Is Racism about appearance?

Because it's human nature. I'm not saying it's right or logical, but it's what people do. Especially when that person has had repeated negative experiences with some identifiable group (be it race, gender, religion or whatever).

I'm not sure how pointing out Obama's actual ancestry shows disgust for blacks or liberals. Wouldn't ignoring the white half of his family tree (which is what so many people do when simply referring to him as "black") be showing disgust for white people?

Most racists probably use both, but it's easier to use appearance when dealing with random people whose true heritage is unknown to you.

 

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Are you sure that race is mythical? If so, how do you know?

 

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How can race be mythical? You may believe something is irrelevant, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

In our modern age of migration, it's very likely that the human race will more or less reach a point of homogenisation. However, as it stands, we are very much divided into (often overlapping) religions, nations, cultures and races.

As for race being 'only skin deep', there is a sizeable amount of evidence to the contrary. For a start, skin colour is only half the story physically; people from different parts of the world have many other striking anatomical differences, including muscle ratio, bone structure and even a tendency to contract specific diseases. There's also a whole different argument to be made concerning IQ, but in light of your apparent inability to think rationally, I'd rather not go there.

 

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Thank you Fraggle, that was very nice and enlightening, unlike BennyF and his open snobbery masturbation. Next question, is what we could define genotypically as a race the same as are classical race definitions?

 

Because to them race does not work that way, to them race is what your discriminated as, race pride is simply a reaction to that discrimination its why so few white people have "white pride" because so few of them feel discriminated. It does not matter that his mother was white, as long as he was treated black, he black, and pointing out his white mother is seen as trying to claim he didn't go through racial discrimination like every other black man.

 

How do you know how race works to "them"? Who is "them"?

Possibly so. Another factor may be that any hint of group pride or political solidarity among white people is immediately painted as Hitlerism by some.

So if he was treated like a Japanese person, would that make him Japanese?

Or maybe people point out that he's half white because, you know, it's true? I don't know what Obama's life was like when he was younger, but he'll always be biracial to me...because he is. Same with Rashida Jones, Jennifer Beals, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods (multiracial, rather than biracial), Kristin Kreuk, Ryan Giggs, Jason Kidd, etc.

 

I don't know anyone who calls Obama "black" who is ignoring any of his family tree.

He is "black", in the US and everywhere he has llived. He's been black all his life. In Brazil maybe he would have some other label, but in the US no.

You have no control over the racial classifications of US society. You can no more classify Obama as some invented "biracial" category than Benny, above, can make racism disappear by declaring race mythical.

"Mick" is not a racial epithet. Anti-Catholic bigotry is not racism. Racism is not used to describe cultural antipathy toward aspects of a person that they can change, that depend on their upbringing or education or religious beliefs.

Appearance is the only factor in racism, as far as identifying the race - which is the central act.

 

No, appearance is not the only factor in racism. What you are describing is racial discrimination or racial profiling. Which is rooted in racism, but they are different.

Instead of everyone assuming what Obama is, they can read what he considers himself, seeing it is his ethnic lines, his body. He discusses this and his views on racism in his book http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-My-Father-Story-Inheritance/dp/1400082773

 

Err... I've always understood the term "mick" to mean "Irish" rather than "Roman Catholic" as such (nobody applies it to Italians or Mexicans, for example). Not to deny that anti-Catholicism animates a lot of the anti-Irish bigotry, but the term itself does seem to be ethnic in nature. I would that I could point to the slur being used on a Protestant Irish somewhere to back this up...

Although I'm given to believe that in Australia it refers to Catholicism rather than Irishness. But I've never heard it used in that way in the US (or anywhere else).

Strangely enough, I once had an almost-identical exchange to this one (on another forum, long ago) about the word "spic," which my interlocutor held to refer to Catholicism (and so be applicable to Italians in particular).

 

Other people, people who are not you.

Sure it may be misconstrued as that but that has nothing to do with reasoning for why there would be white pride to begin with.

If a person could pass as Japanese amongst Japanese, sure, although there is a difference between cultural inclusion and chronic racial discrimination. Obama passes as black amongst blacks, he has garnered solidarity amongst blacks because of actual or perceived prejudice and discrimination against him for his "blackness".

Race is many things, the sooner you see that what race and racism is and how to define it is incongruently very different from one person to the next, the sooner you won't be a bigot.

 

Really? Do Black men prefer light skinned or dark skinned women? Also, whenever you see a successful Black man, does his wife tend to be light skinned or dark?

 

We don't use the term at all.

 

Yes, really.

Your statement is a racial misconception. Yes, there are some that prefer lighter skinned, even white women. But, to be fair, I know of Black men who prefer only dark women, I know some black women who prefer light or white men. Not every successful Black man prefers light skinned women.

Take a look at Denzel Washington's wife, Jesse Jackson, Will Smith, Obama, Steadman Graham, Danny Glover was married to Asake Bomani, Jim Brown, and Samuel Jackson just to name a few.

