So you think Americans will be divided by the use of flag? — ssu

I don't know. It's possible. You'd have to ask them. But to me any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them. If there's a schism on that then, yes, they'll be divided.

I'm Ashkenazi Jewish with family killed in the Holocaust. — BitconnectCarlos

I know you said you're Jewish, but even if you weren't I think I would see the general point of principle even though I thoroughly disagree with it.

American symbols like the flag or anthem don't have a sacred right to survive in perpetuity. They either represent Americans as a whole or they don't. And that's up to Americans and the various communities among them to decide. It's not long ago that the confederate battle flag was not seen as racist enough to be removed from Government buildings, but now it largely is. Shit changes.

Perhaps more organized force is required for enduring change on the level rightly desired by the movement. — fdrake

When one aspect of systemic racism is disproportionate levels of violent state oppression against a given community then, failing other methods, more organized force can be justified in my view. The level of violent force justified being proportionate to the level of oppression and the accuracy of the targets. In the most extreme case, for example, with the Jews in the 1930s, not only imo would have they been justified in assassinating leading Nazis (if they had the capacity) but inflicting civilian casualties too if strategically beneficial. A less extreme case would be the Republican struggle in Northern Ireland where Catholics weren't under genocidal threat, but were, similarly to blacks in America, denied fundamental fairness re jobs, housing, and political franchise and were being murdered on the street by British armed forces. Here, targeted violence against occupying security forces and officials was justified in my view, but not attacks on civilian targets. I won't comment on the present situation in these terms in case I'm accused of some form of incitement, but I'll say this if, when getting down on a knee, you are not only ignored but treated with contempt, you take it to the next level and if that's ignored you keep going to the limit of what can be justified in context and nothing is a priori ruled out.

Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled. — BitconnectCarlos

The question was meant to tease out whether you'd answer morally or strategically. I guess it's both, but especially in light of the example of the Jews in your post, I differ in that I see more options as justified morally and for those, it then becomes about strategy. So, my objections to property destruction would largely be strategic. However, I completely agree that not every target is morally permissible. I don't, for example, advocate random destruction of property where much of it belongs to members of the very community being harmed. Getting back to the example of the Jews, why shouldn't they have rioted? I think your position is extreme here. Their very existence was under threat. I would say their scope for justified counter-action was wide open. For me, based on a straightforward utilitarian and consequentialist position, pretty much everything was permissible for the Jews if, of course, it would have contributed to their safety as individuals and as a people. So, strategy aside, on what ethical basis, if any, are you objecting here? Why is it wrong? You have a dominant party aimed at destroying an oppressed minority. If anything they have an obligation to do everything possible to defend themselves, right?

Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks — StreetlightX

Also reading. :up:



Read that. Yeah, fascinating. Have my doubts about some of the science in the book but an idea definitely worth pursuing.

Got to say I still don't get how after 400 years of slavery, 100 of Jim Crow, and over 50 of systemic racism, all some posters here have to say to those who suffered all that is, "Don't break any windows". :vomit:

Questioner: So how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Don't break any windows.
Questioner: Um, ok, but how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Or do any other property damage.
Questioner: Yeah, but how...?
Conservative: You're saying burn stuff?? How dare you!
Questioner: But...
Conservative: Anarchists! Vandals! Mob! Conformists!
Questioner: ....

have a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act and I can tell you that discrimination against those with disabilities is pretty rampant. Yet, you don't see us setting buildings on fire or demonizing abled people who contribute to structures of systemic blah blah blah. — BitconnectCarlos

Why not?

Yes, when you divide people into oppressed and oppressor the oppressed is justified in doing what he needs to do to even the score. Any calls to the misdeeds done by the oppressed are just products or sympathizers of the oppressive system. The oppressed aren't individuals or moral agents - they're just an amorphous, oppressed blob whose singular purpose is to dismantle systemic injustice and if they need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - they're fighting evil. It's all just black and white - no shades of grey. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Poor vs. Rich. Black vs. White. People are defined by these identities are nothing more.

If you choose this vantage point, that's on you. — BitconnectCarlos

I think we both know that's a caricature of my position. Without committing to "anything goes" (not something I've advocated either), do you agree with the following or not?

