Why is any criticism of a culture considered racist?

BernardR asks:
"Is "denigration of customs of cultures" now equivalent to "The use of mytho-biological inequalities to justify the economic and political exploitation of weaker ethnic communities".

NO. We mustn't confuse culture (which is real) with race (which is not). The only time, I think, that the denigration of cultural practices is "racist" is when it is implied that the "inferior" customary practice of a group is reflective of their biological inferiority. And since there is no such thing as a race, this cannot be. Societies have throughout history adopted the customs of other societies (anthropologists call it "diffusion") which shows that customs are independent of biology.

The term "mytho-biological inequalities" is, I am very much afraid, quite lacking in substance. Unless it is clearly defined, there is bound to be some overlap with "denigration of customs of cultures'

Some definition please!! Specific, if you will!!!

Geeze, what a putz . . . he was quoting you, Italgato, if you think the response deficient for a lack of definition, you need to define the terms which you introduced into the discussion.

Eorl's remarks are very much to the point, and derive directly from the state of mind which i described as arising in the late 1960s, when "solidarity" among "minorities" (women, for example, are not a minority, although certainly subject to prejudicial treatment) became a desired goal. With such an ethos in place among militants, one could not criticize misogyny in any community defined as minority, or alcohol or drug abuse, such as is one of the huge social problems among Amerindians, to revert to an example which Eorl introduced.

Eorl's example of the Amerindians is a reference to a huge area of "political rectitude" which has succeeded marvelously in re-writing history to the point at which the common public view is horribly skewed toward the historical myths which now surround the "Native Americans." (I personally object to the use of the term Native American itself--i am a native of North American, i just don't happen to have any Amerindian ancestors.)

The Lenni Lenape are an Amerindian tribal group known more commonly to Europeans as the Delaware Indians. In the 17th Century, the tribes of the Iroquois Confederation began a concerted effort to wipe out the French in Canada (they had a grudge, and with them, grudges were never forgotten). The Iroquois Confederates were very sophisticated in their understanding of the economic equations upon which European colonists relied. They understood that they would need a large income to prosecute a war over generations (and they fought the French literally for generations), and they understood that the French colony relied upon the income from pelts, especailly from beaver pelts. One of their first moves was to attack the Lenni Lepane, and drive them off the land they then occupied. Even though the Lenni Lepane moved back after the Iroquois Confederates left, the Iroquois, fully cognisant of the European attitude toward land ownership, sold the "Delaware" lands to the Europeans at Albany. Part of the contemporary myth of the Indians is that they had no concept of property ownership. That is clearly false, but it persists as a cultural myth, because it underpins the claim of the "theft" of land from the Indians. (Of course, if they did not have a concept of property ownership, how could one "steal" land from them?)

Thereafter, the Iroquois Confederates realized they would need to "starve" the French colony by cutting off their access to the fur trade which supported them. The scam with Lenni Lepane land had provided the wherewithal to support them in continuous military campaigns against the French, but they decided to cut the French off from the fur trade. Therefore, in about 1640, they decided to exterminate all of the tribes of the Great Lakes region in order to engross the fur trade and choke the economic life blood of the French. They slaughtered tens of thousands of Indians over nearly 50 years, and wiped some bands out altogether. As late as 1678, Henri de Tonty, a lieutenant of le Sieur La Salle, encountered a war party of about 2000 Iroquois Confederates southwest of where Chicago now stands, hundreds of miles from their home in the Mohawk valley of what is now New York. They were marching on the winter encampment of the Illiniwek (those called the Illinois by the French). He warned the Illiniwek, who began a retreat which eventually carried them southwest to the Mississippi, and the Illiniwek only survived by fleeing over the Mississippi River. The Tamaroa sept decided they were safe, and did not cross the Mississippi. The following day, the Iroquois Confederates fell on their encampment, and the Tamaroa "braves" abandoned the women, children and elderly, and fled. The Iroquois butchered all of the Tamaroa they could get their hands on, and the Tamaroa sept ceased to exist--the surviving men were taken into the other septs of the Illiniwek. This explodes another myth of the Indians, that they all lived in brotherhood.

In the 1870s, the Shoshone of Montana agreed to remove themselves to the Wind River Reservation, and to attempt to take up farming. In the 1880s, the government wanted to put the Arapaho on the Wind River Reservation, despite the objections of the Shoshone, for whom the Arapaho had traditionally been tribal enemies. The Arapaho were settled on a strip of land in the southern portion of the Reservation, but white men acting on behalf of the Shoshone successfully sued the government, who were obliged to pay the Shoshone for the land which had been taken from them. The Indians of North America had a very good understanding of property ownership.

