Racism that is accompanied by hatred is often disappointment and frustration that finds racism as an outlet because it's convenient.

Racism without hatred is a genuine belief that it's correct to categorize and heirarchialize by race. — frank

Racism is defined as:
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

Prejudice is defined as :
a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
a harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgment - like the preconceived opinion that isn't based on reason or actual experience.

Discrimination is defined as:
the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

These aren't my definitions. These are the ones you get when doing a Google search.

So it seems to me that racism is a type of hatred, or ideas that can cause unjust harm to others. If it doesn't entail some unjust treatment that is based on the preconceived opinion that isn't based on reason, and includes that belief that your own race is superior, then it doesn't qualify as racism.

Potential Issues with Warrants

Warrants obviously aren’t a guarantee of a good argument and may be attacked for similar reasons as other parts of your argument. They may be considered unjustified due to a lack of evidence, ungeneralizable, or limited in some other way. Again, you may have to go through a process of buttressing your warrant against attack with more levels of reasoning and evidence in order to make it strong enough to carry your claim. And the more formal your argumentative context, the more likely the inference from general principle to specific instance in your warrant is likely to be challenged and solid evidence is more likely to be sought after (with the balance of hard evidence and reasoning required also dependent on the field in which the claim is made and the type of claim made).

SUMMARY

Putting all this together: When you go about constructing an argument, make sure you focus both on the necessary elements of the argument and the many potential objections that may be made to it in terms of its form (e.g. is it logical?) and its substance (e.g. is it well-supported?).Do not dismiss objections on the basis of what may seem obvious to you. Instead, work on the supposition that your reader will demand as much clarity as possible as to what your claim is and how you are supporting it and as much quantity and quality of support as you could reasonably be expected to give.

So when forming an argument:

Make a clear and significant claim which you are able to support.
Include reasons/evidence and a warrant where necessary to back up your claim.
Provide reliable and relevant primary and/or secondary sources.
Take the perspective of someone doubtful of/antagonistic to your claim.
Imagine as many objections to your claim as you can.
Strive to meet them all using reasons, warrants, and hard evidence where possible. — Baden

This is the best part of the whole post.

In other words you might have to take the time to make your argument concise and detailed and have to answer difficult questions that might require that you re-work position. Calling people trolls and blocking them would the anti-thesis of the OP.

This is great information. I have a question: How to respond to people who make irrelevant or intentionally trollish attempts to derail your initial argument?

If the response is irrelevant, one can get caught up in a labyrinth of trying to steer someone who doesn't really understand the initial premise back on track; as for trolls, how do we get them to go back into the woodwork and stay there? — uncanni

If they are irrelevant points to your position, it should be simple to point that out and shouldn't require any leg-work at all. Use the guidelines listed in the OP. Don't be lazy. Go about showing how it is irrelevant rather committing the very first logical fallacy - the ad hominem - by calling them a troll.

If using race as the reason to provide government benefits is what got us here, then why is the solution that they are suggesting that we keep doing it, but in reverse? — Harry Hindu

I don’t really know what those sentences mean if I’m being completely honest. If you could rephrase (possibly add more detail) from “If ...” onward I may be able to respond better. — I like sushi

Right, so maybe we should take a step back and remember what the title of this thread is:
Why are We Back-Peddling on Racial Color-Blindness?

Without saying anything about the existence, or non-existence, of "systematic racism" today for the moment,...

There was systematic racism by way of providing government benefits to one race over another in the past.

The effects of the systematic racism of the past has carried over into subsequent generations.

What is the solution for handling the effects that don't resort to back-peddling on racial color-blindness?

If providing government benefits to one race over another is why we are in this position, and it is morally wrong to do so, then why go back to doing it, but in reverse (reverse discrimination)?

Are there are other solutions that don't make us back-peddle on racial color-blindness that we can (or should) consider? It doesn't seem like the other side is open to considering anything except that all whites are racist and we need to give them some of their own medicine.

Even if you grant that everything's been colourblind since then, it isn't doing a damn thing to address poverty rates. Which is strange; why are there persistent racial disparities in poverty in the US if colourblindness assures equality of opportunity? This is granting the polices are colourblind, of course (in this world of Harry's where there's no extant politics of prejudice). — fdrake

I've already pointed to the disparity between people that are raised in a two parent home with a more cohesive family and those that aren't. Are you so unwilling to accept that there might be other causes to the problems you are pointing out. Is every problem the result of racism?

The point I was making is that, even if we became color blind over night racial segregation would continue. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but I already moved past your point and I am now asking what we do about it that doesn't entail doing what created this problem in the first place. Are there no other options to consider, or is the only option to be a hypocrite?

Let’s take the claim we focused on above:

Systemic racism still exists in the United States.

