Regarding Race and Racism.

[jps]

Debates about the biological existence or race are popular here at the moment, but thats not what this thread is about.(At least this first post isn't, and I hope the thread doesn't become about it)
I'm interested, instead, at considering questions like these:

What is racism?

Can one believe in biological races in humans and not be a racist?

Can one not believe in biological races in humans and still be a racist?

Is racism ever justified, and if not, why does it exist?


Here are my answers:
I consider racism to be pre-judging people based on their race, and making generalizations about the inherent value or lack thereof of certain races.
For example, if upon meeting someone of a certain race one makes assumptions about them based on their race("Bob is an Arab, therefore Bob hates Jews), that would be racism. On the other hand, racial generalizations that are not about inherent value("most black people are poorly educated") are not racist.

It should be clear from my definition of racism that the answer is yes to the second two questions. In the first case, one can certainly believe that humans are divided into distinct biological races, but not believe that any of these races are any better or worse than another. In the second case, it is completely possible for one to believe that although there are no biological races, certain races have negative cultural practices that are so ingrained in all of them, that it is safe to assume that they are shared by every member of that race.(Dan is a Jew, all Jews are raised to kill Christian babies, therefore Dan kills Christian babies)

I do not believe that racism, as I have described it, is ever justified. Even if one were to believe that race exists scientifically and that certain races are inherently better equiped than other races, such differences would be so overshadowed by socio-economic circumstances that they would not be relevant in looking at the world. For example, a common argument that proponents of racism present is the fact that blacks consistently score worse on educational tests than whites, and that this shows their intellectual inferiority. Even if race is a factor in these test scores, there is no way to conduct such tests with specimens from equivalent socio-economic backgrounds, and this makes any difference in the scores that race might have played negligible in comparison to that played by background, and impossible to distinguish from it.

Although racism has likely has its origins in a natural fear of the unfamiliar, differing levels of technology, and cultural and language barriers, these things can hardly be the cause of it today as globalization has lead to people of different races speaking all different languages, living at the same level of technological advancement, and living in the same cultures.
Today, racism is perpetuated by differences in socio-economic status, and intentional scapegoating. For example, if you ask a white person from an all white community if they'd be more afraid meeting a black person on the street than a white person, they'd likely say they'd be more afraid of the black person, but in their minds eyes, what they'd likely have pictured is a white person dressed as they are, and a stereotype of a black person. In truth, I'd imagine rather few people would be at all scared of either a white guy or a black guy in a tuxedo, and many would be scared of either a white guy or a black guy dressed as and carrying themselves like a gang-member. However, as black people, having only recently been granted human rights(in the US anyway) are far more likely to be dressed as gangsters than white people Without putting much thought into it, people may conclude that they do not like black people because they do not like black gangsters, when in fact, what they dislike is gangsters.

Such misconceptions would eventually cease to exist in modern society where it not for the fact that they are cultivated by the ruling class to keep the lower classes divided. Race provides a necessary scapegoat for problems that are inherent in a class society. For example, if factories are being moved to Mexico to increase the wealth of the ruling class leading to high unemployment in the US, it would be dangerous to present this directly to those suffering from it. If people were made explicitly aware of the fact that there are no jobs because US companies are building things in other countries to circumvent US labor laws, people would demand that the situation be rectified. Instead, the situation could be blamed on illegal immigrants willing to work for cheap, and instead of making it illegal for US corporations to move their factories overseas, stricter immigration laws would be passed. When the problem doesn't go away, it could be portrayed as the stricter laws not working. In the same way, if crime rates increase in an area as a result of joblesness, blaming it on unemployment would be dangerous, so instead it can be attributed to changes in the areas racial demographics, implying that certain races are bringing crime to the area because they are inherently criminal.

 

[goofyfish]

At its core, racism is a kind of tribalism. Protect your own, be suspicious of others, use primitive cues to determine if a person is part of your tribe. I think it is natural to be racist, and many cultures in the world are. It is easy to fear people with strange looks, behaviours and languages. We are comfortable and safe amongst those who look and do as we do. This is where the power of the human mind must come in; the ability to override instinctive impulses; a sign of intelligence.

