Amsel_ wrote:Well I don't think minorities should be exempt from anything that would happen to negatively effect them.
please be clear. What is this supposed to mean? How is it a response to anything I said? I said that they were targeted specifically, not that they should be exempt of things that apply to every other citizen just because they are immigrants. Apart from refugees, please show me an example where immigrants get treatment that locals don't get just because they are immigrants.
I can't cover or defend every issue, since such matters must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The most I can say is that racism is democratically and institutionally opposed, so every issue of a politician being racist is probably going to have some sort of cover.
It is covered in most laws, yes. But what if the people who enforce those laws are racist, or subconsciously biased? We only need to look at the recent history of the USA to see what happens then. Or you can look at SA.
I also don't think that it's necessary to provide statistics to back up the claim that people get fired or lose friends for saying racist things. First of all, statistics would be next to impossible to collect. But also because it is very easy to observe in society.
Actually it is necessary. If it's so easy to observe, there should be some conformation of it. How many people do you know personally that have been fired for saying racist stuff? Even when people say racist things in public, they are often not fired, but they resign because their position is untenable. The few cases where people were fired were cases where the person was a public figure, and the company tried to protect their public image from a business perspective.
I went to look up an example I remember, but it's one of those things where google gives you different results from what you search.
You mean to say you couldn't find anything...
I don't think it's okay to force immigrants to conform to the social-standards of civil society. I view the state as the expression of the national consciousness. If someone is not in tune with that conscious then they have no reason to live within the state's boundaries.
What does this mean concretely?
This thread alone is proof of how people react to racism. And I see cases in the news all the time where someone says something politically incorrect and they get their life ruined. You're burying your head in the sand.
You mean it proves that people disagree with you? So far I haven't really seen any flaming in this thread, there hasn't been a lynchmob, people haven't gone to anyone's house or threatened anyone with anything. Nobody has sent a screenshot to anyone's employer or tried to ruin anyone's life. And I refer to my initial question, please show me examples of (unfairly) people getting their life ruined for saying racist things.
What consequences? Weren't you just asking me for proof that people will get fired and harassed? And my whole argument is revolving around social pressure, not the law. You and I both know that there are non-legal ramifications to saying wrong things.
Yes, I was asking about that. I'm sure this hardly happens. But that doesn't mean there aren't other consequences. Such as people opposing your views, marching in rallies against you, or calling you a racist. I find it funny you feel like immigrants shouldn't escape negative things that happen to affect them, but you believe that this should be true for people who say racist stuff?
There are non-legal ramifications for wearing the wrong shoes. For hanging out with certain people. For liking a certain kind of music. For dressing in a certain way. For having a certain type of sex, gender or sexuality. For having a certain type of skin color... Social pressure can suck in many ways. But what are you trying to say?
This is an example of how the definition of racism will change whenever it's convenient.
It doesn't change at all, racism is much broader than hate speech and inciting violent crime, which may be linked to racism, but isn't necessarily.
There are plenty of cases where someone so much as criticizes another group for something they are guilty of, and that person gets arrested for hate-speech. But by adding the qualifiers of 'inciting hate and harmful conduct' you can twist anything negative said into 'inciting hate.'
Please, show me some of these cases. Iirc, people have been racist of the obama, the most powerful man on earth at the time, yet who has been arrested and thrown in jail for that?
You don't understand the social-pressure I'm trying to talk about because you're the one who loves whipping up the crowd into a frenzy.
And you base this on what? I've been open to your arguments, but you fail to present any. Please be more concise about the social pressure you're talking about.
We don't have a natural tendency to defecate everywhere. Virtually everyone, even animals, leaves waste in appropriate areas. .
Children just defeceate everywhere. They must be taught not to. Yet, what is considered appropriate differs from animal to animal and culturally as well.
Our natural tendency to create society is not the same as the artificially created witch hunts and circlejerks against people who don't hold up to arbitrary social-standards. It has gotten to the point where society rules us, instead of us ruling society
And when was this not the case? I would say it has become less so, rather than more so. Before you were actually killed for not conforming to the social standards you now call arbitrary (but which, in another context, you would call the soul of a society or culture). IF you weren't observing religious practices, you risked being killed or ostracized from society. If you practiced wrong sexual norms publicly, same thing. Pretty much the worst thing you risk now is that you get a video of you on youtube.
And how does all of this relate to: I view the state as the expression of the national consciousness. If someone is not in tune with that conscious then they have no reason to live within the state's boundaries
-Children can tell the difference between colors. The idea that it's impossible for children to identify skin pigment without being trained to do so is absurd and clearly politically motivated.
Clearly they can see the difference between colors. They can also tell the difference between a horse and a pig. And between a human and monkey. A child will not just call another human a monkey if it hasn't gotten this from somewhere else. In fact, a child won't pretty much do anything that isn't related to things directly fundamental for survival, that it hasn't learned somewhere else...
-By pattern recognition I mean seeing a difference in behavior.
Which means what? And why do you call that pattern recognition. It's really hard to communicate with you...
-Trained racism is mostly an echo of the above 'natural racisms.'
Please show me the scientific basis for this claim.
It does not need to include things taught by their parents. In fact, for the sake of classifying this as a natural racism, it must exclude people who have been lectured by their parents on why black neighbors make their property value go down. If one kid recognizes a difference in phenotype then other children are going to absorb that.
Then what does it include? Again, where is the proof for this claim?
you don't need to attack racism. In fact most people who are on the receiving end of discrimination tend to only be defensive and reactionary about it.
They only care to the extent that it affects them.
Sure, then it should be, attack OR resist. How can you resist if you just remain silent? Plenty of people who are the victim of racism have tried to make sure that it doesn't affect others as well, nonetheless, it's indeed typical of most humans to only care about what directly affects them.
The people who obsessively attack racism, real or imaginary, tend to have other reasons. Furthermore, you're forcing an unnecessary polarity between bullying and silencing racism and being bullied and silenced by racists. Most people outside of the West are pretty damn racist. Even then, those people don't get bullied into silence.
Who gets bullied into silence? People in this thread have been pretty vocal. People have been pretty vocal in rallies across europe and the USA. There is racism outside the west as well, and actually it's something that's also a point of debate, south africa's situation is an example. If your best line of defense is simply... but look at them... then we can just stop here.
It's interesting how earlier you were accusing people of having an irrational phobia of the easily observable reaction to saying racist things, which you later acknowledged; yet you are the one who has an irrational fear.
No, I said that it was irrational to fear for your life or livelihood because of saying racist things. I never said that there were no consequences whatsoever. I can't see how I am the one with an irrational fear, as I can easily name more than 10 things in my personal life that have affected me negatively because of racism. Even more if I extend it to my immediate family. And I actually haven't faced much racism in my life. Please tell me, how many people do you know that have their life ruined because they said something which wasn't racist but other people hysterically perceived as such?
Disagreement is not the same as social-pressure. If someone I know says something stupid I might call them stupid, but it usually just ends there. I don't rally the masses to fire someone and get everyone to hate them.
You keep saying this, but I have yet to see any solid evidence of this being a widespread phenomenon.