Politics: J'accuse!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I'm sure they did, but they were just being irrational because someone had challenged the orthodoxy they has been taught (through the UC system, I suspect).

The terms are self-evident.

rac·ism ( P ) n.

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race

racist

adj 1: based on racial intolerance; "racist remarks"

2: discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion. n : a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=racist

What if someone believes that the explanation for why blacks are represented in certain professional sports at higher percentages than their percentage in the population as a whole has to do with physical abilities that on average are found more often in blacks than in other races. Is this racism?

Like long distance runners. Why are the good ones usually black? Is this cultural or genetic?

Like this article, is its author a racist:

http://run-down.com/guests/je_black_athletes_p2.php

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Yes, well now we've reduced PC to irrational people who have been taught an orthodoxy. Glad we cleared that up.

That is exactly what I think of them (i.e., the PC crowd).

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop If you learned anything from that class, it's that substantive differences should not be reduced to unanswerable personal attacks on the other person's capacity to reason.

Key word is substantive. If people are being irrational, I have no problem attacking their ability to reason.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop Hardly. I think one difference is that some people think that the term necessarily connotes subjective ill will towards other races, while others use the term also to refer to unintended historical effects of racial differences.

One can do racist things without being a racist, and one can be a racist, while not doing racist things. It's all in the intent. In my particular case, in order to think I was a racist, one would have to be thinking irrationally, because the point I was making had nothing to do with race, but rather economics/business (and I made that clear by the way in class).

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
One can do racist things without being a racist, and one can be a racist, while not doing racist things. It's all in the intent. In my particular case, in order to think I was a racist, one would have to be thinking irrationally, because the point I was making had nothing to do with race, but rather economics/business (and I made that clear by the way in class).

"It is fine for a company to have a policy against hiring anyone black, particularly for positions where they interact with the public, because the customers won't like it and our business will be adversely impacted."

Discuss.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
"It is fine for a company to have a policy against hiring anyone black, particularly for positions where they interact with the public, because the customers won't like it and our business will be adversely impacted."

Discuss.

Race is an immutable characteristic; language is not. End of discussion.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
"It is fine for a company to have a policy against hiring anyone black, particularly for positions where they interact with the public, because the customers won't like it and our business will be adversely impacted."

Discuss.

It is absolutely not fine, but it is rational, if that is truly the basis.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
It is absolutely not fine, but it is rational, if that is truly the basis.

Is it racist?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Is it racist?

It is discriminatory.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Is it racist?

If that is truly the reason, no it is not.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Example:
Islam is fucked towards women because husbands beat their wives.

Potential response #1 You are a stupid fucking racist
Potential response #2 The Koran doesn't say a husband can beat his wife, plus to blame Islam ignores the very parallel behavior in Brazil, plus wives are beated up half to death in America every X seconds.

But you ignore Potential response #3: You are applying the misdeeds of some members of a religion to attack the entire religion of 2 billion.

Now, if you are someone whose level of education and sophistication would lead one to believe that the information contained in your Potential response #2 would be a surprise to you, then that response is warranted.

But if you are someone whose education and level of sophistication would lead one to believe that you know full well that lots of non-muslims beat their wives, and the Koran doesn't say that a husband can beat his wife, and the like, then why wouldn't someone be justified in assuming that the reason you made the global statement is because of bigotry?

If I meet a hermit who hasn't read a newspaper since the mid-1980s, and who says "I won't shake a faggot's hand because I might get AIDS," then I might take the time to explain to him that AIDS isn't transmitted through casual contact, that "faggot" has come to be seen as a very insulting and offensive term, and that assuming every gay person has AIDS is mistaken.

If, on the other hand, an educated and aware person says the same line to me, I would probably call him a homophobe or a bigot, and my gay friends would probably call him much worse. I don't think that is "PC," I don't think that is unfairly stifling his speech. I think it's a recognition that someone who continues to utter bigoted statements about entire classes of people that he must know are devoid of factual support is not someone who is really seeking the calm, factual response that your Potential response #2 illustrates.



And no, I'm not trying to restart an old argument either. I'm pointing out that sometimes, people make offensive statements about entire classes of people that are no more geared to starting an intelligent debate than are the statements you condemn as "PC".

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
That is exactly what I think of them (i.e., the PC crowd).

And this is exactly what bothers me about people who use the term PC as it's ordinarily used, by which I mean to distinguish what bilmore said earlier. It's being used to refer to substantive issues about race (and gender, etc.) about which people feel differently and strongly, and it sums up a lot of those differences and wishes them away (and in so doing, disrespects them) by suggesting that the people advocating them did so out of a desire to be "correct" rather than on their merits. It shows about as much respect for the advocates of those views as they did for you when they called you racist.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Not Me
Race is an immutable characteristic; language is not. End of discussion.

Oh and if the case is the one I am thinking about, the employees were bilingual and could speak both English and Spanish. What they were doing is speaking Spanish when English-only speaking co-workers were around. They were doing it when they wanted to say things to each other but didn't want the English-only speakers to understand. It was very divisive to the workplace.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Race is an immutable characteristic; language is not.

My high-school Spanish teacher kept saying this, too, but I proved her wrong.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
How so? I haven't seen [professors retaliate for non-PC ideas], although I imagine it would be hard to tell.

I've seen it. It can be pretty obvious. Details of the most colorful incidents are somewhat outable, since 100 people in my LS class witnessed the same incidents I did. But I will say that, when a professor tries to have a student expelled for sexual harassment because the student "demeaned" her in front of the class by asking her to explain factually incorrect statements used as the proof of an argument, it ain't hard to tell.

But I did get an A+ in the most relentlessly thoughtless, knee-jerk-PC professor's class I ever took by treating the exams and term paper as exercises in satire. With blind grading, anyone with a brain can usually avoid retaliation by lying like hell on the exam (caveat: above). It's not a useless exercise to learn; one should be able to understand arguments one disagrees with enough to make them before dismissing them. But it doesn't speak well for the openmindedness of academe.

I've of course seen conservative professors do exactly the same thing, though less frequently (which is certainly only because I've encountered conservative professors less frequently). And liberal profs I've known seemed to express much more dismay when hearing of other profs shutting down student inquiry that didn't comport to that other prof's political views - though I believe, in sincerity, that the conservative profs were themselves so used to being on the receiving end of disrespect and nasty allegations intended to shut them up that their attitude tended to be "university is about learning to defend yourself against the slings and arrows of closed-minded bigots; stop whining and get used to it" rather than "I am shocked - SHOCKED - that such a thing could happen here!"

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
And this is exactly what bothers me about people who use the term PC as it's ordinarily used, by which I mean to distinguish what bilmore said earlier. It's being used to refer to substantive issues about race (and gender, etc.) about which people feel differently and strongly, and it sums up a lot of those differences and wishes them away (and in so doing, disrespects them) by suggesting that the people advocating them did so out of a desire to be "correct" rather than on their merits. It shows about as much respect for the advocates of those views as they did for you when they called you racist.

I don't really understand what you mean here.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by bilmore
But he ignores the idea that an unexamined life for a liberal is to surround yourself with liberal thought.

I trusted that was implicit.