8 ms·

I don't think a racist ever thought about themselves as racists. Racism is usually a notion of people having an explanation for why they behave towards another

by max_ 2y ago

I don't think a racist ever thought about themselves as racists. Racism is usually a notion of people having an explanation for why they behave towards another race. There are always explanations. I don't think there is any racist that doesn't have an explanation. For American slavery it was that "African Americans" are just animals, not human. So it made sense to use/teat them like donkeys or vermin. In Nazi Germany, the explanation was that Jews are veramin and so veramin needs to be exterminated. In South Africa it was a "scientific" theory they had called Holism [0] which basically described that everything should be kept in its place hence apartheid policies. In Gaza the explanation is religious i.e God have us land X, and this we need to cleanse the land of it's "invaders". Also, look at caste systems in India. They have explanations of why they do that. They don't see themselves as racist. The explanations still occur today using "statistics", "data", & "science" with stuff like IQ "research" & "race realism". "Racist" is something we project on people. But racists always think they actually have a Nobel or logical cause for thier activities. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution

echoangle 2y ago
What’s your definition of racism? White supremacists are certainly racist and would probably tell you that they are racist, too. That’s their whole message. Nazi Germany Leaders would probably have been ok with having been called racist, too. They were talking about being superior than other races all the time.
- max_ 2y ago
  I think a black man declaring all white people evil vampires is racist. But we seldom call oppressed minorities racist. My definition of racism is the application racial stereotypes to individuals & groups
  - b112 2y ago
    For me, it depends upon how the 'groups' part is applied. An example that seems sexist: women love shoes. However, this isn't sexist... it's simply statistically true. Where *isms come into play, where sexism occurs, is seeing the individual and then thinking "Ah, a woman... clearly she must love shoes". Applying group derived statistical fact to individuals is where racism, sexism occurs. Another example, black people in America show lower outcomes on IQ tests. There is a lot of debate as to why, whether it is genetic (an example, do Black people have less incidents of autism? Autism is often correlated with mental issues, but also conversely with higher test scores in some areas.) But really, it doesn't matter why. Whether it is genetic, whether it is cultural, or what. What matters is that we understand the group statistic exists, but that no matter what we do not simply apply such thought processes to the individual. After all, a few percentage in group testing has no basis for determining if the person in front of me is capable or not. I've met (as an example) some very unintelligent white people, and some very intelligent black people, a few percentage difference as a group is not relevant here. Yet if we pretend group differences don't exist, how can we possible try to fix it.. if it is cultural? Or worse, what if it is environmental, such as... poor nutrition which hurts brain development during youth? Such things can be fixed, yet if we pretend there is no difference, how can we try to fix it? So again, the primary must be to treat individuals as just that, and treat groups as just that, otherwise.. how are we being fair?
somenameforme 2y ago
To me racism has a pretty simple litmus test - would you treat an individual of another race, but in an otherwise identical background situation differently? If yes, then it's probably racist. If not, then it's probably not. So Tuskegee has some interesting backstory. It was inspired by a similar experiment that was carried out in Norway that followed the progression of untreated syphilis in thousands of people over decades. [1] That study provided extensive data and information on the progression of syphilis, but at the time it was believed that syphilis affected different races in different ways. And black Americans had (and still have) infection rates dramatically higher than other major groups. So this meant that studying this exact group could not only be overall most impactful on a population basis, but was also the least well understood group (as the Norwegian study presumably lacked much of anybody of African ancestry) and so the most most likely to yield novel/informative science. So if these individuals had otherwise been just another subgroup of whites (but one still had reason to think syphilis might affect them differently than e.g. Norwegians), would we still have carried out this experiment? It's impossible to say for certain, but I think the answer is probably yes. Not only was such experimentation already happening across the globe, including in relatively homogeneous societies, but there have been all sorts of other US government driven experiments on the population where white groups were just as readily experimented on like MKUltra [2], Operation Sea Spray [3], and so on endlessly. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0021968155901399 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002196... (note the date on the paper) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
- mandmandam 2y ago
  Did you ... Did you just try and. use MK Ultra and Operation Sea-Spray to claim the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist? :o Systemic racism in medical research cannot be justified by comparing it to other unethical experiments... Really would have thought that was obvious? Also, even the analogies are terribly flawed. The Oslo experiments involved retrospective examination of medical records and autopsies, not the withholding of treatment. And Tuskegee victims were not informed of the real nature of the study - a clear ethical violation which disproportionately targeted a vulnerable racial group.
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Probably like 2/3 of the people I know that I would consider to be racist or hold racist beliefs would call themselves racist, or at least say that they have some racist beliefs. Probably half the other 3rd are predominantly those that are racist specifically toward white people. When you create a space where people can be sincere, you would be surprised how self-aware they can be. At least I am.
- xenadu02 2y ago
  I take that as part of the point they were making: white supremecists, for example, claim white people are superior. Their actions are logical in some sense if you accept their premises that a) race is a useful classification akin to species and b) there is some inherent difference between races. To be clear personally I think the science has definitively debunked not only supremacy of any race but even race as a concept which is really all about skin tone and facial features... many people's DNA doesn't even match their supposed "race" because the categorization of race is akin to color of coat in dogs: a very superficial trait useful as a visual descriptor but not useful for segmenting individuals into groups. Not to mention the whole story of homosapiens is freeing us from biological evolution. The idea that someone's biology inherently limits their worth or makes them not an equal member of humanity is in some sense the most perverse denial of our very nature.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    I think when trying to debate something, the idea should be to try to convince the other person. That sounds stupidly obvious, but it's really not. Imagine you're debating somebody over something and resorted to an argument over the exact meaning of terms that, to people who might not share your worldview, would be completely obvious. It's unlikely you'd really be persuading them of anything. I think the more salient point is that even if you assume clear racial distinctions, and even substantial racial differences, that still does not justify any sort of racial ideology. The movie Gattaca works as an oddly perfect metaphor for racial ideologies and its problems. Gattaca was about genetics, but it's not a coincidence that it fits perfectly with race, as it's literally the exact same problem. Just because somebody is a part of a group with some sort of a negative correlation, does not mean that person will inherently let that trait dominate them. Incidentally the reverse is also true - just because somebody may e.g. have a high IQ does not mean they will inherently be knowledgeable or wise. It's okay to consider group tendencies, but at the end of the day individuals are able to rise far above or fall far below their "expectation", and so it's important to judge each person not by the makeup of their genetics, but by the content of their character.

