Question about race

[Beet]

angus, you're confusing racial awareness with racism. Biological facts are racial awareness, not racism (therefore I disagree perhaps with both you and Al on this score). Racism refers to something inherently political, like communism, fascism, liberalism, conservatism. That's why when you go to racial supremacy sites they try to replace "racism" with "race-consciousness" in an attempt to de-politicize their racist views. Once something becomes de-politicized it becomes unchallengable because people are no longer thinking about the political consequences of a type of thinking (on the other hand, when labelling racial awareness as 'racism' it deprives the word 'racism' of its political meaning). It's true that there is a certain uncomfortability when discussing these topics. But please don't confuse the two, it's inaccurate and dangerous.

[Beet]

angus, you're confusing racial awareness with racism. Biological facts are racial awareness, not racism (therefore I disagree perhaps with both you and Al on this score). Racism refers to something inherently political, like communism, fascism, liberalism, conservatism. That's why when you go to racial supremacy sites they try to replace "racism" with "race-consciousness" in an attempt to de-politicize their racist views. Once something becomes de-politicized it becomes unchallengable because people are no longer thinking about the political consequences of a type of thinking. So please don't confuse the two, it's inaccurate and dangerous.

No!  I am stoned or drunk quite a bit of the time.  But I am very clear on this point.  Up until the mid 1960s the word "racist" could refer to any study of race.  it was only during the beginning the period of great Social Experimentation that the word took on pejorative connations.  Also, Racial Awareness is one of those silly PC terms.   You'll not find me using it except in this sentence. 

Let's take our language back.  Sometimes, when I say gay, as in "Don we now our gay apparel" around Christmas time, I just mean gay.  Get it?!?!

I'm ready to rant for days, so just keep bringing it on.

You're missing the point.

(Not much rant material, sorry to say, I do find your posts always interesting )

[Beet]

Look, this is very important to me.  I'm very liberal about most things.  Two guys move in next door and make loud sucking and hollering and gay sex noises all night, I'm okay with that.  Two college students move in next door and smoke pot and play the stereo all night, and I'm okay with that.  Some school administrator decides that we need to teach Spanish in school as well as English because there's a sizable hispanic community, I'm okay with that.  Somebody wants to make sure inmates at the local prison gets condoms in order to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases I'm okay with that.

But when it comes to language, I'm an arch-conservative.  A prude (to use opebo's rather Victorian term).  I think words need not be emotionally charged.  When the US does something Imperialistic, I call it so, even though many Americans cringe at the word.   When a statement is racist, I call it so, even though some will have us believe that "racism" should only mean "racially discriminatory in a bad way"  And when I'm singing along with the Flintstones tune, I always say "We'll have a gay old time."  And I like having a gay old time.  And I'm not afraid to say I like having a gay old time.

I'd say it's important not to confuse the ability to have an honest, open-minded discussion with the necessity of suppressing the emotional connotations of all political words. While emotions certainly can get in the way of discussion with integrity, they should also not be denied outright. Rather, in the specific instances in which emotion is clouding reason, this ought to be pointed out. For example, communism is a political word with a negative emotional connotation, and it will probably always have this negative connotation. But this connotation comes because regimes historically communist regimes sacrificed tens of millions of people to starvation, political persecution, and state slavery for a failed dream. At the one extreme is to dismiss any idea that is associated with communism. This is intellectual dishonesty. At the other extreme is to deny that communism is a political term at all, and claim that it merely refers to awarenss of class divisions in society. This, too, is intellectual dishonesty.

What I am pointing out is not a judgement of good and bad on my part, but a factual conceptual difference between awareness of differences between humans of a type we would call race (differing skin color, etc) and the political ideology of racism, which is a type of thinking about the way society should be. It's the difference between science and ideology. This does not necessarily mean the ideology is necessarily bad, even though it is true that the vast majority would say so (just like identifying "communism" as a political term does not necessarily mean communism is bad). It is simply separating the political from the conceptual.

