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The talk on the Mario KKK thread made me think of this, but i felt it deserved a new topic.

Racism is a very funny thing (funny as in curious) let me explain. When I was a little kid growing up in a rather poor section of the upper southern united states I was taught from a very young age that some people were simply better then other people, and that skin color was on of the best ways to tell what the pecking order was.

Now keep in mind I was a little kid and every adult I knew was telling me this stuff, so of course I thought it was true.

Once while out to eat with my parents, I made a whispered commented about the ‘nigger’ that was in line in front of us. I got in a lot of trouble for that. Not because I had completely disrespected a perfect stranger based on his skin tone, but because I had lowered my voice to say it.

I stopped talking to a kid I hung out with in grade school because I found out his dad was black.

A cousin of mine started dating a black man and it tore my family all apart, that was over 10 years ago and there are still fights over it.

I was always taught how the KKK was sort of like a team of super heroes who helped protect our community. In high school, the kids that got hooked up w/ the klan had just as much pull as the jocks and cheerleaders.

Can you imagine how confused I was when I started to realize how full of shit our entire community was?

Later on in high school, and after I graduated I made friends with the only black kid at school. But I was asked not to let him come to my house (I lived with a GF at this time) because if her family found out a black man was at our house she’d get in trouble.

Now things like hate crimes and discrimination really bother me, because I can remember how it felt to “know” that it was ok to hurt someone because of something as dumb as their skin color.

And don’t even get me started on what we thought about homosexuals.

I’m not proud of my past, and I think it was awful of all those people who would make a little kid think like that. But at least I figured out how wrong it was and got away from it. Not many others did.

So, that is my story. Anyone else got anything to share.

Things you’ve seen, done, felt, or thought?

-halo

Skin color means nothing, anyone whos says otherwise is an idiot or a liar.

What decides power is material wealth; always has been.

There are those who make money, those who earn money, those who get shitloads of money for owning huge corperations, and people who can't keep two dimes in their pocket to save thier lives.

the last ones are the worst, in my oppinion.

Sure, the rich fucks at the top are often full of themselves and are only compassionate when it serves their purposes (charity donations are tax deductable, after all.), but the ones at the bottom are worse.

When you're at the bottom, You can either get down on your knees, knaw on the Government cheese they issue you, all the while whimpering about how "It's not fair! they have so much money, they won't let me make any of my own. If only I could find work. If only they'd give me more money! it's not fair!", or you could stand up, and start earning money for yourself.

What really pisses me off about the actual poor is that they don't do anything. they just sit in their governmentally funded homes, whining about how they're being kept down by "The Man." No, The man ain't the one keeping you down, it's you, the teen mother who purposely gets herself knocked-up for the extra wlfare.

The fact that they're poor doesn't bother me, it's the fact that they choose to be poor, while whining about it. it makes me sick. and don't give me "BUT MOST OF THEM CAN'T WORK BECAUSE THEY HAVE DISABILITIES."

Bullshit. the word "Disability" is used far too liberally in this country.

ADD is not a "Learning Disability." Being short one leg is not a "Disability." Having the volume of a Yugo and twice the mass is not a god-damned "disability." If you have a hand, half a brain, and a beating heart, you're useful, and you should do something. preferrably something you like. You should also learn a trade. a good trade, that you enjoy. the more trades you learn the better. Smiths are a good choice, masonry is another. if you can get on the good side of some you can learn as an apprentice.


spoiled kids who inherit empires run them into the ground, spineless wards go nowhere, only those who have the determination, the know-how, and the foresight get ahead. those who only have the know-how and foresight are payd to help fools get ahead.


I guess my point is, attitude, education, and observation decides who's at the top far more often than luck or genetics. Money is how this is gauged.

I say that what's acceptable changes quickly in big cities and stuff because it's fashionable to believe in the beliefs of the times, whereas people in the boonies tend to be a lot more stuck in the past.

Wow, Major, I dig how you took an attempt at serious discussion of racism, and turned it into a tirade against the poor. No, really, that is so amazingly cool...

Man, if only I had realized before that all one needs to do is stand up and get a job in order to find work...wow. You, sir, have changed my life. No more shall I apply for job after job, hoping that ONE of them will take pity upon me and hire me. No! I'll just walk into some random business, and say "I AM HERE FOR A JOB! GIVE ME ONE! I WISH TO WORK!" And they will, doubtless, happily oblige me, non?

