Racism

[amarna]

but the idea that genetic changes take place because of environmental factors

You didn't get anything, did you? Good heavens, there is no such an idea. These changes are NOT genetic. The sleight you didn't get is that genes remain the same but are switched on and off by environmental influence.

[Emil Miller]

And, of course, these statistics broadly support your argument, so you allow them (even faute de mieux) whereas those I cited contradicted your argument, so you dismissed them.

Allowing for the kind of hyperbole that government departments practice when showing how they have performed each year, I do accept that the Education Department's figures have a certain validity.
However, I will continue to dismiss figures regarding race, whether from the Office of National Statistics or any other govenment agency when figures for the numbers of various races that are shown to be currently living in the UK do not allow for the huge number of illegal immigrants who are already here and those queuing up at Calais and elsewhere in Europe to come here. Clearly, those are the kind of statistics that give ample credence to Disraeli's dictum.

You didn't get anything, did you? Good heavens, there is no such an idea. These changes are NOT genetic. The sleight you didn't get is that genes remain the same but are switched on and off by environmental influence.

Are you saying that there is not a change taking place when genes are either
being switched on or off ?

[The Atheist]

Just struck me this morning. Here we are politely [most of the time] talking about racism and the basis for race.

Seems all a bit pointless in the face of actual racism.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10589251

[Virgil]

Whoa, I've been away and this conversation has taken a turn. I want to make it clear that in no way am I saying that any ethnicity or race is genetically predisposed to be better or worse than any other. I am not supporting anyone making that claim, nor do I endorse it, nor do I want to be associated with it. I do not believe it.

But I do want to respond to Darkshadow.

It's not obvious at all what my viewpoints are from the post, actually. If you read the quote in context that you’re responding to, I was merely pointing out the contradictions of YOUR assertions. I said nothing about my views concerning the relationship between poverty and race.

Yes you did. Yes you absolutely made that equation. Here’s your post from post #80:

So the last 40 years have been nothing but prosperity and moving on up for blacks, but at the same time they are plagued by poverty, unmarried mothers, valuing the wrong aspects of culture, low graduation rates, etc.? You try to square these contradiction away by pinning this on a sub-group within the larger community that makes up the black population of America…

That is exactly your equation: blacks are poor because of racism. There is no other way to interpret your language.

You’re the one that implied in the last forty years racism hasn’t prevented African Americans from prospering back in post # 49:
“Their claim that racism has held them back, while once true, just doesn't square with the facts of the last forty years.”

I am saying it. Racism has not prevented them from rising out of poverty. It is their list of social dysfunctionalities that has prevented them from getting out of poverty. What do you think I’ve been saying?

While simultaneously arguing that they are plagued by issues of poverty and education, despite all this so-called evidence that nothing is holding them back:

“I believe the race consciousness will end when African-Americans break out of the problems that have plagued them and do not have the high crime rates, go on to high college graduation rates, and are prosperous.”

What in God’s name have I been saying? I’ve been saying that their poverty is a result of high crimes rates, school drop rates, unwed motherhood, and a host of dysfunctional behavior. Race consciousness is not the cause of their poverty but race consciousness perpetuates a mentality that the problem is racism when in reality it is their dysfunctional behavior.

In other words, I never said anything about my own viewpoint. I simply noted that there is something contradictory in implying that the last forty years have shown racism hasn't held African Americans back, but then also claiming huge issues of poverty plague African American communities.

Of course you have. I’ve already pointed it out and it’s all over. But feel free to re-evaluate your position.

It’s your responsibility to provide actual references/statistics with citations. Burden of proof is on you.

Well, I don’t have access to them. If you live in New York City, and you go to school and work with both groups, you would notice the difference. I got my engineering degree at the City College of the City University system in NYC. That school is right in the middle of Harlem, the very center of black culture in the US. Here was a college for engineering right in the center of Harlem and do you think I had any African Americans in my classes? There was remarkably none. The only blacks in mechanical engineering were from the Caribbean. Period. I can’t vouch for the other departments but it was astonishing and noticeable.