There are three great myths of the American Indians. I've pointed out property ownership and tribal brotherhood as false myths--the final one is their alleged harmonious relationship to nature. The archaeological evidence is that species diversity took a nose dive after human beings arrived in North America, as it has in every part of world into which human beings have migrated. There is archaeological evidence as well as written records in historical times of Indians using surrounds to trap game animals (buffalo, elks, antelope) or cliff-top walls to force the herds over a cliff to die below and be butchered for the meat and hides. When Lewis and Clark lead their expedition to the Pacific coast in 1804-1806, they took along with them a Shoshone woman named Boinaiv (Grass Child), who had been captured by Minnetaree raiders in about 1801, and who was given the Minnetaree name Sacajewea--Bird Woman. When they arrived in the Rocky Mountains and contacted the Shoshone, the Shoshone demanded that they establish a trading post so that they would have access to fire arms. They lived constantly on the edge of starvation, and lacking the military resources, were a prey to the other tribes of the west who would attack them when they came out of the mountains to hunt the buffalo, in the attempt to get enough meat to survive the winter. Later, when Jim Bridger established a trading post in what is now Montana, the Shoshone settled in large numbers around his "fort," to be able to trade for the wherewithal to hunt successfully, and to fight off their tribal rivals.

There can be no doubt that white men slaughtered the buffalo in their millions, often just to get the hides, leaving the meat to rot. Many of them knowingly slaughtered the buffalo to deny them as a resource to the Indians of the plains and mountains. However, it is a myth to portray the Indians as gentle innocents, living in brotherhood and environmental harmony, with no concept of capitalism, property or of economics. The historical record simply does not support such a myth. But the myth is all important, and i have been attack in online fora for pointing these things out. I do not deny for a moment that Indians were subjected to horrible attacks and oppression, and were often the targets of desultory attempts at genocide. I do deny that they were gentle innocents, who bore no responsibility for what happened to them.

J. L. Nobody--

The term "mytho-biological inequalities" is, I am very much afraid, quite lacking in substance. Unless it is clearly defined, there is bound to be some overlap with "denigration of customs of cultures'

Some definition please!! Specific, if you will!!!

For me the term merely refers to false (mythological) inequalities between peopleS that are attributed to biological-racial differences. Undoubtedly, there are physical inequalities between individuals, but since "races" do not exist, these inequalities are not "racial" in nature--so, by "mytho-biological inequalities" I refer to the lie of racial inequalities.

People from every ethnicity tend to look and act in similar ways. So of course we generalize about them, just as we would generalize about any group of people than can be identified. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with not liking them. If somebody chooses not to like a group of people, say -- chinese people, or people who are in chess clubs, or short people, or fat people, or jocks...that's fine.

It's perfectly reasonable to assume you won't like someone based on similarity to other people you don't like, and there's nothing wrong with making fun of those people behind their backs. Nobody likes all groups, and we all make fun of the groups of people we don't like from time to time.

I wouldn't say any of that is racism. Racism would be showing open disrespect in some way to those people to their face. I've never witnessed racism.

To believe in the existence and significance of races is to be (while not maliciously, regarding intent) RACIST. I do not dislike any group; a group is an abstraction. I probably dislike individuals from every so-called group or nation, another abstract. There are only individuals who join together to form what they perceive to be groups. And this does affect their behavior in significant ways. It's one of the bases of sociology. But I know of few social scientists who ascribe ontological reality to groups.

Why in the world would a mentally sound person dislike all short, chinese or fat people?

I don't see that "openness" or "disrespect" are necessary components of racism. For one thing, discreet racism is still racism. For another thing, not all racism is (deliberately) derogatory. To assume that all blacks can dance, that all Chinese are smart or that all Native Americans are wise is still racism because those are all examples of a characterization that is categorically applied to an entire race. (And as laudatory as those characterizations sound, they're still condescending and absurd.) That's why the word "racism" has the word "race" in it. I'm not sure where you got your definition of racism, but here you're not describing racism; you're describing disrespect.



Certainly, but what is not perfectly reasonable is to assume that that similarly exists before you've verified for yourself with the person in question.



Yup, that's racism.

These are just sets of people defined by arbitrary criteria.

There is nothing irrational about disliking an individual person for a specific reason.

Therefore, there is also nothing irrational about disliking a set of people for a specific reason.



If you choose to classify racism as recognizing that people have different traits, then you're not describing racism; you're describing not-being-blind.

Quite correct, which is why I didn't classify racism that way. It's stated quite clearly in my previous post, but here it is again: "a characterization that is categorically applied to an entire race." What you're artfully glossing over is the basis on which you assume that the character traits of one person are inherent in another person. If your basis is race, then that's racism.