The reason given (and we’ll stick to one for simplicities sake) was:

Racial minority groups in the US, such as Blacks and Hispanics, are imprisoned at higher rates than Whites.

The evidence provided showing that the above is true was taken from here:

https://www.issuelab.org/resources/695/695.pdf

That’s all fine; however, the link between the reason and the claim may be questioned. It may be accepted that there is irrefutable evidence that Blacks and Hispanics are imprisoned at higher rates than Whites, but consistently denied that this represents systemic racism.

A warrant can provide the link needed to overcome this objection (and show that the reason is warranted ).

For example:

When it comes to sentencing, Black and Hispanic convicts are treated more harshly for similar crimes than their White counterparts.

If this general principle can be established then the higher rates of imprisonment are contextualized as an instance of the racially discriminatory practice outlined. — Baden

You also have to think about what this implies and whether what it implies is reasonable. This implies that all police, prosecuting and defending attorneys, judges, and witnesses are racist. I think that is a very weak limb to stand on.

Why aren't we talking about the percentages of black children being raised in single-parent homes and how that plays a role in these statistics. How do we know that the stats for the convicts being treated more harshly is because they were repeat offenders? When you get caught in a never-ending cycle because of the circumstances you were born into, then we can see these kinds of statistics and it has nothing to do with systematic racism.

What do you think changing our drug laws would do to those statistics rather than accusing others of being racist with no proof?

Do you think having a willy necessitates being a breadwinner? — fdrake

That has nothing to do with the argument I was making.

Can you have a shared expectation about what a willy necessitates and what it doesn't if there weren't willies and non-willies?

In our case, sex as a construct would look at human bodies, and look at their sexual characteristics, whether they are male or female or intersex. — fdrake

There you go again with the straw-men. That isn't my case that sex is a mental construction. Willies aren't mental constructions. They are biological ones, constructed by millions of years of natural selection.

So, you've gone so far as to argue that sex is now a mental construction. What about species? How do you stop yourself from slipping on the slippery slope?

Biological sex is based on an amalgam of five characteristics:
- chromosomes (XY is male, XX female)
- genitals (penis vs. vagina)
- gonads (testes vs. ovaries)
- hormones (males have higher relative levels of testosterone than women, while women have higher levels of estrogen)
- secondary sex characteristics that aren’t connected with the reproductive system but distinguish the sexes, and usually appear at puberty (breasts, facial hair, size of larynx, subcutaneous fat, etc.)

More than 99.9% of people fall into two non-overlapping classes using just the characteristics of genitals and gonads. The the other traits almost always occur within these classes. You can do a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits and you would find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, not mental constructions. Horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between.

Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection where one biological sex exhibits preferences in the characteristics of the opposite sex, and those characteristics (and the preferences for them) are made more prominent in subsequent generations.

If sex were a mental construct, sexual selection wouldn’t work: males would look identical to females. That difference itself suggests that there’s a biological reality to sex, and that this biological reality is what has caused both behavioral and morphological differences between the sexes.

Say we take a census on what it means for someone to be a woman or a man. If we get differing opinions on what it means to be a woman or a man, then those can’t be social constructions, because social constructions are shared assumptions – shared by those in the same society. It would be more of an individual feeling, or inclination.

If there is a consensus on what it means to be a man or woman is that consensus a social construction?

How can you tell the difference between a consensus that is socially constructed vs one that is acquired by simple observation and categorization based on similarities as members of the same species as opposed being members to just a culture?

How do we know that some categorization in the mind is the product of society or natural selection?

Different cultures have different shared assumptions about the behavior of the sexes, but there is a general agreement among different cultures that there are only two sexes that these varying shared assumptions are about, and this is related to how we seek out mates and tell the difference between males and females in a society with the legal requirement to cover up your body with clothes.

The shared assumption that we have is that a person wearing a dress is a female under the clothes. If there wasn’t a legal requirement to wear clothes, or there weren't these biological realities of male and female, we wouldn’t have shared assumptions about what clothes a female should wear. There would be no gender, or gender would be the same as sex.

I keep asking for solutions. If using race as the reason to provide government benefits is what got us here, then why is the solution that they are suggesting that we keep doing it, but in reverse?

Was that the claim? No. Was the claim "Blacks are worse off now than they were in 1964 in the US"? No. Let's grant your claim that all policies are colourblind now, and at least have been since 2008. What would you expect to happen? I'd expect that without targeted intervention on effected communities, we'd see that economic indicators like poverty for black people would have a roughly constant difference from those of white people. And that is what you see. — fdrake

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/11/16/racial-disparity-cities-worst-metro-areas-black-americans/38460961/
It looks like the Midwest is where we should focus then, particularly Illinois?