[Beet]

So, when I mean to say "Racist public policy" I say "racist public policy"  Like the policy of apartheid, for example.  But even then, not all racist public policies are "bad"   If it is a hospital policy to run sickle cell screening on all blacks because 9% of the black population is anemic, then that is (even by your definintion which includes the political) a racist policy.  Does it harm anyone?  well, yeah, I suppose chinese, white, and amerindian taxpayers could say that they're having to pay for something which has no benefit to them.  But it's likely to solve more problems than it creates.

Telling a person you can't hire him because he's gay or Jewish or black is wrong.  I also think policies which say "Hey we have enough Asians right now, so even if you're qualified we can't accept you into this university because we need more black students even if we can't find one with your SAT score, your grades, your letters of recommendation" That policy is very offensive (not particularly because it's racist, as I have no a priori reason to dismiss racist policies, as I've said, but precisely because it discriminates against persons whose races are "overrepresented" in white collar professions).

I'm not sure I disagree with anything in your last post except on the fine point of the definition of racism necessarily implying "racism as public policy".  But I recently evacuated, producing a particularly well rounded and exquisitely turned specimen, and then showered, and therefore I am generally no longer in an argumentative mood. 

Argh, clarification of questions here. Asking (Question 1) whether there is a difference between nonpolitical recognition of racial differences and racism, a political thing, is one question. Asking (Question 2) which particular political statements/decisions are racist is an entirely separate question.

(Question 1) I wasn't trying to say racism necessarily implied public policy, but the word is used to describe what is inherently political. Expressing a self-justified belief that "white women should not mix with black men" is inherently political and therefore racist. On the other hand, saying that blacks are overrepresented athletically or asians having the epicanthic fold is not political, for they represent statements about what is rather than what should be (and like any statements about what is can be tested for accuracy). Like all science, they may have politically significant implications, but are not in themselves political.

Well, if you're referring only to public policy then of course it is political, for policies are systemic decisions that necessarily reflect some view of how the world should work (the mere existence of hospitals, reflects the view that death is a bad thing).

(Question 2) The sickle cell example: is it racist?

Hospitals are probably merely following the judgment of using all the information that they can get to maximize their cost-benefit ratio in disease detection. One can say this is not racist for it is ultimately rooted in something other than race (of course, one can say the intuitive fear that one might get seeing a black man while walking alone in the city at night as rooted in cost-benefit analysis of self-preservation), so this can become very tricky.

All I cared about was pointing out there's a difference between recognition of biological racial differences and racism, a political ideology (Question 1). Which particular policies are actually racist is a swamp I'd rather not get into for now... I have to study for a midterm now anyway.

[Beet]

using any of several definitions of the word, both are racist statements.

Nobody said racism had to be formal and government instituted. The root word of conservatism is conserve. Does that mean conservationists are conservatives?

And which two statements are you referring to?

[Beet]

using any of several definitions of the word, both are racist statements.

Nobody said racism had to be formal and government instituted. The root word of conservatism is conserve. Does that mean conservationists are conservatives?

And which two statements are you referring to?

one of the most conservative things I do is turn off the lights when I'm not using them.  another is that I recycle all my PTFE, glass wine bottles, and cans.  Been doing it for years.  I also am a really lousy tipper. 

Forces can be conservative too.  These include elastic and gravitational forces.  Conservative should be distinguished from dissipative forces, such as friction.

Hah, right there. My bad
So words sometimes, though not always, are generalizable through the root. I'm not sure if conservatism is a word in physics, though I would be surprised if it was. I'm afraid you have much more knowledge than I, which only means that I'm probably benefitting disproportionately from this thread, I hope that's okay with you. Of course, I wouldn't quite say that not everything related to conservation would be called conservative, so even here there's not a universal generalization.

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Well, technically, they are not, though if you are looking for some adjective to describe the fact that they pertain to race, there is a word called
ra·cial    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (rshl)
adj.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of race or races.
Arising from or based on differences among human racial groups: racial conflict; racial discrimination.

