So is verbal racism always a bad thing?
So is verbal racism always a bad thing?
blatham wrote:fishin saidQuote:Ummmm.. No. The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic". Your need to attempt to limit the definition and usage of the word is the result of that.
What on earth are you talking about? Lincoln and other abolitionists used the term 'racism' for political gain? He/they assigned negative connotations to 'racism' that wouldn't have been there had he not wanted votes? Is that your claim?
They did?? Really? Have you got a quote where they used it?
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the word was first coined in 1932. According to Merriam Webster the word was coined in 1933. Lincoln had been dead for some 60+ years by the early 1930s and the entire abolitionist movement had pretty well dwindled.
A search on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln shows no work, either written or in speech, where he ever used either "racist" or "racism".
So I have to ask, what is it that you are talking about?
racism is first attested 1936 (from Fr. racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories.
The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations[/color] - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic".
blatham wrote:
Consider a situation where a mother dies giving birth to twins, one pretty and the other one ugly. The father remarries and the new wife takes a strong preference for the pretty child, and over a period of years gives her all the cake and makes the ugly one do all the chores.
The father, a dim bulb, finally grasps what has been going on and sets to correcting this historical imbalance and injustice. He discrimates between the two twins and begins giving the ugly child slightly more cake than the pretty one and he begins making the pretty one do more chores.
The pretty one cries..."This is reverse discrimination! It is a wrong, by definition. It must stop or you, dad, are being unfair, unjust and immoral."
We are hard wired by biology to prefer beauty over ugliness, since beauty reflects a symmetry that correlates with being healthier for reproducing. I read this; it's not my opinion.
But then, given the actual first use of 'racism'Quote:do you still wish to maintain thatracism is first attested 1936 (from Fr. racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories.Quote:The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations[/color] - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic".
I have no problem admitting that I am not color-blind. It's my issue and up to me to deal with it and check my views and opinions in an attempt to weed that out of my thinking. Overtly racist actions aren't an issue but, like everyone else, I notice who is around me and at some times I am more concerned than other times. I can freely admit that when I get on a train and the car is full of black teens I don't have the same level of comfort as I do when it is full of white middle-aged men. There is no rationale reason for the discomfort - none of them have done anything to me. Is that not still racism?
blatham:
And that's the trick being used when you or someone else labels AA as 'racist'. It is a legal strategy and it is a PR/propaganda strategy. It's been effective. But it is morally incoherent.
fishin:
As opposed to the legal/political strategy of claiming that race based policies are "good"?? How is that morally coherent?
blatham
The ML King point, which Occam Bill seemed to be the only one to appreciate, was that such slipshod use of the term 'racism' must also apply to King, to his statements, policies and goals because they were inextricable from discriminations based on race.
To end up in a position where Strom Thurmond and ML King are both placed in the category of 'racist' is where you end up, fishin. That is both morally and intellectually incoherent.
fishin
I have no problem in saying that MLK was racist. Your problem is with your yes/no, black//white, good/bad thinking.
MLK, I suspect was aware of his own racism. Your attempt to paint that as being the same as Thurmond is, in itself, intellectually dishonest.
King's "ideal" was a color-blind society and in several of his writings and speeches mention AA programs (which he often referred to as "preferential treatment") as "necessary". I can find no reference to him ever stating that he saw them as "good".
I have no doubt that King recognized that AA programs were racist - he pretty much stated as much in his 1963 Newsweek article where he called for "discrimination in reverse" as a form of social justice. He made similar comments in several of his other writings as well.
The difference therein, is that King saw AA as necessary to correct past injustices while Thurmond fought against AA while attempting to leave racist laws/polices in effect and ignoring the past injustices. Where is the intellectual honesty in saying that those are the same thing?
blatham wrote:But then, given the actual first use of 'racism'Quote:do you still wish to maintain thatracism is first attested 1936 (from Fr. racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories.Quote:The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations[/color] - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic".
I have no problem maintaining my earlier statement. It holds true.
Or imagine a traffic cop at an accident scene where only one lane of traffic can move past the overturned truck. He has to allow, say, 20 cars from the south then 20 cars from the north. He has to discriminate one group from the other group. But imagine that he gets a phone call, his wife is leaving him, and being distracted he keeps allowing only cars from the south to move through for some minutes. Can that group of cars stacked up on the north side justifiably demand that the prior imbalance be compensated?