It is unrealistic to think that what was the norm for thousands of generations can change in 11 years. Short of taking people's children away and raising them to be color-blind by the state, what is your solution? I keep asking for specific institutions and specific solutions and you can only speak in vague generalities. It can only make one think that there really isn't a problem to be fixed, or that the solutions you have wouldn't really solve the problem, or include more segregation based on skin color.

You can't just argue "gender is sex because natural selection", — fdrake

That wasn't my argument. You aren't taking time to read and digest what I'm saying. You just have this knee-jerk emotional reaction to what I say and then post this wall of text that doesn't apply to what I said.

Gender is sex because that is how we've use the term and now a particular political entity wants to redefine it for their own political agenda.

The only confusion there is yours. Cultural variation regarding sex and gender is causally independent of anatomical variation of sex characteristic in humans. You need to keep these two things (sex, gender) somewhat separate to tell a coherent story about them. Even their relationship. — fdrake

This makes no sense. Cultural variation regarding sex IS gender, according to your own arguments that gender is a social construction. Gender cannot be causally independent of sex if gender is a shared expectation of the sexes. You'd have an expectation that is devoid of any object it is associated with and be then gender becomes meaningless.

Let's look at the post in question, and see if it supports the idea that there's no systemic injustice now.

The presence of these disparities and the mechanisms that keep them in place? That's systemic injustice; a systemic racism. — fdrake

Then the FHA is still racist? Did Obama know this when he was president? Did he know that Chicago is one of the worse places for African-Americans? Does Maxine Waters know this, because if she did, you know she'd be looking for a microphone and camera and calling them out.

Ok, so we've established that the FHA is still racist. What other government entity is racist? I need more names to send to Maxine Waters.

Present tense, worse off now. — fdrake

All you have to do is use your eyes and you can see that blacks are not worse off now than they were in 1964.

I admire your call for moderation, but some perspectives are better than others. Particularly when discussing issues that have political implications. — Baden

That's the problem - being color-aware for political purposes rather than for biological/medical purposes. When race becomes a part of a political discussion rather staying in the domain of biology/medicine, then racism raises its ugly head. We should be color-blind for the purpose of pushing a political agenda and only color-aware for the purpose determining which diseases you might be more susceptible to.

No. You've just conceded that gender is a social construction, so it's not a confusion at all. Social constructions are like the boxes available on a census form, you still get to pick which one to tick.

Yes, some social constructions are sexist (that's my particular beef with some radical trans philosophy that seems to reify such constructions), but..

The important thing is that people are required to choose anyway in order to take part in the culture which has just constructed those options.

So the trans thing is really about support for a choice between options which someone else presented but where 'none of the above' isn't an option.

Note - philosophically, 'none of the above' is what I agree with, but practically it can only go one way, society changes the choices first. — Isaac

First, I never conceded that "gender" is a social construction. What I'm doing is taking that idea and showing the illogical implications of that idea.

The boxes that are available on a census forum are related to biological characteristics, like sex and race. If gender is a social construction, then the boxes would be labeled:
Women wear dresses
Women wear makeup
Women have long hair
Men wear pants
Men don't wear makeup
Men have short hair.

The list would have to be much longer for any behavior that one takes as their "gender" and you could check more than one. Notice that the list isn't identities - they are behaviors expected of those biological identities. That is what it means to have a shared expectation as opposed to having an identity. If gender is a shared expectation of the behavior of the sexes, as you agreed with, then gender would be statements like, "Men wear pants", not "Man". That confuses the expected behavior that the members of a culture share ("men wear pants") with the biological entity, "man".

The other problem you have is the term "shared" in the definition of a social construction. If a social construction is "shared" then that means that it is an agreement between the members of society. Transgenders aren't conforming which means that their idea of gender isn't shared, it is an individual feeling, so it wouldn't qualify as a social construction.

There is also the problem of transgenderism promoting sexism. If these social constructions are sexist because they put men and women, who are biological entities, into subjective boxes, then a man claiming to be a woman simply by wearing a dress reinforces those stereotypes. Wearing a dress doesn't make one a woman. It is simply the expected behavior of women. This is why people get confused when they see that a man is under the dress. They expected a different identity because of their shared expectation that only women (the identity) wear dresses (the shared expectation of behavior for that identity).

You've not established that the evolution of sex is relevant to gender at all. — fdrake

I've established that if gender is a social construction then that means it is a shared expectation of biological identities, not identities themselves.

I brought up the evolution of sex to show that our species has diverged enough from our far distant hemaphrodite ancestors that when those hidden genes are activated during conception and our physiology has changed so much since then, that the outcome of ancient DNA expression in a body that it wasn't designed for can have unpredictable consequences.

