Racism
 

Topic of much discussion. This thread got me thinking... does racism really pose a problem any more in the Western world (including Oz and NZ)? I've lived in the West for all but three of my years, and as a visible minority, I can tell you I can never remember being treated in a discriminatory manner. Ever. My dad tells me of the troubles he had getting promoted and so on when we lived in Ireland, and that's why he seems to love Canada so much. But this was about 15-20 years ago, and I'm sure that Canada was similar back then. Your thoughts on this hot topic?

I live in the same flat as an Asian guy, and get on well. Two of my friends are black. It doesn't bother me, at least.

It depends on what is happening. You are pretty affluent, successful and can be seen as such. Therefore you are accepted. You speak good English, so people can talk to you.

If, however, you were to ask someone from say Oldham, here in England, then the picture would be much different. In places such as that, the minority populations are unemployed, find it difficult to speak the language (through there not being any provision to learn the language), and they are segregated in to "ghettos"

You are lucky that you are not faced with rascism. I have been, and I know people who have also been threatedn by rascists.

Could distinct ethic regions of a city be considered racist though? Living in a certain part of town will happen to anyone who is unemployed. And certainly, those immigrants should have considered the language barrier before coming to the West.

btw, I used to live in a pretty crummy part of town in a pretty shabby building with a low income. The "Projects" as it were. About ten years ago. Even then, racism never touched my family.

I am not saying that it is racist, but the ghettoisation is. It prevents cultures from mixing, which ultimately leads to the hate that is a major part of rascism. I think that if the different colours were to me mroe fairly mixed, and sensitively, then it would helo the problem somewhat.

I say sensitively because recently, Leeds City Council decided to take in some Kosovo refugees, and place them in the city. A few weeks later, they placed some Serbs in the same area.

A) Ghettoization, to my knowledge, has never been forced.
B) Adding on to that, immigrant populations, in my experience, tend to congregate. When they first arrive in a new city, they head to where there are others of the same nationalities. It happens in London, it happens in Toronto, it happens in New York. It's something that other races have no control over, unless they forcibly remove people from their homes, and mix it all up.

I know that it does happen, but here in the UK, the councils that decide where people are going to live usually do put different races in one place. I am not against that, but i think that it would lessen the tension if people could mix more.

Another reason for the tension in the UK is that the migrant populations are usually put in the shit houses that none of the native population want to live in.

Well, I do know of people who would deny an employment opportunity to a qualified applicant based on skin color alone.
I also know of people who have died for getting lost and winding up in a "bad" neighborhood.
Maybe the employment deniers were related to some of those who made wrong turns and died for it.
I also wonder why nobody has heard about the white hitchhiker in Jasper Texas who was beaten and intentionaly run over not long ago by four assailants who just happened to be black.
We heard about James Byrd the black man murdered by three racist whites for years.
Why is that you reckon?
Would this story be less compelling that that of Byrd?
Somehow I doubt it.
Was the story of the young lady from Wisconsin who was killed for winding up in one of "those" neighborhoods a few days ago uninteresting? Did you not hear it?
Am I not surprised?
It's not even that isolated an occurance that innocent whites in America are murdered for being white, but it is not reported in the national news.
Australia called it our "Dirty War".
Though I have never hated any person for the color of their skin I shall no doubt be chastised as a "Racist" for knowing these things, and daring to speak them.
If so I shall wear the name proudly.