How is that different, if we are concerned primarily with justice, from AA?
fishin wrote:blatham wrote:But then, given the actual first use of 'racism'Quote:do you still wish to maintain thatracism is first attested 1936 (from Fr. racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories.Quote:The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations[/color] - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic".
I have no problem maintaining my earlier statement. It holds true.
Well, perhaps not so much of a pleasure.
There is no pleasure or lack of either way for me.
I relate this simply becuase it demonstrates (other than a screwed up family history) that, at the time, "race" was an issue of geopolitical boundries - and even more so in Europe - as well as that of color.
Read the chapter in Mein Kampf titled "Nation and Race" and then look at the competition between Nationalism, Fascism, Communism and Socialism in Europe in the 1920s/1930s. That is what the French were concerned about when they started writing about Nazi racism.
Before World War II racism began to exert great influence on the policies of political movements in Europe, especially those of the Nazi Party in Germany. The persecution of specific racial groups duringthe Holocaust, particularly the Jews, was a product of the Nazi racial view of the world. In the mid-1850s Comte Arthur de Gobineau published his "Essay on the Inequality of Human Races." Before Gobineau, racism was mostly a subject for scientists. He turned racism into a cultural and political issue, by sayingthat the deterioration of the modern age resulted from the mixing of superiorand inferior races. He divided humanity into the black, yellow, and white races, and claimed that only the pure white, or Aryan, race was and could be truly noble
Racism and anti-racism
UNESCO Courier, March, 1996 by Etienne Balibar
The strangely ambiguous relationship between two incompatible ideas
The term "racism" seems to have been introduced into the English language in 1938 in a translation of a book by the German writer Magnus Hirschfeld which had appeared in German four or five years earlier and described the "racial theory" that underlay Hitler's conception of a war between races. The word thus seems to have been coined in Germany to describe the racism of the Nazi state, which was targeted primarily against the Jews but also against other "sub-human" peoples and groups and was based on the Aryan myth. In due course it came to acquire its internationally accepted meaning as a prejudice based on belief in the congenital inequality of human groups.
Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a French philosopher who has made an exhaustive study of the question, has discovered what he calls two "totally distinct appearances" of the word "racism" in France. The first, relatively episodic use of the word occurred between 1895 and 1897 and was connected with the founding of the authoritarian ultra-nationalist organization, Action Francaise, and of an extreme right-wing nationalist newspaper, La Libre Parole. The supporters of this movement, which actively propagated anti-semitism in France and also had close ties with colonial circles, described themselves as "racists", representatives of a "French race" that was to be preserved from degeneration. Then, between 1925 and 1935 the terms "racisme" and "raciste" made a come-back in France but this time were used in a broader sense to designate the doctrine of German fascism, and to translate its key adjective, "volkisch".
Definitions
As 'racism' carries references to race-based prejudice, violence, or oppression, the term has varying and often hotly contested definitions. 'Racialism' is a related term intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another race or races. The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.[1] The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism thus: the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.
fishin
I'll go back and pick up some other loose ends. By the way, even if you remain a dogmatic reactionary with a mother whose teeth are yellow, it's a pleasure to talk with you again.
Quote:blatham:
And that's the trick being used when you or someone else labels AA as 'racist'. It is a legal strategy and it is a PR/propaganda strategy. It's been effective. But it is morally incoherent.
fishin:
As opposed to the legal/political strategy of claiming that race based policies are "good"?? How is that morally coherent?
Because they are corrective of prior injustices. Race, by itself, is not the moral issue. Injustice is the moral issue. Look at the traffic cop analogy I used just above to foofie. The cop, to be just or fair, must procede to correct a prior injustice/unfairness by discriminating the northbound traffic from the southbound traffic and now favor one over the other. To not do so (on a theory that discrimination is always bad because it is discrimination) is to end up with a result that is injust.
Quote:blatham
The ML King point, which Occam Bill seemed to be the only one to appreciate, was that such slipshod use of the term 'racism' must also apply to King, to his statements, policies and goals because they were inextricable from discriminations based on race.
To end up in a position where Strom Thurmond and ML King are both placed in the category of 'racist' is where you end up, fishin. That is both morally and intellectually incoherent.
fishin
I have no problem in saying that MLK was racist. Your problem is with your yes/no, black//white, good/bad thinking.
