Who in here doesn't "see race"?

[Godfather of Soul]

Just wanted to know who in here doesn't "see race"?  Or would argue that "we're all just human beings"? 

[murdaLicious]

urrrbody sees race.  If they say otherwise, they aren't being honest.

[atlien]

Agreed.

[KillJoy]

The human mind is too quick to categorize, it's inevitable to notice differences in skin colour and culture.

But even if you automatically perceive this, it doesn't mean your judging.  From the anthropology classes I've taken, the whole concept of race is fallacious.  It's just slight phenotypic differences, biologically we are all the same.

It was a hard concept for me to understand, but the is no such thing as race.

[atlien]

I agree that there is no such thing as race but this statement caught my attention in a different way,

The human mind is too quick to categorize, it's inevitable to notice differences in skin colour

 
Correct me, please, if I am wrong but that sounds like categorizing along racial lines is natural.  I've seen no evidence to support that the human mind naturally makes racial demarcations and tons of evidence to support the construct model.

Please elaborate when you have time.

[Kanarki]

I think the way we see race has been instilled socially there is nothing natural about it.
You look at dog behaviour and different breeds and sizes they come in, we see differences in them but they just see each other as another hole to sniff, screw or fight no different from any other.

[Victor]

Race and culture give us a sense of identity in a country where none of us are native.
So I think that seeing diversity itsn't really a bad thing, as long as you percieve it with equality and without judgement.

[atlien]

Some us of are native which is the origin of this very problem. 

Don't forget that.

[LastNameForgotten]

Races exist, but it needs to be kept in its proper perspective which is that races are a man made concept. Like someone has already mention, from a science stand point there is no such thing as races.

[Field Marshal Ohan]

if you don't 'see' race your a fucking hypocrite, and probably your a racist too. you should respect people come from different races, even if that just boils down to cultural differences. but just using the word race for a minute, different races have been subjected to different enviroments and societies, natural and unnatural, self-made and immposed, and there are very real differences in 'races' that need to be respected before you can understand. maybe in some brave new world, communist world order, we could be brough back to be all biologically the same, but due to current and past economic, political and social conditions, there are differences in people which we call race. perhaps if we talked about tribes, some of you would be more comfortible accepting this.

in the words of masamune shirow: 'technology has not yet wiped out the concepts of nationality and ethnic groups'.

at the same time, breaking everyone down to the same race is a scary thought... anyone ever read 'the giver' in school? the way i read into it is like the boy is living in the ultimate communist society where people literally do not see color, not the color of a person or the color of an apple or the color of a girls hair... and that's kinda sick.

[Godfather of Soul]

So I started this topic in response to a posting on my blog:

While I'm not about to call you out on whether or not the social hierarchy in the United States (and, to certain extents, here in Canada as well) as I most certainly agree with you on that point, not everything is a race and/or class struggle. It's undeniable that racial injustice does exist, that much is obvious. But, the fact of the matter is that I don't believe it's as prevalent issue as you're making it out to be in certain cases. Do you honestly believe the truth movement is racially motivated? Do you honestly believe that my motivations for at least a somewhat lukewarm interest in the movement is based upon racial insulation, as you refer to it? If you answered yes to either of these questions, we're not going to get anywhere here.

Aside from that, let's quit the comparison of the 9/11 events to worldwide poverty; comparison of that style ("your struggle is nothing compared to mine, because my people have suffered so much more for so much longer.." et cetera) doesn't lead to anything. You're only going to piss people off. If you want to gain sympathy for your cause, you shouldn't go around lambasting people simply for calling for accountability in government (is this not important to you? as a Canadian, this issue is very sensitive and very current to me and anyone else north of the 49th parallel..see: Liberal sponsorship scandal), as discounting the deaths of thousands of people is no way to gain sympathy.

I find this very disappointing, because I know we probably have very similar political mindsets, but, quite honestly, I don't like the way you go around informing people of the causes that are important to you. And, at the end of the day, isn't the colour of one's skin negligible in terms of a human being's qualities?

and...

First, I'd like to point out that I find it very disturbing that you accuse all white people in your final paragraph as people that have, at some point in their lives, engaged in racism. I know you want me to admit that, at some point in my life, I made a judgement based upon race, as this would only add to your argument. I'm happy to prove you wrong; I was raised in a household that taught, before all things, acceptance and cooperation are the keys to peaceful co-existance. That doesn't just apply to your neighbours, it applies to people of all backgrounds across the globe.

Look, if we're going to play the racial card, I could call you out on the struggles of 'white people' (I abhor that term, or using any kind of skin colour term, but your argument forces me to resort to such pedantics) over time; the Helvetti in Switzerland, the Turks in Greece, the Irish, the Jews, the Bosnians, the Poles, the Lithuanians, and, currently and to a more politically-restrictive extent (ie. imprisonment and torture, as opposed to actual killings), the Belorussians. Christians have either in the past or currently are persecuted and/or attacked in Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Indonesia, Albania, China, and India. Additionally, aboriginal populations in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Paraguay.

