When is racism OK for you?

Most would say that saying "nigger," "faggot," "kike," or "cunt," is not a good thing. However, we all know that people make "exceptions." Do you have exceptions to the "rules?" Do you ever think that any group is monolithic? Do you ever catch yourself making "bad" statements against an entire group?

Ever cross the street because the person coming at you was a Black man?

Ever think that a gay man/lesbian was "out to fuck you" because you were the same sex as they were?

Ever think an Arab man on the plane with you was about to fly it into a building?

Ever think that Jews run the media? Or Israel runs our foreign policies?

Ever think that atheists are amoral?


How do you overcome your own prejudices?

:)

What happens when others don't share your vision? What if they are self-proclaimed progressives and liberals? Where do draw the line?

"Forget all dat an come to da Mardi Gras!" :D

...to G-d's ears!

NOLA, one of the most beautiful cities in the WORLD, needs MG 2006!

It still won't erase the hate. But, if there is an American city that shows that we can all live together, it would be NOLA! We just have to remember that when, "pushes comes to shove," we must rely upon on one another!

When I was a boy, my father and I used to go for long walks on an old abandoned railroad bed. His father had come to this country in the 1800s, after the Civil War, and had been one of the workers on that railroad. My father would tell me stories of the battles his father faced, including between various ethnic groups. And I remember him telling me that contact between individuals was the best route towards understanding between different groups. His father had taught him that it was important to recognize every human being as a distinct individual.

I truly believe that for the majority of prejudices to survive there has to be a separation between the bigot and the object of his bigotry. If a person hates Jews, for example, if he is not exposed to Jewish people in everyday life, he is more likely to continue with that bigotry.

Take my brother for example. He is a kind and normally generous person. He grew up in a white, suburban, middle class household and had all the privileges a white male has in this society. But his exposure to African Americans is limited to what he sees in the media. He told me the other day that the only contribution to society that African Americans have made were in sports and music. My brother is a repuke and we are constantly arguing about things. I explained to him about the black man who invented the gas mask (I wish I remembered his name). He heroically ventured into a collapsed tunnel and using the gas mask, he rescued twelve people. A white man was with him. The white man got the medal and the black man got nothing. If this black man had been encouraged and rewarded for his invention, there would be no telling what else he would have accomplished. It made my brother pause, and he has not said racist things to me since.

http://www.blackrefer.com/inventors.html

zalinda

Say a group dislikes the influence of another culture on their own?

How dare you think that each human is an individual!?! :sarcasm:

What a world we would live in if we all had your father walking us along abandoned railroads!

The battles he faced, shouldn't be ours! We should have grown since then. Yet, here we are. He has you to carry on his message.

that if I truly want to call myself a liberal, then I have to acknowledge that there are people I disagree with, but I have to accept their differences. A good example for me is that I work with a lot of republicans. These are very nice people, and thoughtful co-workers, but I occasionally catch myself thinking things like "ignorant, uninformed, stupid, uneducated, etc". and I have to stop and remember that I live in a country that is supposed to be celebrating differences. I need to stop making blanket judgments about these people, and focus on the things we share in common (usually we're more the same than different). This does nothing to change them; only me. I keep telling myself that as soon as I acheive perfection, then I can start working on the rest of the world. And I think I'm getting close!
Peace.

and had an irrational hatred of Greeks. weird.

self delete

are you gay? female?

Why does it matter who I left out?

Hate is hate!

That's the tone throughout DU and it's time to get the message across that it's NOT ok to insult whites.

On what subjects does that happen?

poor people who live in trailers. When people use the term trailer trash they mean poor white people. I guess it's OK for liberals to hate poor whites, because after all if they are white then they have had every advantage in the world and have no reason to be poor, right? :mad:

other than whites. Yet the struggles are the same.

and after being exposed to individuals in a group it becomes harder to hate the group as a whole.

I think any prejudices I may have had have evolved out of me over time as I have met many people as I have lived and traveled in different countries.

Although being an anglo-canadian I am always suspect of french-canadians that don't like greek food. :)

If you mean discriminationg your actions based on race, then I am all for it. In certain circumstances.
If there are drugs that work on african sickle cell anemia, but don't do squat for other races, test it, prescribe it use it.
If certain sects of jews have a higher incidence of mental or neurological disorders, then study them separate and apart from the general population.
If a breast cancer medication is great for whites, but less effective for african-americans and is totally worthless for orientals, would I support discrimination based on race? You betcha.
If Black inner city kids suffer from 50% higher rates of asthma and ADD, would I waste money studying only hispanics and caucasions? or would I spend most of the research grant in make testable and observable hypotheses about solving the problem by concentrating the money and effort on inner city blacks?

It is not only medicine. The Arts, too, have a place for recognition of race.
If a playwrite drafts a remake of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the director insists on casting all the slaves as white women as part of his/her artistic license, I might be amused, then ignore the play.

Now, ift Spike Lee directs a great movie, but happens to be black - would that keep me from the theater? of course not.

Race is a fact. Differences in the races are facts. treating certain results of those differences may fall under the category of racism, but might be perfectly permissible. As always, there are no absolutes.

think they are anyway?

Prejudice goes away when we get to know each other.

I refer to TOS only, of course... but in order to eliminate prejudice, we all need to desensitise ourselves to elements that we end up feeling fear/prejudiced over.


But Jews run the media? I thought they were all only rich. :eyes:

racism is NEVER ok.

it is okay to have a certain ethnicity as friends as long as long as they are not married into your family. I know people who have this great illusion of how progressive and tolerant they are until their kids want to date someone of a different race or ethnicity. Then it masquerades as "there will be racial issues in marriage and marriage is hard enough".