I did show you. I provided two links highlighting examples of institutional racism (one in a country club, the other in the publishing industry) that also serve as evidence supporting the existence of institutional racism. Ironically and unsurprisingly you failed to place them in your quoted material from my post, which makes me think you're being a tad disingenuous.

The country club example is hardly an example of institutionalized racism. If that story is correct (and frankly I’m skeptical) and that club was open to the public, then those people that were turned away have legal recourse. That’s why it’s not institutionalized racism, because the institutions provide legal ramifications.

As to the publishing industry example, big deal. You expect me to believe that the publishing industry is inherently racist? People in the publishing industry are as liberal as they come. Obviously they made a marketing decision to try to appeal to the broadest possible market. Sure the world is not perfect.

I can point out all the Equal Opportunity laws, the EEO's in every company that ensures blacks get equal consideration for promotions and hiring, all the law suits that have gone on in the past forty years to ensure this is enforced, the afirmative action that goes on in hiring and college entrences. Today we have a black president, the biggest media star is Opra (and media is a genre that requires visual idnetification), the biggest musical star is Michael Jackson, and there are black CEO at a number of companies. That's on my side of the ledger, what's on yours?

Well, for starters the incidents that I linked to that you disingenuously failed to quote are on my "side."

If that’s what you got, that’s hardly much. One is clearly not an example of institutionalized racism, and the other pretty singular and specific to certain micro-demographic concerns. I can turn around and say why are 90% of the basketball players in the NBA black? Isn’t that racism?

Secondly, you’re naming a few select individuals, which at best proves only that a few select individuals have managed to transcend the limitations of racism. Not to mention all these individuals have claimed to experience racism at one point or another in their life (rightly or wrongly), and would agree that institutional racism exists (such as racial profiling), despite their own success (see Obama's comments in the Gates case).

Not at all. Those people I mentioned are examples where white people either have to vote for them, watch and identify with them, or purchase their music. Those examples show that white people are not racist. How many racists do you actually know?

However, I don’t see race and poverty as necessarily the same thing; ironically, contradicting your strawman claim that I held such a view. The African American Middle-class experiences institutional racism, which has nothing to do with poverty. Likewise, just because institutional racism exists doesn't mean blacks and other racial groups aren't at all responsible for some of their own issues.

That’s not what you said before. But I’m glad you agree now.

Oh sure, there are laws addressing these problems. Sometimes they work when they are enforced. Sometimes they don’t; when they are not enforced. And it is always difficult to enforce laws legislating racism, hate-crimes, discrimination, etc. because it's difficult to fully get into a person's head and truly know what caused them to perform a specific action. They were instituted because we have a race-problem, which is inherent in the fact that such laws are needed in the first place. This tells us nothing about whether these laws have successfully ramified racial discrimination one way or the other; it tells us only that attempts have been made to fix the problem.

Between me and you, I bet I’m the only one that has interviewed people to be hired, hired people including a black person, and had promoted people including a black person. I bet you don’t have a clue as to what the EEO and affirmative action rules are and how they are enforced and appraised. Managers actually get points on their records for having diversity. My division is about 150 people and in the entire division there are three black engineers and one black secretary. That’s it. We would love to hire more black engineers. There aren’t that many with engineering degrees. And out of the three, one is Caribbean and the one I hired and promoted is half Caribbean. In our division we have an incredible diversity. So many immigrants become engineers. We have Muslims, Egyptians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians, Pakistani, Greeks, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and other Hispanics, as well as the more traditional ethnic groups. We would love hire black Americans. The problem is they don’t qualify. If we were racist why do we hire all those other people, and foreign born at that?

However, fixing one problem doesn’t fix all the problems. If a person were to announce, “It is wrong to stereotype Jews as cheap money-horders, but I understand why some people can’t stand looking at them since most of them are really ugly.” It is perfectly possible and reasonable to denounce one stereotype, while reifying another. Secondly, the example is more personal racism than institutional. You acknowledge that personal racism exists, so why is it so hard to believe that some institutional racism still lingers in our society? Basically, personal racism and institutional racism feed each other.