...the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice — Baden

I'm sure we agree on the egregious nature of racism, but if we don't agree on standard terms, we're just going to end up talking past each other. I can't force you to use the term in the standard sense, but it's going to be a mess of confusion otherwise. Your call.

It's not opposition to spout thoughtless low-quality rubbish. You are just too stupid for this thread and refuse to deal with the actual OP. Others who disagree aren't and have made an effort. You can come back if you can find it in yourself to write something a five-year-old couldn't come up with.

Stop filling the thread with stupidity and go elsewhere.

Incidentally, I think the proper response in future to those who wish to complain about rioting etc. is to say that if your moral gears are so clogged that systemic racism isn't a more pressing problem for you to address, you don't need to be here as that is the actual topic of the thread and I'm trying to keep it on-topic. Maybe start your own thread on why rioting is always bad and why we should always cry about it. You're not contributing anything here to the substantive issue.

An all too typical 'philosophical' stance...

That's meaningless nonsensical language use. — creativesoul

No, that's what the word means and how it's used in academia and elsewhere. And as it can happily co-exist with explicit racism, it by no means obscures or denigrates that reality. In any case, you don't get moral brownie points just for not understanding a commonly-used concept.

@NOS4A2 having nothing original, interesting or remotely sophisticated to say just pops up every couple of days to repeat the party (White House) line.

You can't justifiably, or even coherently, mount an argument that is inferred from the founding principles or dominant ideology of a particular society to neutralize the ethical basis of actions undertaken in opposition to structures that inevitably flow from the way those principles and that ideology are, in practice, expressed. You've got to zoom out and look at a broader set of human values and the overarching importance of those being fundamental to any acceptable social contract. Fundamental to that perspective is the establishment of a form of equality that extends beyond the theoretical into the lived experience of all communities and social stakeholders. So, repeated focus on injuries to the property rights of those who, for the most part, are the beneficiaries of the system under question just distracts from the real injured parties and the wider ethical injury of a society that maintains an underclass disproportionately inhabited by communities of color that it expects to obediently propagate the structures that keep that underclass in its place. And from this vantage point, the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice and the deficit lies in those who don't, making much more of a moral degenerate of the weasel-mouthed objector to rioters and looters than the outraged victim of social injustice who burned down the wrong building.

Not buying that he drank a whole glass of water; like the stadium, I bet the glass was only half full.

Are you moving my thread to the lounge? — TheMadFool

Yes, stuff like this:

The population to consider is all females and if the fraction of them who won Nobel prizes is less than the fraction of men who bagged a Nobel then, it seems I'm forced to conclude men as more intelligent — TheMadFool

is mind-bogglingly bad reasoning bordering on parody.

Silliness factor too high. Moving to lounge.

Nah, Bay-den like the town in Germany.



Don't know where @andrewk went. Good guy. Good mod.

You lost me as to why I lost you. Maybe my definition of 'racist' is stricter than yours, but I have no intention of being down the wrong end of the pitch so the goal is wide open and feel free to score.

The rest of your A and B example is ridiculous and it makes wonder if you actually received your degree as a surprise from a box of Froot Loops. — Harry Hindu

:lol:

You can have the last word, Harry. Like I said, it's off-topic and posters can make up their own minds on which one of us is the Froot Loop here.

@Hanover

Oh, sorry, did I break a rule??

Policies don't have beliefs. Positive discrimination is a policy. By your own logic, it can't be racist. Of course it's not in any case, it's reparative of racism. The idea that you can start a clean slate as soon as you dispose of those directly affected by explicit racism is rubbish. Wealth and privilege are passed down. America's wealth was built on and stolen largely from slaves and then concentrated and channeled through generations of those who made them slaves. If I steal all your shit and use it to put generations of my family in a better position socially and economically than yours, my ancestors don't get to turn around and tell yours everything's just hunky-dory now because the direct party to the exploitation is dead.

Please go on; explain. — 180 Proof

That I don't draw an equivalence re racism between racist cops and those who know about them but don't protest them (whether they be other cops or not and whether their neglect be due to apathy or akrasia). It's possible not to act against racism without being racist. However, you can't escape culpability. If you don't act, you are culpable, and every one of the quotes above I agree with 100%.

...he should have done something and he didnt and thats a serious part of the problem too imo. — DingoJones

And why? Maybe he was a racist too. Maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe both. And maybe the culture and system he was a part of militated against action. In every case, culpable. But the latter is where systemic racism comes in and where maybe the balance can be tipped against the racists and towards those who might do something if they had the backup.

