Racism and President Obama

Pay a lot of attention to what's going on do you? How about the polls shown by the media that detail black-white voting? Or have you not turned on a television lately? Also, it's not "my views", I'm just telling what I've seen.

The constant and unnecessary use of the race card is getting old real fast. The only thing unequivocal here is your obvious ignorance.

And what you've seen isn't in any way influenced by the views you already hold?

A remarkable achievement :) I know my related views of the voting behaviour of white republicans are influenced by the fact I already think they're all a pack of cunts. Is that the right collective noun? Never been sure of that one.

And btw - I've not seriously played the race card at all. I thought it was fairly clear from the fact that when I have I've done it in a hugely over the top manner drawing on all the cliches of inappropriate and reactionary use of the race card. Plus I used smileys. Plus I've said specifically that it's not a serious use of the race card.

Although the more you react like this the more curious I am. What are these polls shown by the media (and seen by all except those of my unequivocal and obvious ignorance) that detail black / white voting patterns that also spell out that the black people are voting for obama just because he's black and they don't actually know anything about politics. I've not seen any of them when I turn on my television. I do see the sort of data that PJ has posted that suggests that black support is no higher than it is for any democrat (fair play to your black population, if only the rest of the country were so smart). They might be a bit more excited about a black democrat than a white one but why shouldn't they be? It's a big milestone in history, of course they're excited.

I think we've seen the same things (polls showing blacks overwhelmingly supporting obama) when we turn on our television, we've just brought different interpretations to what we're seeing, interpretations influenced by our (conscious or subconscious) views. Unless you've seen (& can post) some stats showing that black obama supporters are less able to answer questions on their chosen candidates policies than white mcCain supporters, in which case I will happily back down with full apologies :)
 
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I am not blind to the fact that even non-whites are racists. Recognizing your own group is promoting racism.

No, it isn't.

Not recognizing your own group is willful blindness to a basic human social behavior. Sometimes (often) "race" is the marker; mostly the markers are cultural. But the groups are real, and people hang all kinds of values onto the markers. People identify with them, which causes all kinds of behaviors, some constructive, others destructive.

You must see "race" as important to do so. In every situation recognizing race as a "group" beyond modern medicine and maybe identifying a suspect, is a pathway to racism.

Not exactly: for me, personally, "race" is entirely unimportant (or, to be perfectly honest, I do my level best to make it as unimportant as I possibly can). This is relatively easy for me, since I'm a light-skinned, blond-haired Finnish-speaking Finn living in a country where this represents the "racial" norm. It's somewhat more difficult for my wife, because she doesn't quite "look like a Finn," and a lot more difficult for my salsa teacher who doesn't "look like a Finn" at all.

But: race is an important identifying marker for many minority communities. That means that refusing to acknowledge its importance almost inevitably morphs into refusing to acknowledge the very existence of the community that uses it as a marker. That makes it impossible to even admit of the possibility that said community might have particular concerns that need to be addressed.

So, in Cuba, where race is relatively unimportant as a community marker, it *is* irrelevant. But in the USA, race is relatively important as a community marker -- so much so that Barack Obama, who has no blood relatives in the black American community whatsoever, and was raised by a white single mother in a mostly white community, is treated as a bro from the ghet-to with his ho in tow by pretty much everybody, including many good folks on this thread.

I agree that it *shouldn't* be relevant. But it is. And pretending that it isn't relevant won't make it any easier to *make* it less relevant.

I can see why a groups geographical or social situation needs to be recognized but I see no reason whatsoever to recognize their ethnicity.

Like it or not, ethnicity is a very important factor in identity. I for one don't particularly like it -- but if I want to change it, that is, make ethnic identity more inclusive, I still have to start by recognizing that it exists.

Since they are living in Turkey, they are turks by the sense that they are humans living in the geographical region of Turkey for all administrative purposes. Custom traditions are allowed in a free secular democracy unless they interfere with others freedoms and by that regard any group may express their local traditions and culture. Politically, if you ignore the aspect that Turkey isn't as free politically as Finland, how is the "kurdish community" different from the "Kuopio community" or any other city or geographical area?

Why don't you ask a Kurd? I'm sure you can find one near where you live. He -- or, even better, she -- will be able to give you a much better answer than I can. Trust me, you will get pretty concrete answers.

