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    United States Avalon Member Strat's Avatar
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    Default Re: Racism

    Hopefully I didn't miss this, but what are your thoughts on reparations?

    I don't have a hard lined opinion but as I read more US history I tend to be pro reparations. I dunno what that would entail, but I feel it'd be great for the country overall. I don't think 40 acres and a mule is a good idea, not sure how much help that would be. I think monetary reparations is a huge figure, close to the entire countries GDP. So what do you think?
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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    Hopefully I didn't miss this, but what are your thoughts on reparations?
    Here is a good discussion by current presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson.


    To me, there seem to be no doubt that the creation of what is called "whiteness" back in the 1600s, done to bind the European colonists into one cohesive political and social body, has been extraordinarily successful. So much so, that its formulation has spread throughout the world and even to countries where the European presence is negligible. In these nations, you find color consciousness and class stratification based upon skin color as well. But it is here, in the United States of America, the genesis of the modern understanding of "racism", that it finds its highest and purest expression.

    My personal thoughts about Reparations are conflicted.

    On the one hand, I agree with Marianne and Farrakhan and many others that Reparations were promised to my ancestors after the Civil War, by the government, for economic compensation for unpaid labor and that promise must be honored fully. I agree with Marianne that there is a psychic cost to European-descended folk surrounding the continuing refusal to pay reparations. The heavy, undeniable toll of generation after generation, refusing to acknowledge the full personhood of an entire ethnic family of humanity does something to those who practice that kind of mentality and social classification. It does something to those who impose that social system as well as those upon whom the system is imposed. Epigenetics might come into play, here, and some of the intergenerational psychological stressors and conditions we currently see in effect in certain populations here in the USA and other places, might be the result.

    On the other hand, I think actually making a plan and paying reparations to the Descendants of Slaves (DOS), will drive a segment of our population absolutely crazy. Bat-shiza insane. To the point of extreme violence, psychopathically expressive.

    I keep hoping we won't have to go there, here. That we can get beyond the race issue without having that fateful blowout that will tear this nation apart.

    I don't know if we can.
    Last edited by Mark; 23rd May 2019 at 19:00.

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    United States Avalon Member Valerie Villars's Avatar
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    Default Re: Racism

    I've thought about this subject. My initial thoughts question how this can be practically carried out.

    Who gets the money? Every single descendant of every single slave? In some cases you are talking about 12 generations of people from one slave. How much? Does it end with the last descendant that gets money or does it go on in perpetuity?

    I'm just not sure where it would end.
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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    Who gets the money? Every single descendant of every single slave? In some cases you are talking about 12 generations of people from one slave. How much? Does it end with the last descendant that gets money or does it go on in perpetuity?
    These things would have to be worked out carefully. I highly recommend you watch the video with Marianne that I left above. Here is another, shorter one where she gives a concise rendition of her stance:



    I'm a 5th and 6th Generation Texan, on both sides of my family, which is a big deal, down here in Texas.

    But it means that my ancestors were enslaved in this state before it became a part of the union. I have a direct line of oral memory, stories told that have been passed down through the generations about those times and even unto Africa herself. On my mother's side, there is the story of Great-Grandmother Elvira, who was stolen with her sister. They saw a red flag waving down by a river and went to go see what it was, and they were taken. This story only goes back about 7 generations, which means this happened in the early 1800s, when importing stolen Africans was patently illegal but still happened, down off the Gulf coast in places like Galveston and the South Carolina sea isles.

    Her descendants came out of Louisiana into Texas and worked hard and long. My extended family is the result and we are strong and proud of who we are and where, as well as what, we came from. My mother (RIP) did a genetic test and found that her maternal side came out of Southern Africa, which is NOT the norm (most enslaved Africans came from West Africa) and speaks to the unusual nature of the theft of my Great Grandmother Elvira and the genetic bequeathment of my family on that side.

    However it happens, if and when it does, it will have to be equitable and serve the purpose of elevating those DOS who remain mired in abject poverty and ignorance by situation and circumstance.
    Last edited by Mark; 23rd May 2019 at 19:11.

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  9. Link to Post #205
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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    I've thought about this subject. My initial thoughts question how this can be practically carried out.

    Who gets the money? Every single descendant of every single slave? In some cases you are talking about 12 generations of people from one slave. How much? Does it end with the last descendant that gets money or does it go on in perpetuity?