I'll admit here and now I am a racist.
Every Sunday I sit down,
and watch the Nascar Races on TV.
:)

[edit: in response to Jon]

It's interesting to note what the left (not your left Bilbo, the more liberal, pathetic noncommunist left) wants to cover up. It's as if they want to say all people are equal, but only the good parts.

on a similar note, every homecoming in my ol' highschool would have a "Black and White" day to replace the "Maroon and White" school colors. The kicker is that white students would swap with black students and vice versa...
i wonder how it's going to play in the future with our school's asian populace, it's now about 70% white, 20% black and 10% asian...

sorryfully the admin never had our sense of humor and tried to ban it every time, but it never worked since they'd be the ones labeling certain styles as "black or white" and we'd just say we're doing nothing. well... you gotta prove something right? can't just say "um mr chad your pants seem too black for your white ass, go home."

ok the story has some point, we actually can poke fun at ourselves and each other w/o resorting to school shootings and slashing tires. then again the school is private, and Lutheran.
who knows, in 300 years we could be all one mixing of a race and "pure" blood people will be weirdos. then no longer can we judge according to skin, but for the f*ckups they make.

first, i'm white.

many black guys scare me. this is probably due to the fact that only 5 or so black people live in my city, so I have no experience with them. and they are all so huge (mostly basketball players from the college).

i prefer white women to black women. this is just a preference, nothing really against blacks.

also in my city there are many mexicans (forgive me, my use of politically incorrect terms probably). 99% of them are the stereotypical mexican: dirty, lazy, slurred speech, and more. i have no problem with a mexican person who works for their place in society, but i really do dislike these stereotypical people.

that would be how i feel on the subject...try not to flame me to hard for being a "racist"; i'm really not. i just have opinionated views on some things.

cya!

Liquid, I can't really say much about you being scared of black men. Just say hello to them as you pass. Smile at them. Most everyone will smile back. If they don't they aer either in a bad mood or just asses. I doubt that all of the black men in your area are moody asses. :D

Black women. . . definitely a preference. That's not racist, though. I'm less attracted to black women, on average, but there are some I find very attractive. I've dated one. I find dark haired women (without the mustache, though :D) more attractive than blonde women. That doesn't make me prejudiced against blonde women, though. I just have particular tastes.

The mexicans I know are very hard workers. (Some of the female ones are extremely attractive, too . . . the dark hair, you know) I won't deny that there are mexicans who don't practice the same hygene rituals I do, but there are also white people who practice what I would consider poor hygene. I haven't really seen any more mexicans with slurred speech than I have of any other race.

P.S. To address the original point of the thread. Yes, I believe that many people encounter racism. The girl I dated told me quite a bit about her experiences in high school with racism. It's not stuff I'd want to experience. It's not stuff that happenned at my high school though, as far I know. However, at my college this halloween, one (white) fraternity had a member dress up as a black man, and took pictures of other members beating him up (I've forgotten a lot of the actual details). They then posted these pictures on the Internet. It was sad, but what was worse, to me, is that they were banned from campus for a year or so. I still fail to understand how the school decided that it can enforce its ethical beliefs onto an organization. (I believe that the actual students involved were actually expelled. I would have teken it to court, but then, I wouldn't have been engaged in the act in the first place.)

LOL.

The one thing i do find annoying though it the ethos amongst some ethnic minorities that they have the right to turn aroud to you and insult you in wibblewobble, or whatever it is they speak. I think that this is insulting, not because of the content (hell, i can give as good as i get), but because of the fact that they know you do not speak their language.

Foul niggards!

Foul stingy people?

Hell bent on stirring up trouble, eh?

I was actually hoping to stir some trouble up, but a smartass beat me to it :D

for most of my life, i've never really been aware of racism around me, but recently i've looked back and noticed some odd things, and a few things have happened to make me re-evaluate things
First, i'm a blond haired blue eyed white male, and i have to be VERY careful about what i say or anything, b/c i have been accused of being a nazi in the past. I'm not, i've never done anything remotely racist, i have lots of asian friends, black friends, and yet, a year or so ago, one person walked up to me and said "Matthew, you're a nazi" then walked away.
I recently shaved my head, and a few ppl have made jokes about nazis in one way or another. That annoys me

And the other thing i mentioned, of reevaluating the past, in one of my classes recently i was really bored and got to thinking, my school is mostly white or asian students. For the most part, my group of friends and a few others are exceptions, the white kids hang out together and the asian kids hang out together.

