White Supremacy

Prejudice on racial and/or ethnic grounds is ALWAYS a result of gross ignorance.

But, to go into it a little more deeply, that kind of prejudice is also, almost always, based on fear. We -- all of us, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic origin -- have a tendency to fear things or people that are different from our own preset norms. People who have different skin pigmentation, speak a different language or worship differently from the way that we do tend to be people we fear. They are the "others," not like "us." This has been so since our ancestors dwelt in caves.

My dictionary defines prejudice as "a bias for or against something formed without sufficient basis." As I said, ignorance.

In the case of back-country white supremacists, the feeling of bias is often fueled by a fear of losing their jobs to these "others." Sad, I agree.

You realize that there are a great many sociologists, psychologists, etc., who have spent or are spending their entire careers writing volumes dealing with the issue of racism and ethnocentrism. There are numerous factors and the issue is complex.

To begin with, people generally favor those most like themselves. This tendency holds true for race, ethnicity, and language. We often forget that other races and ethnicities are as likely to suffer from racism/ethnocentrism as those of European descent. White supremacy is simply racism/ethnocentrism practiced by a portion of caucasians. White racism/supremacy, however, tends to be a more virulent since European/caucasian people have dominated the globe for hundreds of years.

Beyond the human disposition to gravitate towards other humans who are most like us, explaining racism gets pretty tricky. Racism seems to persist for largely economic and psychological reasons. The classic image of the white racist, that of rural and/or working class folks with limited education and/or world experiences, seems to be the product of learned behavior from parents and is reinforced because it provides an ego boost (if you're a white racist, then it doesn't matter how poor you are because you'll always feel superior to a member of an ethnic/racial minority). However, it's not poor southern rednecks who cause African Americans to earn less on average than European Americans for the same work when all other factors are equal. It's not poor southern rednecks who cause qualified minority group members to be promoted at a lower rate than whites. It wasn't poor or working class whites who imported slaves from Africa. This moves us into the economic dimension of racism.

Slavery helped solve the labor shortages experienced by southern farmers/plantation owners. However, people generally feel uneasy about kidnapping other people, taking them across an ocean, and forcing them to work for no pay. Thus racist attitudes were promoted to convince people that the Africans being brought over were less than human. The same holds true when discussing the native population. Folks are generally uneasy about killing other people and taking their land, so justifications are invented (remember, most hispanics in the western hemisphere have significant native heritage). Fast forward to the post-slavery era, and promoting racist attitudes and behavior became useful to the economic leaders for a different reasons--business leaders could keep their white workers in line by threatening to replace them with ethnic minority workers who'd work for less (this, in turn, feeds back in to racist attitudes among poor and working class whites).

This, of course, barely scratches the surface.

I think you made a good dent in the surface, Mills75.

Thanks, but as I said, literally volumes have been written on this topic.

I was just thinking that it's kind of like sports fan loyalty. There are a lot of Yankee fans in New York and around the world who would say that the New York Yankees are the supreme baseball team no matter what the facts, win percentages, batting averages, etc. say. Most people don't look at loyalty to a sports team as wrong, and I'm not at all saying it is. But it is very similar to the idea of racism, just on a larger scale.

In some countries, soccer rivalries get violent. Fans end up fighting each other in the stands. In the same way, people end up thinking that their race is better than another race.

"Hey, I'm a fan of the White people, and your a fan of the Hispanic people! Let me show you how awesome and powerful my team is!"

This happens all of the world, too. In certain countries in Africa, different tribes fight to exterminate neighboring tribes by warfare and racial purging. Racism isn't just a white on nonwhite problem (although the most documented accounts of racism have been white on nonwhite).

P.S. Hello, hello world. This is my first post!

Hello! Hello! back atcha, my friend. Welcome to our world, Quidne.

There will always be a pecking order. Everyone seems to need to look down on some group, whatever the ethnicity. It's called competition, I think and a place in the sun.

Re: White Supremacy


Same thing the terrorists are doing right now.

I agree with Quidne, some of it is akin to the gang/team mentality of this is my group and we are better than your group. It is a rage that gets out of control when mentally inept people are unable to control themselves and are encouraged by like-minded people.

Robert Hayden says it rather well, I think:

"What kind of a person are you?

What kind of a person am I?

What makes you so sure?

What kind of a person could save a Black child?

What kind of a people will lay down its

life for the lives of our children?

What kind of a people are we?"

What about the eugenists? They're the problems aren't they? Some of them kept trying to show that this race has this general tendency to be less intelligent, bla bla bla, and some tend to inherit more genetic disease, etc. They make their argument sound smart that it's frustrating... I can see their mistake however, that they are ignoring the fact that all races have some sort of tendency toward a certain hereditary disease. Also, none of the argument is a valid justification for treating people like dirt. People are people, and if they dont' understand that, then they are bordering psychopathy. Anyways, that's my rant...

Edit: Oh, and there is really no justification for saying that caucasians or some other race are more intelligent than another. There are wide variety within a race, and the average is about the same for all races. Also, trying to measure intelligence is vague as you have to consider environmental factors, cultural familiarity, and some people might have more interests in other things etc.

To everyone:
My mate says his neighbour is like a broken machine that needs fixing.
My mate says something needs doing about his other neighbour to make an improvement.
My mate says the neighbourhood is full of people whose mothers and fathers need patching up and sorting out.

Who's my mate? A geneticist. And don't say you don't go along with my mates sentiments, because we all going along with what the technicians tell us.

A note on intelligence:
I think a lot of racial intellectual trends are based on cultural emphasis. Asian parents, for instance, often press their kids extremely hard to do excellent in school and art. Product: a lot of smart asian kids. White parents, on the whole, tend to be less involved and let their kids try hard and excel if they want or be lazy slobs and not excel. Product: a lot of average white kids. There are always exceptions, but the most common way to measure "intelligence" is through testing on training received.

But, I'd like to know what you would say makes people different from animals. We both breathe, eat, sleep, drink, and play. So why should it be okay to selectively breed sheep and not humans?

Our consciousness is the difference. We have a cerebrum that has two hemispheres, the left side for spiritual and artistic side, and the right side the rational side. I think that the combination of both the senses and our ability to understand is what sets us apart.

edit: I guesss I should add and clarify to my last post. I think that the difference between people and animals is sentiency. There.

Re: White Supremacy


ok your argument with the girl friend doesn't work cause maybe they want an inferior girl friend. and i think in this case of studying supremacy you need to judge by actions and words of what people actually did and/or said that was racist by looking at history or studies i know personally there is racism also in the other direction "white man can't jump" etc. or malcomx. don't try to pin it all down on one race.

Re: White Supremacy


iagree wi w ith yoiu totaly i thi k thjat overall wear always doiungto have a go a o ur neignours buti th i nk ihope you kno w whatwhat i i am o na abnbout i because i becaus any way thas al i ha vetosay

Hey, Ray, I agree, just wanted to see you write it.

ok
Human race = ALL RACES regardless of skin color.

Maybe whites downgrade minorities from what they see on T.V. Alot of black men are known for their roles in the entertainment, as singers, and rappers. And many rappers are being convicted for various crimes, so some whites may led to believe all blacks are this way.