No, because there would be a conflation with actively being racist and not trying to prevent racism. Being apathetic about racism doesn't equate to racism. But if I'm missing your point, let me know.



Well, no, it depends on the statistic you use and how you analyze it. You can't obviously draw sweeping conclusions from a single data point without some level of interpretation. And it's a strawman to suggest that that is where the idea of systemic racism arose. For example, I just provided Harry Hindu in the other s.r. thread with a statistic on drug arrests that had a whole study backing it up to show the significance of race in the disparity found.

The other point is that conscious racist motivation isn't required for systemic racism to obtain even though it is obviously there to a degree. The way the system functions is the root problem. Individual racists are important insofar as the system allows them to act with impunity, insofar as it allows environmental racism to filter through, but, theoretically, you could have a systemically racist system with no overt racists in it and just cops following procedures that disadvantaged/disfavoured minority communities.

Again, I don't know what the big block is here. The phrase is pretty much self-defining. Even Trump has recently acknowledged the existence of systemic racism, only he's tried to downplay it. But at least he's implicitly taken on some responsibility for dealing with its results on a systems level.

One unfortunate result of denying systemic racism in policing is it puts the blame solely on individual police officers rather than on processes over which most of them have little or no individual control, including training, police culture, policing of the police etc. This speaks to the perversity of the accusation that those who point to systemic racism do so with the intention of labeling all cops as racist. If you take the systemic racism out of the equation, all the racism we point to in the system must fall on the cops, making them more not less culpable.

American citizens are entitled not to have a systemically racist and regularly brutal police force. The US is supposed to be a modern democracy not an authoritarian state. So, the protestors shouldn't have to lift a finger, and the fact that they do is an indictment of the system not of them.

You said that not all cops are necessarily racist, yet you claim that systemic racism occurs in policing. How is that not a contradiction? Give concrete examples. — Harry Hindu

Because there's nothing contradictory about it. If you see a contradiction, you still don't understand what systemic racism is. I don't know what the block is here. And I already did give a concrete example from policing just on the previous page.

"African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for petty crimes." Here's just one study demonstrating that "a black person more than 3 1/2 times more likely to be arrested for possession [of marijuana] than a white person, even though rates of usage are similar."

https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform — Baden

So, maybe you can explain why black people being more likely to be arrested for petty crimes necessitates all cops being racist?

As for your apparent race realism, I've been debunking a biological basis for the folk notion of race. And I am right because there is none. There is no biological basis for a division of humans into "Black", "White", "Asian" etc. What there is is genetic variation among populations, including within and across folk racial groups. And that's explained in your own Whittle link above.

"...it is important to distinguish between the word ‘race’ as it is socially used — say, the Black/African American, Native American, White, etc. racial categories used in the US census — from the biological sense, used to describe distinct populations within a species.

...the idea of an overarching ‘Black’ race utterly fails to capture the genetic diversity of African (or African-descended) peoples, irrespective of how we are now able to distinguish genetically related groups within the wider human population of Africa."

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2019/02/13/genetics-and-race-how-do-we-have-this-awkward-conversation/

What Whittle misses, maybe as he's not a biologist or geneticist but is more interested in promoting free speech, is that we have, to replace "race", the concepts of haplogroups, clines, and demes, which are much more accurate and useful when talking about variations between human populations and don't carry the confusing baggage of folk notions of race, not to mention the taxonomical baggage of races being equated with subspecies etc. There are no subspecies of humans, there is one human race. And race essentialism is pseudoscience.

"Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete"

"all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, and ... subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)

Again, from your other link, a quote demonstrating how the folk notion of race has no basis in biological reality:

"In some ways all non-Africans can be thought of as a subset of the genetic variation of Africans. Those humans who reside outside of Africa are simply a diversified branch of Africans."

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/which-population-is-most-genetically-distant-from-africans

Do you read your own links?

So, it's all there even in your own material. Race essentialism is bunk. Race realism is bunk. And folk notions of race have no special biological significance but are social constructs. If you still don't get it, consider the following short conversation in which A is a shade realist and B is not.

