Schreck157 said:
Say that a man hates a man, not because he's black, but because he lives by what is considered " black culture." Is this racism? To hate, based not on the color of a man's skin, but on how he lives his life? Not every black man uses "black culture", and not everyone in that culture is black. Is hating a culture racism; especially if that culture is associated with a specific race of humans?
No, it's bigotry and/or discrimination but not racism.
Racism is a term that has been used inappropriatly for a long time due to the political power inherant in the term, and the way it resonates with peope. You can only be racist if your holding someone's genotype against them. Negative discrimination based on physical apperance and something someone cannot change. The most important part being the "cannot change" bit, and that's why it's so negative. Someone can change the way they choose to behave in public, live their life, or what values they espouse.
It's sort of like how the UN has extended the term "Genocide" to include so many things totally unrelated to the actual meaning of the term, due to the sheer force the word carries with it.
Truthfully I think terms like "Racism" and "Genocide" are going to lose a lot of their oomph in a generation or so due to overuse and mis-use.
Right now "racism" is a trump card typically used by a person or group that otherwise can't defend themselves, or how they choose to live. Dropping the "racism" card tends to bring a lot of very dumb people running, unthinkingly to their side. A state of affairs that is not going to last forever as it's increasingly misused.
I'll also be honest in saying that I do not consider bigotry or discrimination to be a bad thing. In fact I think we need more of both in society in order to deal with a lot of the problems we're current facing. The standard we have in the USA right now of not discriminating against anyone is actually doing more harm than good, and at the root of a lot of long standing social problems that are getting severe enough to the point that we can no longer ignore them. Things having gotten so bad, because nobody wanted to compromise their principles, and were hoping magical solutions would appear.
I think "Black Culture" is one of those issues that needs to be addressed, it's touchy largely because of the entire slavery/civil liberties issues.
It's a multi-faceted issue, but to put things into perspective look at the problems with education. Right now there is a general issue with a lot of black America that they are owed success. Equality is viewed as being equivilent to the top 1% of society, as opposed to simply having the abillity to live normally and perhaps very rarely climb to those heights. The majority of people however living rather dull lives of hard work and boredom, stuck in a rut. It's not appealing to people that somehow feel they were promised more. A big problem with black culture, is that it's anti-assimilation. The idea is that by getting educated and becoming a normal, hard working person, it's in some way selling out. It's better to "git rich, or die trying" so to speak, either being one of the elite no matter what it takes, or reveling at being in the bottom and doing anything and everything you can to get to that point, even if it makes you a criminal and gets you killed. Things like education are looked down on, after all going to school might get you a job that peaks at middle management, where blowing off all of that to play Basketball MIGHT get you into the pros, and if it doesn't then being found face down in the gutter wth a gun in your hand is still better than merely being normal... at least you died trying.
The thing is that all the oppertunities are there, but as crusaders in the civil liberties movement said from the beginning, fighting for equal rights was the easy part. The hard part is to take those oppertunities and assimilating into society. I think today racism in any real sense is dead as a mainstream phenomena, and is mostly used as an excuse. People would rather have an enemy to blame, and to be fighting against, than go out, get a job, and live a miserable and unfulfilled life like the rest of society.
I tend to use Bill Cosby as my point of referance for a lot of this, because his statements are easily verified, he has a PHD in Children's Education, and also by being black he sort of illustrates how simply pointing out the problems creates a backlash. He's been called everything from a sell out, to a race traitor, simply by telling kids that they need to put down the basketballs, the guns, and the rap music, and go to school and prepare themselves to fit in.
Excuses like the so called "Digital Divide" or the conditions of schools in black neighborhoods and such are of course complete BS, especially now, when you consider that people have been literally lining up to supply those schools for decades. Computers, textbooks, sports equipment... it's a popular form of charity (and tax write offs) and great PR. The problem is that all of this stuff is destroyed or stolen after it arrives, because going to school is seen as selling out, and with the attitudes, stealing those computers or whatever and selling them is more "noble" than going to school, leaning to use those computers, and then getting a job doing something with computers (or whatever).
I'm using black culture since it was mentioned by the OP, I could point fingers at a lot of other things as well, and not all of the having to do with subcultures defined along racial lines.
The problem with all of this is that to do anything you have to be a bigot, and engage in discrimination. You have to pretty much say "okay, black culture is a problem" and then target it specifically for special treatment. But of course once you start creating special laws, especially negative ones, that only apply to black people in specific circumstances, people are going to scream racism, and of course doing this raises a lot of moral questions due to the principles of our society.
For example, look at how pro sports influances the equasion. A big problem is all the poor kids wanting to be "Michael Jordan" and doing nothing but playing games like Basketball, to the exclusion of school work and such, even if the odds of pulling it off are slim to none. We've seen all kinds of messages by pro-athletes pointing out how ridiculously tiny the chances are because this one thing is a major influance on the whole equasion. Of course these messages have little or no influance on it at all. What's more the safeguards in things like school athletic programs don't work, because even at the high school level there is a lot of money to be made (via donations, scholorships, local tourney prizes, school grants, etc...) from a successful team... and as you move up to college it gets worse. The schools themselves will frequently find ways to cheat so their Athletes can be morons and still play balls for them rather than being scholor-athletes as intended.
Looking at the problem with black culture in paticular, let's say you put extra special laws into existance that required black athletes to conform to certain standards, which would be adminstered by a higher level of goverment. To say play college Basketball, in addition to what he NCAA might require, Uncle Sam requires playes of black Ethnicity to head down to the federal building periodically and pass tests to be allowed to play irregardless of what their school might want. Extending that, what if it also becomes a requirement for pro-athletes as well, the goverment requires them to test pediodically to meet certain standards.
People would of course scream "OMG, that's horrible discrimination" and "why is it that dumb white people can play pro-sports, but Black guys have to prove they are well educated" and to be honest it IS slanted because of the problem it's intended to address. On the other hand it would probably have a sweeping effect because it means that that dream of "I can be a moron and not have to sell out, if I bounce a ball well enough" is gone.
Do not misunderstand, this probably wouldn't work even within that one aspect of the problem, I'm simply using it as an example of the type of logic involved here, people far smarter than me would have to work out the specific things to target and how to do them. The point here is mostly that the discrimination is not because "blacks are inferior" or anything racist, but because of the simple fact that they can go to school, educate themselves, and fit into society, there is nothing preventing them from doing this. The purpose of such regulation is to get them to go to school, and target certain attitudes, not to actually oppress anyone, or kick them out of sports, or "put them in their place" or anything else.
Honestly I think that oftentimes people who argue against discrimination and bigotry are far more racist than the people who make those arguements. Most bigots nowadays argue from the perspective that with all people being equal, the same standards can be expected of everyone. Those who argue against it oftentimes wind up making arguements about why what the bigots are saying is unfair, or how "they don't understand", while making excuses about why the group of people in question can't meet those standards and shouldn't be expected to. If you say that a group like blacks, hispanics, asians, rural white trash (inbred!), or whatever inherantly can't meet the general standards of society, then that's actually racist.