 

Do you think Barack Obama would of been elected if he was as Dark as Wesley Snipes?

 

WTF?

Ok, he was elected only because he's not TOO black.

Whatever.

 

Yep. I know of black people who didn't vote for him. I know of white people who voted for him. I know of people of all races who voted for or against him. You know why? Because they did or didn't like his ideas. Because they educated themselves on what he stood for. Not because of the color of his skin.

I will say there were some that voted for and against him because of the color of his skin. But to say he won based purely on shade, hue, tone of his skin is an ignorant statement.

If you can show me that all the votes he received was because the hue of his skin, then I will agree with you.

 

Yes, I'm sure. The concept of separate human races is similar to the concept of separate dog breeds, or separate varieties of apples, oranges, and tomatoes. They all obey similar biological laws regarding the appearance of any one item, but the whole concept is something that some person cooked up in his mind a LONG time ago.

Dogs, for instance, are descended from wolves and other four-legged wild animals One day, tens of thousands of years ago, a human being took a wolf into his home. The wolf got regular meals, regular grooming, and affection in exchange for being taught to bring fowl or other game animals home to his master instead of eating them himself. The animal probably served a second purpose by being tied to a tree near the entrance so that it could warn the owner if anyone came near.

Eventually, the descendants of that original owner chose one puppy out of a wolf litter and taught it to amuse the owner by rolling on the ground or by sitting on command, again, just for the sake of regular meals and human affection, which wild animals never get.

Biological laws dictate that in a litter of animal babies, each one will look just a bit different than the others. When humans chose one animal out of a litter of wolf descendants, they also influenced the looks of the descendants of the original mother and father of those babies.

This is science, including the ability of people to influence what animals look like, by a process called natural selection. The same principle of semi-inherited appearance works for apples, oranges, corn, wheat, and other biological stock, including mammals, and including human beings. However, the idea that two human beings will think or act differently just because they LOOK differently is a myth, one that some pseudo-intellectuals have sometimes engaged in, usually to the laughter of their own peers.

Again, this century will see diminishing numbers of bigots due to the reduced number of people who believe in the concept of race, a concept that requires a difference in the brain, not just the skin.

I can never be a bigot because I will never believe in colored pigeonholes. I will teach everybody I know the same principles because I believe that color blindness is scientific, practical for one person and for American society as a whole, and because it can't possibly hurt anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in segregation, bigotry, or actual racial violence.

Benny F (an admirer of Mr. Franklin)

 

I don't believe in the concept of race. I also don't believe that the earth is the center of the universe. If you do, then that concept is real for you, and you may very well teach it to your children, but there's no scientific basis for either concept aside from simple biological laws that dictate the looks of the children of two specific parents.

One more time. Well-known biological laws will dictate the height, skin color, hair color, and other physical features of the children of any two specific parents, but there's nothing that ensures a group identity unless a person wants it that way for his own political purposes.

Color blindness is a 21st century concept. Leave the 19th.

 

I was making a list, knocking down stuff in series, not repeating for emphasis. Sorry about the confusion.

People call me "Mick", and in the circumstances the term fits - although I am neither Irish nor Catholic. I fit into the cultural corner in which it is used.

I am describing the labeling, the assigning of membership in the category, the identification of the "race". That is the central act - the foundation the rest is built on.

People are assigned to their races, in the US, without regard to their culture, genetic heritage, religion, clothing, language, food preferences, education, country of origin, or any other cultural feature. Most people in the US can be racially classified by their driver's license photo.

 

How do you know that they're really "black" OR "white"?

You may not have seen this when I posted it earlier, but I learned in high school that you can disprove something by temporarily assuming that it's true, and then showing, by a series of logical arguments, that this false assumption NECESSARILY leads to a false conclusion.

So let's assume, just for the moment, that these people you refer to are members of two races, one called the white race and the other called the black race. I don't believe it for a moment, you understand. This is just the temporary assumption I'm making in a logical process.

Now let's make the further assumption that a "white" man has had sex with a "black" woman, and that she gets pregnant as a result. I'm going to further assume that you believe that any such children are always members of the black race. Now that we've made these temporary assumptions, let's see where they lead.

The "black" children grow up, meet some "white" people, fall in love with them (not absolutely necessary, but it happens) and have sex with them. The "black" females get pregnant and THEY have babies. THESE "black" children grow up, meet "white" people, have sex with them, and get pregnant.

At some point in this process, which actually happened two centuries ago to a man named Thomas Jefferson (our third President) and a woman named Sally Hemming (one of his slaves), most of the descendants of this couple look like "white" people, which negates the original assumption that any child of a "black" person is always "black".

Now that we've seen a contradictory conclusion from a questionable assumption, we can safely say that the assumption is more than questionable, it's A FALSE ASSUMPTION and should be thrown out on its' rear ASAP.