The entire point of raising hermaphroditism here is to undermine your claim that "we have the sexes we have because of natural selection", because evolution also produces hermaphrodites and species with more than two sexes... — fdrake

This means that "gender" would be kind of shared assumption or expectation, but a shared assumption or expectation of what?

The answer: the behavior of the different sexes within a culture.
— Harry Hindu

Yes — Isaac

Yes, but those are defining characteristics of those species, not humans. Which species were we talking about again?

Poor Harry Hindu. He's still confused about the difference between what's in your underpants and how people treat you. — Banno

Poor Banno is still confused about the difference between how what is in your underpants scientifically/objectively (not culturally/subjectively) identifies them as a particular biological identity, and how subjective cultures form subjective expectations (not objective identities) about those scientific/objective identities.

If noticing color in the past led to racist systems and institutions...
— Harry Hindu

To make sense of what follows this I think you should probably explain exactly what “noticing color” means in this sentence. — praxis

I thought I was using the phrase the same way everyone else was - recognizing the race of an individual for a particular reason. Per , The FHA "noticed color" for the purpose of segregating "blacks" and "whites". That is what I was referring to. Does the FHA still "notice color" for the purpose of segregating whites and blacks today? I didn't get an answer - just more ad hominems.

It is my position that we don't "notice color" as that is what the FHA did in the past. My position hasn't changed and Bitter Crank's post doesn't change it. It supports what I've been saying.

Systematic racism existed in the past. It doesn't now. There are pockets of racism that still exist on both sides. It will take a few more generations to weed out the stragglers. The way things were for thousands of generations will take at least several generations to change. The necessary change to the system has happened and we need to wait for the effects to propagate, not make the system become racist again. We have equal rights laws and that is meant to minimize what the stragglers can do, but it can't be applied unequally where only "whites" get accused of "racism" if "blacks" want to be treated equally.

If racism is related to power, and minorities now hold positions of power, then that means that they can be accused of racism and passing laws that benefit one race over another would be racist as BitterCrank pointed out. That is what YOU and 180 and Baden and fdrake, etc. want. That isn't what I want. I want people's race to only be noticed in biological/medical contexts and not in the context of politics because that is when it becomes racist, as BitterCrank's post shows!

Okay, Harry. Prove you're not a cunt — 180 Proof

:meh:

I can point you to a history book - THE COLOR OF LAW (2017) - that will show that we do not have, and have not had equality of opportunity. We need not go back as far as the 18th and 19th centuries and slavery. Let's go back to the 1930s. — Bitter Crank

But this is 2019. What are the racist institutions in 2019? Are you saying the FHA is still racist today? Did it take this long for you to point out the racist institution?

They're saying there are situations where the way a society allocates resources protects one race and exposes the other to social disintegration, educational and nutritional deficits, and gang violence.

"Systemic racism" isnt the best terminology for it because much of it, as Bittercrank pointed out, is the legacy of historic racism, and corruption that may or may not be related to racism.

It's more poetically speaking that racism is embodied by economic, political, and judicial systems. — frank

Right, so we don't have laws and institutions where the way society allocates resources and protects one race and exposes the other to social disintegration today. It's more about that the effects of the racism in previous systems that have carried over generationally. Given that, what are the proposed solutions? More vague generalities?

If noticing color in the past lead to racist systems and institutions, then why isn't the solution to be color-blind today? Why isn't the solution to ignore race and treat people equally today?

We like to point out racist people from previous generations and take down their statues, so why would you want to go back to those racist ways by using race to divide people?

Do you even care if anything you write is true? I mean, if you're going to appeal to biology, at least know something about it. Why any particular baby has a natal sex (all else held equal) is due to essentially random union of gametes. On the individual level this has nothing to do with natural selection.

Sexual reproduction is evolutionarily old, need not have just 2 sexes, need not have one sex per organism. And you wanna reduce all of the question of "what makes a person a man or a woman?" down to evolutionary adaptations that occurred prior to the evolution of humans. What in the fuck are you even talking about. — fdrake

The entire point of that argument strategy is to get us talking about biological sex, as if it's relevant to gender at all... — fdrake

Right, so when I show you that you're wrong and don't know what you're talking about your tactic is to then say it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about. :roll:

If you press these guys enough, you'll find that it's never about the language issue, it's about something more fundamental. This is a major part of why people are campaigning for more inclusive language might actually be effective to some extent; if it becomes hard to articulate prejudice (misgendering is punishable), proponents of bigotry and ignorance have to speak in terms of their underlying (badly researched or wilfully ignorant) ideas about reality.

