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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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I never claimed it was only the poor who hate.

The poster I was replying to claimed it was the rich who are hate the poor, the poor who have done no wrong.

Im sorry, but ignoring the poor, vs. hanging effigies of the rich.

I'd say hanging shows more hate than ignoring.

The poster that you responded to said no such thing.
 
That is exactly what I suspect to be the case. I don't think racism is so much taught as it is "unlearned" through experience and teaching. It's not just race, but anything that we see as a difference between ourselves and *others*. I can remember when I was a small child, being afraid of the first black person I recall seeing. My mother had to teach me that the difference was in skin color, and that we are all the same on the inside. I was about three years old at the time. Unfortunately, some kids don't have parents who will teach them these things, so the fearful behavior is allowed to grow into hatred.

I can't think of anyone whom I hate. There are people that I don't want to hang out with, because they are jerks, but hatred is something that I would reserve only for someone who tried to harm me or mine personally.

Most racism is based much less upon hatred than upon fear. Indeed, what is hatred if not a psychic concoction of fear and aggression?

Throughout human history, nearly all instances of popularized racism were originally based upon territorial fears. For example, the KKK drew is rank and file members from poor southern whites who feared being politically and economically displaced by the newly free blacks. The Nazis capitalized upon "Aryan" German fears of being usurped in their own land by an increasingly successful class of German Jews, many of whom were outwardly (and in some cases genetically) indistinguishable from other Germans and could only be identified as Jewish by their birth records. So you see, racism goes beyond mere appearance of race and entails any characteristic which can be labeled or perceived as "different" or "other."
 
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As long as people define themselves and others by their race instead of merely it being a description there will be racism.
 
Eliminating racism isn't about eliminating hate. You'll never eliminate hate, and you shouldn't want to-- hate serves a purpose. It's a good thing.

Eliminating racism is about eliminating race as a standard of assigning human beings into categories. To that end, I would propose first that we eliminate all laws, projects, and programmes that make reference to race,

REFERRING to the political fiction known as "race" isn't a problem...rather, the problem (legally speaking) are those laws which treat "race" as if it were real.

Which is -- contrary to the insistence of some folks WHO JUST DON'T GET IT AND AREN'T TRYING TO -- not the same thing as acknowledging that racISM is real.

and then on a cultural level run a grassroots campaign of voluntary free-spirited reproductive integration.

Bulworth's plan (which you're referring to here), while fun, misses the point. People having a whole lot more so-called "mixed" children is not a solution, because "race" isn't based in biology in the first place.

But your core point is central to any possible solution...racISM, at its heart, is about treating the fiction of "race" as if it were real.
 
Of course it will go away. Genetics and interracial marriage will solve the racism problem in the end.

No, it won't be solved through "interracial" marriage, because "race" isn't genetic in the first place. "Race" mythology points to real phenotype, but posits a completely fictional cause for those phenotypic traits ("race" mythology posits that casually imagined social definitions of different "races" correspond to some ACTUAL difference in genetic material, with matching INTERNAL/hidden traits).

When the world has become as "small" as it has then it is inevitable that everyone become the same color/race.

Biologically we were never different "races" to begin with and still aren't. Insistence to the contrary is the essence of racism.

If we succeed in defeating racism, it will be through defeating its core mythology -- the notion that "race" is a biological -- rather than socially constructed -- phenomenon.
 
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Unfortunately, racism (or should I say territorialism) was tattooed upon the human soul long before the advent of conventional moral precepts and modern social ideologies. 500,000 years ago (and so much more), when technology was very crude and natural resources seemingly scarce and thus violently and vehemently pursued and defended, there was enormous survival value in making very rapid cognitive distinctions between those who are of your clan and those who are not. Those who in anyway appeared different than one's own kind were to be feared and defended against possible encroachment. This was the genesis of what we now deem "racism" and it remains with us to this very day, and will continue to haunt us for as long as we are human in any contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.

Racism is NOT territorialism, nor is racism just a general instinctive suspicion of outsiders. Racism is a specific, historically contingent ideology of political manufacture. It makes as little sense to claim that racism is some inescapable human fate (because of our well-documented tendency to form in- and out-groups) as it is to claim that speaking North American English is an inescapable human fate (because of our capacity to speak and develop languages).

