EVERYONE'S A LITTLE BIT RAAAAAAAAACIST!

[Hydronine]

Are you racist?

Apparently, in the feild of Sociology, even jokes about ethnicity are considered racist, even if that's not the intent.

Are you racist?

********

I'm so sensitive to racism, that I actually come full circle sometimes. When I was younger, I would hear the n-word and I'd go BERSERK because one of my best friends at the time was black, and my other friend was Muslim. I was so protective of them, that sometimes it got out of hand.

....

Like how I dumped black paint on one of my classmates when they had made a stupid comment towards Dedrick.

I've learned how to tone it down, but I'm still sometimes sensitive to it, though. One of my friends at the moment is from Pakistan and the father of two daughters and a god husband. He's a good guy, but everyone makes assumptions since he's from Pakistan.

 

[MiraMirror]

I was in a situation like that when I was younger. I had a black friend named Shelby, and every time I'd hear the "n" word, I'd go ape-crazy in my head, and I'd confront them about it. That earned me a black eye on numerous occasions. As I grew up, I learned to control it, but it's pretty screwed up that my dad says it. -_-' And my mom's always talking about "Oh, the black people..." with an emphasis on the word "black".
And I've confronted THEM and said, "That sounds kind of racist...>_>" And of course, they've denied it.
So very annoying... -_-;

 

[Hydronine]

My grandpa, as a result of WWII hates anyone of asian decent. Well, until he gets to know them.

 

[Myrnodyn]

The thing is, at least in europe, yes there are those that truly hate people of a different descent and it's a growing number, but there's a lot of people that just don't like the political correctness that seems to be enforced ever stricter. It was the same with handicapped people. They used to call them retarded...which is a perfectly fine way to describe them, language wise. They then changed it to 'mentally handicapped' because retarded was "something you just couldn't say" (not that the people themselves cared)

What I find to be way more offensive than the name someone calls another, is the people who'll smile at them on the street, but then lobby for negroid/asian/latin free bars and busses behind their back.

Hell...I'm white...someone else is "black" ...Asians tend to have slit eyes. ...I'm actually kind of attracted to asians...

Why can't we just call people by what they are and avoid making a big deal out of it? For me, it's intent and intonation that counts, not the words themselves.


Having raged about all that: I DO talk with people about what exactly they are saying. There is a huge debate going on in the netherlands about immigrants, and whether we should sharpen the current laws. People complain about them all living together and talking their own language on public busses, not realizing that that's because dutch society has practically forced them into what slowly are becoming the first dutch ghetto's, meaning it's hard for them to actually integrate into society.

I think the major point with discrimination is a lack of knowledge, which breeds fear and/or a lack of respect. If people would know more about those people, and where they were coming from, it would make things a lot better, perhaps not in this generation, but at least in generations to come.

 

[Hydronine]

Good response, Myrn! I had no idea it was like that over there! The more you know!

 

[Diana]

Yes, I think everyone is a little bit racist. It happens in just as many innocent ways as it does the bad ones, that all this political correctness has just gotten really out of hand. It's definitely all about the CONTEXT. Like, I would never want to say or do something that would actually hurt or offend someone. And I don't have any hatred for someone just because they're a different race or nationality.

Won't stop me from making terrible jokes about Ampoule's people. >:D You have to be able to laugh, joke, and poke fun at stereotypes. If you can't have fun about it, you're pretty miserable.


BUT what really pisses me off is when someone says that white people can't suffer the effects of racism. Because, white people rule the world, enslaved everyone, yadda, yadda, yadda. THAT is racist. >:[ ANYONE can be the target of racism. In the neighborhood I grew up in, -I- was the minority. I got my ass kicked for be the "oreo cream" white girl. t___t And someone had the audacity to tell me that wasn't racism, because white people have all the power in the world.

...and obviously, I'm still mad about that! o_____o Anyways! Yes. Agree with Myrn. Context.

 

[Blind Hemingway]

And Sociology is wrong because there is no such thing as race~

I say this because race is only established to create "differences", ie us vs. them. if you wish to go the route of communism, race is only set up to cause strife between the lower classes, all of whom are stuck in the same lifestyles anyways.