And they'll keep going, really, because it's never about the fact of the matter (if it were, they wouldn't behave like douchenozzles trying to refute you on all points and being internally inconsistent in the process), it's about a personal feeling of discomfort with norms shifting underneath them. — fdrake

The entire point of that argument strategy is to get us talking about biological sex, as if it's relevant to gender at all... — fdrake

We went over this already.

If "gender" isn't about sex, then what is "gender"?

You defined "gender" as a social construction.

"Social construction" is defined as a shared assumption or expectation.

This means that "gender" would be kind of shared assumption or expectation, but a shared assumption or expectation of what?

The answer: the behavior of the different sexes within a culture.

So, again you are confusing a shared assumption or expectation with the actual sexual identity of that person, which is the result of millions of years of evolution and nothing that they have any control over.

Those shared assumptions or expectations are sexist, so when someone claims to identify with them, they are the actual proponents of sexism.

Do you even care if anything you write is true? I mean, if you're going to appeal to biology, at least know something about it. Why any particular baby has a natal sex (all else held equal) is due to essentially random union of gametes. On the individual level this has nothing to do with natural selection. — fdrake

Of course I care if it's true. I answer your questions because I seek out criticism of my ideas in order to fine tune them. You're not returning the favor and it's not just me that notices.

I've already done the research on evolution and natural selection as it is what changed me from being a theist to being an atheist. What I see is the same thing happening in politics - that many atheists have simply swapped one big brother for another. They make the same logical errors that the theists do and don't even question their beliefs, or what they are told, like when a man claims to be a woman.

How do you think two different gametes came about?

The first mathematical model to explain the evolution of anisogamy via individual level selection, and one that became widely accepted was the theory of gamete or sperm competition. Here, selection happens at the individual level: those individuals that produce more (but smaller) gametes also gain a larger proportion of fertilizations simply because they produce a larger number of gametes that 'seek out' those of the larger type. However, because zygotes formed from larger gametes have better survival prospects, this process can again lead to the divergence of gametes sizes into large and small (female and male) gametes. The end result is one where it seems that the numerous, small gametes compete for the large gametes that are tasked with providing maximal resources for the offspring. — Wikipedia

Sexual reproduction is evolutionarily old, need not have just 2 sexes, need not have one sex per organism. And you wanna reduce all of the question of "what makes a person a man or a woman?" down to evolutionary adaptations that occurred prior to the evolution of humans. What in the fuck are you even talking about. — fdrake

In order to procreate as a human you need two different sex systems - a vagina/ovaries and a penis/testicles. Each system includes the storage for the gametes and their delivery method. It seems to me that you need both to have a functional system. Those that are born with both don't have both as fully functioning - it's either one or the other or none at all. We usually say that they are intersex, which reflects their condition of being between the two sexes, but typically they lean one way or the other because of which system is more fully functional.

Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the "female" or "male." For example, the great majority of tunicates, pulmonate snails, opisthobranch snails, earthworms, and slugs are hermaphrodites. Hermaphroditism is also found in some fish species and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates. Most plants are also hermaphrodites. — Wikipedia

Hermaphroditism is old. Sex isn't. You are the one that doesn't know what they are talking about.

Humans are still born with tails from time to time. We still carry genes from our distant ancestral species that get activated by some mutation in the copying of genes when a person is being conceived.

No, the core part would have been the same-to "be a woman." The difference lies in different cultures having different established social rules on what women should do. — HereToDisscuss

Exactly. Societies have different established social rules on what women should do, not what makes one a woman. Those rules are sexist because they put women in boxes that limit them. Why can't a woman wear pants and have short hair and join the military and still be a woman?

What makes a person a man or woman? Natural selection.

This has nothing to do with natural selection. We're presuming the existence of humans of both sexes. So, I'll try again. To start off: Society, at whatever level, is involved in forming the identity of individual humans? Yes or no? — Baden

I wouldn't say it like that.

Society, at whatever level, is involved in forming assumptions and expectations about the identities of individual humans.

You seem to be saying that our biology already provides the identity of being a male or female, and then society comes along and creates assumptions, or expectations of those biological identities. Those assumptions and expectations are usually wrong which makes them sexist.

This is what I've been saying all along - that you and others are confusing the shared expectation of a particular sex as the actual identity of being that sex.

You've earned Chrome ignore — Baden

Systemic racism is a form of racism that is expressed through the practices of institutions in their interactions with socially dominated racial groups, and that serves to reinforce the dominated status of those groups. Systemic racism may be enshrined in law (e.g. apartheid systems) or it may be a matter of practices/policies involving legal interpretation and/or extralegal actions discriminatively applied by those with discretionary power, direct or indirect, at any level of the system. Examples of systems where systemic racism may apply include justice, education, and health in both their private and state-managed manifestations. — Baden

What are the names of the institutions? Aren't there institutions that are socially dominated by blacks in the U.S.?

