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A Georgia networking event wants to help white people 'Come Meet a Black Person'

TheGoverness said:
I've got plenty of non-white friends. My girlfriend is Hispanic.

I'm good in the diversity department.
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I'm never sure which side I'm on. If I'd go there, where would they put me?
 
TheGoverness said:
No, I've never done that. Because I really don't care about what race my friends are.
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There's only one race, the human one.

This is one of my favorite songs in the world. I was rockin' it hard on my way home the other night, singing at the top of my lungs, lol.

 
ecofarm said:
You don't believe forcing a derogatory name on a small group of people serves to marginalize them?

You think calling gays 'faggots' is not a problem? If I decide to call lesbians 'dikes', that's fine? If everyone does that, there's no problem?
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....What the hell?

Take a chill pill, dude. I was joking around.
 
Lutherf said:
I figured my answer covered your question. I don't consider racial diversity to be the least bit important in picking friends.
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Still unable to answer?

Do you think it's a worthwhile goal at all to see that peoples social circles are more diverse?

It's a very simple yes/no answer.
 
roughdraft274 said:
Still unable to answer?

Do you think it's a worthwhile goal at all to see that peoples social circles are more diverse?

It's a very simple yes/no answer.
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You're talking about racially diverse, not diverse in general, and with regard to whether I think it's a worthwhile goal for someone to expand their social circle based on race I do not.


NO


As I've said time and again, if you're picking the people you associate with because of their race, and that includes trying to expand your social circle because you don't have enough black friends, you just might be a racist.
 
Lutherf said:
A Georgia networking event wants to help white people 'Come Meet a Black Person' - CNN

https://www.facebook.com/events/166061020654788/?active_tab=about



Alright.

I'm not going to dispute the statistics. Based on my experience they're probably accurate. I also figure that the organizer's goal is to encourage interaction. That's fine.

However

Why do this as a "Meet a Black person" event? Why make it all about race? Can't you do the same thing with a "Help clean up the park" event? What the hell am I supposed to do at an event like this? Do I pay my $15 and get to ask the black person if he or she really likes fried chicken and basketball? If I cough up another $5 can I touch their hair? What the hell is the point of this!!??

Seriously, if you want people to get together and talk about stuff that matters then build your event around something that matters. This is......I really don't know what it is.
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I have seen a lot of "Meet a Muslim" events recently. It's community out reach, and sometimes the mosque I go to has interfaith meetings. I have never been to one, but I have seen the setups. It's mostly to help each other understand the beliefs of others. I think it's actually a good thing, because some of the immigrants and Americans are confused about each other.
 
Lutherf said:
You're talking about racially diverse, not diverse in general, and with regard to whether I think it's a worthwhile goal for someone to expand their social circle based on race I do not.


NO


As I've said time and again, if you're picking the people you associate with because of their race, and that includes trying to expand your social circle because you don't have enough black friends, you just might be a racist.
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White dood: "Hey, you wanna be friends?"

White dood #2: "Sorry pal, but my white friend quota is already filled up. If you know any marginalized peoples willing to be friends with me, please let me know."
 
Someone trying to do something positive to bridge racial divides?
Ridicule it, laugh, and wonder why it mentions race?

We need to have a "meet ignorant white people" meetup. You can ask them questions and listen to their irrational responses to everything.

One event will be kind of like bingo, you'll get a card with the recent week Fox news talking points (same ones that go to the White House), and check off the things they say.
If you fill your card with checks, BINGO!

The overall goal of the meetup will be to *INCREASE* the divide between the curious onlookers, and the ignorant white folk. If you leave angry and enraged, it will be deemed a success.
 
Lutherf said:
A Georgia networking event wants to help white people 'Come Meet a Black Person' - CNN

https://www.facebook.com/events/166061020654788/?active_tab=about



Alright.

I'm not going to dispute the statistics. Based on my experience they're probably accurate. I also figure that the organizer's goal is to encourage interaction. That's fine.

However

Why do this as a "Meet a Black person" event? Why make it all about race? Can't you do the same thing with a "Help clean up the park" event? What the hell am I supposed to do at an event like this? Do I pay my $15 and get to ask the black person if he or she really likes fried chicken and basketball? If I cough up another $5 can I touch their hair? What the hell is the point of this!!??

Seriously, if you want people to get together and talk about stuff that matters then build your event around something that matters. This is......I really don't know what it is.
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You ask a good question.

I read a book a few years ago that I think is relevant to your question. It's written by the late Richard Rorty, professor emeritus of philosophy and humanities at Stanford, and former chair of the American Philosophical Association. It's a bit of a heavy reading, and it probably would help to have a bit of background in intellectual history before reading it, because he makes a lot of references to thinkers from Plato to Heidegger. But even without it, I think reading it is interesting and you can still get some takeaway points from it.

https://www.amazon.com/Contingency-Irony-Solidarity-Richard-Rorty/dp/0521367816

In this book, he says that philosophers have been arguing the question of "why not be cruel if it helps advance my personal interests and agendas?" for at least over 2500 years now. And after all that arguing they still have not come up with a good answer. After all, there is nothing illogical about a psychopath who steps on and destroys others to get ahead, gain positions of power and prestige. Many, actually, do quite well BECAUSE of that: lawyers, CEOs, accountants, politicians, conquerors throughout history, etc.... You can't logic chop or rationalize or philosophize them into getting them to stop. If you try to rationalize it by telling them " you can't do this because it hurts others" or "it's not fair", you might get a puzzled look at best as if you are not staying on topic, and perhaps even an outright smile or laughter. How is that even a reason to stop? Many psychopaths, after all, are extremely and coldly logical and calculating, and it is exactly because of that that they calculate that hurting and using others will help them get ahead.