Oh, you don't think that's the case??

There can be few more arbitrary classifications than "race." There are not different races--all descriptions of race are based on superficial appearances, and often on the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. For example, describing "blacks" (Americans of African ancestry) as prone to crime ignores that economic opportunity (specifically, the lack of it) is the overwhelming incentive to crime. Most recipients of welfare payments are white, and live in small towns and rural areas. It is easy to focus on urban crime (most urban recipients of welfare payments are black--the point about welfare payments is that it is evidence of poverty), and to then claim that blacks are prone to crime. One need only ignore urban blacks who do not engage in criminality, and to ignore that crime is prevalent in small town and rural areas as well, which (outside a very limited area of the "Old South" in the United States) are overwhelmingly populated by white people.

One other striking example of this use of the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances is a claim that blacks excel at sports. Poor people who have little education and no resources, but who have athletic ability can, if the opportunity arises, use that ability to escape their poverty. Small town white boys who make it big in sports simply are not compared to urban blacks who make it big in sports--but that is exactly what Bobby Orr and Larry Bird did. They both came from small towns, and used their athletic abilities to make a fortune. White folks in the United States simply have more opportunities than any other description of people which is based on their superficial appearance, and it is precisely because of that superficial appearance, and persistent racism, that those opportunities are available to them.



You are willfully ignoring that your stance implies that people who can be classified by superficial appearance can be described as having similar traits just because of the superficial appearance. Your claim certainly is as Shapeless describes it, that characteristics of one person in a group with family resemblance can be automatically attributed to people of that same group. Black people who act in criminal ways, or who excel at sports have in common their poverty, not "race." The poor black boy from an urban background who becomes a sports legend has more in common with the poor white boy (from an urban or a rural background) than he does with other urban blacks who do not become sports "superstars"--the commonality being the use of sports as a means to escape poverty and restricted opportuntiy. Wilt Chamberlain has more in common with Bobby Orr than he does with other blacks from Philadelphia who did not excel at basketball--with respect to his exploitation of his skills to his own advantage. Bobby Orr has more in common with Chamberlain than he does with other small town Canadians who did not excel at hockey--with respect to his exploitation of his skills to his own advantage.

Not all Irishmen are Catholics with large families--but if one only looks at those Irish who are Catholic with large families, and ignores examples which contradict the stereotype, it is easy to assert that that is the case.

Culture is what many people with superficial resemblance have in common. Calling criticism of the culture racism is nonsense because other people of the same "race" who do not share the cultural background may not have the same character traits, simply because the same "values" would not have been stressed when they were reared.

But to claim that mere superficial family resemblance is a valid basis for attributing character traits to people may well constitute racism. I have known Africans who have lived in American cities who despise, and are despised by, the black Americans of African ancestry among whom they live. The difference between them is culture--the similarity is only superficial, and is meaningless.

No, I am not willfully ignoring it, I am openly stating it!

First of all, appearance is a trait, so my statement is true by definition.

However, it is easy to show the validity of this statement with other traits, too. For example, a person may not like people who are annoying to them. The way that a person speaks can easily be a factor of annoyance. It is well known that certain groups of people have commonalities in the way that they speak.

If the person observes a trend of people from a certain group where the majority exhibits this annoying characteristic, then given a random member of that set it is more likely than not that they will not like that member. So it can be said that they do not like the set in general.

By noticing the association between speaking in an annoying way and distinguishing characteristics such as race or attire, the person is simply applying the brain's innate capabilities for pattern matching to make the most informed assumption possible.

This skill, which you call racism, is a necessary aspect of being a functional human.

Nonsense, Stuh--you're comparing apples to oranges. If, to use your example, "upspeak" (ending every utterances as though asking a questions, ya know?) is annoying to you, then anyone from a culture in which "upspeak" is common would annoy you. But that could be anyone from that culture who is "white," as well as anyone from that culture who is "black." What are referred to as the races (a superficial and false distinction) do not determine adherence to cultural norms. Your analogies consistently fail because "race" does not determine individual behavior, it is only coincidental to local cultural norms. That is the point which Shapeless is making.

By the way, it is not axiomatic that the ability to distinguish patterns is a component of successful human function--in fact, falsely identifying patterns (such as is the case with the application ill-considered anecdotal evidence, or the employment of the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances) might in fact lead to human "malfunction."