In my neighbourhood, a middle class area of north toronto, there are TWO families taht aren't caucasian. That scares me.
In the elementary school i went to, there were NO, not one SINGLE non-caucasian students. The only ppl i ever really saw who weren't, were the hispanic nannies of kids in my classes.

Those things scare me. That i could grow up so isolated, and yet never have really noticed it until now.

Unfortunately, HueHue, that kind of thing happen. I'm pretty sure it always will, but it's also getting better all the time. :)

I still get a kick out of hearing teachers saying things about Hitler believing that "Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Germans were the master race." Hitler had neither blonde hair nor blue eyes. Neither do most Germans. Regardless, Hitler wasn't even a German. There are so many teachers still saying things like that, though. Mine said things like that to me.

That's what happens in a multicultural society. I noticed that while I was living in Ireland, people had no problem mixing because the Irish have a strong national and cultural identity. When immigrants arrive there, they get absorbed into it.

Hitler believed that eventually, the German race would get to a point where all of them were blond haired and blue eyed. This superior race would have superpowers such as levitation and telepathy. He didn't believe, that at the current moment in time, that blond Germans were superior to black haired ones. This was based on some myth or another about an ancient race of Germans or something like that...

And Hitler was German. Even though his home was in Austria (in a border town, actually), Austria is an ethnically German country. There are Germanic people all across Central Europe, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. After all, the modern political state of Germany only came into being in the mid 1800s (after the Congress of Vienna, to be exact), but the German nationality existed long before that (the Romans encountered Germanic peoples when they tried to conquer Germania).

[edit: RM needs to get his facts straight before typing anything historical.]

The girl I took to my Junior prom was from Germany (she had dark hair, very sexy :cool:) and she told me that she thought that the different races would mix here. She said that the kept separate just like they do in Germany. It's apparently that way everywhere. (She did bridge the gap and go with a black guy to her prom, though. :D)

i really dont get that whole blond hair blue eye thing. i mean, you dont start hittin those traits in people until you head north to sweden & other nordic countries. so are the germans just gonna magically change? i think not.

i have brown hair and green eyes & am mostly german, btw.

Like I said, it was based on some myth, with a bit of German folklore tossed in for good measure. If I ever become unlazy, I'll go hunt down the specifics. btw, there are blond hair, blue-eyed Germans.

There are Blonde haired, blue eyed Jews as well. It's just sort of rare. :)

My German teacher (yes, from Deutschland) last semester did have blonde hair, though. I'm not sure what color his eyes were, though. I didn't get that close. His wife (my teacher last year) had brown hair and brown eyes. Yes, I did get that close. ;) :D

I met this very pretty blond haired, blue eyed German girl working the cash at a gas station on the outskirts of Tubingen :)

I've seen beautiful people from just about every race there is I guess.
Funny, despite Coporal Klinger, some of the most beautiful people I have known were Lebanese.
It's really odd, I know 4 people who are Lebanese and every one of them may be described as handsom or beautiful.

In Australia there is racism but not nearly as much as their used to be. However whenever one community does something it can trigger to do racist acts. i.e. during the Kosovo conflict several Serbian communities were attacked.

Australia is a multicultural country and has many minorities. Most of these minorities get along and mix. However recently people from the Middle East have been separating themselves from the community, and attacking anybody who enters the area. i.e. these three Lebanese teenagers gang raped two white girls.

When acts like this happen it destroys the tolerance that the community has about their culture and way of life. More and more acts like this are occurring and soon it may spill over into violence if the police and government don't act

No matter how much we may wish racism didn't exist, it will always be a part of our imperfect society. Some positive changes have been made in recent history, but there is nothing that stops our minds from thinking "That person is different than me" when we see someone of a different color. Until whatever part of our brain that causes those thoughts evolves, racism will always exist. Sadly.

Yeah sure, it will always exist. I don't dispute. In fact, I know hundreds of intensely racist immigrants (yes, hundreds). But is it so widespread that it poses a threat to the Western way of life, our culture, and our values?

It seems to me that it's, for the most part, gone silent and underground.