by max_ 2y ago

echoangle 2y ago

What’s your definition of racism? White supremacists are certainly racist and would probably tell you that they are racist, too. That’s their whole message. Nazi Germany Leaders would probably have been ok with having been called racist, too. They were talking about being superior than other races all the time.

max_ 2y ago
I think a black man declaring all white people evil vampires is racist. But we seldom call oppressed minorities racist. My definition of racism is the application racial stereotypes to individuals & groups
- b112 2y ago
  For me, it depends upon how the 'groups' part is applied. An example that seems sexist: women love shoes. However, this isn't sexist... it's simply statistically true. Where *isms come into play, where sexism occurs, is seeing the individual and then thinking "Ah, a woman... clearly she must love shoes". Applying group derived statistical fact to individuals is where racism, sexism occurs. Another example, black people in America show lower outcomes on IQ tests. There is a lot of debate as to why, whether it is genetic (an example, do Black people have less incidents of autism? Autism is often correlated with mental issues, but also conversely with higher test scores in some areas.) But really, it doesn't matter why. Whether it is genetic, whether it is cultural, or what. What matters is that we understand the group statistic exists, but that no matter what we do not simply apply such thought processes to the individual. After all, a few percentage in group testing has no basis for determining if the person in front of me is capable or not. I've met (as an example) some very unintelligent white people, and some very intelligent black people, a few percentage difference as a group is not relevant here. Yet if we pretend group differences don't exist, how can we possible try to fix it.. if it is cultural? Or worse, what if it is environmental, such as... poor nutrition which hurts brain development during youth? Such things can be fixed, yet if we pretend there is no difference, how can we try to fix it? So again, the primary must be to treat individuals as just that, and treat groups as just that, otherwise.. how are we being fair?

