Racism

[archytas]

Martin Luther King is in our thoughts at this time of year.  I've never been able to hack racism, yet feel there is little honest discussion of the matter.  It is still in place all over the world, though in the UK it is not as obvious as in my youth and there have been improvements.  I have two problems in mind:

1. The situation is rarely viewed from the perspective of poor indigenous people suffering housing problems, work and wage pressures - now including many ethnic minorities

2. The meritocracy system we have is based on a flawed concept and is easily cheated by educational advantages, inheritance and class-based networking.

Few here are now openly race prejudiced, yet it remains easy to see many problems remain.  I won't be watching either of the next two soccer world cups because they are in profoundly racist countries, but most don't care enough to boycott such.  Any views out there?

[Gabby]

I agree. The necessary knowledge and awareness on how that topic defines us is definitely not around in this group and therefore not suitable for the personnel here. 

[facilitator]

Some groups of people are inferior to others.

[Chris Jenkins]

Inheritance is one facet of institutionalized racism; it's not about the overt slurs and segregated dining, it's about the segregation of opportunity, and the enforced sense of otherness. 

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Babies are not born racist they are trained.


تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

[facilitator]

This is true.

[archytas]

Damn it Chris, don't you start sounding sensible!  Yes, opportunity - but we don't all get the opportunity to go to "pubic" (no typo) schools or Russell Group, Oxbridge or Poison Ivy League universities and become parrots of what is taught there.  Plus the great opportunity to be bullied by maths teachers until 18 for autistic kids who can perceive the difference between a circle and oblong isn't.  We have the ideology of meritocracy all wrong and to such an extent that weasel Blair actually quoted a book by Michael Young criticising the whole shebang as though it said equality of opportunity to play for Manchester United for the wheelchair disabled must produce fair outcomes.

Come on Gabbs -"fess up country girl" - what new ideologies are there down the rabbit hole.  I know we have to maintain undercover cover - but what might be a better direction not consumed in the gaze of the blue eye and the pheromones of the slaver ant?  How do we get through the Fourth Wall?  Wait for you to deal 'caste' cards at a party with the Mad Hatter?  I love what some of your sweet nothings never say (curses now we'll need a new cover), but deconstruction is to reconstruct, not tell everyone they smell and should use Lifeboy carbolic.  On could come to think you work for a cosmetic company, like one of the old right wing fascists of the Cagoule.  And there was me thinking we'd smuggle medical supplies to the Republic, not sabotage their aircraft to save the future for L'Oreal and women who won't swing from trees because of untreated armpit odour.  Watch some George Carlin and work out we already know we are the problem and are waiting for you to open up the problematic, like the Guter-Mensch test-passer we already know you won't let us make you in our patronising desires for good ole country girls.

Babies are not born racist gentlemen, though some have the silver spoon of its instrumentality in their mouths pretty early.  All cultures get ethnocentric.  Even Freud noticed, when not curing frigidity with nose pliers, that the best individuals form the best societies that produce the best individuals - which rather screws anyone born a baby not in the best society in circular oppression of opportunity-nots.  Don't start knocking out silver spoons for all Allan - it's a metaphor and this is a low budget presentation as we weren't born with any.in the inescapable circles of privilege.

FIFA, run by some corrupt German step-ladder from behind Swiss secrecy laws, has an anti-racist policy that builds stadia in Qatar on the dead bodies of Nepalese indentured kafala workers.  Sure there's the equality bit that the overpaid millionaire wimps licking a beach ball in a wuss replica of the game my size-nines once graced in mud and rain kicking a soggy pig's bladder, may all die of heat exhaustion too.  Sure, Tottenham Hotspur fans may get it in the neck for speech crime chanting in which they refer to themselves as Yids, but then they give a World Cup to Russia and advise black fans not to travel.

What would we need to change to bring about more genuine equality?  I would say, for instance, that the feminisation of management just changes the sex of those whipping the slaves.  I don't really give a monkey's about the sex or colour of the overseers.  Slavery in history knew few colour divisions.  Slavers were black (the Dahomey). brown (the Crimean Tartars), Jewish (Rhadamantine), European and slaves were just those not protected from slaving bastards as in the 'harvesting of the Russian Steppe' and the southern coast of Ireland and England.  Slaves didn't get reparation, the owners did.