Which is very similiar to the racialist that you had mentioned previously, except that it lacks the -ist suffix of course, which apparently means "one who practices."

[Beet]

"nobody said...  public policy"?!?! You said it yourself, in your diatribe about how all "isms" are inherently political (which is demonstrably false as well, as in nepotism, onanism, etc.)  At the time I didn't think it was intelligent enough to even deserve a response.  Still don't, but felt it provided an easy reference here.

Forgive me for my indiscretions, angus. You were keeping up a response to me through the discussion, so I was under the impression you were fully engaged. If you ever feel that my posts don't deserve a response, please don't respond. I will always enjoy your posts, however.

The suffix -ism within a certain context which I thought was assumed, refers to some sort of pre-packaged ideology. When I said political, I explained what I meant in a way consistent with only the broader definition,
"politics
n 1: social relations involving authority or power"
I had mentioned for example that the hospitals' decisions was political... surely you did not think I assumed only hospitals owned by the government? The more general distinction I made was between ideology and science, between statements about how the world should work, and how it is.

EDIT: Also note, that I never used the words "public policy" until you did, and here is my exact quote:

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If there's a part of that which wasn't understood by you, sorry.

EDIT #2: Now that I go back and re-read my post, I didn't even say that "all -isms" are inherently political. I said racism was inherently political, and compared it to other political isms. But from the article I linked above it's clear that some authors have used the suffix -ism to refer to the political, whether in the broader or narrower sense. Of course, a certain context is always assumed in these cases.

[Beet]

Lots going on here.

Indeed. I'll just assume you're drunk and looking for an argument. The rest of your post simply wasn't worth responding to.

[Beet]

LOL.  I guess I deserved the comeback.  truthfully, I'm pretty drunk about this time every night.  But that's not the problem.  It's just that I had the all you can eat Indian buffet today.  Too much naan, saag paneer, and chicken vindaloo.  Funny thing, I can eat oily, salty chinese pork all day every day, no problem.  But Indian always sets me back about half a day to a day even.  There must be a physical reason, but I don't know what it is.  Though I did see a chemistry seminar on Curcumin (a component of the Tumeric plant) last week and its purported effect on Alzheimer's disease prevention.  I guess I can trade the pleasure of twice daily evacuation for the longevity of my mind's independence.  You might say I'm "conserving" matter.  Hard to be clever while bloated and stiff.  No worries, I always start my day with a pot of strong french-roasted, turkish grind, African AA.  (I may be cheap about most things, but I drink good, rich coffee and always buy plush, high-quality tissue.  some things are just too important to skimp on.)  I'll be back in the saddle by about 9 am, and ready to rant.

That's alright, angus, it's an interesting topic you bring up, and even when you're combative you're interesting. That's all that matters, eh? I'm sure when Lewis gets here he'll say something sensible.

Like don't forget to eat right.

[Beet]

The problem is that this thread was already four pages long when I jumped in, and I've not yet been in the mood to read pages two through three.  Lewis' defense of his uncharastically inconsistent initial post may lie somewhere within.  These presents are best opened on festive occassions.  Christ, did I say festive?  you can't even say festive anymore without everybody giggling.  I blame the democrats.

By the way, here I sit all broken hearted, tried to sh**t and only farted.  But it gave me a chance to do some reading, so I looked up in my dictionary "conservationist" and it said one who advocates conservation of natural resources.  How in the world can that not be described as conservative?  Seriously.  That epitomizes conservative, imho.  There's a movie on right now with Jackie Chen called "Shanghai" and the scene shows him taking a bath alongside Owen Wilson, giggling, laughing, and drinking hard liquor.  There was a day when two cowboys could take baths together and everybody was cool about it.  Conservation of water.  Conservative of water.  Conserve water.  Conserve.  Con=with; serve=to keep, or guard.  Two cowbows bathing at the same time is very conservative. 