Genetic wise, there is nothing that sets any of us apart from each other. The only difference lies in the way the skeletal structure is set up, even there differences are very minimal.

The real different lies in the concept of what ethincities are. This deals more with cultural attributes vs. anything else. Nine times out of ten, when you are making a joke about race, it is someone's ethnicity you are harassing.

The proper term to use is predjudice, i.e. a preconceived belief, opinion, or judgment made without ascertaining the facts of a case.

Yes, all people have them and it is a natural effect of peoples living any sort of group, whether it is religion, ethnicity, or nationhood.

 

[Krang]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbud8rLejLM&feature=related"]YouTube- Everyones A Little Bit Racist[/ame]

I laugh. But I don't distribute. It's funny, because it's happened before. Just it shouldn't have been made into a joke to include an entire race. If anyone is to be made fun of, it's us. We're the most colorful of anyone(Red in the sun, green when sick, blue in the cold), we've fucked up so many other ethnicities, cultures, and traditions. We don't have Japan beat in the "WTF?" department, yet.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4V8iH-oQgg"]YouTube- Stephen Lynch - America [3 Balloons][/ame]

I have a feeling a vulgar singer/comedian can explain it better than I can.

 

[Apocaric]

While I agree wholeheartedly with Myrn and Diana and I think that GDHD (dear lord, that sounds like a date rape drug) and Krom are speaking out their respective assholes. Admittedly, GDHD has a shadow of a point, though Krom is basically spouting a PC-trip. Nobody can "fuck up" somebody else's culture, and jokes are funny because they hold a grain of truth. You know who tell the best black man jokes? Black men. Same goes with asians. I would tell white jokes, but I don't know any.

GDHD - a race is a set of genetic predispositions that tend to cluster. Their importance may be (and is) artificially inflated, but they exist, and include everything from skeletal structure to muscle mass to skin pigmentation to subtle but important differences in chemical processes. Ethnicity deals primarily with culture, yes, but recall that different races tend to go hand-in hand with certain ethnicities or sub-cultures. Conflict sparks easily between ethnicities because some ideologies are not easily compatible, or even completely incompatible. While the differences may be exagerrated, they do exist, and they can and will cause conflicts all on their little old lonesome.

As far as prejudices go, I admit I have my fair share. For example, I'm prejudiced against blacks, specifically black men. Why? Because before I joined the military, 95% of black males I encountered were utter fucksticks. That's not to say I won't give them a chance, but they start with points against them. Now that I've joined the military, I'm slowly becoming prejudiced against people in general.

True racism, while less common these days, does still exist and is usually a poorly-disguised attempt to gain advantage from one's own race. Terms like "nigger" (Yes, I said it. It's not a fucking curse, and I don't censor those anyways. Get over it.) are considered offensive only because they were used in such a way in the past. (Nigger, incidentally, while on the one hand a corruption of "Negro," the spanish word for "black," also means "an uneducated person" and predates the corrupted version. Thus, if you take offense at the word, no matter your race, you show it to be accurate.)

 

[Hydronine]

Rory, I do know that Race doesn't actually exist, and actually, genetically, those who we think look the most alike are the most genetically different, IF AT ALL.

But Ric has a point in that it's a the standpooint of view and culture.

MORE OPINIONS!

 

[Krang]

...though Krom is basically spouting a PC-trip. Nobody can "fuck up" somebody else's culture...

Japan closed their ports and blocked out the world for a long time. They fished off their own shores, traded among themselves only. Then, Commodore Matthew Perry, with the "Black Ships" steam engines, forced the ports open in 1854.

In 1954, America bombed Nagasake and Hiroshima.

However crude, "fuck up" is the what comes to my mind.

"...Between the seventh and twentieth centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) took 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took 7–12 million slaves to the New World..."

-Wikipedia

In the latter nineteenth century, Europe colonized ALL of Africa, save for only two countries, Ethiopia and Liberia. Africa is approximately 30.2 million km(^2)

That's 6% of the Earth's surface, and Europe carved it up. The lines drawn by the colonists ignored tribal borders set there by the inhabitants, separating friendly tribes and hemming in hostile tribes. Famine and drought did the rest, and war doubled.