At university colleagues are now more ethnically diverse, but most of the cleaners are Asian, as are the taxi drivers waiting to help me finish my journey if it's raining.  We have massive unemployment.  I'd hazard a guess, the England cricket team is an example of a hidden group of a lower opportunity group of poor males - there a rarely any working-class English boys in it.

We import skills, so we are told - as we build huge youth unemployment in our indigenous culture (groups too dumb to be taxi drivers?) - and who develops what back home where the skills are paid for and why aren't why needed there?

There are clearly arguments we are not having on 'race'.  Can we set up the bones and flesh them out?

 
On Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 7:08:19 PM UTC, Chris Jenkins wrote:

Inheritance is one facet of institutionalized racism; it's not about the overt slurs and segregated dining, it's about the segregation of opportunity, and the enforced sense of otherness. 

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:36 AM, archytas <nwt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Martin Luther King is in our thoughts at this time of year.  I've never been able to hack racism, yet feel there is little honest discussion of the matter.  It is still in place all over the world, though in the UK it is not as obvious as in my youth and there have been improvements.  I have two problems in mind:

1. The situation is rarely viewed from the perspective of poor indigenous people suffering housing problems, work and wage pressures - now including many ethnic minorities

2. The meritocracy system we have is based on a flawed concept and is easily cheated by educational advantages, inheritance and class-based networking.

Few here are now openly race prejudiced, yet it remains easy to see many problems remain.  I won't be watching either of the next two soccer world cups because they are in profoundly racist countries, but most don't care enough to boycott such.  Any views out there?

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[archytas]

Even limping with Pegida (here the English Defence League) one doesn't find much outright racism.  People are concerned about their own economic situation, fears of Asian mobbing and actually disgusting practices in child abuse, female castration, forced marriages, honour killings, kids not being able to move into their own housing, cooking smells, noise, crime, not feeling at home in their own streets and the swamping of school, welfare and health services.  The lack of jobs, depression of wages and much more is on people's minds.  These people may be right of wrong.  For years, they have been considered wrong and racist, though in the main, they are the people I've found actually living with these problems and with other cultures at their doorstep.

We are told that immigration is good for us and that high-level skills are imported.  440 Germans died to a man at Waterloo after emigrating here, the NHS is staffed by Asian and other 'third world' staff trained abroad.  All this stuff has hidden content, not least on how it is we can't train our own people, even to run corner shops, drive taxis and run fast food businesses - and how third world countries don't need the doctors and nurses.  People who would never dream of open racist comment attend church and do almost anything not to have their white kids attend predominately ethnic schools.  Faith schools are built, so keen are some to integrate.

Politicians of the right have sensed the dissatisfaction and have moved to UKIP.  No one remembers, but the UK had a major civil war over 'race' (religion) in Northern Ireland based on many of these factors between the privileged Proddies and exploited Provos.  This scales up on a per capita basis to 100,000 mainland deaths or half-a-million in the USA.  Idi Amin exiled 80,000 Asians and Fiji had a military coup.  Israel has chronic apartheid.  Black people are unhappy in various ghettos and often in prison in the US.  

I've seen far more racism abroad than in the West.  We haven't done enough to get rid of it.  Yet we seem to assume this is a white on others matter and it is not.  The problems in my view are deeply economic and ideological.  They are so deep I doubt we can eat a tin of tuna or make a mobile phone call without being involved in this 'racism'.

And very deep in this 'racism' quickly re-emerges in peoples who have lived peacefully side by side for years. 

[RP Singh]

Bias due to color is present even among Asians. People over here tend to appreciate  the fair among us , I don't see why?

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Oddly  i think the biggist problem with racism comes from the people themselves. Actually I was raised in a very non racist environment.  Well educated .. translating that to if you were  of the human species you are of my race. Other charater differences were how you were identified.  ( I was the freckled kid, still am very freckled).

From what I have observed is it is not so much heritage but a refusal to integrate into society.  Then the question is who is the racist.  Society or the person that is refusing to be part of society?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

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[facilitator]

Oddly, in all of this scenario, the greatest conflicts in the world right now are people of the same race.

Semitic peoples, North South (Insert country here)  African nations, Soviet and US, etc.

[archytas]

Not only is that spot on Tony, it's historic.  Genghis Khan was a classic before he moved on from his own.   The Battle of Stamford Bridge took place at the village of Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire in England on 25 September 1066, between an English army under King Harold Godwinson and an invading Norwegian force led by King Harald Hardrada and the English king's brother Tostig Godwinson.  Harold won and then marched off to take one in the eye from another Northman, somewhere near Hastings.  Kaiser Wilhelm from WW1 would have been King of Britain too under current crown inheritance rules.

