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Is the following statement racist?

Is the following statement racist?


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pbrauer

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"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."
 
Depends on who said if you ask some posters around here. I on the other hand think it was pretty damn racist.
 
"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."
Hmm...

Well whoever it is is assuming "we" define terrorists as "muslims/arabs/whatever, basically people with brown skin of one shade or another from the ME/Africa regions."


Which would not be an accurate definition, obviously.

And whoever that person is, they are obviously making the same faulty assumptions.

I'm not sure "racist" applies...but perhaps "predisposed to assume people from the ME/Africa are bad guys"?

Borderline, at least.
 
It's not racist at all. The fact is, statistically, the majority of modern terrorists are Middle Eastern Muslims. They don't have to be, they simply are. When someone shows up yelling "Allahu Akbar", it doesn't matter what accent they have, it's a pretty safe bet what group they're from.
 
"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."
I honestly have no Idea what the statement even means.... it sounds like a gaff.



Is he saying that he is wonder whether these guys were typical terrorist arabs or not? Like if they were just crazies that came from elsewhere or ones that came from there?

I don't know what the person is trying to say here
 
"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."

How can that not be racist? Naturally, a racist would think "bad guys" look bad based on their skin color.
 
How can that not be racist? Naturally, a racist would think "bad guys" look bad based on their skin color.
"typical" bad guys eases that a little.

What was he trying to say? Obviously at first glance it sounds racist... but what if it was just badly executed language.
 
"typical" bad guys eases that a little.

What was he trying to say? Obviously at first glance it sounds racist... but what if it was just badly executed language.

Armed and masked was the only "bad guy" clue needed - accent and skin color should not tip the scales in either direction. ;)

EDIT: Waiting for the duck hunter or SWAT team exclusion to pop up.
 
can't say without context
 
The statement clearly means how can we know if they are bad if we can't see their skin color/they don't have the skin color of a typical bad guy. Yikes.

The only thing I can say is that if you asked me to ad lib on TV, I'd probably stick my foot in my mouth more often than they do.
 
Well, the statement associates skin color, with being "bad". How anyone can say that isn't racist is beyond me but, I'm sure we'll see some people do just that in a few posts.
 
Racism_rules.jpg

a) No

b) No

c) No

d) She was talking about the Muslim terrorists (the "bad guys") from the attack in France and as we all know, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslim terrorists in world are of middle eastern descent. So the answer is No.

e) No
 
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d) She was talking about the Muslim terrorists (the "bad guys") from the attack in France and as we all know, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslims terrorists in world are of middle eastern descent. So the answer is No.

Interesting claim. Just for reference, I'm going to name a few countries. Can you tell us whether they're in the Middle East or not?

Afghanistan
Pakistan
Nigeria
Somalia
India
Philippines
Thailand

Here, I'll make it easy for you:

List of Middle East countries by population - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Next, can you add these numbers? 17.3, 13.1, 10.2, 2.3, 2.2, 1.6, 1.1

Finally, can you tell the thread what you mean by overwhelming majority? Percentage wise. Is it like 90% of these terrorists, or 60% or 70%?
 
Interesting claim. Just for reference, I'm going to name a few countries. Can you tell us whether they're in the Middle East or not?

Afghanistan
Pakistan
Nigeria
Somalia
India
Philippines
Thailand

Here, I'll make it easy for you:

List of Middle East countries by population - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Next, can you add these numbers? 17.3, 13.1, 10.2, 2.3, 2.2, 1.6, 1.1

Finally, can you tell the thread what you mean by overwhelming majority? Percentage wise. Is it like 90% of these terrorists, or 60% or 70%?

Sorry, I'm not going to play your game... If you think her words were dripping with hatred, she called an entire race of people terrorists, or indicated that an entire race of people were violent or inferior, then please point this out to everyone. I watched the clip, and I saw nothing of the sort.

Let me just post this link for you.


.
 
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"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."

Racist? Not on the face of it but pretty dumb. I mean, considering that Caucasians came from the Caucasus...