    I'm just not sure where it would end.
    being at it, maybe the Cajuns should have reparation too from the British, since they were deported to Louisiana and thrown into the swamps to survive. And maybe French Canadian should have reparation for all the very cheap labor and finance they provided to the British/English Canadians for centuries (I will make my Western Canadians avalonian jump with this comment. You know what they would say: we already paid enough for Quebec.

    And here is the point. I do not think money directly given to any kind of descendent, here it would be also to the natives, will make any difference. It would just create entitlement.

    But yes, helping the descendent to cross the racial barriers, by giving more sustenance for achieving goals, this would be a step. In this category, the help given by other provinces to Quebec when Quebec was still dam poor did make a difference. It in parts allowed us to overcome centuries of exploitation.

    So giving to specific groups, in different forms, such as some positive discrimination for jobs, some financial help to the poorer of the slave descendent, some help to start businesses, etc. in order to offer, on the long run, equal opportunities to develop (which takes into account racial discrimination), this would help.

    Same for women by the way, who still over alife time make 30% less than their male counterpart. This has to be balanced somehow. It stems from discrimination on gender and specific gender oriented work.

    ------------------

    Rakhyt, your post on medieval studies and the colored medieval expert input or lack of is very interesting, instructive and well written, thank you.

    Unconsciously, I always considered the appellation "middle ages" as being white European. To me, else where did not have middle ages period lollllll. Asia did not have a Middle age, they developed following a different structure and pathways with corresponding dates to the middle age in Europe or not, same for India or Africa. This is how I was perceiving it, not having studied it at all.
    Last edited by Flash; 23rd May 2019 at 19:31.
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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Flash (here)
    being at it, maybe the Cajuns should have reparation too from the British, since they were deported to Louisiana and thrown into the swamps to survive. And maybe French Canadian should have reparation for all the very cheap labor and finance they provided to the British/English Canadians for centuries (I will make my Western Canadians avalonian jump with this comment. You know what they would say: we already paid enough for Quebec.
    Were these groups promised reparations by a governmental entity? What we are speaking about here, is very specific and has to do with the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and General Sherman back in 1865. Then President Abraham Lincoln approved it. Sherman's Field Order #15 is the document at issue. So we are not speaking of a claim made merely by enslaved humans after a devastating war. This discussion is a continuation of a promise, made by the American government.

    There is an entire story about what happened after this, how the Black Codes became Jim Crow etcetera, which we can have here. But the point I hope to make is that universalizing this issue by pointing to every other group that has experienced hardships does little to shed light on the issue and more to obscure it and minimize it even further.

    But, this is a real strategy by some. And has been quite effective, for quite some time. And probably will continue to be, moving forward, if the history of this country continues into its future.

    Quote Posted by Flash (here)
    I do not think money directly given to any kind of descendent, here it would be also to the natives, will make any difference. It would just create entitlement.
    That has not been the case for the descendants of Japanese people held in internment camps, nor the descendants of those Jewish folk also held in camps, paid by Germany over time. I expect this discussion to provide good tinder to those who hold that there were no internment camps and it was all a part of a conspiracy to redistribute wealth from the German state to the Zionists.
    Last edited by Mark; 23rd May 2019 at 19:47.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Good Rakhyt, I did not know about this part of the American history. The consideration might be different then, since it was agreed upon and never delivered.

    But I did about the internment camps.
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    Default Re: Racism

    Forgot to answer this part:

    Quote Posted by Flash (here)
    Rakhyt, your post on medieval studies and the colored medieval expert input or lack of is very interesting, instructive and well written, thank you.

    Unconsciously, I always considered the appellation "middle ages" as being white European. To me, else where did not have middle ages period lollllll. Asia did not have a Middle age, they developed following a different structure and pathways with corresponding dates to the middle age in Europe or not, same for India or Africa. This is how I was perceiving it, not having studied it at all.
    I liked it, found it interesting upon reading and thought it would be a way to delve back into this topic without being too inflammatory, on an issue which is of concern to all of us without being a flash point. How you viewed it is probably how most do, who have never studied those times. Movies are getting better at depicting them, although people still blink two or three times when they see brown-skinned people wearing armor or fancy European clothing of the times. Some European royalty was also brown-skinned, as has been made famously public with the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle and the admission that one of the royal ancestors, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenberg would be considered black under our current paradigmatic view of ethnic interrelation.


    Last edited by Mark; 23rd May 2019 at 19:50.