Racism is behaving in a biased manner toward someone due to differences for which they are not responsible, such as color of skin, or location of birth. I also believe that racism is also the willful continuance of a behavior which a racial group (or culture) finds insulting, antagonistic, or hurtful.

Personally, I dislike people for their actions or choices, not something that is always up to chance.

:m: Peace.

 

[Hathor]

Personally, I dislike people for their actions or choices, (goofyfish)

do you not factor in circumstance and motivation when making judgements?
i understand that ideally, the individual is solely responsible for his or her actions. yet, in practice i think society concedes that this is not always the case. for instance, in a court of law, we have such phrases as...mitigating circumstances, crime of passion, diminshed capacity etc.

 

[Hathor]

jps

Such misconceptions would eventually cease to exist in modern society where it not for the fact that they are cultivated by the ruling class to keep the lower classes divided.

there is the occasional political opportunism and demagoguery. could there be an active collusion? a master plan on the part of the "ruling classes?"

For example, if factories are being moved to Mexico to increase the wealth of the ruling class leading to high unemployment in the US, it would be dangerous to present this directly to those suffering from it. If people were made explicitly aware of the fact that there are no jobs because US companies are building things in other countries to circumvent US labor laws, people would demand that the situation be rectified.

i think most were aware of nafta. however i doubt if the more obscure trade agreements surface sufficiently enough to attract public interest

 

[SpyMoose]

A Mexican student in one of my classes made fun of me for being Lilly white and having a Spanish last name. I think he thought I must have a Mexican person in my family, and was giving me an endearing ribbing about my apparent whiteness. I told him "There is an entire nation full of Spanish speaking white people" and that sort of made it awkward. I think I messed up.

This happens to my family a lot, living in the southwest. People ask “What kind of Rodriguez are you?!” My fathers version of the rebuttal to this question involves reminding people about just who conquered and ruled all the Mexicans for hundreds of years. I consider this a little less PC than my reaction was… but then again, speaking in racist or ethnocentric terms, aren’t Spaniards supposed to have a lot of fiery Spanish pride?

That’s my story about racism.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

To understand racism we must look into our own prehistory. We are social apes like chimpanzees and gorillas. In fact the entire primate order has many social species of monkeys. They all behave in a manner that we call "racist" when humans do it.

Social primates (like all social mammals such as elephants and dogs) are comfortable relating to a "pack" or a "tribe." Basically, a pack is a group of related individuals of a size that can feed comfortably within the geographical area that it can command. For hunters like wolves that need a huge turf, that might be only a dozen. For large fearless ungulates that can digest the ubiquitous cellulose like bison, that might be a couple thousand. But for apes, it seems to be somewhere between fifty and a hundred.

Now remember that we are apes, and it's only been a few million years since our evolutionary line diverged from the chimpanzees. Fossils and other anthropological records indicate that our ancestors lived much like the chimps, in packs or "tribes" of about the same size. But eventually we adapted to a more carnivorous diet and learned to hunt, and that changed things.

Our hunting tools allowed us to live efficiently in larger tribes, well over a hundred.

Throughout this time period, which brings us up to the Neanderthals, we had an instinct to match our lifestyle: any humans who showed up in our hunting area that were not of our tribe were outsiders. They were competitors for our food supply.

If times were good, like all pack animals we would tolerate a little hanky-panky. Some cross-breeding is very healthy for the tribal gene pool, so that's a very handy instinct to have. A little inter-tribal competition during the summer months when food is abundant makes life interesting, and advances the survival of the entire species by letting all tribes share each other's discoveries.

But when times were tough, outsiders were the enemy and had to be driven off, or even killed if it came to it. The survival of "our tribe" was paramount.

