So, you really want a discussion on racism?

Politics
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Honestly, nope, I don’t believe most people do. I believe people are so stuck in their notions that nothing is going to change their minds.

There’s reasons for this, one of the biggest being no consistent working definition of the term, everyone assumes we all know what it is and agree on a definition, so why bother to define it. For the purposes of the OP, I will provide the definition that I got from google:

RACISM " prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized."

I think most would accept this, but while skin color would be the most obvious distinction between people and thus the root cause of racism, I believe the real problem is culture, not color. Don’t get me wrong, yup, there are people who hate simply based on skin color, but I believe that today, most “racism” is due to cultural differences between people and not a blind, automatic reaction to peoples color.

A close cousin of racism is stereotyping, a working definition being: “stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group.” THIS is what I mean when I talk about differences in culture, though here, I would add behavior as well…

I don’t believe there is a single person in this forum who doesn’t engage in stereotyping of one type or another. The problem is that we associate certain cultural things or behaviors that we may disagree with or perhaps even hate, with a particular ethnic group, and then we automatically transfer that cultural or behavioral thing we don’t like to the person, and then to every person of similar appearance. Stereotyping can lead to racism, but isn’t racism by itself, and sometimes stereotyping isn’t a bad thing at all…

I tend to believe that most claims of racism today are more cases of stereotyping, or perhaps doing or saying something in ignorance or a momentary word spoken without thought, not outright racism.

I believe if people would be intellectually honest, put aside partisanship, and the ingrained compulsion to jump to conclusions, that genuine racism has been in decline for many years and false claims of racism against people and institutions today not only diminish the real racism that people have experienced throughout our history, but hurt the cause that people are tearing the country apart over…

What say you?

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That there clearly is a working definition of racism, standard to Europe and North America, and that the problem is that conservatives just reject it.

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It’s technically not racism, it’s racial prejudice isn’t a wining argument my guy.

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Why did you single out white countries/nations?

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“Singled out” is a weird approach to dozens of countries.

But, the US belongs to a larger civilizational complex, one whose major powers engaged in colonial projects through which they collectively and individually developed the concept of race as we understand it. And from those colonial views on race, esp. during abolition and liberation movements, those same countries also developed an intermittent but shared working definition of racism, often as a way to grapple with the problems generated by slavery and colonialism.

I probably should have included OZ, SA and the Kiwis, come to think of it.

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China, Japan and Korea.

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What about?

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Well that was an interesting and enlightened viewpoint…

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This is true clearly.

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But, the US belongs to a larger civilizational complex, one whose major powers engaged in colonial projects through which they collectively and individually developed the concept of race as we understand it. And from those colonial views on race, esp. during abolition and liberation movements, those same countries also developed an intermittent but shared working definition of racism, often as a way to grapple with the problems generated by slavery and colonialism.

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There’s quite often other things to take into consideration. For example, if a person has ever worn blackface, are they automatically and forever racists? If a person ever laughed at or told an ethnic joke, are they automatically and forever racists? If a person ever watched a movie that portrayed racism, are they then racists? If a person listens to a certain type of music which contains a certain derogatory word, are they racist? How about if they sing along with the lyrics and actually use the word themselves, are they racist then?

This thread hasn’t gone very far, but so far, most responses have been from the left. You guys are the ones primarily perpetually calling for a “national discussion.”

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Okay. But what about the three countries yiu listed?

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Same thing applies.

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How about provide it then? Sure makes it easy to call someone something according to a definition that you have just in your head…

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Perhaps. Different conditions, different histories, different ideas about race, nationality and ethnicity. Are these three countries racist enterprises? I don’t know, precisely.

Han culture is, I think, pretty clearly supremacist, and it doesn’t seem to produce a large number of people inclined to see Africans as equals. And yet. The Han approach to Africa is significantly less paternally racist, as we would generally understand it, in dealings with African peoples and countries.

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Not just Africa and Africans. Libs just refuse to accept it.

And then there is the Islamic version.

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To say we in America are free from the bondages of Racism is just silly, like wearing a big, loud, yellow bow tie silly.
Travel outside America, Racism is very real, and all over the place, and always has been.
The modern Greeks look at, and treat their neighbor Albania like America does Mexico; cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor, go home.
Even Gandhi had racist views well documented.
The human race is not perfected yet.
And America still deals with Racism.
It is Naive to think America is Racially perfected.

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Islam isn’t racist, like Christianity isn’t racist.

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https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3940.html

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Islamists are.