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    Default Re: Racism

    I'm gonna get back to you on reparations. I need to do a bit more homework on the figures. I think that gals figure was very low, but again I haven't researched it.

    Quote Posted by Rahkyt (here)
    President Abraham Lincoln
    Sorta big question I know, but what's your opinion on him, and this quote:
    "If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." - Lincoln

    It would be easy to say that he may be considered racist. Fredrick Douglass (probably in my top 3 fav US historical figures) though once said Lincoln was the only white man he ever met that didn't immediately remind him of his race (I really butchered that quote, but should be easy enough to look up).
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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    Sorta big question I know, but what's your opinion on him, and this quote:
    "If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." - Lincoln
    It just tells me that he was a President. A pragmatist, willing to do whatever it took to keep this nation going during his watch.

    I see all of the Presidents in that light, every single one of them. They have all been absolute products of their time and have represented the zeitgeist of this nation at the level of Avatar. They have almost all been initiates of the secret societies and shared certain genetics as well.

    I have a slightly different understanding of what the United States actually is, than most people and that is informed by my own studies. I don't like or dislike Lincoln's comments, it is a cold recognition of his situation and the necessity of continuing the American Experiment.

    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    It would be easy to say that he may be considered racist.
    Not directed at you, but, so what?

    An unfiltered and honest look at American history since the colony days of the mid-1600s reveals a metanarrational milieu within which every, single American is born into. Within this sociological construct we are all immersed in data, even back then, that informed our viewpoint of the world. Lincoln was then, just like we are, today and as every person to engage in this experiment has been since the nation's inception. Today, we might call his viewpoint racist. He was a white man in the ultimate position of power in a land where the descendants of enslaved Africans were chattel. Without being an apologist or accusing, it just was what it was. Ever read this quote, from the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate:

    Quote While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

    And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife.

    So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. … I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject,) that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, [laughter] but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, [roars of laughter] I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. [Continued laughter and applause.]”
    Imagine an American president saying this today in a debate.

    The thing is, there are enough people in the world who believe this today and plenty here in PA that do. The question of whether or not it is racist to just want to be with people who are like you is in the framing of that perspective. Is the belief that those whom one does not want to interact with are lesser in any way, shape or form, present?

    If it is, then elements of ethnic supremacy are being expressed. As Lincoln does in this quote.
    Last edited by Mark; 23rd May 2019 at 21:02.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Rahkyt (here)
    Quote Posted by Flash (here)
    being at it, maybe the Cajuns should have reparation too from the British, since they were deported to Louisiana and thrown into the swamps to survive. And maybe French Canadian should have reparation for all the very cheap labor and finance they provided to the British/English Canadians for centuries (I will make my Western Canadians avalonian jump with this comment. You know what they would say: we already paid enough for Quebec.
    Were these groups promised reparations by a governmental entity? What we are speaking about here, is very specific and has to do with the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and General Sherman back in 1865. Then President Abraham Lincoln approved it. Sherman's Field Order #15 is the document at issue. So we are not speaking of a claim made merely by enslaved humans after a devastating war. This discussion is a continuation of a promise, made by the American government.

    There is an entire story about what happened after this, how the Black Codes became Jim Crow etcetera, which we can have here. But the point I hope to make is that universalizing this issue by pointing to every other group that has experienced hardships does little to shed light on the issue and more to obscure it and minimize it even further.

    But, this is a real strategy by some. And has been quite effective, for quite some time. And probably will continue to be, moving forward, if the history of this country continues into its future.

    Quote Posted by Flash (here)
    I do not think money directly given to any kind of descendent, here it would be also to the natives, will make any difference. It would just create entitlement.
    That has not been the case for the descendants of Japanese people held in internment camps, nor the descendants of those Jewish folk also held in camps, paid by Germany over time. I expect this discussion to provide good tinder to those who hold that there were no internment camps and it was all a part of a conspiracy to redistribute wealth from the German state to the Zionists.
    My initial and gut level response is this. Since time immemorial government has made promises that were never kept. They are more in the business of breaking promises than keeping them.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote My initial and gut level response is this. Since time immemorial government has made promises that were never kept. They are more in the business of breaking promises than keeping them.
    I had to laugh rather wryly at this one. Of over 500 treaties between Native Americans and the US government, not one was honored to any extent.

    That brings up the question of whether or not Native Indians should receive any reparations.

    My great grandmother was removed from her Potawotami family in present-day Michigan and sent to a government school. The whole family was broken up and scattered to several states as was not unusual at that time. Do they deserve reparations?