I'll would be interested by your perspective. You have a different perspective on cultural identity than I have.

Perhaps. I get a feeling that you want to use terminology based on how you'd like the world to be (e.g., where racial characteristics are entirely unimportant as community identifiers, or to determine how people treat each other), whereas I try to use terminology that describes the world as it actually exists as precisely as possible.

Some people could accuse use of typical lefty liberal PC-speak, and me of typical conservative crypto-Nazi pseudo-hate-speech. Which would be kinda interesting if it happened, actually.
 
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Some people could accuse use of typical lefty liberal PC-speak, and me of typical conservative crypto-Nazi pseudo-hate-speech. Which would be kinda interesting if it happened, actually.

RACIST!

Sickened.

Hmmmm, probably not as interesting as you'd hoped. And not as much fun as saying the same to JDR13.

I too think ignoring race issues is madness. People are heavily influenced by their early cultural conditioning, and although we are (hopefully) moving towards a more homogeneous ethnic melting pot where influences merge and communities become more integrated, there are still a lot of inherited values and perspectives and forms of behaviour that have strong correlations with racial origin.

Saying that's the case is not racism. Racism is saying that one such set of inherited social traits is in some way better than another set (I for one, I have to admit, find it pretty well impossible not to feel like that about the prevalent misogyny correlated with many muslim backgrounds, try as I might to avoid value judgements. Plus I think republican voters are mostly arseholes, but that's okay).

I'd much rather we could have sensible recognition of cultural factors and try and work with them rather than ignoring them for fear of being racist.
 
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And what you've seen isn't in any way influenced by the views you already hold?

This seems to be your main problem, you have no idea what other people's views are, you simply have a tendency to assume.

Although the more you react like this the more curious I am. What are these polls shown by the media (and seen by all except those of my unequivocal and obvious ignorance) that detail black / white voting patterns that also spell out that the black people are voting for obama just because he's black and they don't actually know anything about politics. I've not seen any of them when I turn on my television. I do see the sort of data that PJ has posted that suggests that black support is no higher than it is for any democrat (fair play to your black population, if only the rest of the country were so smart). They might be a bit more excited about a black democrat than a white one but why shouldn't they be? It's a big milestone in history, of course they're excited.?

I don't pretend to know what you've seen on your television, of course you're seeing whatever is being shown over there. When I see a poll showing the % of who blacks and whites are voting for, the media sometimes likes to conveniently leave out details such as party affiliations. I thought I already made this quite clear. Have you read all my posts in this thread? Perhaps the term "at first glance" holds a different definition in London?

Unless you've seen (& can post) some stats showing that black obama supporters are less able to answer questions on their chosen candidates policies than white mcCain supporters, in which case I will happily back down with full apologies :)

Unless you've seen (& can quote) where I ever indicated that opinion of blacks in general, you only look quite foolish with statements like that. :)
 
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Unless you've seen (& can quote) where I ever indicated that opinion of blacks in general, you only look quite foolish with statements like that. :)

Can I?

The black community is already orgasmic in some parts. You should see all the Obama t-shirts, hats, and buttons in Detroit. I have no problem with it, except for the fact that a lot of the people I've talked to don't seem to know anything about politics other than "a black man is running for president!".

On first glance, this sure reads a lot like that. But, naturally, we're simply reading our own biases into it and you actually meant something completely different -- such as... let me think... you only talk to stupid and ignorant black people, but nevertheless believe that the rest of them are intelligent and well-informed? Or something?
 
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This seems to be your main problem, you have no idea what other people's views are, you simply have a tendency to assume.

We all have to make assumptions, I've read enough posts from most people on this forum to have a reasonably good guess at what most people's views are, and I'm sure most people could have a reasonably good guess at what my views are and I wouldn't begrudge them for trying or be offended if they were off the mark (to my conscious assessment of myself anyway, who knows what lurks in the subconscious).

I don't pretend to know what you've seen on your television, of course you're seeing whatever is being shown over there. When I see a poll showing the % of who blacks and whites are voting for, the media sometimes likes to conveniently leave out details such as party affiliations. I thought I already made this quite clear. Have you read all my posts in this thread? Perhaps the term "at first glance" holds a different definition in London?

I'm sure we've seen the same polls of black / white voting patterns, information's pretty global these days, and my media didn't spoonfeed me a history of past voting affiliations either (although I tend to research a bit myself). And first glance means the same in London as it does anywhere else. I'm merely commenting on the interpretations that you bring to things when only giving them a first glance.

Unless you've seen (& can quote) where I ever indicated that opinion of blacks in general, you only look quite foolish with statements like that. :)

I infered it from your comment of "I guess that would explain why over 85% of blacks are voting for Obama, while whites are approximately 50-50.", in the context of your earlier post talking about specific examples of black people voting without clear political insight and analysis. It seemed to me, not unreasonably I think, that you were suggesting that (at least a material proportion of) the 85% of black people voting obama (i.e. black people in general) were doing so simply because "a black man is running for president", whether as a generalisation of your personal experiences talking to individual black people in detroit or simply because that's the interpretation you'd bring to those statistics.

Personally I think the vast majority of voters on both sides are probably total idiots voting for all the wrong reasons, not just race. But then you are all americans ;)
 
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On first glance, this sure reads a lot like that. But, naturally, we're simply reading our own biases into it and you actually meant something completely different -- such as... let me think... you only talk to stupid and ignorant black people, but nevertheless believe that the rest of them are intelligent and well-informed? Or something?

:lol:

My turn to thank you for putting what I said in a big essay far more pithily.
 
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On first glance, this sure reads a lot like that. But, naturally, we're simply reading our own biases into it and you actually meant something completely different -- such as... let me think... you only talk to stupid and ignorant black people, but nevertheless believe that the rest of them are intelligent and well-informed? Or something?

C'mon PJ, even for an instigator such as yourself, that was completely pathetic. I would have absolutely no problem saying "blacks" rather than "people" if that were the case. However, since not all the people I was refering to were black, that is exactly why I said "people" to begin with. Of course I understand you would love to believe otherwise. Someone as opinionated as myself has no need to mince words.
 
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BTW - just to clarify, I am in no way claiming objectivity or lack of MASSIVE prejudice myself.

By way of example, the "white people voting 50-50 obama / mccain" data you take as evidence of a lack of racism I interpret entirely differently, and assume it'd be at least 60-40 if there weren't loads of racists. And at least 100-0 if there weren't loads of barely sentient fucknuts for some reason entitled to vote ;)

Those are my prejudices, and I'm happy to hold my hands up to them :)
 
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C'mon PJ, even for an instigator such as yourself, that was completely pathetic. I would have absolutely no problem saying "blacks" rather than "people" if that were the case. However, since not all the people I was refering to were black, that is exactly why I said "people" to begin with. Of course I understand you would love to believe otherwise. Someone as opinionated as myself has no need to mince words.

In fairness you didn't specify black people, you did start talking about the black community and then just made a generalised reference to people, which does lend itself to the inference that you were talking about people from the black community, again it's all about inferences :)
 
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I infered it from your comment of "I guess that would explain why over 85% of blacks are voting for Obama, while whites are approximately 50-50.", in the context of your earlier post talking about specific examples of black people voting without clear political insight and analysis. It seemed to me, not unreasonably I think, that you were suggesting that (at least a material proportion of) the 85% of black people voting obama (i.e. black people in general) were doing so simply because "a black man is running for president", whether as a generalisation of your personal experiences talking to individual black people in detroit or simply because that's the interpretation you'd bring to those statistics.

The problem is that I never gave "specific examples of black people voting without clear political insight and analysis".

By way of example, the "white people voting 50-50 obama / mccain" data you take as evidence of a lack of racism I interpret entirely differently, and assume it'd be at least 60-40 if there weren't loads of racists. And at least 100-0 if there weren't loads of barely sentient fucknuts for some reason entitled to vote.

Of course.....that's life as seen through Democratic glasses. ;)
 
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C'mon PJ, even for an instigator such as yourself, that was completely pathetic. I would have absolutely no problem saying "blacks" rather than "people" if that were the case. However, since not all the people I was refering to were black, that is exactly why I said "people" to begin with. Of course I understand you would love to believe otherwise. Someone as opinionated as myself has no need to mince words.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I'm glad you don't feel the way it looked like... at first glance.
 
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Of course.....that's life as seen through Democratic glasses. ;)

Yep, never claimed I wasn't every bit as biased :)

Not that you're biased of course, just me going around inferring like a dirty inferrer.
 
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Perhaps. I get a feeling that you want to use terminology based on how you'd like the world to be (e.g., where racial characteristics are entirely unimportant as community identifiers, or to determine how people treat each other), whereas I try to use terminology that describes the world as it actually exists as precisely as possible.

I leave this quote since it to me captures where we speak past eachother. Debating nature "as is" is a practice for intellectuals. It's not meant for a public of people who have yet to recognize the complex structures that keeps society together. It's also not meant for kids who needs clear guidelines on "proper behavior" when they are not yet old enough to understand the consequences of their behavior.

I personally do recognize natural behavior. I do not disagree that natural behavior exist. I do however see it as a requirement for keeping a society together, that some natural impulses are "trained away" by overlapping principles, ethics and norms. While this goes against nature and our natural instincts, it is a requirement to keep society together and to create a peaceful environment to live in.

When I say that recognizing a race is a pathway to racism, I also mean that not recognizing a race is a pathway out of racism. A culture that do have the aim to break down racial seggregation must also disagree with accepting race as a way to distinguish people. This is a form of conscious raising. It should naturally "sting" someone and feel inappropiate to speak about "race" in public. Even using the description "black" about someone should almost require an excuse for doing so. This is not only a cultural norm, it's meant to force each individual to think about what his/her instincts tell him/her to feel.

An example of this; I, as you, struggle to make race as unimportant as I possible can. I had problems with this goal when I begun my education because I suddenly had to face people from other ethnic backgrounds, an environment which was alien and strange to me. I had a natural instinct of "fear" of the unknown. Over time I managed to break down the natural instinct to be scared and uneased with the prescense of these "new kind". In my attempts I tried to be nice to these strangers and today many of them are my friends. Throughout my lifetime I have broken down the barriers when it comes to facing subgroups different than me. This was true when you went from your teenage interest in women into having women who are "friends only". Same with meeting people who are gay and recognizing them as individuals and "friends only". In each case, using a principle to object a natural impulse of fear and anxiousness when approaching strangers have lead to a positive outcome.

Im getting off topic, but I think I made my point about the difference between nature and principles. I would not officially discuss Obama's color. I am far more interested in his political view, and recognizing the "black community" in the US seems like a glaring problem to me.
 
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If it's such a problem, why are members of said communities so fierce in defending their "unique culture" and "treasured history"? There are black/white/hispanic/asian/alien-abducted communities because the members want them. It's tribalism, plain and simple, and it's foolish to pretend that they don't exist or claim some higher perception by ignoring them.
 
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I leave this quote since it to me captures where we speak past eachother. Debating nature "as is" is a practice for intellectuals. It's not meant for a public of people who have yet to recognize the complex structures that keeps society together. It's also not meant for kids who needs clear guidelines on "proper behavior" when they are not yet old enough to understand the consequences of their behavior.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here, then. From where I'm at, I don't see anything inherently elitist about discussing the world as it is as opposed to how we'd like it to be -- especially since I believe we're much more likely to find agreement about reality than about objectives.

I personally do recognize natural behavior. I do not disagree that natural behavior exist. I do however see it as a requirement for keeping a society together, that some natural impulses are "trained away" by overlapping principles, ethics and norms. While this goes against nature and our natural instincts, it is a requirement to keep society together and to create a peaceful environment to live in.

I don't believe it's possible, or indeed desirable, to train away our propensity to identify with groups based on characteristics transmitted to us by our parents and society. I think it would be far more productive to try to learn to relate constructively to people who identify with different groups. That, naturally, applies to minority groups just as much as dominant ones.

When I say that recognizing a race is a pathway to racism, I also mean that not recognizing a race is a pathway out of racism. A culture that do have the aim to break down racial seggregation must also disagree with accepting race as a way to distinguish people. This is a form of conscious raising. It should naturally "sting" someone and feel inappropiate to speak about "race" in public. Even using the description "black" about someone should almost require an excuse for doing so. This is not only a cultural norm, it's meant to force each individual to think about what his/her instincts tell him/her to feel.

I think that this is putting the cart before the horse. Using the description "black" is only bad if you believe or feel that "black" carries negative or exclusionary connotations. I think we should work on the connotations, not the word. I only very reluctantly gave up on using the word "negro" (or its Finnish equivalent, "neekeri"). It didn't start out with the ring it has now; it was the word used by American civil rights campaigners like Martin Luther King for their community. They wanted to change the connotations associated with it, not get rid of the word. I only dropped it from my discourse when it was so completely co-opted by racists that I could only use it by including a very lengthy preface describing exactly the sense in which I wanted to use it, which meant that it became an obstacle to communication rather than something that helped it.

The slide from "negro" to "colored" to "black" to "African-American" to "something we shouldn't even mention in polite discourse" isn't doing anything to solve the problem of racism in America; all it's doing is sweeping it under the rug.

An example of this; I, as you, struggle to make race as unimportant as I possible can. I had problems with this goal when I begun my education because I suddenly had to face people from other ethnic backgrounds, an environment which was alien and strange to me. I had a natural instinct of "fear" of the unknown. Over time I managed to break down the natural instinct to be scared and uneased with the prescense of these "new kind". In my attempts I tried to be nice to these strangers and today many of them are my friends. Throughout my lifetime I have broken down the barriers when it comes to facing subgroups different than me. This was true when you went from your teenage interest in women into having women who are "friends only". Same with meeting people who are gay and recognizing them as individuals and "friends only". In each case, using a principle to object a natural impulse of fear and anxiousness when approaching strangers have lead to a positive outcome.

Our experience differs greatly here. I was two when I first went to live abroad, then again when I was six, and again when I was twelve, and yet again when I was fifteen and sixteen.

Probably the most important formative experience of this kind I had was the year I spent in Nepal. I went to a school that was roughly 1/3 Nepalese, 1/3 American, and 1/3 "others." That year included stuff like a staging of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, where Jesus was played by an Indonesian Muslim, Mary Magdalene by an American Jew, and Judas Iscariot by a Tibetan Buddhist. Not to mention spending all in all about one month sharing very close quarters with all these people, and many more besides, while trekking in the Himalayas. My best friend was Iranian (we still keep in touch, occasionally), I had a terrible crush on a Norwegian, and my prom date was a half-Kenyan, half-Pakistani Muslim (and I had a god-awful crush on her too). We were all ridiculously diverse in values, backgrounds, cultural expectations, and appearances, all thrown together in a big ol' multicolored mess, and it all somehow worked out just fine. For most of us, anyway.

I mean sure, there were the usual teenage cliques and all the general cattiness associated with it, but I honestly can't recall anything that was racially or ethnically or religiously motivated. I personally certainly never liked or disliked or feared any of my schoolmates for these reasons. Yet we were all very conscious about our respective cultures and communities. It's there, it's real, and it wasn't a big deal.

In other places and contexts it is a big deal. A very big deal. And coming from this background, I feel that it's somehow completely wrong-headed to try to address it through bending the sense of words, or pretending that values people attach to them don't exist. I guess in a way I'm still looking for the world that that microcosm of Lincoln School in Kathmandu promised.

Im getting off topic, but I think I made my point about the difference between nature and principles. I would not officially discuss Obama's color. I am far more interested in his political view, and recognizing the "black community" in the US seems like a glaring problem to me.

But he *is* black, and that *does* make a difference to the way he sees himself, and the way American voters -- black, white, brown, yellow, red, Jewish, Arab, whatever -- see him. It's no use pretending that he isn't, or it doesn't. You say you've befriended people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds: that's a million times more effective in bringing down the barriers that separate us than pretending that those barriers don't exist.
 
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But he *is* black, and that *does* make a difference to the way he sees himself, and the way American voters -- black, white, brown, yellow, red, Jewish, Arab, whatever -- see him. .

He not black though, he's of mixed heritage to be precise. He's just as much white as he is black. Sometimes people forget that, most likely due to the media's focus on the whole black thing. I agree with what you're saying about voters perception though.
 
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Nope, it's not the media. It's simply that if one of your parents, or even one of your grandparents, is black, American society treats you as black rather than white. The media simply reflect that reality.
 
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