So, what is the solution to this form of systematic racism? Blacks need to pump out more babies so that they are no longer the minority? I love how these definitions are pronounced without even understanding how one would solve such a problem the definition entails.

I'm too lazy, but you aren't when you didn't read and respond to my post? Lazy Hypocrite.

The only question in that is what race I am and why we aren't demanding posters race. I think you can work that out yourself. — Baden

Then you didn't take the time to read it.

It seems that you can work out your own definitions then and we don't need to have this discussion.

The reason you won't say why Admins on this forum aren't demanding members' race is because it contradicts your and 180's other arguments.

And I actually did define the term in question. — Baden

Then repost it because I missed it.

I'll post my own definition afterwards, but I don't want to be accused of prejudicing any replies. I want Harry to look it up himself from a neutral source and figure out if that's what he's saying. — Baden

It's not incumbent upon me to define your god for you. You're the one making the claim that racism is systematic. Now define systematic, and point out the system and members of the system that are racist.

Who knows when HH will show up. — Baden

LOL, I have a life and don't live on these forums, or only participate on these forums.

Can you just answer the question? Feel free to use a dictionary if you need to. — Baden

What the hell? I've asked you questions that you ignored and now you demand that I answer your questions? This is the level of hypocrisy we have to deal with on this forum. Start treating me with the same respect that you expect for yourself and maybe we can have an actual discussion.

You may not have noticed, but if you point out the reality of racism in any form, Harry Hindu will find a way to accuse you of racism. It's his one game here and he never ever gets tired of it.
— Baden

Fdrake made a similar argument. I asked him to define "prejudice" and never answered the question. So, I ask you: define "racism/prejudice/bias". If it walks, talks and acts like a duck, it's a duck.

And I've been asking for awhile now for people to point out the racists in our society, when all along they are right here in this thread! — Harry Hindu

So why don't we get a rundown of everyone's race here and the mods? If it's so important that our race be in people's faces, then why aren't we doing it? Why aren't the mods demanding your race when registering and displaying it with our posts? If being color-blind is now what it means to be racist, then the owners of this forum are breaking their own rules to not be racist! It's the complete opposite of what MLK advocated. — Harry Hindu

So if there is no explicitly racist law in place then no systemic racism can possibly exist? That's your claim, right? — Baden

Isn't that what it means to be systematic? Which system are we talking about?

1) Society mediates biological identity.
2) The subject is socially embedded.
3) What do you disagree with re 1) and 2)? And how does what I said exclude personal psychological input into identity formation? — Baden

I don't agree with 1 or 2.

Natural selection mediates biological identity and by extension, social interactions.

What does it even mean to be a "subject" that is socially embedded?

I already explained how your personal psychological input is excluded from identity formation. Based on your own arguments, it is a social construction and it is the identity that society is assuming of a person that is sexist. So transgenders are reinforcing sexist assumptions of the society they are in.

What does it mean to be unknowable? Is it that it is knowable to some, but not to others? Or is it that there is nothing to know at all - that we are mistaking imaginary things for real things and then asking questions about those imaginary things as if they were real. — Harry Hindu

it simply means you know that you cannot know. because there is something blocking your limited ability to know.

thing can be temporarily unknowable or permanently unknowable

and you can potential know that — OmniscientNihilist

I don't see how that answers my question.

Define "knowing".

Is it? For example, a transwoman's belief that she is a woman is not really like a delusional belief: It is an inherent aspect of the person that believes it and it comes from a psychological/neurological difference from the others that it is a core aspect of it -it is not simply someone believing an extraordinary thing later in life (and it is also based around a more defensible claim, i.e. their gender is different).
In your example, them believing they are a special creation of some god (assuming it is not an unrelated insult at religions and it is about a person who believes they were created by god in a particularly very special fashion) is not a core aspect of the person- it would not have been that way if the culture was different, they would have believed something extraordinary instead. But the transwoman would have still believed only that and, if she was allowed to transition, would not have gone back to being a man after some consideration. If you fed into a delusional person's beliefs, they would have only grown more unstable and not more stable. That is not what we observe with trans people unless discrimination is involved.

That's mainly because you (and everyone else who identifiesthe same) equate being a man with having certain genitals and being a woman with having another set of genitals. Of course, from that perspective, that person will be a "man"-but a man that dresses like a woman, sounds like a woman, literally has boobs and the curves of a woman, has a generally feminine body and prefers to be on the girl side of things nonetheless.

I would say that a social perspective of gender ("gender as a social construct") can more accurately represent those kinds of situtations than a simple biological definition. — HereToDisscuss

It would have been different in another culture. Just ask anyone around these parts and they will tell you that gender is a social construction. That means, that in order to change one's gender, they'd have to change their culture that they were raised in, not their clothes. In the same vein, religious people would have to change the culture that they were raised in order to have a different religion.