My point here is that 'black people' (again with the pedantics) are not the only group of people, as defined by skin colour, to be on the receiving end of genocide. Mankind, as a whole, has struggled throughout its' existence, regardless of skin colour. Your racial-centric views are damaging in a critical time in human history, when those seeking change need to readjust their focus from injustices imposed upon races to injustices imposed upon humanity.

[Field Marshal Ohan]

I gotta say what i'm reading there sounds like PC garbage I used to hear in college phillosophy and humanities. It's almost off-topic, because your getting into like this kind of 'racial tension' shit which we are kinda trying to say is a pretext to other motivations for slaughter, like primarily breathing-space... land and resources, free labour. Honestly is it so unbelievible to say that poor whites and poor blacks (or whatever example, in this racial context) have more in common then poor whites and rich whites, poor blacks and rich blacks...? It does come down to class-struggle in the sense that the ruling class use any tool to destabalize and destroy threats from below, and ally with the ruling classes of other societies in-order to do so (hench, generals die in bed).

Like I herd this black comic like 'I'm irish, on my masters side...' 6,000 Irish slaves were sent to Jamacia alone, and uncounted bound servants and concubines, people are just so ignorant on this subject... even I'm getting angry because I'm conditioned to be like proud of my race or origins, which i don't even really kno, to create divisions and barriers between other peoples.

But like I said, unless you want to get back to the evolution and crossing of the original tribes of man, indeginous peoples, whatever you wanna call it, we can't really discuss anything worth discussing. I don't believe man is like all evolved from the garden of eden or the horn of africa or any of that shit. A good example is the Jews, who have perserved thier bloodline for the longest, keeping thier tribe (semites, the tribe the sem or shem). And as there are lots of brilliant Jews, sucessful lawyers and doctors and what have you, there are also a lot of fucked up jews who are like basically the product of unintentional inbreeding and you can see these genetic traits (btw lots of semites are also considered Arabs, because they are not Jewish by religion, but they share the same characteristics).

You may think your doing humanity a favor by not recognizing this shit, but it's really counter-revolutionary. It's like a cowards stance. Like George Orwell said, 'humanitarians are inevitibly hypocrites'. But what does he know, i think he said that as a Britsh officer in colonial India.

-edit.... oh i c, that was teh response, i thought it was part of you blog

[Victor]

It's more of people being against forgeign culture than race, although they're both played out in the struggle.
I've seen so many people walk into a taqueria or convenient store all pissed off because the launguage and culture is dominantly spanish.
It's funny how offended people get that not everyone has conformed to their specific standards.
I think that eventually people will be sitting in restaurants trying to pronounce menu items sounding like idiots.
It's happened with Italian culture.

[Field Marshal Ohan]

Now we're talking but I gotta run : / ...but yeah like on that tower of babel shit, maybe we all spoke a common language once, I'm not disputing that, in fact I believe it's truth although many ideas and concepts we consider real today did not exist in it. Basically what I guess I can say before I leave is that race and nationality are fabricated concepts used to divide people. You don't have to believe we are all clones to get along, we can unite and stand on our common ground.

[KillJoy]

What I was saying before is based in what I've learnt in basic psych classes.
The mind has a lot to process, and there's a lot involved in recognizing people and such, so the mind has a tendency to automatically notice race before any other markers because it is such a clear thing.
It's not automatically making you a racist, but unfortunately, in some studies, it was shown that if randomly selected whites saw a older black man obviously dressed as a doctor, if they were later asked to describe the first person they saw, they'd usually say, "it was a black guy", instead of saying "it was the doctor".

But even if our mind sees the differences in colour shape and size, it's still up to the individual to make the choice as to how they are going to interpret what they see.  I see everyone as having the same basic potential, but many have been put in socially disadvantageous situations that are hard to rise up out of, and fall into bad patterns. 
So some will jump the gun and say, such and such a race are more often in prison, so therefore, they are inherently more prone to criminality.
And this couldn't be further from the truth.

I live in Canada, and there's a lot of racism concerning our Aboriginal population, people put their noses because many are below the poverty line, many have drastic addictions, and proportionately they commit the most crime.  But none of these people seem to consider that they had a whole way of life before that they are prevented from living.  We push this Capitilistic system on them, since it's apparently the best thing going, and we give them the short end of the stick, and have made them lose their culture in the process.

To me, I find racism is born out of seeing the disadvantage groups, and passing judgment on them for being in these situations, we fucked them up, and left them to fend for themselves.