A: There are two shades of blue, dark blue and light blue.
B: OK, but that's just an arbitrary cultural judgement with no basis in science.
A: No it's not. Due to colour drift, the difference in wavelength between an average dark blue and an average light blue is absolutely discernible.
B: Yeah, I know about colour drift, but colours vary on a continuum. Like I said, your division is arbitrary.
A: No, no, no, watch this Dave Rubin video, he explains everything!

Anyone who mentions genetic drift as support for the idea of the folk notion of races (rather than for variation among populations not coextensive with such folk notions) sounds as silly as A above. And it's a very close analogy only that we're not dealing with a perfectly smooth continuum but maybe 300 different groups. So, objectively if you absolutely must use the term 'race', you could say that there are either 300 races or 1 (as per @fdrake's video). All other divisions are arbitrary and trying to make them line up with folk notions of race as race realists try to do is not a scientific endeavour but an ideological one. And that ideology is called racism.

Anyway, this is not the subject of the thread and as race realism is racist pseudoscience, I'm not going to give it any further oxygen here.

"Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is a pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

Back on topic>> systemic racism.

You didn't have a problem posting a link to fdrake's post with the videos, but you can't seem to do the same thing when it comes to your definition of "systemic racism" — Harry Hindu

It's on page one of the thread, so I expected you would find it yourself. In any case, here it is and it's in line with the standard definition.

Systemic racism obtains when a system(s) function (regardless of explicit rules) to favour certain racial groups over others. It doesn't require overt individual racists (though it may protect and even reward them) nor does it necessarily require any conscious acts of racism at all (and obversely you could have conscious acts of racism in a system where no systemic racism exists, only rather than being performative of the system, they would be antithetical to it). Systems are culturally contextual, they're embedded in cultures and how they function depends on their relationship to the culture they're in. So, often it's what the system allows rather than what the system demands that's important. E.g. if you've got a justice or policing system embedded in a culture that's only recently emerged from the acceptance of explicitly institutionalised racism, you need extremely strong safeguards to avoid the continuance of implicit racism in whatever ostensibly non-racist institutions are substituted. Not having those safeguards in place means the explicit racism of before doesn't just disappear but finds footholds in the new institutions and festers there looking for opportunities to express itself.

Systemic racism occurs in all areas of social life, policing, housing, education etc. And again, it's not primarily about explicitly racist acts or explicitly racist policies or legislation but how things work in practice to disadvantage communities of color. Here's an example relating to housing.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

"For much of the 20th century households of color were systematically excluded from federal homeownership programs, and government officials largely stood by as predatory lenders stripped them of wealth and stability.

In the decades preceding the Fair Housing Act, government policies led many white Americans to believe that residents of color were a threat to local property values. For example, real estate professionals across the country who sought to maximize profits by leveraging this fear convinced white homeowners that Black families were moving in nearby and offered to buy their homes at a discount. These “blockbusters” would then sell the properties to Black families—who had limited access to FHA loans or GI Bill benefits—at marked-up prices and interest rates. Moreover, these homes were often purchased on contracts, rather than traditional mortgages, allowing real estate professionals to evict Black families if they missed even one payment and then repeat the process with other Black families.57 During this period, in Chicago alone, more than 8 in 10 Black homes were purchased on contract rather than a standard mortgage, resulting in cumulative losses of up to $4 billion. Blockbusting and contract buying were just two of several discriminatory wealth-stripping practices that lawmakers permitted in the U.S. housing system."

Most likely, as with you, objections to the existence of systemic racism turn on a misunderstanding of what it is. As if it's just the type of claim that police are racist or police departments have racist policies. That's really not it. It's usually far subtler than that and, for being so, all the more pernicious. — Baden

Thanks for the tag.

it's a shame that I have been on here little over 24 hours and yet felt much worse for having joined. Please close my account, and any related thread/s.

Thank you kindly. — Wandering-Philosopher

Sorry you feel that way. I'll do that.

Then all you have done is show what systemic racism isn't when I've been asking for what it is. — Harry Hindu

Wrong again, I gave an explanation of it earlier in the thread. If you were interested in reading instead of.. whatever it is you are doing here, you'd know that. And if you don't know what systemic racism is now, you must not want to know.