Is the general instinct to form socially defined groups and bear some suspicion of outsiders rooted in human biology? Yes. Is racism, specifically, rooted in our biology? Absolutely not.
 
Racism is NOT territorialism, nor is racism just a general instinctive suspicion of outsiders. Racism is a specific, historically contingent ideology of political manufacture.

Racism is territorialism in disguise. It is "historically contingent" only in the capacity of a pre-existing historical context of territorialism. It is "politically manufactured" for the very purpose of guarding one group's access to natural resources from the encroachment of another group.

Is the general instinct to form socially defined groups and bear some suspicion of outsiders rooted in human biology? Yes. Is racism, specifically, rooted in our biology? Absolutely not.

Actually, the instinct is rooted in sociobiology and likely precedes the advent of hominids by eons of evolutionary epochs. Is racism specifically rooted in our biology? Since "race" is more a matter of perception and social context than a fixed biological reality, obviously no.

Nevertheless, it is what it is (as much as I hate using that expression) and the effect is still the same.
 
Racism in the USA will probably never go away. Agree/Disagree
Disagree completely. Although I am a cynic in terms of how I feel about human actuality, I am very optimistic about human potential. To me, racism is just another problem and problems have solutions. Moreover, it's solution often just mere experience and education which increases everyday. I think it will go away. It's just a matter of time.
 
Disagree completely. Although I am a cynic in terms of how I feel about human actuality, I am very optimistic about human potential. To me, racism is just another problem and problems have solutions. Moreover, it's solution often just mere experience and education which increases everyday. I think it will go away. It's just a matter of time.

I think you are mostly correct in your assessment. If correctly understood for what it is, and correctly taught as such, racism can be minimized to a highly successful degree in so an enlightened society. However, the society that uses "racism" as a cheap political device is doomed to suffer the consequences of continued and bitter racism amongst its people.

Presently, it is still being taught throughout academia, and continued via the idiosyncratic mores of various minority groups, that racism is merely a matter of power wherein one race exerts its political and economic power over other races simply because it can. Thus, the concept of racism is relegated to merely a political and economic construct with no comprehension of its universal sociobiological roots.

This philosophy is not only incorrect, but it is downright toxic, for it suggests, subliminally, that anyone who can identify as a "minority" is automatically exempt from accusations of racism, regardless of their attitude or behavior. Indeed, such folks abide such instincts with little or no internal mechanism for checking their own racist attitudes and motivations, sensing that they are entitled to act upon such instincts to a degree of license and abandon which people of other races are not so socially entitled, regardless of their socioeconomic station in life, even if it be one considerably less advantaged.
 
Sadly I had to vote agree...but I have HOPE..its alot better than it was 50 yrs ago when I was a kid...hopefully in 50 more it will be that much better...
 
Racism is NOT territorialism, nor is racism just a general instinctive suspicion of outsiders. Racism is a specific, historically contingent ideology of political manufacture. It makes as little sense to claim that racism is some inescapable human fate (because of our well-documented tendency to form in- and out-groups) as it is to claim that speaking North American English is an inescapable human fate (because of our capacity to speak and develop languages).

Is the general instinct to form socially defined groups and bear some suspicion of outsiders rooted in human biology? Yes. Is racism, specifically, rooted in our biology? Absolutely not.

Keep misidentifying the problem, you will never solve it.

"biologically" we are programmed to look for facial patterns in even the most random settings

Cydonia (region of Mars) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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What characteristics define caucasian from asian or african? Nobody ever says, "Well their fingers look different."
 
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Disagree completely. Although I am a cynic in terms of how I feel about human actuality, I am very optimistic about human potential. To me, racism is just another problem and problems have solutions. Moreover, it's solution often just mere experience and education which increases everyday. I think it will go away. It's just a matter of time.
I am also optimistic that "racism" will eventually correct itself through the process of exposure and communication which allows fear, suspicion and mistrust to slowly work itself out over time.

This natural process is taking longer than it normally would because communication, which allows people to openly express their fears and concerns, has been restricted by Political Correctness.

White people who voice their fears of blacks because of crime statistics or publicly question a need for the government sanctioned/socially accepted racism of Affirmative Action are attacked as being racists.