Appolonius Christ, man! Why was it not so clear before?! An oversaturated job market and crumbling economy has NOTHING to do with an inability to find work! It was always the POOR PEOPLE who were at fault! Yes! Because EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM is a poor, self-righteous bottom-feeder, who wants nothing more than a handout! AMAZING! You, sir, are a GENIUS!

And you know, I bet all those people who get the shit beat out of them for the color of their skin agree! It's not that they're BLACK, but that they're POOR! BY CHOICE, no less! Yes, racism is gone, and for good! In fact, it was never REALLY racism that was the problem! No! It was those fucking POOR PEOPLE! I mean, if they didn't WANT to be poor, they would have MONEY, wouldn't they?!

Major, I'm sorry but I disagree with what you were saying about the poor. It is horribly obvious that you are not or have ever been, poor.

1. The poor dont choose to be poor.
2. The poor dont do anything to help themselves?, please do not stereotype all poor people.
3. If it were that easy to lift yourself out of poverty, there would be no poor people in america.
4. There are other factors at work here than the self esteem/determination/lazyness of the poor. Bigger factors. Economic factors, educational factors, logistical factors, technical factors even geographical factors (If there are no suitable jobs availible where you live, you have no means of transport, there are no jobcenters nearby etc.) and so on and so forth.
5. Instead of looking at a "teen mother who purposely gets herself knocked-up for the extra welfare" in anger. Why not consider WHY this young adult is so desperate for money she gets herself pregnant. If someone spoke to her and educated her as to what her options in life were, helped her apply for a job, helped her obtain training etc, perhaps she would not need to get herself pregnant for some extra cash. I actually think its extremely sad that someone would do that. 7 tenths of the problem is education. I dont mean mathematics and science (although they are important) I mean about society and the way it works.
6. Since when was being short one leg not a disability?! Godammit if thats not a disability I dont know what is.

By the way, as long as there are different races, there will be racism. I am not racist, nor have I ever been. I dont like racist people. The FBI infiltrated and destroyed the black panthers, why the hell couldnt they do the same to the KKK?

By the way, as long as there are different races, there will be racism. I am not racist, nor have I ever been. I dont like racist people. The FBI infiltrated and destroyed the black panthers, why the hell couldnt they do the same to the KKK?

Because the FBI is predominantly white. Nurrr.

Look at the current immigration "debate" in the USA. Bill O'Reilly referred to the influx of immigrants as the "browning of America."

Closer to home, these are the three rules that Dad says I have to live by to not be thrown out of my home:

1) Don't drive drunk.
2) Don't get a girl pregnant.
3) Never, ever, ever, ever bring home a nigger girl.

Mom, who pretends to be so tolerant, said of this, "well, while I don't agree with how your father worded it, I'd rather not have any mulatto grandbabies."

Unfortunately, right now that's the only option I have for keeping a roof over my head. I can't stay at Christine's, and none of my relatives are close enough.

Curiously, with all the racist shit I've heard from my parents, I'm not really racist. I mean, okay, the black guy across the hall kind of scares me, but more because I get to overhear him say things like, "I'm gonna cut the fucker if he doesn't have my fucking money" and "Dude, I fucked her up the ass until she bled!" every single fucking day. It doesn't matter that he's black, if I heard that sort of thing coming from a white guy I'd be just as freaked out.

yeah poverty is a bitch, and social education is a big thing.

Yeah i got no pitty of the 17 year old drop out mother. Not because her life is screwed up, that is her problem not mine. But i worry about her baby. what kind of future is that kid going to have. Is his/her mom going to talk to her about staying in school or keeping away from drugs? Is she going to have any money put away when the kid gets old enough to do to college? Perhaps. But the majority of kids born into poverty like that, will remain in poverty like that. Just like how when i was growing up, i thought that Racisim was normal because that is all i saw, these kids are going to grow up thinking that a career flipping burgers at Rally's is normal.

LOL the last x-mas i had with my dads family i felt like a god, i sat in the home of my Bible thumping, Jesus loving, good church going southernern family; dressed in black with my hair back in a pony tail with a 5 pointed star on my necklace. it was great. then my younger cousin walked in the Black Girl he'd met at colledge. You could have heard a pin drop. I was so upstaged.