Lots of really important stuff has happened since then. Dogs and humans noticed how well their hunting methods complemented each other and formed the Earth's first multi-species community. This allowed the size of a tribe to increase to several hundred humans, and goddess knows how many canines. People figured out that plants grow from seeds and learned how to plant their own crops instead of roaming the continent gathering them. Having the dogs live among them gave them the idea that they might be able to do the same thing with the goats and pigs that kept hanging around looking for garbage to eat. Soon humans found that they didn't have to wander around looking for food any more. They could grow enough plants and raise enough game animals to stay well-fed in one spot. Soon somebody got the bright idea of building a home that was a little sturdier than a collapsible tent. Human settlements started getting really large. Eventually people coming over from other tribes were viewed as traders, not competitors, and it became normal not to kill strangers. Finally division of labor was discovered, cities were built, and the rest is history.

Very recent history. That's an important point. All of this sociological development happened in something like a hundred thousand years. Does anybody think that our brains could evolve new synapses to keep up with the dizzying rate of change in the outside world that we ourselves were responsible for? No way!!! Inside our skulls, we're still Neanderthals. Look around you. What is the largest human settlement that still functions happily as a tribe? A very small city, somewhere between ten and twenty thousand people. Visit one if you don't live in one and you'll probably find people who don't lock their doors, who don't think twice about disciplining or helping raise other people's children, who pitch in and help anyone who is in any kind of trouble, and who give true meaning to the word "community."

You know something? We should be proud of that. In about a hundred thousand years we really have advanced from a species that only felt comfortable surrounded by a few dozen people that we knew personally and were related to by blood, to feeling comfortable among a huge throng of people, many of whom we barely know and are not even blood relatives. In evolutionary terms, that's amazing progress. Our dogs haven't done that well, even though they have twenty generations to our one and should be able to evolve much faster. When humans hit hard times and let their dogs fend for themselves, they form packs that are only modestly larger than the packs of their ancestral wolves, maybe twenty or thirty.

So we're stuck with these instincts that tell us anybody from outside our tribe is a competitor for scarce resources who must be driven off or even killed if necessary. We can't help it! Our brains are hard-wired that way.

Yet we live in "communities" of hundreds of thousands, and we are expected to treat people who live on the other side of the planet that we don't even know, people who are sheer abstractions to us, as members of our own tribe. We don't get to kill them if it looks like they're competing for the same resources. We actually have to make nice with them.

What a quandary! If you were an evil-minded player of a game like Sims, could you possibly come up with a more cursed environment, a more difficult world to succeed in, for your simulated people to live in than the one we've created for ourselves?

So yes, we have racism in us, it's just left over from our ancestors. We've managed to overcome it to a huge extent. We have a long way to go, yes. But we have proven that human willpower can triumph over human instinct.

Way to go, people! I say, three cheers for Homo sapiens!

(And, if you've read my other threads, you know that I give dogs a lot of credit for this as well. We learned 12,000 years ago how to love a "person" of a totally different species. I believe that if it weren't for that gift from Canis familiaris, we might never have been able to learn how to love a person of the same species who merely speaks a different language, has a different color skin, or calls god by a different name.)

 

[jps]

At its core, racism is a kind of tribalism. Protect your own, be suspicious of others, use primitive cues to determine if a person is part of your tribe. I think it is natural to be racist, and many cultures in the world are. It is easy to fear people with strange looks, behaviours and languages. We are comfortable and safe amongst those who look and do as we do. This is where the power of the human mind must come in; the ability to override instinctive impulses; a sign of intelligence.

I don't believe that the fact that people fear those with strange looks behaviours and and languages means that people are naturally racist. If one grew up in a multi-racial community, as is increasingly common today, one would not find other races' appearances, cultures, and languages would to be strange

do you not factor in circumstance and motivation when making judgements?
i understand that ideally, the individual is solely responsible for his or her actions. yet, in practice i think society concedes that this is not always the case. for instance, in a court of law, we have such phrases as...mitigating circumstances, crime of passion, diminshed capacity etc.

This illustrates how, in my opinion, it becomes possible for one to be racist who does not believe in the inherent inferiority of other races or even in biological race at all. If an entire race(at least in one's mind) follows a certain cultural practice that one finds offensive, then a person might well dislike that entire race.

there is the occasional political opportunism and demagoguery. could there be an active collusion? a master plan on the part of the "ruling classes?"