We are both doing yes/no, good/bad. We are just doing it differently. You've argued earlier that all instances of racial discrimination are bad, with variation in degree. I'm arguing that this focus is morally incoherent IF it leads to a policy or idea that racial discriminations ought not to be utilized merely because they are discriminatory BECAUSE prior injustices are removed from the equation and it is those injustices which present the moral dilemma. That's where the moral dilemma sits.Quote:
But again, that's putting the cart before the horse. See, you want to limt the definition of a word because of what might happen if you don't. This is a combination of a slippery slope and a straw man argument. Seperate the act from what may or may not happen and judge the act - not the possible results.
Quote:
Quote:MLK, I suspect was aware of his own racism. Your attempt to paint that as being the same as Thurmond is, in itself, intellectually dishonest.
I don't paint them the same. Use of the term "racist" to describe both of them paints them the same.
Only if one accepts that all racism is equeal.
Quote:If all racial discrimination is bad, then both men are guilty of something immoral or undesireable. I acknowledge your differentiation between shades of bad. But I've not said King was guilty of 'bad'. Your formulation has King as 'bad', as a racial discriminator.
I suspect that MLK would see the AA as undesirable on it's face. He didn't advocate for it in any way outside of as a form of redress.
Quote:Quote:King's "ideal" was a color-blind society and in several of his writings and speeches mention AA programs (which he often referred to as "preferential treatment") as "necessary". I can find no reference to him ever stating that he saw them as "good".
Then why the hell did he find them "necessary"? Because he liked the symmetry of X whites = X blacks? Rather obviously, he found them 'necessary' as a means of bringing about a social 'good', that social good being justice and fairness and equality.
So that automatically makes the act itself good? The ends always justify the means? Do you deny that a social good can come from a "bad" act?
1+1 = 2
5-3 = 2
Both of those get us to "2" ("good"). But that doesn't mean that 1 = 5.
A "good" result isn't dependent on "good" acts. You are using your slippery slope here again.
Quote:
Quote:I have no doubt that King recognized that AA programs were racist - he pretty much stated as much in his 1963 Newsweek article where he called for "discrimination in reverse" as a form of social justice. He made similar comments in several of his other writings as well.
Then why not use "discriminatory" rather than 'racist"? Surely it is a more appropriate term in this case.
And what do we call it when that discrimination is based on race? Isn't that racism?
Quote:I've been thinking about this all this stuff over the last couple of days. Particularly, I've been musing about the legal and rhetorical moves from a contingent of lawyers and institutions on the right to eviscerate AA programs. I've been wondering why this tact or project was begun.
I think it is a bit difficult to pin down because there are two factors in the mix. The first is the racism such as Thurmond or Wallace represented where they detested blacks so much that they wanted them kept segregated from whites.
But the second factor was the legal ability of the federal government to legislate, say, integrated schools, and enforce such legislation. So the states rights argument becomes a tool for turning back such federal legislation on race.
And that gives some perspective on someone like Bollick (who had been Clarence Thomas' assistant and who shows no personal indications of being a racist such as Thurmond or Wallace) and the institutions he founded and operates within, which are all or almost all funded by that coterie of wealthy right wing families (Koch, Scaife, Coors, Bradley, etc).
Who and what these families have funded concentrate on several particular ends, and the main one is inhibiting the ability of elected government to be an active agent in community affairs. The idea, Norquist said, is to 'get government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub'.
I don't think it was "begun" in so much as it was always there from the start. For starters, I think some of them see equality = equality. But you are also ignoring the changes in tactics from those who support AA programs. If you go back and look at what JFK proposed as "Affirnmative Action" and what we have had there is no comparison.
Proponents of AA programs and added to and changed their minds on what is and what isn't AA as time has marched on. The right isn't operating on it's own here. One side acts and the other side reacts.
And, IMO, the left's tactics have largely led to those of the right. You have to keep in mind that many of these programs were put in place through court orders - not legislation. There was no national discussion and concensus on how to achieve "social justice", what that meant or how long any of the programs were to be in place. There seems to be a mindset on the left of "Well, we won that court decision so that's the end of that!" but that rarely is the case. When a court case is won, it happens based on the rationale the court outlines in it's decision. The minute the rationale for the decision doesn't exist any more the decision is up for testing again. (And legislation is always up for grabs)
And this discussion is just a minute example of the whole thing. The definition for "racism" that you prefer isn't a definition that existed 40 years ago. When people can't get what they want through legislation and the courts and they resort to changing the definition I fully expect others to get upset about it. Think about it - what does the (ultra)femist concept that "all sex is rape" do to the definitions of "rape" and "sex"? If you engage in consensual sex tonight and then find cops knocking on your door in the morning to arrest you for rape you'd probably be just a wee bit upset about it. Suddenly those definitions are the difference between going home and spending 20 years in prison.