-halo

While visiting my aunt in Vancouver, my family went out for dim sum. While we were sitting in a large, fully packed restaurant in the middle of Chinatown, my grandmother commented, "You know, soon there won't be any white people left in Vancouver at all."
There was a short, highly uncomfortable silence, broken by my aunt quickly saying, "So who wants red bean dumplings?"

Sure, the rich fucks at the top are often full of themselves and are only compassionate when it serves their purposes (charity donations are tax deductable, after all.), but the ones at the bottom are worse.

Um, maybe because when you're (not you specifically, but a hypothetical "you" for purposes of grammatical simplification) part of a tiny portion of the population that controls 90% of the resources, it is in your interest to encourage the rest to fight each other over the remaining 10% with enough rancor that they won't look at you. And given who makes the policy, makes the decisions about schools, and who controls what images are in the media, it kinda makes you go hmm.....

Doesn't have to be a conspiracy at this point, doesn't have to be conscious, it's so ingrained in the culture, but I don't think that elite decision makers are going to be inclinecd to try that hard (whether consciously or unconsciously) to get rid of something that keeps people from being mad at them.

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

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As for the rest of the social Darwinist bullshit, I'm not even going to dignify it with a reply.

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As for "because the FBI is mostly white," wouldn't they have an easier time fitting in then?

Yes, my response to that point was inded the lame joke that it looked like.

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As for race, one of the things that most people don't understand is that race is not a biological category, it's a social category.

There is no line that you can draw, in coloration, in hair form, in facial features, or anything, and say "On this side of the line, you are in this racial category, and on that side, you're in that racial category." There just isn't. People come in all different shades of brown.

Traits that we associate with "racial" categories are each in their own region, related to some general regions. These regions aren't totally lined up with each other, so you're going to get a different range of areas depending on which traits you pick.

Like sickle cell anemia. Common in parts of Africa, also common in parts of the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, that area.

I mean, going by the stereotypical image of what an African looks like: If it's skin color, then some people from India are "Black" and either a lot of people the US categorizes as "Black" wouldn't be "Black" or, if we included all of the "Black" by US rules people, everyone would be. If it's nose shape, than the Inuit are "Black." And so on and so forth.

And not everyone from Africa, even if anyone were pure anything, which nobody is or has been for an extremely long time, has all of the traits because each trait has its region, based on what aspect of the climate its possessors are better at dealing with. (there's a guy named C. Loring Brace that you should check out if you're interested in that.)

And then thnk that Egyptians and Morroccans are Africans too, but most people looking at them would put them in the "Arab" category.

There is variation in the human species, it's true, but it is not discrete, and it is not consistent.

And everybody's everything anyway; I love using my SO as an example. Brown hair, gi-normous brown eyes, brown skin, I think he looks a bit like Brandon Lee but he's maybe a little darker. I like trying to get people to guess what "race" he is, where his known ancestors come from.

As far as anyone knows, he's Swedish, Dutch, and Scots-Irish. 100% North European, but he looks like a tall Latino (diet, btw, plays a major role in height; there's a genetic influence, but diet has a lot to do with it---diet during childhood, of course; once you stop growing, you're out of luck )

The way that race is defined varies from culture to culture. In Louisiana, one woman found out from her voting record that she was "Black," because she had a known (to the state of Louisiana, but not to her) "Black" ancestor.

In Brazil, by some accounts, you can wake up and be in a different "racial" category because it's humid and your hair is curlier that day, or you got a suntan, or any number of things. They have, by some accounts (like everything, anthropologists don't all agree about this), I forget exactly, but over a thousand, categories.

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Now, none of this should be taken to mean that race isn't a social reality, or that it means racism doesn't exist, or isnt' an issue anymore, or shouldn't be addressed.

Racism still matters and still does harm, and just because the category into which you are being placed in order to be discriminated against doesn't make any damned sense, that doesn't mean that you aren't being discriminated against. I mean, before we established that the categories didn't make any damned sense, we already knew that the discrimination didn't.

I mean, we already knew that racism was bullshit. Now, more and more research is telling us that it's bullshit on top of bullshit, but that bullshit can and does still hurt people.

I'm no racist, but I don't approve of bending over backwards just to accommodate a sudden wave of new people either. Instead of having bilingual signs all over the place just so hispanic people can find stuff, why don't we just have easily avialable English education instead? It feels too much like American culture is being anally raped by Hispanic culture. At no other point in history has an entire wave of immigrants induced such a radical change.