So, is "gender" a social construction, or a individual feeling? If is it an individual feeling, then how does a man know what it feels like to be a woman to claim that they are a woman? These are very basic questions that everyone should be asking, but they don't because they have an emotional attachment to their political beliefs, no different than a religious person.

You don't seem to understand what a social construction is. It is a shared assumption about others identities, which means that it comes from society, not the individual. Also, these assumptions can be wrong AND SEXIST. The assumption that a person wearing a dress is automatically a woman is wrong AND SEXIST. A man can wear dresses and still be a man. You're conflating the shared assumption of an individual with the actual physical characteristics of that individual and promoting SEXISM.

I am a man - a human male. — Harry Hindu

I guess your identity comes directly from your dick. That fits. Although for most people, there's this thing called society that gets in between dangly bits and their identity-forming powers. — Baden

As I said, I'm a man - a human male. So there was more to my identity than my dick. My first identity was that of a human with my sex being secondary.

It's no surprise that sex was the first thing to come to your mind - as if sexual identity trumps species identity. The authoritarian left has this fetish with sexual identities.

You have the additional problem of your argument getting in the way of everyone's identity forming - including "transgenders". Your argument supports the idea that society, not the individuals, form identities of individuals. So, how is that a man can identify as a woman, and society not get in the way of their identity-forming? You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

What is it about religion and politics that makes people throw logic and reason out the window?

Prior to this, you wrote: "the U.S. is more open-minded and less xenocentric than most other countries." Assuming this claim is true, it's still not evidence that the USA is an "equal-treatment country." — praxis

That's fine. It's evidence that the U.S. isn't as xenophobic as you think. Letting in millions of legal immigrants each year is evidence of that as well. For evidence of equal-treatment, just look at the laws we have. I keep asking you and 180 to provide the names of the entities or laws in the U.S. that are racist yet you can't even do that. You and 180 can't provide any evidence for your claims. You're talking about boogey-men that don't exist, so your whole argument is based off of an imaginary entity - kind of like religion, and you even make the same type of logical errors that the religious do when making their case for their boogey-man that tortures people with fire that don't believe in it.

Once again without mentioning your name, Hindu, you don't keep anyone guessing and self-identify. That's mighty "colorblind" of you. :ok: "I bet you think this song is about you ..." — 180 Proof

In other words: Don't feed trolls! Right on. — 180 Proof

Because the rest of it was the same dribble we've been hearing, I've been responding to, and then you just ignore what I said, call me a troll, and repeat yourself. Those aren't valid arguments. If I was sooooo wrong, it should be simple to tell me why, and establish that you are not afflicted with the Dunning–Kruger effect yourselves. It would seem to me that engaging in ad hominems and ignoring my points, and then repeating yourselves is evidence that you, 180 and the others are the ones afflicted, not me. — Harry Hindu

But you keep feeding me the same bullshit leftovers, 180. You sound like a broken record.

I came to the same conclusion myself - but it's difficult to practise. The scenario is that you're describing a person of colour to a third party, and you don't want to use "race"/skin colour descriptors. You've suggested describing physical characteristics. (Unlike other contributors, I'm happy to imply that you obviously meant characteristics other than skin colour.) The question arises: how important is it that the third party can recognise the described person. The UK police, out of necessity rather than racism, use numbered "race" categories. I'll continue to struggle with this one. I don't like to say, "black", but sometimes I have to. "African" isn't always appropriate. Same with "brown" and "South Asian". "Mixed race" sounds wrong to me. Is "mixed ethnicity" any better? I'm with the OP - lets do it! — Chris Hughes

Being color-blind doesn't entail ignoring skin color all the time - only in those times where it isn't applicable - like when you're an employer hiring someone, or as a citizen voting for someone. It only make sense to talk about skin-color and race in biological/medical contexts - and yes, when describing someone so that they can locate them in a crowd when the crowd is made up of both blacks and whites. You wouldn't need to point out skin color in a crowd when everyone's skin color is the same.

I mean, this is all pretty basic, logical stuff. I don't get why people are so hypersensitive about it.

I feel like I've been here before, but this is a pernicious myth. It is not feelings which are determining truth at any point. One's feelings are just one sense of what's happening. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You feel like you've been here before because you say the same thing in every similar thread and when I respond to it, you ignore it and then repeat yourself in the next thread.

We might say they are the means by which one knows their sex or gender. Any time we understand something we have a similar sort of feeling, that specfic meanings are of certain things or events.

Like these many other situations, what makes a gender or sex true is not a fact someone feels it, but a truth of sex or gender itself about the particualr person in question. We are bound to recognise trans people not because they feel a certain way, but instead because it is true they have a particualr idenity.