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    Default Re: Racism

    I agree with Val. It all comes down to personal accountability. TEACHING personal accountability, and learning from our prior mistakes.. Learning from them rather than repeating them. We need to CELEBRATE our differences, learn from them, grow , diversify, not bash everyone into submission.. TO CONFORM..

    The world will change as we grow and evolve and change. Trying to protect a few places from that change well, it's impossible but we can limit the negative IMPACT we have on those places. But keep cultures thriving.. Sadly there will always be someone who thinks that something else is good, and the influence will have come from another culture. Those who can't handle the change will grow resentful.

    I have been the victim of actual racism. Much like Bill's friend as he suggests. I was born in the San Francisco, in the Bay Area, white hair, and bright blue eyes, certainly I must have been one of those that were white and privileged right? Absolutely NOT.. I WAS the "MINORITY" And I was abused accordingly. I have been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, and I was in a house once, visiting some of my mothers friends when someone threw a molitoff cocktail through the window of their house LIT, and we had to avoid the fire. Why? They were BLACK... Guilty of having pigment in their skin, nothing more..

    Did I blame a RACE for doing this? NOPE.. I blamed the ignorant HUMANS who felt that was ok to do to ANY other human being..

    Recently I went into a local store, and there was a young man working there. I had met him years before, and I chat with him each time I see him. He is the same age as my oldest son, and a very nice guy.. He comes from a Muslim background, and there was some major propaganda playing out on the news.. "Hate Muslims if you're American" essentially.. I walked into the store, found him, and we talked. A few minutes later I told him, We're "Breaking the rules you know". And he looked at me with a blank look of curiosity, and I told him.. "Apparently the tv wants me to believe that you and I can't gt along" HE LAUGHED..

    This planet belongs to EVERYONE, Every continent, Every island belongs to EVERYONE, and until people begin to take personal responsibility for themselves, their own feelings, actions, reactions, and beliefs, we are going to be facing issues such as these. If someone wants to tell me it happens because of cultures being harmed, then they're not protecting their way of life. They're not perpetuating their culture. You can share your way of life, and still share land. And I don't mean by killing others, chasing them off, but by SHARING the beauty in it.

    We live in a beautiful place, with such diversity, we're welcome to go and enjoy everything, one bite at a time, so long as we don't go taking our own expectations to every region we visit. We don't need walls, we need to educate people grow as a species, not as individual races.

    I can't express why people behave the way they do, but I can observe they're learning absolutely NOTHING from the past mistakes, and they're repeating them. And if we continue to do so, we are going to have ONE look on this planet. ONE way of life, and everyone will be expected to conform.

    Celebrate our differences.. Enjoy them, learn from them, grow from them. To me racism is worse than so many other things. But I don't want to understand it.. I want it to end. And if we're going to give it attention, perhaps the attention that we should give it, is how to get beyond it.. Just my 2 cents.
    Last edited by Denise/Dizi; 24th May 2019 at 03:15.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    My initial and gut level response is this. Since time immemorial government has made promises that were never kept. They are more in the business of breaking promises than keeping them.
    Governments have also kept a lot of promises as well. Which populations they keep promises to, is what is really at issue.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by latte (here)
    That brings up the question of whether or not Native Indians should receive any reparations.

    My great grandmother was removed from her Potawotami family in present-day Michigan and sent to a government school. The whole family was broken up and scattered to several states as was not unusual at that time. Do they deserve reparations?
    That is a bit more difficult to respond to. Canada has done this:

    CANADA AGREES TO REPARATIONS FOR ALL RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL STUDENTS

    On May 30, the Canadian government signed an agreement with the Assembly of First Nations pledging to pay a lump sum in compensation for former students of Indian residential schools.

    The Residential School Political Agreement marks an unprecedented policy shift for Canada. Previously, only former students who were victims of sexual or physical abuses were to receive monetary reparation. Indian activists complained that the earlier plan ignored the damage the schools caused through their suppression of Native languages and cultures.

    "This accord will not only result in a better, faster, and more economic claims process for residential schools survivors who were abused, it is a commitment for the entire country to move forward through a national dialogue on healing, reconciliation, commemoration, and truth-sharing," states National Chief Phil Fontaine in an Assembly of First Nations press release. "This is a holistic way to deal with this terrible, tragic legacy of our shared past."