I doubt there's any organized conspiracy, but I have no doubt at all that in political meetings in closed rooms the powers that be do to decide from time to time to actively blame certain races for problems that they themselves are creating.

i think most were aware of nafta. however i doubt if the more obscure trade agreements surface sufficiently enough to attract public interest

They were aware of its existance but not of what it actually meant. People knew that NAFTA meant more "free trade" and everybody loves freedom right? and they also knew that their leaders were saying it would be good for the economy. Thats good too right? This is what the media(which is really an extension of corporate public relations on issues like this) told people.
It was certainly never explained as an agreement to make it possible for US corporations to shop around for the country with the most lenient labor and environmental laws, produce their products there, and ship them back here without having to pay any tariff on them.

Fraggle Rocker,
I agree with much of your historical argument, but it seems to me to be more of an explanation for nationalism than racism, as a tribe or community could be made up of multiple races. In addittion, tribes or communities of the same race would be as much at odds with each other as those from other races.

 

[thefountainhed]

Drastically constricted, one must ask how old the concept of different human races became popularily accepted. One must separate tribal, cultural and even nationalistic pride when talking about identifying with separate races. The notion that a Nordic, a Greek, a Spaniard, would identify and be identified by the abstract Caucasian or White is relatively new. It is not as significant as others viewing most if not all dark skinned peoples as one kind. It is however significant that dark skined Africans identify themselves as black. I think racism as a widespread modern idelogy has its foundations in the transatlantic slave trade. The justifications, guilt, propaganda, etc spurned and spread images of Blacks as inferior. In the abuse of Darwin's theories, people found the perfect structure to create hierachies to separate the races. In the advent of nationalistic pride, these further identifications became strengthened and applied to other peoples.
Perhaps I shall expand at a later time...

 

[jps]

. I think racism as a widespread modern idelogy has its foundations in the transatlantic slave trade....

This is likely true, for the most part, regarding white supremacism, and to some extent all racism in the US, but how could it account for racism in other cultures that had no part in the slave trade?

 

[thefountainhed]

This is likely true, for the most part, regarding white supremacism, and to some extent all racism in the US, but how could it account for racism in other cultures that had no part in the slave trade?

It started the culture of racism. As I mentioned, the notion geenralized humans races is relatively new, and furthermore, the attribution of different mental and physical capacities to specific races that started in Europe with the strict stratification of the peoples of earth started with the concept of the negro at the bottom of the hierachy... Inasmuch as it was based upon Europe's success was it based on European perception of the outside world in relation to themselves. No where was this perception more stronger than in comparisons to the negro, who was being legally enslaved.

 

[lixluke]

Racism is ignorance.
Certain people wish to separate one race with another.
Each of us has qualities that match other qualities of others, and differ from even yet others.
Therefore, it would be impossible to find a basis for the qualities of separation.

The only way these seperatist racist eletist nimrods would get it through their head that there is no difference between races except for the fact they were born under a certain category, would be if everybody interbreeded together so that we would all look the same.
That way even somebody really dumb wouldn't try and act like there is a difference between one person and the other.

 

[laughing weasel]

Look at Asiatic racism if you think that Europeans are the ones who originated racism and they have had it for far longer than they have had contact with Europe. Ask a Hindu pariah about racism. Most people have some preconceptions about races. It is always dangerous to stand out because when times get lean it is always the pink monkey that gets eaten.

 

[15ofthe19]

I was under the impression that organized slave trading has been a part of the world economy for about the last 7,000 years. It would surprise me to see confirmation that racism based on skin color only became a significant factor in that tradecraft within the last 300 years. A link to some scientific explanation of this would much appreciated.

 

[thefountainhed]

Now that right there: "asiatic racism", illustrates the flaw in your argument. Certainly the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mongols have been fighting and hating each other for a long fucking time. In other areas, the definitions are even less broad and the hatred exists...