I’m not stereotyping anyone. I judge people for who they are. I didn’t stereotype the person I hired and promoted. I promoted him not because he was black, which is what he gets with all this affirmative action, but because he is a damn fine engineer. I’ve even asked him if he has any friends that would want to work with us.

Indeed, poverty is an issue. But racism doesn’t begin and end with issues of poverty. There are plenty of middle-class African Americans who have experienced racism; hell, there are plenty of conservative African Americans who admit to experiencing racism. One example of institutional racism that Africans Americans of the middle-class experience is the phenomenon of “shopping while black.” They did a whole TV show depicting this situation to see how shoppers around such an incident would react (http://www.bvblackspin.com/2009/03/2...true-feelings/ ). Many middle-class African Americans can attest to experiencing this phenomenon.

They experience prejudice, not racism. Shopping while black is a prejudgment given the high rate of crime from African American. That doesn’t happen to Asians or Indians. That doesn’t happen to Orthodox Jews with yarmulke and attire. That happens because people have made a calculation, a human assessment. It’s not based on a thought process which says, “I want to hold blacks down.” It’s based on a human association of the dysfunctional behavior coming from a substantial segment of the black community. When blacks end this dysfunctional set of behavior then these prejudgements will go away.

Your comments about business ignore the problem. People’s ideas of what are “beneficial” shifts with context and personal biases. As in the case of the publishing industry that I linked to in the previous post, which you ignored, they whitewash characters on covers to appeal to what they believe to be a white purchasing public. They are clearly doing it because they believe it will sell more books, that it will be more beneficial for them. It doesn’t make it any less racist.

Would it have happened to an Asian writer? Or an Indian writer? Clearly when one lives in a country with a huge differential in demographics, marketing is going to get slanted. If anything it might have helped that black writer sell more. But frankly I think it was just stupid on the part of the publishers. But I find it hard to believe that those publishers are thinking let’s keep blacks as second class by doing this.

It isn’t hard to imagine private companies in the deep south not hiring a black person because they don’t believe it would be beneficial to do so. If you have a lot of “personally racist” customers you don’t want to scare business away after all and offend them. Generally any job applicant pool has multiple people that are qualified. It isn't hard to hire a white dude who is equally qualified.

Well, that’s just pure speculation. Here click through here and look through several of the links: http://www.blackentrepreneurprofile.com/. You’ll find how many blacks are making it through the executive levels.

Your faith in people's desire for profit over their aptitude for prejudice and bigotry is naive, and I say that as someone who mostly supports Capitalism, and thinks that, yes, people are often greedy. If people necessarily cared more about profit than arbitrary differences, there wouldn't be a need for most of the wars fought (with the exception of Imperialistic ones that create additional revenue). What profit will be had from war? The fact is even if we removed "institutional racism" from the equation and talked merely about personal racism, which you accept still exists in your previous post, people make dumb personal decisions all the time because of their prejudices that affect their convenience and wallets. There are plenty of people who refuse to shop at certain stores because, "The Jews own it," or "Only Blacks shop there." There are plenty of people who would sacrifice potential business partners or money-opportunities because of personal prejudices.

As to the capitalism part, that’s way off topic (and no I don’t agree; hardly any wars are fought because of capitalism). Yes, there is still personal racism, but it’s really small. I live in NY and we have every ethnicity here. I know of no one who says I will not shop there because a Jew owns it. I’m sure it happens, but people will buy mostly what is of best value, what is in their interest, not to spite someone.

I don’t know why you keep quoting that at everyone; it supports my arguments more than it does yours. As an upper middle-class Jew whose father has made it in America and who will probably make it in America himself once the economy gets better, I can say with certainty that anti-Semitism still exists and is a problem, completely in agreement with the Sowell quote. Anti-Semitism still exists, but so does racism. And many blacks who have made it in America, the middle-class, still face racism. Institutional racism. They didn't wait for racism to end just as Jews didn't wait for anti-Semitism to end. The irony is I'm not talking about impoverished blacks at all, and that you seem to think that I am.