I don't agree with how immigrants were treated in the old days either, but there's gotta be a better cultural transition system put in place.

At no other point in history

BULLSHIT. Even laying aside the fact that a few hundred years ago, there were some pretty radical changes in the Americas. Like their being called the Americas.

Even laying aside that fact for a moment, that is still a huge, steaming load of bullshit, easily identified by anyone who has ever studied American history.

Ever been to San Francisco? Ever seen the street signs in Chinatown?

As for "forced bilingual" or whatever bullshit, nobody is forcing you to learn anything (heaven forbid!)

We have the same proportion of immigrants that we had in 1910, and the same xenophobic BS that we had in 1910. And many of those immigrants came in not speaking English.

And by the third or fourth generation, a lot of the children of those families mostly didn't even speak their grandparents' language. None spoke it as a first language.

Third generation Latinos DO NOT speak Spanish as a first language, and probably don't speak it as a second language much more frequently than the rest of the population. In fact, I once gave a Latino boyfriend a Spanish lesson because he was going to a family reunion where some distant cousins who had come here more recently might be present.

As for bilingual education, it is given while the child is taking ESOL, so that the child does not fall behind while learning English. It's concurrent with, not instead of English education.

Because otherwise, those kids end up getting the short end of the stick in a major way.

The public schools are supposed to serve the public, and if a service is needed in a particular neighborhood where a school is, that school should have that service. Among other things, in a Latino neighborhood, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a bilingual teacher.

However, probably part of the extreme virulence of some of the anti-immigrant hate that we're seeing now is that people are reacting to immigrants who look different. In 1910, most of the immigrants came from Europe, and they were discriminated against somewhat, but not for long.

The ones that people (some of whom probably also prefaced their statements with "I'm no racist but*") reacted against very strongly were the Chinese immigrants. Hmm...

And one more thing: I see that you've edited out the part where you said that it was unprecedented. That's nice.

*it's not that I think you're part of some hate group, it's that our culture is racist and you live in it. Therefore, you have absorbed some of it, so have we all. You can choose to recognize and combat those attitudes within yourself or you can pretend that they're not coming from the racism that has surrounded you all your life, and therefore avoid having to think about them too hard.

Well, one thing to remember is that English is NOT the official language of the United States. It never was, is not now, and probably never will be. It is simply the language of most convenience.

That would be because, thanks in part to B. Franklin, the U.S. deliberately did not pick an "official language". American English became our de facto "official language" by default, as it became the most commonly common tongue in the country (it's also the most commonly common tongue for business and technical uses...does that make it the official language of technical industries or business? Not at all. It's just that, with the USD having held the strongest "hard currency" value in the world for an extended period of time, through having been the economic overproducer of the world for better than 150 years as an independant nation, speaking our language as a "trade language" became common to the point of habit, and, since many technical industries have either their biggest leaps, widest scope of early use, or most basic roots in the U.S., same thing happened there. Tesla and Edison made almost everything electrical/electricity-related so US-centric that, in order to learnh much about "cuttting edge" technology THEN, you had to learn to read/speak American English, or wait for a technical writer who did to translate and publish the book you wanted, or commission it done for you, or wait until the technology was old enough to be easily available to learn from. Flight was taken over by English speakers in a similar manner, but in THAT case, we simply were the first ones to set a set of standards for pilots, aircraft, etcetera, and place a controlling body over it, forcing pilots from other countries who wished to land here to be able to speak our "native" tongue, and, since international pilots were rare at the time (especially commercial ones) that this was instituted, it was simply easier for many countries to insist ALL their commercial pilots speak the language, so they could be used as international pilots on ANY run.

Gotta love Calvanist economics. I had a guy at drill this weekend try explaining to some people that profitable behavior and moral behavior are one and the same. Not because he believes making money makes it right, he just thinks that it's impossible to make a morally right choice that won't ultimatly increase wealth. The wishful thinking involved in that line of thought just boggles my mind.