Like it or not, the definition that you prefer for rasicm, whether you intend for it to or not, allows one person to do something to another and dodge the "racism" charge and when it's reversed, the charge sticks. Where is "fair", "equeal" or the "social justice" in that?
I think most people "get" the idea that past injustices have to be remedied. What they don't get is the idea that racism can be allowed to continue by some right now and people. The idea that racism was supposed to end was that it was supposed to end for everyone and creating this massive web of loopholes around the word doesn't meet that goal.
Race does not exist even though genes do. The latter do not congeal into discrete, inherently distinct populations.
)
. Race does not exist even though genes do.
The assumption that genetic differences make a difference in any way among populations is racism. As Asherman notes it can apply to both "positive" or "negative" characteristics ascribed to one's own group as well as to others. Race does not exist even though genes do. The latter do not congeal into discrete, inherently distinct populations. Genetic traits may be seen to distribute unevenly across populations, but the qualities of the "typical" member of one social population may be closer to those of the "'typical" member of a "racially distinct" group than to many members of his own group. And we must remember that such "traits" include more than just the obvious ones of color, hair texture, facial features, etc.
According to recent genetic research, the presence among the Lemba of a disproportionate number of men carrying a particular polymorphism on the Y chromosome known as the Cohen modal haplotype, which is strongly correlated to Jewish populations and rare among non-Jews, suggests an ancestral link to the Jewish people. Just under 10% of all Lemba have that particular Y chromosomal type which is associated as a signature of Jewish ancestry, proportions found among general Jewish populations.
One particular sub-clan within the Lemba, the Buba clan, is considered by the Lemba to be their priestly clan, while among Jews, the Kohanim are the priestly clan. From a small sample of the Buba, fifty-two percent of males were found to carry the Cohen modal haplotype, which is generally indicative of Y-DNA haplogroup J. Among Jews the marker is also most prevalent among Jewish Kohanim, or priests. As recounted in Lemba oral tradition, the Buba clan "had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel" and into Southern Africa.
More microsatellite markers would need to be tested in order to verify the reality (or not) of any such link. The Lemba also have a large percentage of genes often found in non-Arabs from the near east.
Evidence for diverse migrations into the New World also comes from Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) research on living American Indian populations. These studies have consistently shown similarities between American Indians and recent populations in Asia and Siberia, but also unique American characteristics, which the very early crania have also shown. Evidence for only four mtDNA lineages, characterizing over 95 percent of all modern American Indian populations, may suggest a limited number of founding groups migrating from Asia into the New World. Recently, however, a fifth mtDNA lineage named "X" has turned up in living American Indians and in prehistoric remains for which there does not appear to be an Asian origin. The first variant of X was found in Europeans and may have originated in Eurasia.[/b] Naturally, generations of conflict, intermarriage, disease, and famine would influence the genetic makeup of modern Native Americans. Further work with mtDNA, nuclear DNA (which is more representative of the entire genome), and Y-chromosome data, the male-transmitted complement of mtDNA, will permit better estimates of the genetic similarities between Old and New World groups and help to determine when they would have shared a common ancestor. (emphasis added)
Mitochondrial DNA analysis lends conditional support to the idea insofar as the fact that some members of some native North American tribes share a common yet distant maternal ancestry with some present-day individuals in Europe identified by mtDNA Haplogroup X. It is possible that Haplogroup X came to the Americas via Northeastern Asia or Siberia, but unlike other Native American mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C and D, Haplogroup X is presently absent from the region, although occurrence of Haplogroup X2 of more recent origin (i.e. more recently than 5000 BC) has been identified in the Altai Republic.
The New World haplogroup X DNA (now called subgroup X2a) is as different from any of the Old World X2 lineages as they are from each other, indicating a very ancient origin. Although haplogroup X occurs only at a frequency of about 3% for the total current indigenous population of the Americas, it is a major haplogroup in northeastern North America, where among the Algonquian peoples of the Great Lakes Region it allegedly comprises up to 25% of mtDNA types. It has been suggested that its relative concentration in northeastern North America indicates an early North Atlantic route for bearers of this haplotype, although it is found in smaller percentages in other regions, among the Sioux, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Yakama in western North America as well as the Yanomani in Brazil.
