectator.org/64643_when-trump-fought-racists/ http://spectator.org/64643_when-trump-fought-racists/ which claims to be from November 13, 2015, 9:00 am on how some years ago Trump worked hard in the wealthy area Palm Beach, FL to eliminate racism in the private clubs. So, apparently the situation had long been for rich WASPs or some such and others need not apply. In the fight Trump opened his club, and before he was done he filed a lawsuit. According to the article, basically he won; at least on the surface, and, at least in public policy statements or some such, now all the clubs in Palm Beach admit while ignoring race. So, that's some evidence that Trump fought racism. My point: In the campaign such evidence was mostly ignored. So, there were lots of accusations of racism, etc., but without any serious evidence. The US knows very well what good evidence is. We use only good information, evidence, etc. in mechanical engineering of airplanes, ships, buildings, bridges, etc., in electrical and electronic engineering, in computer science, e.g., a proof that heap sort runs in O( n ln(n) ), in law, medicine, science, military technology, etc. But in the civil war of politics, somehow the accusations go without evidence. So, with the low level of evidence, the accusations grow wilder. I shut out such accusations and occasionally posted blog and feedback entries and wrote e-mail letters of protest at the lack of evidence. I tried to push back; I saw no evidence of success. But I remain surprised at the number of people who apparently believe the commonly given accusations, give no evidence, and apparently have seen no evidence. The good news is that accusations with no evidence should fly about like a wet paper airplane. The bad news is that apparently too many people are quite prepared to spout and/or believe really bad accusations with no significant evidence at all.
panzagl 10y ago
Prove that the average US citizen is more xenophobic and racist than any the average citizen of any other country then. I think you'll find the opposite. The US deals with these issues in the open, something Europe is only now being forced to do.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  It doesn't matter if the US is more or less xenophobic than someone else. It matters that the the US is xenophobic. Just because other countries are indeed racist doesn't make it OK for the US to be.

CaptSpify 10y ago

The US is statistically racist: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-an... That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more. Things are getting better, but we are far from done with this fight. Anecdotally: I've lived on the west-coast, and the midwest/south. In both areas I have seen blatant racism take place both culturally by individuals, and systematically by police. As an American, I ashamedly disagree that this is at all libel.

mjolk 10y ago
Huffington Post is garbage. That link is full of correlation or data points and then ascribing racism.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more.
vaadu 10y ago
The Huffington Post, really? They are nothing more that DNC staffers with bylines.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > That's just the first link I found of ddg. It's plenty easy to find more.
ftrflyr 10y ago
+1 For Huffington Post nonsense. That is your first problem. Stop reading that garbage.
- 10y ago

odbol 10y ago

You don't need to travel far to encounter racism in the U.S. Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day. My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." I've seen people of color get discriminated against in the workplace. My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist. But anecdotes are not proof. Here's hard data on racism in the U.S.: - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop-and-frisk-by-the-numbers/#59a65fe0fb47 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop... ) - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-carolina-voting-rights-law/493649/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca... ) I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen.

ccvannorman 10y ago
I used to be in the "But I'm not racist and most of my friends aren't, so most people shouldn't be racist, right?" camp. Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. We've got a long way to go.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. Which is why I don't use Facebook and don't have many friends. Most Americans are huge racists and bigots.
pm24601 10y ago
The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I put myself in social situations as much as possible with people of other races and deal with the vague uncomfortableness. I probably still am racist - but at least I am pushing myself.

diego_moita 10y ago

> Prove it. Latin american here. From our perspective, the last presidential election is all the evidence we need. But, in all truth, many Latin American countries are even more racist than the US.

mjolk 10y ago
What specifically was racist in the US presidential election? Keep in mind that the parent comment stated "a large majority of the US population is xenophobic and/or racist".
- zardeh 10y ago
  Many Americans voted for a candidate who has catered racist supporters and put forth a variety of xenophobic policies and made even more statements in that regard. As a simple example, our current president campaigned on a wall to keep out "rapist" Mexicans and to prevent anyone who was Muslim from entering the country because they were terrorists. Those are both explicitly xenophobic statements. They "showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries". Still, about 60 million people voted for him, which means that to those 60 million, either his statements were a good thing, or they were minor enough downsides as to be ignored.
  - refurb 10y ago
    Jesus Christ. The President said that people from Mexico have come to the US and committed crimes including rape. Is that untrue? If it is true, should we be letting them in? He also said that he would block any immigration from Muslim countries until those people could be fully vetted. You only need to look at the Paris, German and UK attacks to see the consequences of not doing that. Neither of those sound all that unreasonable to me.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      That's not what he said though. Specific quote: (you can find many sources) > They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people. Which is a much stronger claim than what you wrote. > Is that untrue? If it is true, should we be letting them in? It's true that some people moved from country X to country Y and committed crime Z, for almost any chosen X, Y, Z. Yes, US should be letting people in. Just as other countries should be letting Americans in. We don't have ability to read minds and predict the future. The best alternative you have is past statistics and unless you've got statistics that show rape is a really disproportionate between country X and the US, (and even that needs a lot of context besides numbers) this claim is just repeating bad stereotypes. Or in case you want a specific example that works the other way: "Americans are child murderers (just look at school shootings) and drug abusers (look at number of jailed for drugs) and some, I assume, are good people. Other countries shouldn't let Americans in if they don't want those problems."

herbst 10y ago

Never been to the U.S. but in my travels it turned out americans are pretty racist and xenophobic. Coming from Switzerland where i thought people are racist i was kind of shocked