somenameforme 2y ago

To me racism has a pretty simple litmus test - would you treat an individual of another race, but in an otherwise identical background situation differently? If yes, then it's probably racist. If not, then it's probably not. So Tuskegee has some interesting backstory. It was inspired by a similar experiment that was carried out in Norway that followed the progression of untreated syphilis in thousands of people over decades. [1] That study provided extensive data and information on the progression of syphilis, but at the time it was believed that syphilis affected different races in different ways. And black Americans had (and still have) infection rates dramatically higher than other major groups. So this meant that studying this exact group could not only be overall most impactful on a population basis, but was also the least well understood group (as the Norwegian study presumably lacked much of anybody of African ancestry) and so the most most likely to yield novel/informative science. So if these individuals had otherwise been just another subgroup of whites (but one still had reason to think syphilis might affect them differently than e.g. Norwegians), would we still have carried out this experiment? It's impossible to say for certain, but I think the answer is probably yes. Not only was such experimentation already happening across the globe, including in relatively homogeneous societies, but there have been all sorts of other US government driven experiments on the population where white groups were just as readily experimented on like MKUltra [2], Operation Sea Spray [3], and so on endlessly. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0021968155901399 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002196... (note the date on the paper) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

mandmandam 2y ago
Did you ... Did you just try and. use MK Ultra and Operation Sea-Spray to claim the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist? :o Systemic racism in medical research cannot be justified by comparing it to other unethical experiments... Really would have thought that was obvious? Also, even the analogies are terribly flawed. The Oslo experiments involved retrospective examination of medical records and autopsies, not the withholding of treatment. And Tuskegee victims were not informed of the real nature of the study - a clear ethical violation which disproportionately targeted a vulnerable racial group.

SuperNinKenDo 2y ago

Probably like 2/3 of the people I know that I would consider to be racist or hold racist beliefs would call themselves racist, or at least say that they have some racist beliefs. Probably half the other 3rd are predominantly those that are racist specifically toward white people. When you create a space where people can be sincere, you would be surprised how self-aware they can be. At least I am.

xenadu02 2y ago
I take that as part of the point they were making: white supremecists, for example, claim white people are superior. Their actions are logical in some sense if you accept their premises that a) race is a useful classification akin to species and b) there is some inherent difference between races. To be clear personally I think the science has definitively debunked not only supremacy of any race but even race as a concept which is really all about skin tone and facial features... many people's DNA doesn't even match their supposed "race" because the categorization of race is akin to color of coat in dogs: a very superficial trait useful as a visual descriptor but not useful for segmenting individuals into groups. Not to mention the whole story of homosapiens is freeing us from biological evolution. The idea that someone's biology inherently limits their worth or makes them not an equal member of humanity is in some sense the most perverse denial of our very nature.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I think when trying to debate something, the idea should be to try to convince the other person. That sounds stupidly obvious, but it's really not. Imagine you're debating somebody over something and resorted to an argument over the exact meaning of terms that, to people who might not share your worldview, would be completely obvious. It's unlikely you'd really be persuading them of anything. I think the more salient point is that even if you assume clear racial distinctions, and even substantial racial differences, that still does not justify any sort of racial ideology. The movie Gattaca works as an oddly perfect metaphor for racial ideologies and its problems. Gattaca was about genetics, but it's not a coincidence that it fits perfectly with race, as it's literally the exact same problem. Just because somebody is a part of a group with some sort of a negative correlation, does not mean that person will inherently let that trait dominate them. Incidentally the reverse is also true - just because somebody may e.g. have a high IQ does not mean they will inherently be knowledgeable or wise. It's okay to consider group tendencies, but at the end of the day individuals are able to rise far above or fall far below their "expectation", and so it's important to judge each person not by the makeup of their genetics, but by the content of their character.