    According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, throughout the history of the residential schools from the late 19th century to the 1980s, many Indian residential school children were victims of physical and sexual abuse. Similar atrocities occurred in the United States from the colonial missionary times to the 1970s.

    In 1998, Canada instituted Gathering Strength, a policy framework designed to address the legacy of residential school physical and sexual abuse. That same year, the Canadian government issued a Statement of Reconciliation to all victims outlining its regret over the treatment endured by aboriginal peoples. The apology states, "As a country we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of Aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices."

    As a result of Gathering Strength, the government allocated $350 million to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which provides funding for community-based wellness projects. In addition, the policy established procedures for government and church officials to jointly develop solutions for dealing with the schools’ aftermath and litigation strategies for promoting settlement and reconciliation out of court.

    The government also created the Alternative Dispute Resolution Project in order to move the dialogue among the victims, churches, and government out of the courts. But many victims complained and were discouraged by the project’s long administrative process for addressing reparations.

    Irwin Colter, minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, and Andy Scott, minister of Indian affairs, recently announced the appointment of Frank Iacobucci as the government’s representative to lead discussions between the surviving residential school victims and the Canadian government. Iacobucci will recommend the actual amount that should be paid out for reparation. He has until March 31, 2006, to propose his settlement package to the federal Cabinet.

    The Canadian government has suggested that reparations be based on recommendations outlined in a November report by the Assembly of First Nations. The report recommended that the lump sum payment be at least $10,000 per student, plus $3,000 for each year each student spent in school. The lump sum payment will be made to any student who attended an Indian residential school. The assembly said the lump sum payment should not affect other claims for serious abuses, and individuals who have already settled claims should still be eligible. The sick and elderly should receive their payments first, the assembly’s report says. Negotiations between the government and survivors will determine how the reparations will be dispersed.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Denise/Dizi (here)
    I have been the victim of actual racism. Much like Bill's friend as he suggests. I was born in the San Francisco, in the Bay Area, white hair, and bright blue eyes, certainly I must have been one of those that were white and privileged right? Absolutely NOT.. I WAS the "MINORITY" And I was abused accordingly. I have been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, and I was in a house once, visiting some of my mothers friends when someone threw a molitoff cocktail through the window of their house LIT, and we had to avoid the fire. Why? They were BLACK... Guilty of having pigment in their skin, nothing more..

    Did I blame a RACE for doing this? NOPE.. I blamed the ignorant HUMANS who felt that was ok to do to ANY other human being..
    I'm sorry you experienced that as a youth. I can imagine how it made you feel and commiserate with the position you were in, being a minority in a larger group. In that instance, I would agree with you that it is an expression of racism. Whenever another group holds actual, physical power over a person, or another group, that IS racism. It is not mere prejudice. It is prejudice plus power.

    For blacks and browns and others the power being held is in the hands of the white majority. Often, when whites tell me they have experienced racism they are talking about a time they may have been beat up by a black or brown person or verbally accosted. The vast majority of their lives have been lived experiencing white privilege in the context of the greater society, where that metanarrative is institutionalized.

    I think this is often an area of unnecessary rancor and ire, frankly. The concentration on the experience for individuals acts to mask greater patterns of interactions within society itself that affect groups. In your experience, I do not believe that is so. Thank you for sharing.

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Rahkyt (here)
    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    It would be easy to say that he may be considered racist.
    Not directed at you, but, so what?

    The thing is, there are enough people in the world who believe this today and plenty here in PA that do. The question of whether or not it is racist to just want to be with people who are like you is in the framing of that perspective. Is the belief that those whom one does not want to interact with are lesser in any way, shape or form, present?
    I want to address a couple things here but will have to get back to ya. I say that as someone offering thoughts, not proving points or even debating. I am a student of these matters I don't know enough to have a solid opinion.

    Another question:
    My family comes from different backgrounds, mother is from NJ/NY and father is from here in FL. Traditional understanding of US race relations would suggest the south is heavily racist and the north is not. However my mother says that in Jersey it was highly segregated and when she came to FL it was totally different. The only racism she saw came from someone dropping the n bomb but there wasn't blatant segregation like she saw up north. The segregation extended to all folks. There was (/is) a tier system.

    Thoughts?

    I appreciate this dialogue cause it's hard for me to do it in real life.
    Today is victory over yourself of yesterday. Tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.

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    Default Re: Racism

    This is such a huge and very important topic.