March 20th, 2003, United States invaded Iraq. On a lie. Things were most definitely "fucked up" before they established Coalition Interim Government.

I'm just listing the major ones we were a part of. People have been racist for a long, long time. At least it is a joke, a benign goal from a cruel wit, not mindless hate dialog. That's part of the curse.

However, if it bothers you that much, I shall use "majorly disrupted" instead.

 

[Torsty]

Yeah, theres a growing anti-semitism up here and in Sweden. While the percentage of the country that wants less and less immigration also grows bigger.

 

[marius]

krom, alot of that is human need for violence regardless of race or whatever. these and all other incidences aren't a case of "fucking up" or "majorly disrupting" another culture, they are additions. when the Saxons invaded Britannia and wiped out the Picts and then damn near annihilated the Celts, they morphed their religion around the druish beliefs in order to draw in the "pagans". all through out history there are instances like this, not just in religion, that show that cultures absorbed others and affected them in usually good ways. history is a lovely thing when you study and actually see what it says

and my racism extends only as far as calling my friends their respective racial slur while the turn around and to the same to me. nothing warms the heart more than saying "have a banana, monkeyman" and hearing "go suck a dick, crackerjack navyfag" followed by "i love you too man".

 

[Krang]

"...Today, Africa contains 54 sovereign countries, most of which still have the borders drawn during the era of European colonialism. Since colonialism, African states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African states are republics that operate under some form of the presidential system of rule...."

We made Africa a better country(by Democracy's standards) too, but it cost approximately 24 million lives(Assuming that instability, corruption, violence and war, made up the amount of slaves who earned their freedom) of labor to do it.

I'd say Japan has improved since the 1800's, excepting the rape rate, and incest, and video games made about former and latter(often in tandem). But their culture is not anything at all like it was before.

What I was saying, is that cultures have been "majorly disrupted" sometimes for the better, other times for the worse, but a lot of "fuck ups" have cost lives. Some provoked only by the color of skin.

My last defense of myself. :/ It seems my Anti-Butthurt wore off.

 

[Hydronine]

Whoa! WHOA!

KHANG!

Sheesh, man, you don't have to do that. I'm merely asking about racism. Not how much people can butthurt each other!

 

[Krang]

Noooo, I was getting butthurt over

...though Krom is basically spouting a PC-trip. Nobody can "fuck up" somebody else's culture...

. After a Wiki quip or two, I Switzerlike retreat.

I agree to disagree. I'm not hugging Ricarten though, and I'm sure the feelings mutual. >.>

 

[Blind Hemingway]

I am inclined to say I am going to remove this thread if we get another outburst of trolling or anymore butt hurt behaviors. If people cannot respect differences in opinions and resort to name calling and wiki quotes, then this conversation is over.

 

[Hydronine]

Seriously! I just wanted people to express what they thought the might be or might not be racist over...

This ISN'T INSANITY.

As much as I KNOW I ACT like some general threads are in the insanity board, I act like that so it can be more comfortable to explain yourselves!

 

[Hydronine]

Khang.

Please stop. Im deleting the post above mine because it's not following the guide lines of this thread.

 

[Seiji]

I'm with Diana and Ric.

Racism exists today, whether we want it to or not. I think it always will exist, so long as we continue to even acknowledge ethnic and racial stereotypes, positive OR negative, despite the context.

For example, Ric said it earlier: black men tell the best black-guy jokes. Mexicans tell the best Mexican jokes. And why are they funny? Because there are hints of truth to it. And what is a "black-guy joke?" It's a racist joke, plain and simple. It takes a stereotype that is widely accepted and puts on it's head: it's pointed at, spun around, and shown off to everyone to... laugh at!

And that brings me to a separate point: I think laughing at racism through these jokes is the direction towards racial acceptance. When we can ALL laugh at each other with pure mirth and genuine hilarity, without any malice or fear, is when we've conquered racism. When I can tell a nigger joke and have everyone laugh about it, and have the black guy pat me on the back for telling it better than Steve Harvey could, then we've conquered racism.

I think, anyways.