Biologically, race isn't much use at all, though our genes do seek each other out without us knowing much about it in what we call consciousness.

We might do better with a refined notion of "caste" as the operating concept.  And sooner of later we have to confront cultural relativism.  The turd Blair the blair has just be making racist statements in Saudi Arabia.  I see the place as a vile, racist, sexist caste system - does this make me 'racist'?  The Bliar was praising the just dead former leader for improving higher education, which I see as a chronic statement supporting the racist, sexist rot there.  Higher education has been a disastrous failure across the Arab countries (see UN HDR reports - there's a specific one on Arabs).  What a great idea it would be to stop Molly and Gabby driving, honour them with black bags, male polygamy, punishment for encouraging their own rapes (argh!) - I'm sure they'd be much happier with all this joy - and imagine their bliss on discovering they were to get the three year course in the wonders of Islam picked for them by their husbands' elder wives. 

[archytas]

Groups of racists are inferior to groups of non-racists.  This statement rather screws the pooch on cultural relativism, but what do we do when the bunch of racists don't agree our reason and have the better weapons?

[allan...@gmail.com]

Build a self supporting barge community  move it to the ocean gyre and defend it with highly army ants .(Tony's speciality)

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwt...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 7:05 PM
Subject: Mind's Eye Re: Racism

[Gabby]

I remember you said you were not meant to become my American Superhero, that your parents had dreamed up something else in Britain before, right?  Being forced to be the other, the enormous amount of energy needed only to hold against the massive YOU-are-the-other disturbances, often leads to over-adoptive behaviour if not into depression. Would you say a moderate way is not possible, only the anti way?

[Chris Jenkins]

"Being forced to be the other, the enormous amount of energy needed only to hold against the massive YOU-are-the-other disturbances, often leads to over-adoptive behaviour if not into depression."

If everyone understood this, we'd already be on our way down the moderate path. Instead, people wield cold statistics like a weapon of judgement, without any inherent understanding of the human lives behind those numbers. 

Research shows that even the most multicultural among us still harbor tribal based pattern recognition algorithms which betray our prejudice in a tenth of a second flipping through photos of faces not like our own. Everyone knows racism is "bad", even the racists, so when you try to talk about institutionalized systems of privilege which shape the statistics, those who worry about being targeted immediately tune out of the productive dialog and hire a virtual defense attorney. "BUT I'M NOT A RACIST!" 

Of course you aren't. No one's a racist anymore, right? But isn't it funny how quickly young black men become "thugs" post mortem.

[facilitator]

Got everything but the "Post mortem Black thugs.

There are thugs in all varieties.  

[Chris Jenkins]

Of course there, Fac, but we're not talking about real thuggishness; we're talking about a crafted media message. 

"But isn't it funny how quickly young black men become "thugs" post mortem."

Trayvon Martin was never a thug until he was dead at George Zimmerman's hands. 

On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 2:23 PM, 'facilitator' via "Minds Eye" <mind...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Got everything but the "Post mortem Black thugs.

There are thugs in all varieties.  

[allan...@gmail.com]

Strange how a soul justifies what it knows to be immoral.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

From: Chris Jenkins <digitalp...@gmail.com>
To: Minds-Eye <mind...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 8:26 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Racism

[RP Singh]

There is an aesthetic sense in humans and the most prominent and easily understood beauty is that of color and sharp features. We tend to appreciate beauty whether in the arts or in humans. That beauty is not skin deep and is greatest in the nature of a person is not easily evident to all. Snobbishness comes  easy to people who are admired and it is the fault of our culture that we become racists. Culture grows with time and now people appreciate beauty in the nature and intelligence of a person.

[Gabby]

Not strange at all how you bend moral and knowledge. A soul by its very nature cannot justify, it is a holistic concept.

[RP Singh]

My views expressed here are just one part of the problem , the others are known  to those who live and let live in such conditions.

[Molly]

Not sure I agree at all. If there is karma, it is a soul property. Yet very much in the realm of cause and effect.

[gabbydott]

Perfect timing! Welcome back, Molly! :)

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Your soul is responsible for your actions

[archytas]

Welcome back Molly.  I felt so lost in the Mollygone I made Gabby temporarily into you.  She was very accommodating.   Chris is making a lot of sense, making me very nervous!  