I think what really matters here is not so much defining racism as deciding whether these statements are racist.  Unfortunately, the latter decision won't happen without first accomplishing the former.  So are we at least in agreement on the definition of racist I posted above, in the thread you dismissed?

Back at our little socialist exercise, are we not? Har har har. Well, you're right. It probably is about more than semantics. You mentioned somewhere a question to "take our language back." That sounds very noble, but from whom are we taking our language and for what reason are we taking it back? I think those are the most important questions here.

As for the two statements Bono brought up, they're false assertions of some fact of nature. With tons of qualifiers about averages and sub-groups and statistical controls, along with some rephrasing, some kind of statement that many experts would accept might be crafted out of that crude form, but as it stands they're indefensible scientifically. I think it's important not to politicize science. If you want to politicize science, one of the best ways of doing that is to get people to forget that there is a difference between what is and what should be. Though some interrelation is inevitable, the more people get latched onto the idea that their political (in the broad sense) station is dependent on the outcomes of scientific study, the more vulnerable that study is likely to be (and don't assume the enemy won't be the presidential administration, either). At the very basic, it is important to keep concepts distinguished. This means having one term that describes scientific study, and another term that describes judgments about good and bad. If you can't keep them separate semantically, you're going to need lots of luck keeping them separate communicatively, conceptually, and socially.

Regarding the dictionary definition, I'm not quite sure how important it is to you. You make it sound like it isn't. But looking at them, it's interesting that both dictionaries use the AND operator: "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." It's the second part that might put your position on Bono's statements in a tricky light. I inferred "better [at] athletics" and "better at reason" to mean empirical testable statements wherein individuals can be categorized into racial categories, then tested physically and through the "intelligence quotient" exam, and empirical results that show that the two groups are statistically different might possible then be derived from there. Would you agree that this results does not necessarily result in any judgments about "good" and "bad" (which must first be done in order to create a basis by which to measure "superiority" and "inferiority")? I think that's the crucial question here. It kind of reminds me of a certain movie that I saw last, Forrest Gump, which shows the stupid ignoramous stumbling nobly through life on his mother's wisdom while others are lost around him; almost as if his ignorance and stupidity was superior to the others' sophistication. Not that I necessarily agree with that message, but it's interesting how things can be presented.

So, I wouldn't label science racist, for that is akin to equating truth with racism, and I would no more do that than equate truth with communism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, conservatism, or Nazism. Unless, of course, I wanted to forget the possibility that an alternative to those things ever existed.

[Beet]

so back on topic, both statements are racist.  Fine, I'll accept the MW definition.  Again, by this definition they are both racist statements.

There are two definitions. The definition you are focusing on says "capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race," not "an inherent superiority in a particular race." This closely mirrors the American Heritage definition where it is phrased as "a particular race is superior to others." Both of these seem clearly meant that one must believe that one race is generally superior to others, not just that one race is superior to others by one particular measure of ability. One may believe that blacks are superior in one area and whites another, and as a whole neither race is 'superior'. One may even believe that one race is superior in a particular area yet inferior overall because they are inferior in other areas deemed more important. This involves a value judgment. From neither of Bono's two statements can you impute as much as overall racial superiority per se. Both statements are only about superiority in a narrowly defined field whose value in determining overall 'racial worth' is unaddressed. Therefore, they fail to satisfy both the MW and AH requirements in the belief in "an inherent superiority of a particular race... a particular race is superior to others"

Now it is true that if you believed that one race was superior in all measures of ability and character, this could be reduced to some testable scientific hypothesis about nature. I will concede this much. Yet this would involve an assumption so strong that even many self-admitted racists probably would not accept it. In practice the determination of overall superiority includes some sort of value judgment about which measures of superiority are more important and produce an overall superiority.

Now you probably decry this definition as overly narrow, but it looks as if it was made deliberately that way because the word is not as general as you want it to be.