[JC]

I am going to address the question posed in the topic. Yes I see race and yes sometimes I do stereotype. I would in no way consider myself hateful in the way that I think but sometimes racist thoughts enter my mind. I am working very hard on this though and it took having a very close black friend in my adulthood to see it clearly. I work for a construction company with my friend Jason, he's black. Jason and I have discussed many topics on race and while he raised some good points I was already aware of most of them. What being friends and caring about him made me open my eyes to was something I always saw but never really acknowledged. I was the subtle remarks that became clear because people were saying shit that would be offensive to my friend when he wasnt around. So now I call everone I hear make comments like that out. For myself I have to reprogram. I grew up on City Island in The Bronx NY. Its a small fishing island in the Long Island Sound and if you were black or hispanic and you were on "our" island you had better be eating dinner and leaving. There was alot of overt racism, my immediate family was not this way but the surrounding community was. So I was shaped in part by this community.

JC-

[atlien]

Godfather,

I encounter many whites like the one that commented on your blog.  It used to drive me up the wall.  And while even now, it's frustrating, I've learned to deal with it in a way that doesn't leave me exhausted and depressed. 

Race has no scientific basis.  On that, we should be clear.  The problem is the social constructions that have been put in place.  The real world implications of those constructions must be accounted for just as the real world implications of the constructions of 'God', who isn't real either, must be accounted for.

That said, the problem isn't 'race' per say.  The problem, and this is why it is so difficult for whites to get on board with the 'race' issue, the problem is white supremacy and white supremacist thinking.

Most whites, especially progressive whites, feel as if they are outside of this or don't engage in this.  But this shit is like the air we breathe.  Everyone is caught up in it.  But everyone's guilt and complicity in it is not equal. 

In a society dominated by whites that prides and self assesses itself as being enlightened and liberal, it is difficult to find an audience of respectable educated types that can even hear the term 'white supremacy' without conjuring ideas of neo-nazis or klansmen.  But they are only the propaganda tools set up to camoflauge the real thing, which is the stuff taught in high schoools, colleges, elementary schools, churches (how long have we known now that Jesus could not have looked European?).

The entire American framework of viewing the world is one of white supremacy.  That is the truth that cannot be said because it removes the convenient KKK bow-hell, it removes all the bow and all of the packaging whites like to keep racism isolated in.  Forget apple pie; racism and euro-centric thinking is what America is really all about.  Most everything else flows from that.

Constantly lying to itself ('we are a nation of immigrants') white America (not every individual but as a collective consciousness) is on a never-ending quest to convince itself and hopefully others that this country was birthed by something other than a genocide of the indigenous population.  We often lament the crime committed by the Germans against the Jews.  Why then, one must wonder, is it so difficult for us to admit that this very country, the land, government, the whole thing, is the result of the extermination of not 6 million, but of an entire people?

The birth of the United States was the death of an entire people.  Instead of lamenting it, we are taught it is something we should be proud of.  Proud of.  Think on that for a second.  The disease, the pathology of racism isn't a problem of the US, as much as anything else and more than most else, racism is what the United States is.  I know that may sound harsh but try to imagine a group of drunks that somehow felt proud of the fact that they had killed people driving home from the bar.  And no matter what you said or how many times you pointed out the peope who had died, they didn't repent but instead intensified their pride in the tragedy.  That insane delusion would be a microcosm of the American mind.  And of course the deluded mind doesn't see itself as such so I'm sure this all probably sounds ridiculous.  But of course.

Thanksgiving is coming up.  A day when white America congratulates itself for exterminating the population of this land.  Imagine the Germans having a holiday where they celebrated placing the Jews in ovens.

This may sound harsh to some but I'm only an amatuer.  Anyone that has read real US history knows this screed only scratches the surface.  America is a scalding hot cauldron of racism that has dealt death globally to millions but imagines itself as a history of benevolent humantarianism burdened with a few rare and unfortunate blights.  It then teaches this lie to each generation of American youth.

So if you don't see race or feel like non-whites make too big a deal about race, I can almost feel sorry for you.  I mean, a person born white in America really doesn't have much of a chance of turning out healthy (in regards to race) in a national consciousness that is light years away from anything resembling reality or sanity.

Cheers

[robone1]

fuck all the bullshit were all on this planet and  it it doesnt matter what your race is were all human  if you can agree with that then kill yourself.

[atlien]

Now that's some advice.

[UNPLUGGED]

If this isnt a racist world why is it that the school system continues to teach that the Greeks were the founders of philosphy, math, science etc.??  The greeks learned at the foot of the Egyptian high priest anhd these priest were notably Dark skinned.   To gove credit to the Egyptians is to give credit to the Black race and Africa.   A definite no-no in a racist world.   

Just my two cents.