For this reason it is quite obvious that the liberal policy of Political Correctness is a major factor in extending the racial healing process of the American melting pot and is keeping us divided as a nation.

Regardless of the problem, stifling communication is detrimental to problem solving__This is so amazingly obvious that it makes one wonder if the stifling was intentional???
 
I'm an optimist.

We just have to sterilize racists and homophobes--that will speed things up.... maybe two generations.
 
Entirely, no. Human's are a socially grouping species which inherently seeks to find ways to justify their group typically at the expense of others. Liberals and Conservatives, Redskin fans and Cowboy Fans, Coke vs Pepsi, Ford vs Chevy, College Football vs NFL, Geeks vs Jocks, Stoners vs Cops, Northerners and Southerners, American and Foreigners, Europeans and Yankees, Christians vs Muslims, Managers vs Employees, Your business vs your Competitor, Mac vs Windows, iPhone vs Android, and on and on and on....

It's a base thing in human nature that will never entirely be wiped out.


Well said :applaud
 
The question posed is way too general. Racism will always be with us to some degree because of culture and politics. Our society redefines racism contiually so that it will not loose its power. You also cannot cure ignorance. Isolated, uneducated, fearful and clanish people will always exist. We have every racial group imagineable in the U.S and new people coming every day who bring their prejudice with them. If we eliminate as much of the politics of the issue as we can, we can reduce it to the greatest extent possible. It is fantasy to imagine it ever being zero. That expectation is also politics.
 
White people who voice their fears of blacks because of crime statistics or publicly question a need for the government sanctioned/socially accepted racism of Affirmative Action are attacked as being racists.

oops there it is.

She started off sensible, like she had had an epiphany of some sort, then the tone of bigotry and ignorance rears its ugly head.
 
oops there it is.

She started off sensible, like she had had an epiphany of some sort, then the tone of bigotry and ignorance rears its ugly head.
I rest my case_
 
Racism is a learned behavior either taught (by example) by the important adults in our life as kids, or it develops as a core belief as a result of circumstances that involve whatever race a person ends up hating. Neither of which is okay in my opinion.

I believe there are racists in all political parties, however, some parties are 'concentrated'. For example, the Tea Party.
 
I rest my case_

Sorry, I already rested it.

You started off sounding intelligent...

White people who voice their fears of blacks because of crime statistics

That statement is pure ignorance and people who believe it should be exposed and shamed.

I am also optimistic that "racism" will eventually correct itself through the process of exposure and communication which allows fear, suspicion and mistrust to slowly work itself out over time.

But then drove right off the cliff with...
 
This is my 2 cents worth. One nation, one people exists only in a homogenous society.
 
Entirely, no. Human's are a socially grouping species which inherently seeks to find ways to justify their group typically at the expense of others. Liberals and Conservatives, Redskin fans and Cowboy Fans, Coke vs Pepsi, Ford vs Chevy, College Football vs NFL, Geeks vs Jocks, Stoners vs Cops, Northerners and Southerners, American and Foreigners, Europeans and Yankees, Christians vs Muslims, Managers vs Employees, Your business vs your Competitor, Mac vs Windows, iPhone vs Android, and on and on and on....

It's a base thing in human nature that will never entirely be wiped out.
So far you have provided the simplest most sensible summation to something that many Americans have long considered a problem, but in reality may be nothing more than human nature.

Perhaps the best course of action would be to just allow each of us to find our own comfort zone and ask only that we be polite to one another until group mentality is no longer our human nature.

An easy way for people to peaceably coexist is to simply have no societal expectations or requirements of one another other than common courtesy which should eliminate bitterness and hostility.

Forcing our personal beliefs, racial solutions and political correctness on each other has thus far failed miserably__While these things do work for some, they only serve to drive others further apart.
 
You cannot remove hate if you remove hate you remove love same is with matter and anti-matter that is how world works.
Hum. I've seen racism without hate. It's a very insidious form. And, I've observed love without hate in a few I have known very well. I'm sorry about your observations.
 
Racism is a learned behavior either taught (by example) by the important adults in our life as kids, or it develops as a core belief as a result of circumstances that involve whatever race a person ends up hating. Neither of which is okay in my opinion.

I believe there are racists in all political parties, however, some parties are 'concentrated'. For example, the Tea Party.

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!"
 
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