More important than any of the above discussion however, definition 1, the abstract hypothesis about nature, is obviously, very clearly not what most people mean when we say racism. Most people generally refer to and think about definition 2, "racial prejudice or discrimination". "Discrimination" used in this sense clearly involves an attitude, a "partiality or prejudice", an "irrational suspicion or hatred", an "irrational attitude of hostility". It is this definition to which I have been referring for most of this exchange. If one infers from Bono's statements nothing more than assertions about some testable phenomenon in nature, then they cannot possibly satisfy this definition.

Thus by both definitions, the exquisitely narrow one and the more generally used one, both statements fail the dictionary definition when they are interpreted in the way that I interpreted them: as testable hypotheses about nature. It is only when the definition is expanded to mean anything that deals with race that they become racist.

That is the theory. In practice, of course, when such statements are uttered they are virtually without exception indications of racism because, as they stand, they are so clearly false that only a racist or someone who accepted some racist idea would continue to say them. It is hard to imagine a world in which all blacks are better at athletics than all whites and all whites are better at reason than all blacks. It would make the Olympics rather unfair, wouldn't it? Furthermore, Bono used the words "better," which could easily be interpeted as more than just a testable hypothesis. For these two reasons it is not hard to say why most people said both statements were racist.

So... you claimed Bono's statements are both racist, but used it as a jumping off point for a broader discussion that warranted clarification of the topics, and I pointed out that when interpreted as hypotheses about nature, neither statement is technically racist according to proper English usage. Of course, you have your own preferred definition. Which brings us back to the broader point. You seem to be tired of debating this and this may or may not be the last I am going to say about it.

There was a study done once that after the debate peoples views only become stronger and more entrenched. Undoubtedly your views are becoming more entrenched. Myself, I genuinely have no problem with the clarification of ideas and concepts or with increased precision in communication with the aim of reaching at truth. If this involves the invention of novel words, or the use of commonly unused as instruments to fill a void, all the better. In particular, I currently see in no problem in the use of the word 'racialist' to mean something that considers racial differences across people.

Yet it is one thing to do the above, it is something very, very different to take a broadly used existent concept and attempt to take away its linguistic existence in order to serve the needs of some other concept that you personally apparently consider to be more important. This is not the creation of something new but the attempt to take from something else that which is already in usage and appropriate it for one's own personal usages. It is a violent sort of act, and what are the stakes in this struggle? None other than which concepts are given embodiment in language, and the mode of human thought and communication... the same sort of stakes faced in an Orwellian world of doublespeak, for the right to use a word is more often than not the right to conceptualize the object; the very building tools of social communication and thought. To destroy the word is to destroy the concept, and George Orwell was perfectly aware of the consequences of that.

But you've mentioned two times your quest to "take our language back" and suggest this is what it's all about. I've asked you from whom we were taking our language back, and was met with silence. Surely not the French? Or the PC Police that come knocking on doors at night taking people away? Perhaps it must be those secret agents of the DNC who work at Merriam Websters. But it is none of those, for "our" implies some class if people identified with the "self" and another class... nameless, dehumanized, and defined as the "other..." and it is imperative that they remain nameless and dehumanized, isn't it? And what are "we" going to do about it? Why we are going to "take" from the other, presumably without their consent, which suggests theft. And what are we going to take from them? Language... which in this quest is no longer the universal human instrument of communication but the privledged property of some class of individuals "we" only "we" have a right to.

Unfortunately for the justice of this quest, the importance of the concept of racism as it exists today is too important for its linguistic existence to be ripped away in a personal crusade to return to some imagined level of superiority about race dialogue that is supposed to have existed before the civil rights movement, no matter how self-righteous that crusade purports to be. This is quite true and likely will always be so for the rest of our lives. And it is worth saying that, even if this exchange has merely strengthened your resolve.

[Beet]

Bah. I think angus you misinterpreted what I wrote about validity (which has more to do about inferences about the speaker than the words themselves) and I still think the 1st dictionary definition refers to belief in overall superiority of one race in general, but I'm done arguing over this as well.