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Racism in the USA will probably never go away. Agree/Disagree

Racism in the USA will probably never go away. Agree/Disagree


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Racism is obviously a bit more than merely "learned behavior." Racial genocide has been a fixture of human behavior long before the species Homo sapiens even emerged from the hominid line. At some point during the eternal regress which you are unwittingly suggesting, you will have to come to terms with the fact that racism is evidently rooted in survival instincts which were honed through eons of sociobiology and continue to whisper in our subconscious ear: "Be wary of the Other!"

Racism is not some generalized fear/instinctive mistrust of "other"-ness. It is a specific, historically and politically contingent set of practices based upon a narrow and very recent political fiction.
 
Racism is not some generalized fear/instinctive mistrust of "other"-ness.
Actually, that's a fairly accurate description__It's a primal instinct inherent to nearly all biological life.

It is a specific, historically and politically contingent set of practices based upon a narrow and very recent political fiction.
Racism has absolutely nothing to do with hate and everything to do with avoiding and defending against the dangers of the unknown.

It is a survival tool that predates politics by millions of years for which no amount of political correctness will expedite it's demise.
 
Actually, that's a fairly accurate description__It's a primal instinct inherent to nearly all biological life.

Racism has absolutely nothing to do with hate and everything to do with avoiding and defending against the dangers of the unknown.

It is a survival tool that predates politics by millions of years for which no amount of political correctness will expedite it's demise.


Fastfoward today..the time we live in btw....dont try to tell me racism isnt racially and ethnically motivated by hate
 
No it won't go away. Even if the more transparent displays like the KKK ceased to exist, even if Mississippi seceded, there will always be stupid ****s somewhere. What's more interesting to me is looking at hidden racism that we might not even be aware of. People at some level tend to prefer their own race, whether for socializing or just fantasizing. For instance, depictions of Jesus tend to coincide with whatever race put him there. In the US he's usually white; in African areas he's often black, never mind what he really would have looked like.

People also socialize with their same race disproportionately, even when they're forced into the same living space. At college it was very noticeable, even on a liberal, integrated campus, that people would hang out with their same race or nationality. When the college tried to pretend otherwise, like a Newsweek cover that had a white girl, an Asian and black kid together, that would very rarely happen. Does this reflect racism though? I dunno, on some level it seems to be, even if not intentionally. People decide subconsciously pretty damn quickly (think i've read .3 seconds) if they're going to like you or avoid you, and one of the first things they notice is race.
 
Fastfoward today..the time we live in btw....
I was talking about today and how it related to the history of our genetic evolution.

dont try to tell me racism isnt racially and ethnically motivated by hate
Too late, I already told ya that__sorry.
 
Like the song goes, I believe it's due to evolutionary conditioning that "everyone's a little bit racist". It's just that some people are assholes about it. I doubt that instinctual fear of people who look different from us will ever go away. Thankfully, most people to live in relative harmony with people of other races. Might lynching, committed by the aforementioned racist assholes, one day cease to exist? As the human race becomes more educated and intelligent, I think so.
 
Like the song goes, I believe it's due to evolutionary conditioning that "everyone's a little bit racist". It's just that some people are assholes about it. I doubt that instinctual fear of people who look different from us will ever go away. Thankfully, most people to live in relative harmony with people of other races.
I agree, but unfortunately there will always be a few "assholes" around to fan the flames of hate_

Those people whose racism is socially accepted, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpten, come to mind_

Might lynching, committed by the aforementioned racist assholes, one day cease to exist?
Yea, I know what ya mean BlaZa__"lynching" black folks is a really BIG problem in the 21st century_

It seems like everywhere ya look, ya see a brotha hangin from a tree__When will whitey ever learn?!

As the human race becomes more educated and intelligent, I think so.
We might be getting "more educated" but I believe the "intelligent" part may have stalled.
 
Racism is not some generalized fear/instinctive mistrust of "other"-ness. It is a specific, historically and politically contingent set of practices based upon a narrow and very recent political fiction.

You are about as wrong as you can possibly be.

Racism is obviously not specific, at least as far as race goes. History attests to that abundantly, and prehistory even more abundantly. For most of the history of the hominid line, political concepts were non-existent, yet by the time Homo sapiens emerged and finished off the Neanderthal, a whole baseball team of hominid species had come and gone, seemingly pushed into oblivion by the one which succeeded it.

As far as recorded human history is concerned, well, it can easily be read as one act of genocide after another, from Jericho to Kosovo, involving just about every race of people, in every corner of the globe, as both victim and victimizer, depending upon the time and place.

Pretending that things are not the way they are is of no help to anyone.
 
You are about as wrong as you can possibly be.

Racism is obviously not specific, at least as far as race goes.

That's funny, since the political fiction of "race" as we today know it is at most a few centuries old. It's rather difficult to have had racism as a universal backdrop to human existence when anatomically modern humanity is tens of thousands of years old, while "race" as a concept was practically born yesterday. People of course engaged in a wide range of atrocities based upon superstitions and misinformation (both by complicity and by deliberate planning) for far longer than that, but "race" mythology-- and actions based upon it-- is a very recent development.

History attests to that abundantly,

Oh really? Care to cough up examples of a *specifically racist* case of xenophobia or rationalization of atrocity that's more than a few centuries old? It's easy to find ancient cases of nationalism/statism, classism, religious persecution, factional in-fighting, etc., but not "race" mythology or its implementation through treating "race" as real.

and prehistory even more abundantly. For most of the history of the hominid line, political concepts were non-existent, yet by the time Homo sapiens emerged and finished off the Neanderthal, a whole baseball team of hominid species had come and gone, seemingly pushed into oblivion by the one which succeeded it.

Kindly explain how you alone have managed to produce evidence of the political fictions of prehistoric humans when by definition they left no records?!?

As far as recorded human history is concerned, well, it can easily be read as one act of genocide after another, from Jericho to Kosovo, involving just about every race of people, in every corner of the globe, as both victim and victimizer, depending upon the time and place.

Complete nonsense. Mass atrocity is NOT evenly distributed across human societies. Successful aggressive imperialists, however, are disproportionately represented in the prevailing narratives of history ("winners" write the history books), and so aggressive imperialism is falsely normalized (when in fact most people, most of the time, recoil from committing mass atrocities themselves...but they are all but ignored by the dominant historical narrative).

In addition to being false, it's also irrelevant. Genocide includes attempts to destroy the capacity of a people to live and exist as a people. While it does certainly INCLUDE attempts at racist extermination, many acts of genocide, historically, have not been framed in racist terms.
 
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