Actually it's in the news here in the Midwest. Right now Kansas is considering a "Hate Crime Law" that would prosecute perpetrators of so-called hate crimes more strictly. For example if a white person were to commit vandalism on a black family's house, he would be sentenced more harshly than if he had vandalized a white family's house. Thoughts???

Ick. That sounds like affirmative action in disguise.

I think I have been the victim of racism-

I saw how much money the "FUBU" (For us by us [Africans]) label was making, so I decided to start my own "CC" (Caucasian Clothiers) label-but then I was told that would be a racist statement so it never got off the ground.

I went to my local government office to see if I could get March, the month after Black History Month, to be declared White History Month. I was declined because that would be racist.

Dejected, I decided to write some rap music about getting the shaft from all of the black establishment, but then I was a market failure because people only want to hear black people who write about niggaz getting the shaft from the white establishment.


3 statements of rhetoric - my message is that "Racism" is not a one way street
:rolleyes:

Holy hell. Where did this post come from? Did I just overlook it?

Anyway, I didn't realize that he actually believed all that. That's ot what techers are telling their students, in any event. Good info to have, though. He was a lot worse informed than I originally thought, though.

Hilter was not German. Austria is not the same as Germany. Germanic, absolutely. Germany, absolutely not. English is a Germanic language. It's not German, though.

Linguistics is completely different from ethnicity. In any case, he was most definitely German. As I pointed out "Germany" was not a country until after 1840ish. I can find out the exact date for you if you wish. Even after then, it was only a loose Confederation of states that couldn't really claim any national identity. There were still German people living in those states, in what is now present day Germany, Austria, and Poland. When talking about any period before about the 1918, nationality had little to do with citizenship. You could be a Provencal, but not live in the polical entity of "France", be Italian but not live in "Italy" (which for a large portion of history never existed as a unified state) and be a German (not Germanic, German) but not live in the political entity "Germany". Only after WWI were countries borders divided along ethnic lines. Unfortunately, some people of a certain ethnic background, such as Hitler, did not end up in the new ethnic country.

Well, I still consider "German" to mean "coming from or belonging to the country of Germany". I've never considered "German" to be an ethnicity. I suppose you could call it one, but then that's you, not me. ;) :p

A scan from the Onion's "Our Dumb Century"

http://www.plastikomatik.com/onionjap.gif

Tell that to the Florentine and Venetian merchants who talk of meeting Germans, but never set foot in "Germany" :p

Remember, Hitler was playing race politics when he was talking about the superiority of the Germans, so you must consider his ethnicity when discussing his nationality.

lol@Xerxes

im 1/2 Sri Lankan 1/2 Irish and my girlfriend is chinese..is that multi-cultural?

lol

That's stretching it a bit. It's root language, as you no doubt know, is Latin, so is related to the Romance languages. Of the three of that family, it's most influenced by French (actually, Provencal. Contemporary French is a modern invention). It also has many Celtic-linguistic-group derived words (old, ford, etc.)... But of all the languages in the world, it is the most closely related to Dutch, surprisingly. This is because Dutch is of the Finno-Ugric linguistic group, which covers all of Scandinavia, Estonia, and parts of Northern Europe (some dialects of High German are influenced by these Norse languages). This would be a result of the many contacts with the Vikings that the English have had. The German influence is only slight. But English sounds similar to it because of the incredibly diverse mix.... the very harsh and elongated sounds of the Finno-Ugric languages combined with the sweeter sounds of the Romance languages. German, too, is a mixed language. Sorry, but I wouldn't be able to tell you it's root language. I'm sure that English was influenced by it, so the two languages sound similar.

From what I understand, the two have very similar roots. There are more overlapping words between German and English than you might think. (for example: finger->finger)

I could be misinformed, but I've always been told that English was a Germanic language. The Anglo-Saxon influence on English is not slight. Nor is its influence on German. (perhaps you could say that both English and German are Anglo-Saxon-ic :D)