Look, let’s get African Americans away from the dysfunctionalities. Whether you’re right or not I hope we can agree that those dysfunctionalities are more pernicious to their well being in this time in history than whatever racism may exist. It is my contention that relying on racism as a crutch creates a self defeating rationale before they even attempt it. No I disagree, there are slights, but there is no institutionalized racism either for blacks or Jews.

[Nightshade]

OK while I have been reading I have been wondering about the connections of Self fulfilling Prophecy, the so called social dysfunctionalities, racism and prejudice.
What is the difference between Prejudice and racism.
I think if this discussion is to go any further working definitions are needed.

[Jozanny]

Racism is about inferiority Nightshade, like the cop who emailed the phrase *jungle monkey* in relation to the Gates arrest, and the mayor booted him off the force, because phrases like that dehumanize.

Prejudice may involve racism, but it also involves preconceived notions, like inner city black kids are dangerous. Inner city black kids may be dangerous, but they also may just be kids being kids according to the norms they know.

[Nightshade]

SO all rascism is based on prejudice but not all prejudice is rascism?

[MarkBastable]

SO all rascism is based on prejudice but not all prejudice is rascism?

Exactly. To make judgements about someone on the basis of their race, is prejudicial and racist.

To make judgements about someone on the basis of their gender, is prejudicial but not racist.

[ImaginaryFriend]

Hi again Brian. I have a little knowledge (dangerous i know ) of biology and genetics. The thing with identical twin girls as you may have noticed is that they rarely look as similar as identical twin boys do. This is down to having the double X chromasome.

While both girls will have the same genes for everything, they will express themselves (activate) at different times. For example, one girl may go through their childhood growth spurt before he other does. And even when they both have gone through it one of them still might be shorter as the gene was active for a shorter period of time. The timing of the genes expressing themselves can be affected by any number of environmental factors, even if the twins grow up together.

It seems odd i know but the research is there and you have to admit it does explain the differences. Hope that helped

I think it reinforces the fact that we are all a little bit of nature AND nurture. For example, within my family at least, when people have had the same upbringing they have all turned out with different behaviors and temperments (some very scary ) and so it would be difficult to apply one temperment to one family never mind one race.

Anyhoo, hope i made any sense and dont sound like a blethering idiot

[Emil Miller]

Hi again Brian. I have a little knowledge (dangerous i know ) of biology and genetics. The thing with identical twin girls as you may have noticed is that they rarely look as similar as identical twin boys do. This is down to having the double X chromasome.

While both girls will have the same genes for everything, they will express themselves (activate) at different times. For example, one girl may go through their childhood growth spurt before he other does. And even when they both have gone through it one of them still might be shorter as the gene was active for a shorter period of time. The timing of the genes expressing themselves can be affected by any number of environmental factors, even if the twins grow up together.

It seems odd i know but the research is there and you have to admit it does explain the differences. Hope that helped

I think it reinforces the fact that we are all a little bit of nature AND nurture. For example, within my family at least, when people have had the same upbringing they have all turned out with different behaviors and temperments (some very scary ) and so it would be difficult to apply one temperment to one family never mind one race.

Anyhoo, hope i made any sense and dont sound like a blethering idiot

No, I think you have explained it well enough. The abstract given by Amarna draws similar conclusions, albeit not in layman's terms. There are, however, other considerations to be made when discussing racial differences. We do not know the complete connection between genetics and human psychology but psychology must be taken into the equation when considering factors that condition human activity.
The word Epigenetic, as in the above-mentioned abstract, is applied in non biological studies also. I have given below an extract showing another of its uses and have used bold type to illustrate another possible cause of racial behaviour.

Epigenesis

Epigenesis is the philosophical/theological/esoteric idea that since the mind was given to the human being, it is the original creative impulse, epigenesis, which has been the cause of all of mankind's development.