1. Racism hasn't gone away in any of us.  It lurks in biology.  Many learn the correct rhetoric, but nothing about the 'underneath'.

2. If souls have responsibility we need some transcendental cops.

3. Overt racism remains in many countries around the world.

Chris is right about the treatment of black people.  But what do you say to a black bloke accusing you of racism as a cop when the reason you are talking to him is because he is carrying a car radio in his underpants?  Or the mother in a Pakistani heritage community claiming you are racist because you have arrested her son and husband for the street grooming and rape of a white kid?

4. The issue is tougher to resolve than we put up in argument.  Racism is about exploitation.  If black people as a group have low average IQs, are we likely not to exploit them in a world in which people are generally exploited for this, in an education-based "meritocracy"?

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to minds-eye+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[allan...@gmail.com]

When someone points a finger saying they are a racist. One needs only to examine their hand they have three pointing back at them with the thumb pointing down.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

From: archytas <nwt...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com

[archytas]

If only it was as easy as a rule of thumb Allan!

[allan...@gmail.com]

I always thought of it as a watershed.. years ago my boss pulled me aside for a talk about the morality of law..  I still remember what he had to say
"We are the good guys, they are the bad guys. Now the good guys get the bad guys. See?"

[RP Singh]

The attitude behind racism is that of superiority , if a group has that attitude it starts exploiting the weak and uncivilized. That is what happened when Africans were captured and herded onto ships and taken to the States to work as slaves and I don't remember if the American Government has ever apologized for that.

[Molly]

I'm not back yet but miss you all so much. Racism is about fear, fear of not having enough, fear of getting hurt, fear of what is different. Racism isn't the only diversion of the pathological liar, but in a racist culture, it is often the first best punch. It is all about conflict which is why it is an effective weapon. Anyone who does not hold racism in their viewpoint sees through the absurdity of it. Anyone who as outgrown an ethnocentric world view sees past the ruse, but that does not mean the race card is not played effectively in circumstance filled with fear.

The only souls that have responsibility are those who have not transcended karma. They are their own cops. (paradox)

overt racism is as prevalent as fear all over the world.

I hope Chris is back to stay.

I hope Francis will be inspired and also return.

Black people don't have lower IQs.  Children born into poverty have lower IQs

[RP Singh]

Molly , who is racist in the States , the colored people living in fear in ghettos? Are those who are being abused racists or those who are abusing? Who were the racists in South Africa , the hordes of blacks living in fear of handful of whites , fighting for equal rights ,equal opportunities , recognition and respect? No Molly you have got it wrong , it is arrogance that is behind racism , the arrogance that we have superior color , superior intelligence , superior civilization and superiority of force!

[archytas]

Right on to all that Molly.

[archytas]

Superiority is a big part as RP says.  Religions of 'chosen people' don't help.  Primitive societies are very violent and easy to exploit.  'Whitey' is just top of the ple now - in longer history this hasn't been true.  India still has the caste system, and in fairly recent history was dominated by 'Islam' - the 'racial' tensions of this still exist. 

[allan...@gmail.com]

Agreed Molly. Your paradox is great.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

From: archytas <nwt...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com

[RP Singh]

We are evolving and becoming better and kinder people. I hope that in recent times to come extremism and intolerance become things of the past. Humanity must rise above sectarian and parochial issues.

[archytas]

Not sure about the first part, but right on on the aspirations RP.  I suspect we need to realise something nasty in the biology of leadership we need to understand and bring under better control.

[archytas]

What gets to me is we know racism is wrong, but do little to get rid of it.    Don said something about upbringing on g+ - and it struck me as interesting, perhaps in reverse reasoning, that we have little control over it as individuals and that parents or care can be seriously disabling.  We could have a wider and more open form of community care and education.