The Caucasus Emirate: Genealogy of an Islamist Insurgency | Middle East Policy Council

and considering Muslims among Bosnians, Serbs and homegrown whackjobs.
 
Sorry, I'm not going to play your game... If you think her words were dripping with hatred, she called an entire race of people terrorists, or indicated that an entire race of people were violent or inferior, then please point this out to everyone. I watched the clip, and I saw nothing of the sort.

Let me just post this link for you.


.

So you won't? I wonder why. There is no game to be played. The answers contradict your silly claim. :) Let's start with the first answer: None of those countries are in the Middle East. Can you guess what the second answer is?
 
So you won't? I wonder why. There is no game to be played. The answers contradict your silly claim. :) Let's start with the first answer: None of those countries are in the Middle East. Can you guess what the second answer is?

I notice you couldn't find any of those characteristics that define racism in anything she said... That's because they aren't there.
 
I notice you couldn't find any of those characteristics that define racism in anything she said... That's because they aren't there.

Grim17, you can acrobat around the thread with you dictionary definitions, but this really is a clear cut case of someone associating race with intent/type of person. A certain skin color = bad guys. A certain skin color = good guys. What color were the Muslims who killed those people at Charlie Hebdo by the way?
 
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Grim17, you can acrobat around the thread with you dictionary definitions, but this really is a clear cut case of someone associating race with intent/type of person. A certain skin color = bad guys.

a) The "Bad guys" she referred to were specifically the Muslim terrorist who murdered all those people in France, not all criminals.

b) The overwhelming majority of Muslim terrorists possess physical features that differ from those of European descent, including a darker skin color.

c) The dictionary is what defines words in the English language, whether it fits your agenda or not. What defines "racism", and always has defined racism, are a set of specific characteristics including hatred of a person or persons based on their race, a belief that different races are inherently inferior or superior to others, and discriminating or treating people differently than others based upon their race. Neither a person or a statement can be labeled "racist" without at least one of those characteristics being present.



When people like yourself label a person or their words "racist", you do so with the specific intention of designating it, or them, as possessing the very same racial hatred and/or intolerance as described in that dictionary definition. You label that person or their words as being based on racial hatred.

What I want to know is how you or anyone else in good conscience can label someone with that dictionary definition of racial hatred and intolerance, when nothing they have said or done even matches the definition to begin with?

If I'm in a room full of predominantly black people, and they talk about the KKK, slavery or the fact that nearly all of America's serial killers are white, I would probably feel pretty uncomfortable and who knows, maybe even somewhat offended... but unless their words were based on hatred of white people, or an attempt to condemn all white people as killers and oppressors, I would not slap the "racist" label on those people or their words. Just because the stating of certain facts publicly can be racially uncomfortable to some, doesn't make them, or their words racist.

That doesn't mean in this case, that what she said was perfectly acceptable. I think her words were poorly chosen and what you would call "racially insensitive". I bet she wished she could have taken them back the second she said them. Either way, what she said had nothing to do with hatred or intolerance, therefore simply wasn't racist


A certain skin color = good guys. What color were the Muslims who killed those people at Charlie Hebdo by the way?

She never said that... Like the truth makes any difference to you...
 
a) The "Bad guys" she referred to were specifically the Muslim terrorist who murdered all those people in France, not all criminals.[

b) The overwhelming majority of Muslim terrorists possess physical features that differ from those of European descent, including a darker skin color.

c) The dictionary is what defines words in the English language, whether it fits your agenda or not. What defines "racism", and always has defined racism, are a set of specific characteristics including hatred of a person or persons based on their race, a belief that different races are inherently inferior or superior to others, and discriminating or treating people differently than others based upon their race. Neither a person or a statement can be labeled "racist" without at least one of those characteristics being present.

When people like yourself label a person or their words "racist", you do so with the specific intention of designating it, or them, as possessing the very same racial hatred and/or intolerance as described in that dictionary definition. You label that person or their words as being based on racial hatred.

What I want to know is how you or anyone else in good conscience can label someone with that dictionary definition of racial hatred and intolerance, when nothing they have said or done even matches the definition to begin with?