    In just reading 2 pages of posts I felt a strong line of thought that I feel I need to post. Of course it could be washed away and forgotten like a sand scratch drawing that is washed away by a wave on the beach....and if so that is ok.

    There have been so many reparation promises made by so many governments and that knowledge surfaced very quickly here in this conversation.

    But do you know what else was apparent? How many people would be on those lists for compensations due. We are all a part of many and that is because we learned to live and love together.

    I think that is what we should focus on - who we are. And yeah, people can and should be proud of their heritage, why not? But that should be viewed also as a celebration of how people began with a strong family heritage and shared it with another bringing us forward to where we can and will all go togther.

    I know. If dreams could come true, but it was said to me once "Dreams come true when the dreaming part stops."

    So I see our discussion here as being a part of the path to a better place.

    Reparation promises should be honoured, but the older they are the more difficult it becomes, obviously. Based on my roots, I could have claim to a small handful of settlements - but I think that is a very good point to show that living together in peace and harmony is very possible.

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    Default Re: Racism




    A new book explores how racist biases continue to maintain a foothold in research today

    Scientists, including those who study race, like to see themselves as objectively exploring the world, above the political fray. But such views of scientific neutrality are naive, as study findings, inevitably, are influenced by the biases of the people conducting the work.

    The American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois once wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” His words were borne out, in part, by science. It was the century when the scientifically backed enterprise of eugenics—improving the genetic quality of white, European races by removing people deemed inferior—gained massive popularity, with advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. It would take the Holocaust to show the world the logical endpoint of such horrific ideology, discrediting much race-based science and forcing eugenics’ most hardline adherents into the shadows.

    The post-war era saw scientists on the right-wing fringe find ways to cloak their racist views in more palatable language and concepts. And as Angela Saini convincingly argues in her new book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, published May 21 by Beacon Press, the “problem of the color line” still survives today in 21st-century science.

    In her thoroughly researched book, Saini, a London-based science journalist, provides clear explanations of racist concepts while diving into the history of race science, from archaeology and anthropology to biology and genetics. Her work involved poring through technical papers, reports and books, and interviewing numerous scientists across various fields, sometimes asking uncomfortable questions about their research.

    “Mainstream scientists, geneticists and medical researchers still invoke race and use these categories in their work, even though we have been told for 70 years that they have no biological meaning, that they have only social meaning,” Saini says.

    Scientific research has struggled with concepts of race for centuries, often proposing misleading or erroneous explanations of racial differences. Contentious debates among Europeans about the origins of modern humans began in the 19th century, and many of the continent’s leading scientists believed firmly that Europeans exemplified the most evolved and intelligent humans. Human fossils in Europe provided the first data points in the budding field of paleoanthropology, but the region was in reality just where European archaeologists happened to start looking. Fossils, as well as cave art, DNA samples and other evidence later uncovered around the world pointed to a more complex picture of human origins: Elements of modern humans emerged throughout Africa, and those people migrated east and then north and west in waves.

    Rather than distinct races, groupings or borders, the continually mixing populations produced only gradients, with some traits slightly more common in some regions than others. Lighter skin color in northern climates emerged late; some Britons were shocked to learn that Cheddar Man, the remains of a man who lived in southwest England almost 10,000 years ago, would today have been considered black.

    In the 1950s, geneticists began to confirm what some archaeologists had already surmised: “Individual variation within population groups, overlapping with other population groups, turned out to be so large that the boundaries of race made less and less sense,” Saini writes. The conclusion was that no “pure” races exist that are distinct from others. Despite this evidence, those eugenicists still practicing sought to prevent their supposedly superior race from being overrun by immigration, miscegenation and higher birth rates among other ethnicities.

    While few people study or advocate for eugenics today, some scientists in the rapidly advancing field of genetics held onto related ideologies after World War II. They simply used different terms, Saini points out, as some continued with race-focused research while referring to “populations” and “human variation” rather than “races” and “racial differences.” Geneticist James Watson, for instance, a co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix structure, has frequently been the subject of withering criticism for voicing racist beliefs, including that differences on tests of intelligence have a racial component, and arguing that Indians are servile and that Chinese people have somehow become genetically conformist.