When we misgender a person, we are telling a falsehood about their idenity. We are claiming their idenity is something which it is not. — TheWillowOfDarkness

And I already pointed out that people's own identities about themselves can be wrong. Some people are delusional. Some people think that they are a special creation of some god. Telling them that they aren't is no different than telling a man who thinks he's a woman that he isn't. I can't make him believe that. He has to come to that realization himself, but he can't make me use words that don't represent my identity. I am a man - a human male. His declaration of being a woman makes my (and everyone else who identifies the same), use of the word, "man" and "woman" incoherent.

What's the matter - don't have the balls to reply directly to anything I've said? You're just posting walls of text that doesn't address anything I've said. You're responding to ghosts.

Good question by the OP. My answer is: we're back-pedalling on being "colour-blind" because "colour-blindness" has been co-opted by racists. White anti-racists like me (and, I presume, the OP) are subject to the historical currents of the ongoing civil rights movement. Being "woke" to them isn't a backwards step. The current state of affairs may be flawed, but it's essentially progressive. The criticism of "colour-blindness" isn't a criticism of an individual white anti-racist's way of approaching people of colour - it's a criticism of (white) racists who boast about their "colour-blindness" while continuing to blithely practise personal and institutional racism - and continuing to deny the pervasive historical structures of racism. — Chris Hughes

So why don't we get a rundown of everyone's race here and the mods? If it's so important that our race be in people's faces, then why aren't we doing it? Why aren't the mods demanding your race when registering and displaying it with our posts? If being color-blind is now what it means to be racist, then the owners of this forum are breaking their own rules to not be racist! It's the complete opposite of what MLK advocated.

I consider myself an anti-racist. I have pale skin, but I don't see what that has anything to do with it, as you said yourself, not all whites are racist, so who are the racists then, and what does your color of skin have to do with being racist or not?

We can influence our negative biases by providing positive experiences that counteract them, simply. This can be done deliberately or unintentionally to ourselves and others. Of course, it can also occur by chance. For an example in popular culture, I saw a movie last night that appeared to be trying to counteract the negative image that the Trump administration is painting of South American immigrants. In the new Terminator movie [spoiler altert], it's an illegal border crossing Mexican woman who turns out to be the savior of humanity. If Trump made the movie, the hero would be a blond-haired white dude and all the killer robots would be Mexican. See how that works?
— praxis
Yes, and if you go to another country their movies are even more xenocentric. In other words, the U.S. is more open-minded and less xenocentric than most other countries, yet you and your side are lambasting the U.S. You just provided evidence that supports my argument. See how that works? — Harry Hindu

Evidence that we try to influence each others biases supports your argument? Okay. — praxis

No, evidence that the U.S. is already an equal-treatment country. Didn't I say that? Yes. I did.

Without reading it, I don’t think you selected the most relevant portion of the book to respond to, in relation to the topic and the context that it was presented. Also, your response to the excerpt was rather simplistic. It’s easy to see why someone may not give it any attention.

The book review gives a detailed outline but I don’t know that it offers the gist of it. — praxis

Just saying ... — 180 Proof

Because the rest of it was the same dribble we've been hearing, I've been responding to, and then you just ignore what I said, call me a troll, and repeat yourself. Those aren't valid arguments. If I was sooooo wrong, it should be simple to tell me why, and establish that you are not afflicted with the Dunning–Kruger effect yourselves. It would seem to me that engaging in ad hominems and ignoring my points, and then repeating yourselves is evidence that you, 180 and the others are the ones afflicted, not me.

Supernagic is ...
real or nonsense — jorndoe

Supernagic is a real word (it's there on the screen) that refers to a nonsense idea.

saying 'i cannot know' = making a claim that the answer is intrinsically unknowable — OmniscientNihilist

What does it mean to be unknowable? Is it that it is knowable to some, but not to others? Or is it that there is nothing to know at all - that we are mistaking imaginary things for real things and then asking questions about those imaginary things as if they were real.

Yeah, I agree with this.

At that, I don't have any problem with the idea of someone being transgender, but I have no problem with the idea of someone thinking that they're really a dragon or a toaster or whatever. I'm not necessarily going to call them a dragon or toaster, but I don't have any problem with people thinking that. — Terrapin Station

Sure, but like religion, they are trying to use the government to push their ideology and make it a crime to say certain things. That is when it crosses the line.

Say someone who's been skeptical of their gender from birth, but doesn't identify with the... — fdrake

So I went away and did some reading by way of a Google search for "differences in gender brains" and can you guess what kind of search results I received? Why don't you go away and do the same thing and see if you get the same results and then come back here and lets have a reasonable discussion about it. :cool: