Good point,

I suspect we are drifting back to one of Sicarius's ismism (copyright) threads... but it is worth noting the 'it' in the question string as this means we are not discussing racism as such or intolerance in general but 'racism and intolerance' as a specific entity.

What is it indeed...

well a definition isnt hard
its the belief that someones race is a factor in judging their worth. racism is why the asian kid id picked for math squad and the black kid is picked for the basketball team, regardless of either of their abilities. it also has a much more insidious side, as I mentioned before.

akso, before when I said 'not letting people think less of you and getting away with it' I actually meant actions not thoughts. you can think w/'e you want about me and i dont care

You are referring to a discussion that I did not see...

its not that important. I'm trying to start a new dialougue about it here, so anyone with an opinion chime in

Bilo is that you?

Okay, I'll take that definition as pretty good. One problem I have with it is the word, "worth". How about replacing it with "abilities". So, racism is the belief that someone's race is a factor in judging their abilities. If this is our definition, then I'm afraid I must conclude (at this point) that racism is or might be valid.

The scientific study of races has been discontinued for many many decades because it became politically unacceptable. Despite this, there still remains some bits of evidence (poorly backed-up and poorly explained, I admit) that there are certain racial characteristics that make people of a certain race more apt to doing some sort of activity. I don't believe this is an incredibly strong thing (ie, that certain races simply CANNOT do that which they may not be racially prime for) but that it is a highly generalized and frequently broken rule.

This is why I believe that racism may be warranted, but it's still a very unhealthy way for people to think. Not so much because racism is wrong but because prejudice is not helpful.

well Idont necessarily agree with everything you said, but i do see where you're coming from and you made some good points

That comment came straight out of a can surely...

Fair enough. Mapleleaf, would you like to go ahead and expand on your theory of "Indian Inferiority" or whatever you might term it?

Supposing we were to agree that race might be a factor in determining someone's abilities. Supposing we were to accept that this might even have some genetic basis, rather than just being the result of cultural influences. I'm not saying I do agree with any of this, but for the sake of an argument, let's accept that it's possible.

Can we move past this now, and consider, instead, racism, the belief that someones race should be a factor in judging their WORTH? Because racism, says Sicarius, is the reason why the Asian kid is picked for the math squad and the black kid is picked for the basketball team REGARDLESS of their abilities.

The next question is, what is worth?

What if you accepted Jerkface's perspective, but also factored in Nietzsche's ideas of worth? (I'm not saying that's true or that people should, but just imagine what that would then imply) Then the whole concept of "worth" is more or less moot and you could possibly have an argument for racism being an efficient line of thinking.

Again, I don't actually agree with any of this... I'm just saying, supposing "worth" doesn't really matter, then there's not much to discuss here.

I don't know, what are Nietzsche's ideas of worth, and do they form a practicable basis for a balanced, functioning society?

Actually, I'll qualify my previous remarks somewhat.... I work in a country where anyone who is blond haired and blue eyed can get some sort of a job teaching English, regardless of whether they can actually speak the language or not, whereas an Asian's job prospects in the field are rather more limited, and a black man would basically have to have a PhD to stand a chance of getting his foot in the door, regardless of fluency.... this is an Asian country, by the way. This is racial prejudice, certainly, but "racist" is a word I would reserve for those who are genuinely hateful, rather than those who are merely ignorant and uneducated. You know.... skinheads in bovver boots with swastikas tattooed on there foreheads. And the moose fucker.

All forms of racial prejudice truly suck, though.

Sent from: Jerkface (100 ) Sent: 09:26 PM
Fair enough. Mapleleaf, would you like to go ahead and expand on your theory of "Indian Inferiority" or whatever you might term it?
======================================
For the record, I do not consider Sicarius to be representative of Native Americans. I simply identified him as the progeny of a squaw prostitute. The guy is a teenager who lives on the street, eats out of the garbage, steals, vandalizes, and God knows what else. Whatever his mother might have been, she was no school teacher, that's for sure. Certainly not mother of the year material. Don't get me started on his father. Likely a boozer.

For their sake, I hope that they've both mercifully passed away, so they are not witness to the shame that anybody who cares for this piece of offal would naturally feel.