[Molly]

a person feels they are superior because they fear they are not. Psychology 101

[allan...@gmail.com]

Very true.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

From: Molly <moll...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com

[Molly]

Yesterday in the ballroom we were honored to witness the local Pulitzer Prize winning local news editor (for his coverage on the Detroit bankruptcy) interview the former Detroit Emergency Manager Kevin Orr who guided the city out of bankruptcy, before he leaves town to become the new EM of Jersey Shores, NJ. It was quite a conversation and kept bumping into the topic of racism (well, it is Detroit). It is well known that before the bankruptcy and imprisonment of the former Mayor, the prevailing attitude of the Detroit City Council was to exclude white owned companies from doing business in the city. Because the city is still 70% African American (with a rapidly changing demographic) and saddled with a painful past in race relations, I suspect this will be an ongoing conversation for generations. But I was happy to see former Mayor Dave Bing get much of the credit for laying the foundation for an exit from bankruptcy as he is the man that restored integrity to the office of mayor and brought a world-centric business platform to the city stage. That is what it took. It was not about who is smarter or darker or lighter. It is about putting the right people in the jobs to get it done and lift everyone out of bankruptcy and poverty with solid business practice. I hear the race card played loudly all of the time by bullies and muckrakers. But those people also act out of fear, the basis of hate and all of the other attitudes of separation that lead to racism. Leaders (or cops) that learn to look beyond all that and let it roll off can get the job done (although they might age more rapidly in the process.) Leaders that can unify.

[allan...@gmail.com]

Slavery is an African thing originally they took slaves from europe..  and the amount African slaves transported are minor to the Irish slaves the English sold..

[Chris Jenkins]

None of us are really here to stay, given the transient nature of life, but I've missed the chance to explore big topics with big brains. G+ gives me more of that than any other social network, but this list has spawned some of the most enlightening conversations I've ever been a part of. 

And yes, class has far more to do with your chances in life than skin color or gender. I'd rather be Oprah Winfrey than a West Virginia coal miner (nearly invariably white and poor). 

[archytas]

There are more people living as slaves now than the sum through the rest of history, though the per capita basis is lower.  Skin colour has not been the basis of it. Humans have been harvested like any other land crop.  The brood parasite ants are slavers.  Believe it or not there is PC language in biology insisting we use terms other than slavers, as the poor little sweeties know not what they do. [note to Chris: these PC-types never seem to drink beer and seem to spend their time offering Rebecca Watson coffee in elevators]

Now, some make think ants aren't human (indeed, they are much more civilised), but slavery in human communities is very like theirs.  In our primitive societies, slavery is largely about stealing women and children.  The more civilised we get the more male labour is organised into slavery.  The term 'robot' has origins in Eastern European language, meaning 'slave worker'.

Molly puts up a fair description of a lot I found on my travels.  I am not as positive about the fixes as my friend.  Leadership is a fix that brings many of the problems it is supposed to fix.  Just as a clown fish may change sex and go through exponential growth when a leader dies (clearly a biological process), human leaders' brains change once they become leaders.  Our debates still lack awareness of the biological issues and the role of genes in lifetime processes, such as the changes in bees from forager to nurse and vice versa.  Such doesn't happen in some way as we take on different human roles?

Popper said it mattered less who leaders were and more what control we have over them.  Sadly, he didn't elaborate.  I think what we call racism is caught up in superiority as RP says, but as with Popper we need elaboration, perhaps in terms of leadership patronage systems.  There is a literature (Max Weber) that contrasts fascist economic organisation (current practice) with rational-legal democracy.  The latter is supposed to do away with stuff like racism, but assumes we humans are fairly easily rational (which denies our biology).

'White guilt' on racism isn't much use,   Pretty much every society has practised it and continues to do so.  White male domination is still chronic as we should see in the je suis charlie pictures of the worthies and how these were falsely put together as though marching at the head of the people.  I would be happy to see a proper mix of ethnicity and gender in our leadership - but also think this won't matter if we continue to elect into a privilege system with revolving doors into banks and bureaucracies like the IMF, UN and various regulatory and judicial bodies.  This and the money system seem crucial parts of the way racism is maintained.  US manipulation of finance, oil prices and supply and the vast military umbrella those of us in the West have lived under since WW2 - this is extremely racist and based on American exceptionalism.  Most 'Yanks' (a term weirdly based in cheese) take umbrage at this, much as most Brits still can't see the Empire in racist terms.  We were slavers and drug dealers, maintaining 50% profit margins on manufactures (down to 5% now).  Through history one can replace black victims with white, brown, yellow and the colour of the 'master race'.  Much of the problem is that we are all the same, with a biology of pack differentiation and competition.

There's an Adam Curtis video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-fP3RAep0 - that gets at some of the history we won't look at, though it's currently seen as too sensitive for television and is on BBC i-Player.  The underlying racism is pretty clear in this film and isn't simply white.