Racism is very much broader. Asians are a group. Africans and the africa diaspora become Black, Europeans are grouped, Indians..... Do you see the difference or not? The Mandinka and the Yuroba never thought themselves alike, neither did the Korean and the Japanese, and yet, as races, these entities are grouped together... Racism follows with the definitions of races...

 

[laughing weasel]

The few Koreans that I have known have made it very clear that they do not believe that they are the same race as the Japanese. For specific groups that hate each other look at the Yankees versus the Rebs. My 70 year old grandmother would have shot someone for calling her a Yankee and that is not even a racial slur. You can always find something to hate about any other group if you look hard enough.

 

[rainbow__princess_4]

Racism is not discrimination or generalisation (though they can be by-products of it). Racism is the belief that a race is "better" or "more civilised" than another. And quite honestly i reckon some are.

 

[laughing weasel]

I disagree that some races are better or worse than all the other. (Except Yankees). I do believe that there are some cultures that are better than others. Those that support personal responsibility are better than those which deny individuals the power to change.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I don't believe that the fact that people fear those with strange looks behaviours and and languages means that people are naturally racist. If one grew up in a multi-racial community, as is increasingly common today, one would not find other races' appearances, cultures, and languages would to be strange

To a certain extent, "specieism," which is a more general term for demographic discrimination, is something that people learn. Yet to a certain extent it is also instinctive. Sexism, for example, seems to be prevalent in all cultures. In Israel, where gender equality is practically dogmatic, male soldiers often need to be relieved of duty when they see a female comrade blown to bloody bits, whereas if it happens to a male soldier they keep right on fighting with renewed determination. They don't mind making their women do all the housework and raise the kids, but as cockeyed compensation they don't want to allow them to be battlefield casualties.

Specieism is common enough in the animal kingdom. In South America many conure species (small parrots very similar and closely related to mini-macaws; you Brits and Aussies confuse us all by insisting that they're "parakeets") are on the endangered list and it's not easy for them to find mates. Yet they will avoid interbreeding with another species almost to the point of preferring extinction. When they finally do interbreed and produce fertile, hybrid offspring, the hybrids are invariably uniquely colored and patterned since conures are one of the most colorful families of parrots. The hybrids continue the tradition, preferring to mate only with other hybrids of the same genetic mixture and appearance, rather than other hybrids or the ancestral species. There's no reason to dismiss racism as a totally learned behavior when it has a well established hereditary vector.

This illustrates how, in my opinion, it becomes possible for one to be racist who does not believe in the inherent inferiority of other races or even in biological race at all. If an entire race (at least in one's mind) follows a certain cultural practice that one finds offensive, then a person might well dislike that entire race.

That's a good reason for using the more general term specieism. The learned part of "racism" is, as you say, often not about race or only incidentally about it. Poorly educated Westerners believe that all Muslims are Arabs (when in fact something like 90 percent of them are not). So anti-Arabism easily morphs into anti-Islamism, and America's huge and heretofore peacefully integrated population of Somali immigrants is suddenly blamed for 9/11.

I doubt there's any organized conspiracy, but I have no doubt at all that in political meetings in closed rooms the powers that be do to decide from time to time to actively blame certain races for problems that they themselves are creating.

Well duh. It's their mission to lay off blame on someone else. Why not pander to an easily aroused emotion?

Fraggle Rocker, I agree with much of your historical argument, but it seems to me to be more of an explanation for nationalism than racism, as a tribe or community could be made up of multiple races. In addition, tribes or communities of the same race would be as much at odds with each other as those from other races.

History shows us that nationalism as a form of specieism is often difficult to distinguish from racism. Look at the fierce battles among the various states of ancient Greece and ancient China. The Scandinavians, who are so closely related that they can just barely understand each other's languages, have fought among themselves in historical times. How about the American Civil War? The differences between Northerners and Southerners (even the role of slavery) were purely of economic origin, yet many historians consider it the bloodiest conflict ever to occur within a single Christian nation.