The fact that this flotsam would actually think that he has ANYTHING to offer intellectually is hilarious.

He is a moral degenerate.

can't help assuming some of you are mutli-accounters arguing with amongst yourselves . . .

Lets throw in a new word for Worth and use Tendencies.

I told my daughter (who is learning to drive), that allthough racial profiling in most cases is wrong it is one of many tools she will learn to use behind the wheel. She will learn that genders, races, and ages all come into play when anticipating the most likely reaction of the drivers around her.

seems like alot of people are fond of hypotheticals... I personally am more oncerned about the problem as it actually manifests

I agree with feckless

maple- morals are subjective anyway

oh, and too the gay guy, sorry if I offended you, I meant to call him weird, it wasnt any slight on gender preference.
I actually do alot of work with bash back

Yeah right, buddy. You do work.......

Hey, could we have some GROWING UP here?

Racism is bad.

In terms of whether or not it's true, it may be that in vague studies done in the past before our more racially sensitive scientific ideals it seems that race holds a correlation with some ability, but this does not validate racism. Perhaps African-Americans may jump higher, but this isn't because their skin is black, it's because their legs might be longer. Race is generally overrated in terms of it's effect on ability simply because it is the most noticeable phenotypical difference between peoples. The vast majority of genetic and phenotypic differences are between individuals rather than races. Race is only used as an indicator because for we visual creatures it is such a blatant difference, but most differences are much more subtle, though play just as important a role in terms of ability.

Any other noticeable difference in abilities between races can be chalked up to the nurture side of the coin, as cultural pressures and continued racial profiling only perpetuates the difference. African-American role models differ extremely from Caucasian American role models. The greatest divide between races is purely because of the tribal mindset caused by the visual difference between the races.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Africans jump higher than others because their skin is black. Rather, Africans jump higher and have black skin because they are Africans. They are of a certain family of humanity, that which comes from the continent of Africa. I cherish the fact that so many families exist, coming from so many different places and representing so many different cultures. The problem that I see today is people trying to downplay those differences and say that all are alike but I think this simply isn't so. The fact that races have differences is a great thing!

I do have a problem with our institutional racism (at least in the US), where whites and other supposedly "privileged" people are treated as less-than-equal simply because of their familial background. I think in this case, it is a societal problem that ought to be corrected. But it doesn't bother me too much. When it isn't institutional though, like when a white kid gets the crap beaten out of him by a gang of black kids, I see it as a somewhat natural scene: one family of one kind feels threatened and attacks the outsider, the one who doesn't fit. Surely, I think it's wrong, but I absolutely abhor such titles as "hate crimes", as if beating someone up for the color of their skin makes it any worse than beating them up merely because you want their money.

It doesn't - but I think there's a general understanding that beating people up because you want their money is wrong - from the point of view of society in general, and, of course, the guy getting beaten up, at least. It's because beating somebody up, or denying them a job, etc, because they're black, white, jewish, gay, whatever, must ALSO be seen as wrong that communities have to guard against the spread of the idea that these attributes make people somehow worth less.

This doesn't mean that we have to delude ourselves that all people are equal in all respects, when clearly they are not, or that racial profiling doesn't have a place, when actually race may sometimes be an indicator of cultural factors that may prove relevant to a given situation, if nothing else, as q93 has apparently noticed whilst driving.

In the U.K., 'fruit' would be recognized by most, I think, as a term of abuse against gays (albeit a mild one) imported from the U.S., whereas "fruitcake" would be understood to mean 'crazy', as in "nutty as a fruitcake".

While mapleleaf's contention that Sicarius is the progeny of a "squaw" prostitute is already blatantly racist, given that "squaw" is a) arguably a term of racial abuse, and b) wholly irrelevant to whatever point mapleleaf thinks he's trying to make, his defense omits the fact that he has also referred to Sicarius as "Hiawatha" and "Geronimo" - he's not very good at racial abuse against native Americans, I admit, but he's doing his best....

I'll take someone who chooses to eat from dumpsters over this fruitcake any day.

I totally fed 200 people foe 3 days off dumpstered food