( Warning : About racism ) Please tell me this is some terrible hoax.

[stuh505]

Ah, Stuh. You gotta love someone who can rationalise racism. It's just like Christians who say "I don't hate homosexuals. I just hate homosexualisty".

Affirmative action is racist

[DGMacphee]

You're still rationalising racism. It's not healthy.

By your logic, this is racism and affirmative action tied in a bow:

"Hello! I'm belive in cultural diversity and equal opportunity, but I judge you on your race, because racism and affirmative action are the same thing! Yes, you're equal to me despite your race, but I'm still going to judge you on your race!"

See, my Bullshit Detector (TM) is going off the wall here. I find it very hard to believe you'd think someone is equal to you (whatever race they may be) and then judge them on their race. It's a contradiction. Either that, or you're just hiding your hate for a particular race.

Look at it in the context of two people of the same race. It's like me saying, "I won't speak to Andail, because he's different to me. Granted, he is equal to me, but I still won't talk to him."

Sorry, Andail! I'll always talk to you, dude!

[Fuzzpilz]

I make judgements on people based on their race.

What kind of judgments, exactly?

Let me knock down a strawman or two.

4. Don't want non-European immigration.  This is racist.  But it's not "hate", and not very extreme...

Oh, yes it is. Refusing to let people immigrate based on to what race you consider them to belong is saying "people of this race are inferior, they're unfit to live in my country". It also massively alienates other people of this category already living there - after all, if you don't want to let them in, nobody can guarantee that you wouldn't try throwing them out as well.

And imagine if you were to try to enforce racial segregation. Let's assume for the moment that you'd be trying to do this without the appearance of hate or considering members of one race inherently less valuable (in toto) than those of another; and for the sake of simplicity I'll pretend sharply separating people into races is possible, and that there are only two of these. How could you do that?

Take any arbitrarily chosen "good part of town" where people would want to live. Most likely, there will be both white and black (the terms "Caucasian" and "African American", quite apart from the inapplicability of the latter outside the US, seem rather silly to me - not only can I think of no good reason why they should be considered any less offensive, but they also take longer to type/write/say and add a ridiculous geographic component) families living there (ignoring the possibility of mixed-race marriages). If you want to separate the races, one of them will have to move.

But which group will you evict? Either way, many of them will have lived there for quite a while, and will be attached to their homes. Do you decide by majority? That would be hardly fair: after all, it's a fact that there are more white people in the US than black. You'd end up throwing a huge lot of black people out of the pleasant spaces - they mostly wouldn't be able to move to another because you would not have enough good "black sectors".

Since you don't hate and therefore can't possibly think the ever so noble goal of racial purity would justify the amount of suffering caused by deporting vast numbers of people to poor and/or otherwise unpleasant places, you wouldn't want that. But similar problems would arise with any way of choosing. Eventually you'd end up having to look at a big list of communities and try to figure out which ones to give to which race, and then making nearly everybody move.

In other words, it would be stupid. All that effort and all the cost of moving so many people and their possessions around for a cause with absolutely no rational justification behind it; if there's anything approaching one, this clearly outweighs it.

Now, about affirmative action - I don't pretend I know a lot about exactly who does what in that respect, but generally I think treating people better because of their race is wrong.
However, and this is a big however, if a group is regularly treated unfairly, e.g. passed over because of prejudices towards their race, harming their changes of finding a job, getting research grants, and so on, then that certainly justifies helping them in some way. Affirmative action is one of the possibilities, as are anti-discrimination laws. I'm by no means claiming that what of this sort there is in the world is perfect, nor in many of the cases even very good at all, but I certainly don't agree with people complaining about such measures as long as they're still necessary.

[Las Naranjas]

I reckon the Native Americans have a bit of a right to whinge about immigration...

[SSH]

It's more subtle racism that I fear the most... things like the UK Independence Party, AKA Don't let the Krauts and Froggies (French) run England. And this anti-European agenda is prevalent throughout the UK Mass Media and is infecting other European countries too.

But althoguh stuh505 has spouted a lot of rubbish, affirmative action is racist. IN the UK there is the "Equal Opportunites Commision" apparantly they recieve more complaints from men than from women about sexism "This isn't why we were set up" one representative bemoaned. OF COURSE IT IS, F00, you can't promote equality for some and not for others...! On the otehr hand, NOT doing affirmative action might also be racist simply by promoting the racist status quo. Finding the perfect middle ground is impossible, but we shoudl try and get as close as we can.

The Labour party forced a percanetage of its election candidates to be female for a while,, but I think they had to drop it.. it is unfair on some excellent men candidates who missed out, but then it has increased the female percentage of MPs to something like 10%.

[Moox]

Sorry SSH, but who are the froggies? Im american 

A KKK leader once said they are not against others as much as they are pro white. Veiws like that are hiding racism. Its allways been around us, its not changing. There are 3 reasons I feel there is racism.
- You grew up in a family that was
- Another ethnic group offended ou
- You need a scapegoat

We cant eliminate any of those reasons at this time, but we can change the kids who grow up as racists. More diversity and history in schools. This has been looked over many times in the past because racists rule the government in some cases. A simple thing like renaming black history month to diversity month would go a long way. People just dont want it to. We can debate all we want but nothing changes, people should relize this. Action speaks louder then words, reforms in the government regarding to equality and the current wellfare system should be instigated.

[InCreator]

That means Hitler's most important decission in the war killed 120 more times than Truman's. I simply don't know if you're not good in maths or history.

I don't think that dead human beings can be just counted with numbers. Wheter you kill one or thousands, you're still a murderer. But if you like math, read again. WWII lasted for about five years. Atomic bomb explodes and kills really damn fast plus - there was two of them. And doesn't leave much to bury - just shadows.

[Helm]

I'm not a race hater, but I am a racist, and I'm not afraid to deny it.

Come on then, deny it! I dare you!

[Scummbuddy]

Helm, welcome back...
but are you okay? digging up old threads, for shameeeee

bring back GAC....

[Matchew]

Racist sites and organisations? christ, try the British education system, seperating black and white kids to different classes? talk about breeding bigotry!

[Meowster]

Out of interest... which class does perform better?

[Las Naranjas]

I had a friend who spent a year in the UK when he was 8 or so.

Every other kid in his class was West Indian or Bengali, and he was a pale red head. It's more amusing than anything else though, and he enjoyed it.

[Andail]

Yeah, Helm, dig up GAC instead of these old threads!!

Alhtough it was good quote you found there.

[TerranRich]

Now, color me stupid, but isn't gay marriage legal in Massachusetts? (Sorry, just commenting on a very early post in this thread.)