 

[coolsoldier]

I'm going to agree with the above post and say that what we call "Racism" would be more aptly called "cultural prejudice". It seems to me that, with few exceptions, prejudice and discrimination in our society are based on patterns of behavior, not on race. Example: The guy, white or black, wearing "street" clothing, blasting rap music and talking slang laced with profanities is far more likely to experience discrimination by the guy, white or black, who wears starch-white collared shirts and listens Paul Simon through headphones, and vice versa. Neither pattern of behavior is specifically racial, but discrimination against these cultural patterns is often mistaken for racial discrimination even among the people doing the discriminating.

That said, prejudices are in some cases useful, although like anything, it's a problem when taken to the extreme. For example, a prejudice against people carrying assault rifles is probably justified, simply because a person with an assault rifle in any ordinary situation likely intends to kill somebody. I think true prejudice against race independent of behavior patterns is never a good thing, but prejudice against behavior patterns does have a place in society.

 

[thefountainhed]

Fraggle Rocker:

To a certain extent, "specieism," which is a more general term for demographic discrimination, is something that people learn. Yet to a certain extent it is also instinctive. Sexism, for example, seems to be prevalent in all cultures. In Israel, where gender equality is practically dogmatic, male soldiers often need to be relieved of duty when they see a female comrade blown to bloody bits, whereas if it happens to a male soldier they keep right on fighting with renewed determination. They don't mind making their women do all the housework and raise the kids, but as cockeyed compensation they don't want to allow them to be battlefield casualties.

How is "speciesm" as you describe it, analogous to demographic discrimination? One can have a variety of species living within the same geographical region, and most importantly, the human group has no species within it. Sexism is not “speciesm” and therefore that analogy is irrelevant.

Specieism is common enough in the animal kingdom. In South America many conure species (small parrots very similar and closely related to mini-macaws; you Brits and Aussies confuse us all by insisting that they're "parakeets") are on the endangered list and it's not easy for them to find mates. Yet they will avoid interbreeding with another species almost to the point of preferring extinction. When they finally do interbreed and produce fertile, hybrid offspring, the hybrids are invariably uniquely colored and patterned since conures are one of the most colorful families of parrots. The hybrids continue the tradition, preferring to mate only with other hybrids of the same genetic mixture and appearance, rather than other hybrids or the ancestral species. There's no reason to dismiss racism as a totally learned behavior when it has a well established hereditary vector.

The original premise that specism is a natural trait for human beings has not been confirmed! Firstly there are no species within the human race. Secondly, the behaviour of parrots does not warrant the conclusion that humans are naturally racist. Mammals of different locales mate. Racism is a learnt behaviour for the discrimination must be justified. Without attributing certain characteristics to the group that is discriminated against, one cannot therefore reach the conclusion that this group if for instance dangerous, stupid, etc... These are all learned.

And from your initial argument:

So yes, we have racism in us, it's just left over from our ancestors. We've managed to overcome it to a huge extent. We have a long way to go, yes. But we have proven that human willpower can triumph over human instinct.

This is not racism! The instinct if you will, to feel distrustful outside of the protective construct-- which at its most fundamental is the family, and when abstracted--by LEARNING, becomes the clan, does not warrant that one, a group of people living thousands of miles away from each other (White Americans, Europeans), can still identify with each other and then discriminate against another group that lives with them (African Americans). This is a very important characteristic. The identification with a race is completely unnatural and a very modern attribute of the human being, and to equate that with our natural instincts for belonging in groups is absurd.

laughing weasel

The few Koreans that I have known have made it very clear that they do not believe that they are the same race as the Japanese. For specific groups that hate each other look at the Yankees versus the Rebs. My 70 year old grandmother would have shot someone for calling her a Yankee and that is not even a racial slur. You can always find something to hate about any other group if you look hard enough.

The Koreans and the Japanese have a very long history of hating each other; this I quite agree. However, outside the context of the two entities, that is, in bringing an African or a Hispanic into that context, current perception have that, the Koreans and Japanese will identify themselves as Asians. This is the peculiarity that accompanies racism-- the attachment to more generalized entities than the nation/tribe.