If I'm in a room full of predominantly black people, and they talk about the KKK, slavery or the fact that nearly all of America's serial killers are white, I would probably feel pretty uncomfortable and who knows, maybe even somewhat offended... but unless their words were based on hatred of white people, or an attempt to condemn all white people as killers and oppressors, I would not slap the "racist" label on those people or their words. Just because the stating of certain facts publicly can be racially uncomfortable to some, doesn't make them, or their words racist.

That doesn't mean in this case, that what she said was perfectly acceptable. I think her words were poorly chosen and what you would call "racially insensitive". I bet she wished she could have taken them back the second she said them. Either way, what she said had nothing to do with hatred or intolerance, therefore simply wasn't racist


She never said that... Like the truth makes any difference to you...

All that diatribe and you can't answer a simple question: Can you or can't you tell whether someone is a bad guy by their skin color? Answer whenever you want Grim17.
 
All that diatribe and you can't answer a simple question: Can you or can't you tell whether someone is a bad guy by their skin color? Answer whenever you want Grim17.

OK... Your question is, Can you tell if a person is a Muslim terrorist by the color of their skin?

The answer is "No", but that isn't what she said, nor what she was implying. She was replying to what Kennedy said about how Muslim terrorists don't always look like Muslim terrorists. She was making the point that the 2 Muslim terrorists in France wouldn't have fit the typical profile of a Muslim terrorist even if police had interacted with or saw them, because they spoke unaccented French (no Arab accent) and were wearing ski masks so it was impossible to determine if they were of Arab descent.

Now how about you address my question:

When people like yourself label a person or their words "racist", you do so with the specific intention of designating it, or them, as possessing the very same racial hatred and/or intolerance as described in that dictionary definition. You label that person or their words as being based on racial hatred.

What I want to know is how you or anyone else in good conscience can label someone with that dictionary definition of racial hatred and intolerance, when nothing they have said or done even matches the definition to begin with?
 
OK... Your question is

No. Can you or can't you tell whether someone is a bad guy by their skin color?Yes or no answer.

The answer is "No"

Good. Why not?

By the way, this is what the Paris terrorists looked like:

Charlie-Hebdo-terrorists-jpg.jpg


1 was a black man, the woman could pass for a regular French woman, and the men in question to the far left of the screen look like your average Latin American baseball players. So again, do you believe she would have been able to tell who the bad guys were simply by their skin color?

but that isn't what she said

Nobody claimed she said what you think I asked. She implied that skin color and being a bad guy were related. Do you believe that to be true in this case? How Middle Eastern does the black fellow look? How Middle Eastern does the white lady look? Get serious Grim17, dictionary definitions are for people who fall for that stuff. This is DebatePolitics, we have higher standards for arguments.
 
No. Can you or can't you tell whether someone is a bad guy by their skin color?Yes or no answer.



Good. Why not?

Since the answer is obvious, I won't dignify it with an answer.

By the way, this is what the Paris terrorists looked like:

Charlie-Hebdo-terrorists-jpg.jpg

Nobody said that all Muslim terrorists are of Arab descent, or that all people of Arab descent are Muslim terrorists, so that changes nothing. The fact remains however, that the overwhelming majority of Muslim terrorists are of Arab descent.

1 was a black man, the woman could pass for a regular French woman, and the men in question to the far left of the screen look like your average Latin American baseball players. So again, do you believe she would have been able to tell who the bad guys were simply by their skin color?

Already answered.


Nobody claimed she said what you think I asked. She implied that skin color and being a bad guy were related. Do you believe that to be true in this case? How Middle Eastern does the black fellow look? How Middle Eastern does the white lady look? Get serious Grim17, dictionary definitions are for people who fall for that stuff. This is DebatePolitics, we have higher standards for arguments.

The phrase "Bad guy" was the entire panels reference to "Muslim terrorists"... Just listen to the damned clip and stop pretending that she meant something she didn't. Here's the quote again:

"That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups."


I have answered your questions, so why is it that you have yet to answer mine?
 
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