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What is racism?


Argus

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The term is used often here, and has been for years. It's usually misused. Racism is, at heart, the belief one race is inferior to another (yours, usually), due to science or genetics or God, perhaps. But it is a fact that race is inferior and can never hope to reach the same level of intelligence as yours. The most concise definition I've found is this.

The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

There are very few racists in Canada or the US. Despite all the media hysteria about Charlottesville, there are no more than 5,000-8,000 KKK members in the US today where there was once 4 million. The largest Nazi group in the US has about 400 members.  Canada has a few small Nazish groups, but we're talking a dozen members apiece perhaps. These groups are all too small to have any real influence except on Blacks and Jews unfortunate enough to run into them.

When people talk about racism they usually mean prejudice. There is a lot of prejudice out there, but the word essentially means to pre judge. Ie, you are pre-judging an individual based on your belief in group characteristics. And if you dig down into why people are prejudiced about Blacks or Muslims or Chinese or others it's normally not due to some sort of belief in genetic inferiority but to perceived or real group behaviour. 

Most of the prejudice towards Blacks in the US (and Canada) is, I believe, due to perceptions of Black criminality. Most of the prejudice towards Muslims is due to perceptions of religious extremism. Most of the prejudice towards Jews is based on not very much at all, really, but historical myths and rumors and conspiracy theories. 

Those who think we can address these things by taking down statues are fools. Especially when the perceptions are not wrong. By secular western standards most of the Muslims in Canada, who mainly come from the Middle East, are, to some extent, religious extremists. And Blacks do commit a disproportionate amount of crime, especially the kind that frightens people, like murder, robbery, rape and assault. The way to address this prejudice is to address the group behaviour and reform it.

 

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On 8/24/2017 at 9:54 AM, Argus said:

Most of the prejudice towards Blacks in the US (and Canada) is, I believe, due to perceptions of Black criminality. Most of the prejudice towards Muslims is due to perceptions of religious extremism. Most of the prejudice towards Jews is based on not very much at all, really, but historical myths and rumors and conspiracy theories. 

Argus played this one so that he didn't get a Rue dump. Yet he played up other prejudices. 

Edited by hot enough
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