Additionally, i am not identifying pattern recognition as racism, i am pointing out that it is false to ascribe adherence to a perceived pattern as arising from putative "race." I am pointing out that as Shapeless said, to assume that a person will inevitably behave in a certain manner based upon superficial identification can constitute racism--such as saying that anyone with dark brown skin ("blacks") will necessarily be criminal. It is more accurate to identifying criminality is arising most commonly from poverty, and even then, one cannot reasonably assume that all poor people will be criminal. Such "pattern recognition" would be a flawed process indeed, and would not necessarily contribute to successful function.

No, that's not true, but depending on the statistics it might be a good idea to assume that it is true.



Yeah, sure.



Of course.



I never assumed that race determines individual behavior. I merely implied that there may be statistical correlations between observable characteristics and un-observable ones, and that these correlations should not be ignored.



That is very true.



That is very false. Without the ability to distinguish patterns, humans would be able to do the following things (for example):

a) We could not perceive depth from vision
b) We could not recognize peoples' faces, recognize familiar objects, or even navigate using vision
c) We could not predict social reactions
d) Similar events could not trigger memories or remind us of things
e) We might not be able to access memories properly
f) We could not detect emotional changes in people

I don't think it's really necessary to go on with this list.

This is a basically meaningless statement. "Race," as determined by physical characteristics, is observable. Characteristics which annoy one, or which one condemns, are observable. What part do any putative "unobservable" characteristics have in a discussion of Shapeless' criticism of your remarks? Once again, this ignores both false analogy form anecdote and the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances.



No, of course not--it is necessary, however, to take notice that you are ignoring my use of the word "axiomatic." Not all pattern recognition successfully identifies corollary. There was absolutely nothing in what i wrote which suggested that pattern recognition was not valuable, i simply pointed out that not all pattern recognition leads to valid assumptions about the nature of the world.

In this case, the perspective for which the trait is observable has not been defined. While it is true that there exists a perspective from which any trait can be observed, that is not the point. The point is that, when in a perspective where only a limited subset of characteristics can be directly observed, using pattern recognition on those observable characteristics can yeild statistical evidence about the potential states of unobserved characteristics.

For instance, if a person has encountered 1000 people having characteristic A, and all of those people also had characteristic B, and this person in the future observes a person with characteristic A but is unable to directly observe the presence of characteristic B, it is certainly admissable to assume that characteristic B is also present, although it cannot be known for sure.



I certainly agree with the truth of that statement, but that's not what you said. I'm not ignoring your use of the word axiomatic, but perhaps you are not understanding the meaning of the word correctly.

"it is not axiomatic that the ability to distinguish patterns is a component of successful human function"

axiomatic ~ pertaining to or of the nature of an axiom; self-evident; obvious.

Therefore your statement is virtually identical to:

"it is not obvious that being able to distinguish patterns is important for human function"

which is certainly very different from your most recent rephrasing...

Do you have any criticisms that are not based on mangled misinterpretations of my point?

Stuh 505- You are debating with a blowhard named Setanta who thinks he knows everything. In reality, he twists and perverts definitions to suit his own desires.

Let's cut to the chase.


Critiques of other cultures is not racism---

Racism, is "A 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 others"

Very few people in the USA now think that a "race" of people, be they Black, Mongoloid or Caucasian.

One can, if one has any morality or feeling for their fellow humans, criticize other cultures. In the political correct climate in the USA currently it is forbidden to criticize some of the cultural aspects presented by African-Americans but it is considered appropriate to criticize, in the strongest possible terms, the cultural aspects of those who would be identified as fundamentalist Christians.


People like Setanta do not appear to realize that the mere fact that different peoples and cultures have evolved in radically geographical settings is alone enough to make simililarity of skills virtually impossible.

This, of course, does not mean that cultures cannot change and adapt. When Commodore Perry gave the Japanese a scale model train, the Japanese were astonished, yet, a century later the Japanese "bullet train' would be one of the technological marvels of the world.

However, we can criticize other cultures without being labelled racists. Indeed, we would be morally delinquent if we did not strongly excoriate the barbaric African custom of Clitoridectomy just as the British railed against the Indian barbarism involved in Suttee.

Like so many radical liberals, it appears that Setanta is dreadfully afraid of facts. He states that the major reason that African-Americans do not improve themselves as one might expect to poverty( read racism) but he is apparently unaware that even African-Americans who have a much higher Socio-Economic Status that some Asians do not score as high as those Asians do on the standardized tests.

This is not a failure based on poverty. It is a failure based on culture. The culture which has permeated the lower class African-American family and has been encouraged by the race carders. The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons can only retain their power by insisting that the US culture is a racist culture and that the US leaders have a policy to keep African-Americans in poverty. These race carders teach the African-American lower class that they are victims in a racist society and that their failures are not due to their personal habits and culture but rather stem from racism in the government.

People like Setanta should know better. They don't.