You mean to claim that you know what you are talking about but don't know what genetic drift and kin selection is? How do we know that the person in fdrake's video knows what they are talking about? What are their credentials on the subject? If the person never mentioned those terms that I did, then I wonder if they actually know what they are talking about. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I know what they are and I think you know I do but are playing some silly game here. Apart from having a basic knowledge of these things, I studied genetics and evolution in university and have a related degree. Now stop the bluffing and man up. What is your scientific argument? Where are your references? What are your objections to what's in the video? You haven't even told us that. You come across as not having any substance behind your rhetoric. Prove me wrong.

And it still stands that it is people like you that are playing the race card, by assuming that every instance of blacks being killed by cops is an instance of racism. — Harry Hindu

I literally just dealt with this type of objection and pointed out it was a strawman in the last post. And yet you insist on repeating it. So, again, every instance of a black person being killed by cops does not have to be racist nor does every cop have to be racist for systemic racism to obtain. Please tattoo that on your forehead and look in the mirror before responding to any more of my posts.

That did cause me a chuckle. It's classified information if he can block it and lies if he can't.

It is BLM and people like you that are still focused on race because you keep using circular reasoning in assuming your conclusion (that cops are racist) to support your claim that the actions of cops are racist. — Harry Hindu

Again, systemic racism does not mean that all cops are racist — Baden

If you just want to repeat the same strawmen over and over, there's no need to reply to my posts. All cops are not racist, but some are. That's obvious and something every rational interlocutor here agrees on. Besides which, it has virtually no bearing on the existence of systemic racism, the topic of this discussion.

What makes me suspicious is when people cling to the idea that certain ideas have been debunked. Sure, humans have a wide range of varying features, but some features only occur with certain other features. Genetic drift and kinship selection are real, natural processes. — Harry Hindu

What ideas do you think have been falsely debunked? What does it have to do with race? And what is your evidence for it? So far, you give the impression of being an ignoramus with regards to the issue of genetics and "race". So, now is your chance to prove you're not. Lay out in scientific terms exactly what you are trying to say. If you can't or won't, we'll be justified in drawing the conclusion you have no idea what you are talking about.

:cool:

Solid. Reminds me of good old ND.

While I understand why people may fall for folk wisdom on race, what makes me suspicious is when they cling to it after it's been debunked. Race essentialism is built on such flimsy foundations, it can be utterly obliterated in a couple of simple 20-minute videos. And the existence of systemic racism can be established by looking at one or two studies. If you want to plant a flag somewhere, find some solid ground at least.

Well, I hope we still can discuss difficult topics. — ssu

I agree too and I don't think it's too hard to discuss difficult topics like race without using phrases like "black coon" or repeating a bunch of racially-loaded personal anecdotes of dubious veracity. We're not setting the bar very high with that, I think.

:up:

Below are just a couple of facts from a recent WAPO article relating to the US justice system, any of which in itself demonstrates the reality of systemic racism. You literally have to deny this empirical data exists (along with that forming the basis of hundreds of other peer-reviewed academic studies) to continue with the conspiracy theory that there is no systemic racism in the US:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-you-dont-believe-systemic-racism-is-real-explain-these-statistics/2020/06/12/ce0dff6e-acc7-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html

[If you turn off javascript in Chrome you will permanently bypass the paywall, so definitely don't do that. :halo: ]

E.g:

1. "Police disproportionately stop African American drivers and disproportionately search African American drivers after stopping them, even though they tend to find less contraband."

2. "African American men were about 2 1/2 times more likely than white men to be killed by police."

3. "African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for petty crimes." Here's just one study demonstrating that "a black person more than 3 1/2 times more likely to be arrested for possession [of marijuana] than a white person, even though rates of usage are similar."

https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform

Of course, rather than bite the bullet on the above what you tend to get are red herrings and distractions to do with BLM or whatever. Again, systemic racism does not mean that all cops are racist or there are explicitly racist rules in place in government bureaucracies or that white people don't also suffer from the failings of certain systems. It does mean that certain systems function in a way (often despite explicit intent) to disfavour communities of colour. And all that is required to demonstrate that is data on the results of the functioning of these systems. And the data is there. Lots of it. Let's at least accept that and move on.

"Racism has the power to hide and when it hides, it's kept safe."

Moved here as this is the thread focused on questioning the existence of systemic racism.

Reminder that this thread will be kept strictly on topic and low-quality posts will be deleted or moved. Thanks.