Here's how I think of it, when it comes to the degree of responsibility any person has in their own future. Making money takes an investment. Everyone has some labor to invest (some combination of physical, intellectual, and social abilities valuable in the job market), and most have some capital (money to spend on starting your own business, educating yourself, getting yourself to and from various work sites, whatever it takes to get you more money). The more you start with, the easier it is to find a profitable investment of your combined resources (labor and capital), and the more you stand to make. If you start life in a poor family, you're not going to have much to invest in making yourself a better candidate for jobs (i.e. college, investing, and starting a business are all unlikely). The labor you bring to the job market is also going to be less valuable (odds are if you're poor, you live in a poor neighborhood with poorer schools, have more problems distracting you from education, less local availability in training, etc.). Through no fault of your own, you're not as likely to go somewhere in the job market. And, all of this ignores social issues such as race, class, ethnicity, and also ignores any physical, mental, or social limitations you may have. If it weren't for our one truely socialist policy, free K-12 education, the distinctions would be even more pronounced (everyone's labor contribution is improved by being educated, as soon as you need money to aquire more education, how wealthy you are starts influencing the value of your labor again). So, while a degree of individual responsibility applies, the whole framework is different at the bottom than at the top. Unless the system is set up to help people reach some level of stability, those below that level aren't likely to make any real advancement. And while people may on occassion rise above their class, it's more likely that they'll move in to an adjacent class than shoot to the top ranks. The chains of jobs with real promotional opportunities rarely reach all the way to the bottom links, more often you have to jump in somewhere in the middle to find real progress. The US is up there amoung the most stagnant nations (with comperable economies, I don't think we're comparing the US to the Yanamamo tribe or anything) in terms of economic mobility. It used to be amoung the best when real middle class movements existed, such as strong labor unions, but unions are as likely to be the bitch of the business anymore as anything.

As to the original question of race, I think the statement "our culture is racist, and you live in it" sums it up nicely. There are historical reasons for it being so, and economics and class once again play in as motives (it was easier for the wealthy classes to control their sources of cheap labor if they kept them fighting each other through race issues than letting them join together and pose a real threat via fully integrated labor unions, for example, and those racial hatreds went back to cheap labor again, dehumanizing Africans so their masters could feel good enough about using them for virtually free labor).

If any of you have ever watched mind of Mancina on comedy central, you might have heard his solution to racism. Everybody fuck everybody, til we are all one color.

I know it won't end the hatred or whatever, but it gives you something to think about.

If we all are one color/race, we will find some other thing to hate others for. For as long as recorded history, one group always finds something about "outsiders" to fear/hate. While we can work to minimize the hate crimes, we can't get rid of hate.

A couple of years ago I worked doing over the phone tech support for a really big cell phone company. And one thing that I noticed was that as non PC as it is I found out that I could tell a lot about a caller based on race and location as soon as the call started.

Now keep in mind that I was dealing with prepaid cell phones so I was dealing with mostly people from the lower end of the economic spectrum.

If the call started and it sounded like I was in a moving car, I knew that 19 times out of 20 I would be talking to a black man. If the call was from a particular state I would most likely get in a fight.

The other 1 time out of 20 I would be talking to a white made who claimed to be a doctor, and I would always get in a fight.

If it sounded like I was in a room full of people, I would most likely be talking to a black woman. Most likely wouldn’t fight.

If the call was from a particular state and the speaker had a Spanish accent I would most likely be talking to a crazy person. If there was no accent, I would be talking to someone who had been ripped off by a dealer.

Any call from one particular state would always result in talking to an idiot.

I wasn’t stereotyping, but after months of doing this I couldn’t help but notice that there were certain trends that I could almost always depend on.

-halo

I know other cultures coming to the US have had an effect, but it's usually been a subtler change, not as pervasive. I just happen to live in an area where a lot of hispanics have immigrated to recently and it gets a bit stifling... even my regular hispanic friends (who immigrated here legally) agree that people who move to this country should make more of an effort to adapt and learn the language a little bit. I don't mind them preserving their culture but when they're *only* playing spanish songs at the yearly church cookout and have a giant dancing Dora the Explorer, I have to wonder a bit.

It's not about race or color, it's just a bit much of a culture shock.

At any rate, I'm sure things will calm down in the future, and I do feel bad for the people who are living in bad conditions in the other countries...

queenhank wrote:Wow, Major, I dig how you took an attempt at serious discussion of racism, and turned it into a tirade against the poor.

wrong, it was a retarded and hastily cobbled together rant against lazy fucks who live off the money of others, regardless of social position.


looking back at it, I have no idea why the fuck i went that way with it.


but the point i started off trying to make stands; it's not race; it's wealth.