According to spiritual evolution, humans build upon that which has already been created, but add new elements because of the activity of the spirit. Humans have the capacity, therefore, to become creative intelligences—creators. For a human to fulfill this promise, his training should allow for the exercise of originality, which distinguishes creation from imitation. When epigenesis becomes inactive, in the individual or even in a race, evolution ceases and degeneration commences.

[kilted exile]

Whilst it is true that that whites and other races generally do better than blacks scholastically, I have never heard it suggested that racism is the cause; the usual reason given is that they are financially disadvantaged.
I think that's wrong and that the actual reason, apart from a few obvious exceptions, is that they are temperamentally unsuited to intellectual pursuits.
I would absolutely hate to be a teacher in an inner City school where the majority of the pupils were black but, as you know, that is the unfortunate situation that some teachers find themselves in.
Coming on to your second point, I also haven't heard it claimed that racism causes unmarried mothers and since there are increasing numbers of white unmarried mothers, obviously racism cannot be to blame.
I completely agree with you that it is down to the indivduals concerned and their communities and that they would rather act that way rather than take responsibility for their actions but the reason they do this is because there are people who keep making excuses for them.

I went to a very inner-city school (including riots, stabbings and the occassional 15yo girl arrested for murder). There was zero difference between pass and fail along racial grounds. The financial disadvantage as it manifests itself in other socio-economic areas did make the difference to success and failure however. I had just as many (if not more) white classmates fail than non-white. I find the idea that there is any racial linkage positively absurd.

[Emil Miller]

I went to a very inner-city school (including riots, stabbings and the occassional 15yo girl arrested for murder). There was zero difference between pass and fail along racial grounds. The financial disadvantage as it manifests itself in other socio-economic areas did make the difference to success and failure however. I had just as many (if not more) white classmates fail than non-white. I find the idea that there is any racial linkage positively absurd.

Yes, but your experience is not borne out by the overall scenario as presented by the Education Department for the whole of the UK.
I can only repeat that, in the abscence of any conclusive reason for the disparity, we must all draw our own conclusions.

[kilted exile]

Yes, but your experience is not borne out by the overall scenario as presented by the Education Department for the whole of the UK.
I can only repeat that, in the abscence of any conclusive reason for the disparity, we must all draw our own conclusions.

So the situation in Glasgow (which if not still, at least within the last 5yrs contained 5 of the 10 most socially deprived areas in the entire UK) is completely different from the rest of the UK?

Another issue with the stats is that they do not do a breakdown by percentage of races living in disadvantaged areas. Of course more non-whites fail in areas of socio-economic deprivation because there are more visible minorities in those areas.

[AmericanEagle]

No, I mean toward other rich people, like would a rich American think himself better than a slightly richer Hong Konger? does that sort of division exist, or is there a sort of mutual respect attached to everyone with money by the rich?

I have a feeling, for instance, a lot of poor people justify their lack of success in racist banter, but how would that form itself in someone who essentially has nothing to gain by being racist, and nothing truly to complain about, relative to his own status in the world? .

I guess you're asking whether class trumps race? I don't think it does because society and institutions are organized in ways that privilege whites. For example, when an Asian or Latino individual is promoted to a prestigious post, there is always widespread surprise. It is generally not expected that racialized individuals would excel in certain fields. This reinforces the notion that minorities are 'below' whites. Even if whites and minorities share the same socioeconomic class, the white person may still feel superior because the Hong Konger (in your example) is considered to be an anomaly, whereas he himself is considered to be the norm.

[Emil Miller]

So the situation in Glasgow (which if not still, at least within the last 5yrs contained 5 of the 10 most socially deprived areas in the entire UK) is completely different from the rest of the UK?

Another issue with the stats is that they do not do a breakdown by percentage of races living in disadvantaged areas. Of course more non-whites fail in areas of socio-economic deprivation because there are more visible minorities in those areas.

If.as you suggest, Glasgow contained 5 of the 10 most socially deprived areas in the entire UK, it obviously is different to the rest of the country.
Even allowing for such atypical circumstances and statistical discrepancies, the result, as far as it can be determined, remains the same.