    A handful of researchers with similar beliefs, including former Nazi scientist Otmar von Verschuer and British eugenicist Roger Pearson, had trouble getting their research published in reputable journals and formed their own journal in 1961. Mankind Quarterly became a platform for race science—a place to publish questionable research under the trappings of objective science. Intelligence, a more respected psychology journal that’s published by the major publishing company Elsevier, also occasionally included papers with pseudoscientific findings about intelligence differences between races. Until recently, that journal had two eugenics supporters, Gerhard Heisenberg and Richard Lynn, on its editorial board. But by the time Saini finished her book late last year, after interviewing the journal’s editor-in-chief, she saw that the pair had been removed from the journal’s list of board members.

    “The extreme stuff poses a dilemma for legitimate scientists, since you can’t read every crank’s work and falsify it,” says Aaron Panofsky, a sociologist of science at UCLA and author of the book, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics. Researchers don’t want to endow these papers with more legitimacy than they deserve, but they don’t want to ignore them and risk fueling conspiracy theories, either.

    While Mankind Quarterly has managed to hang on into the 21st century, “hard-core scientific racists are mostly old white men, and they’re not being reproduced in academia,” Panofsky says. Even so, plenty of racist, young white men continue to promote concepts of scientific racism, such as the participants in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—an event that even the scientific journal Nature felt the need to condemn.

    Even more well-meaning epidemiological scientists nonetheless still use race as a crude proxy for myriad social and environmental factors. Saini cites an example of a 2017 study with statistical errors claiming that race and biology indicate that the airways of asthmatic black Americans become more inflamed than those of asthmatic white Americans. Black Americans do suffer more from asthma than whites do, but they’re also affected more by environmental hazards like air pollution from highways and factories as well as disparities in access to high-quality healthcare. These many forms of inequality and structural racism—which sociologists have documented for decades—were swept under the rug in favor of a race variable that led to findings that could be easily misinterpreted.

    In another example, Saini describes the ill-fated 1990s Human Genome Diversity Project, which analyzed the genetic variations of small, remote populations referred to as “isolates,” including the Basques in Europe, the Kurds of eastern Turkey and Native American tribes. Indigenous rights activists, understandably sensitive to being exploited, resisted the project, surprising the naive scientists.

    Time and time again, groupings by race, even if they don’t use the term “race,” can be dangerous and misleading to people looking for inherent biological differences. But Saini doesn’t think we can be “colorblind” or “post-race” in scientific research either. Scientists who claim to be so tend to have the same problem as the asthma study, ignoring racial inequalities all around that influence a study’s findings. Saini also explores the possibility of affirmative action policies, reparations or environmental justice advocacy, all intended to mitigate structural, historical and scientific racism.

    Like many geneticists, Saini argues that since race is a social construct, it doesn’t belong in genetics research. Scientists in other fields have the freedom to study race, she writes, but with that freedom comes responsibility. They can’t afford to leave room for misinterpretation. Researchers using racial categories “should fully understand what they mean, be able to define them, and know their history,” Saini writes.

    The rest of us, too, need to be aware of racial stereotypes, lest we fall prey to them. “That’s part of the reason that we’re fascinated by DNA ancestry testing,” Saini says. “The reason it matters to us is because we feel that these racial categories have some meaning, that they can tell us something about ourselves, and that’s just wrong. They can’t.”

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    Default Re: Racism

    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    My family comes from different backgrounds, mother is from NJ/NY and father is from here in FL. Traditional understanding of US race relations would suggest the south is heavily racist and the north is not. However my mother says that in Jersey it was highly segregated and when she came to FL it was totally different. The only racism she saw came from someone dropping the n bomb but there wasn't blatant segregation like she saw up north. The segregation extended to all folks. There was (/is) a tier system.

    Thoughts?
    Most of my most intense and harrowing experiences of racism have been in Midwest and Northern states. I lived outside of Spokane Washington, on Fairchild AFB back in the 80s when Coeur d'alene, Idaho, was home to the Aryan Nations and the kids in the small northern Washington towns our military school would go play basketball against had never seen black people in person before except on TV. Oklahoma and Illinois in the late 1970s early 1980s was a proving ground for me in my ability to stand in the face of direct and sustained racial abuse from individuals, groups, other children and adults.

    I've never lived on the East Coast but I've read about it and heard stories from friends who came up over there who confirm that opinion in their lived experience. The Northern states had these places called Sundown Towns, where black Americans were kept out by force, custom or law. Could only be in town during the day to work, things like that. Segregation was generally practiced and still is in many cities north and south. We have not come anywhere near as many people to think to desegregation as it is generally believed.

    Quote Posted by Strat (here)
    I appreciate this dialogue cause it's hard for me to do it in real life.
    Why might that be so?

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