This is a great book on the same topic, from a psychologist's perspective:
https://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Ne...55892&sr=1-1&keywords=the+sociopath+next+door

So, Rorty asks, what is it that's lacking in psychopaths, if not rationality? It is emotions, he answers. Studies have actually shown that these folks have deficiencies in the parts of their brain associated with feelings of empathy, of looking at the pain and fear in someone's face and and not caring (specifically, neuroscientists have narrowed this down to the limbic system part of the brain- the part associated with some visceral emotions like disgust and revulsion). That is why it is so easy for them to look at that kind of fear in someone's face, to look them right in the eye, and fire that bullet into their face anyway, with no feelings of remorse or trepidation. This is a neurologic deficiency in the same way that, for example, dyslexics have trouble in parts of their brain associated with reading print.

So how do you get people to stop hurting others, if it's not just a purely rational argument? Well, if they are not psychopaths, Rorty says, you have to be able to appeal to emotions. What emotions? Well, it turns out that we have feelings of tribalism, a sense of looking at someone and saying "he is one of us", rather than "he is an other". One is dehumanizing, and decouples the feelings of protection, of solidarity, that come when we see someone. When those feelings are activated, we protect them, we are interested in their welfare, we are interested in even going out of our way to help them. We don't want to see them hurt or left behind.

(cont'd on next post)
 
(cont'd from previous post)


But, on the other hand, if we don't have that feeling, we just don't care. The empathy centers are not activated. That is why, for example, when dictators or tyrants are interested in destroying an ethnic or religious group, they start dehumanizing them: "They are just animals", "they are just cockroaches", etc...." This was the pattern in many genocides from Hitler's extermination of the Jews to the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia among various ethnic groups to the recent massacres between the Hutus and Tutsis in Africa. That sort of "othering" of other people works because it deactivates those empathy and solidarity emotions in non-psychopaths and frees them to do things to those groups that their emotions might otherwise inhibit them from doing. If these "others" are not like us, then surely they don't feel emotions like us, they don't feel pain like us, they don't feel love like us, they don't feel despair and humiliation like us, they don't have hopes and ambitions like us, etc... then surely they are just sort of like dumb animals that can be used or exterminated as fits our most current needs and perceived interests.

So how do you reverse this kind of thinking? Rorty says that this comes through association, through friendships, through reading, watching movies and documentaries, etc... Once you get to know people more, that sense of "otherness" goes away and is replaced by a sense of "wow, this person is more like me than I thought". It's no surprise, for example, that the parts of the country where Trump's message against "others" like Muslims and Latinos reverberated the most were those places that had least exposure to these ethnic and religious groups. In the large cosmopolitan cities, people know more of these "others", and are more likely to know them as friends, neighbors, coworkers, friends of their kid at elementary school, etc... It's much harder to feel such a feeling of "otherness" and alienation when you get to know people better like that.

So that's why I think this idea of "meet a black person" may not be a bad idea. We need to break down walls and barriers between people. This doesn't come through logic and rationality. It just comes through starting to see these other people as "just one of us", "he's also a fellow American", "fellow human", etc...
 
SheWolf said:
I have seen a lot of "Meet a Muslim" events recently. It's community out reach, and sometimes the mosque I go to has interfaith meetings. I have never been to one, but I have seen the setups. It's mostly to help each other understand the beliefs of others. I think it's actually a good thing, because some of the immigrants and Americans are confused about each other.
Click to expand...

Do blacks have a different belief system than other people?

Churches regularly hold various events to introduce people to their beliefs and expand their congregations. The focus there is religion, not race. It's about an idea, not skin color.
 
ataraxia said:
In this book, he says that philosophers have been arguing the question of "why not be cruel if it helps advance my personal interests and agendas?"
Click to expand...
I like how the game theory addition to that argument.
It's quite something to see the possibility that virtues are virtues not because it "feels" right for a portion of the population, but because once you set up the criteria for what the goals are, over a population that has a memory and a long life of interaction, virtues result in superior outcomes...mathematically.

For the one person that betrays and wins a hand for short-term gain, as long as we identify the betrayer, their tactic will reduce their chances of long term success.
 
Lutherf said:
Do blacks have a different belief system than other people? Churches regularly hold various events to introduce people to their beliefs and expand their congregations. The focus there is religion, not race. It's about an idea, not skin color.
Click to expand...
This isn't a church, why would you compare the two? It makes no sense.

They listed the statics, let's just say 90% of whites don't have blacks as friends, and 90% of blacks don't have whites as friends. <- that's a racial disparity.
We have a racial divide in the nation, and a long history of black vs white. <- that's a racial disparity.
So they decided this is the problem the want to explore solutions to, hence, a meet-up that is based on...wait for it...race.

It's like you have a class full of kids that cannot read. So you have a get-thereto where you learn how to read.
And then you question why it's "all about reading" and not about art and science? It's nonsensical.

It seems petty and Steve Bannon-ish to be griping about racial differences being irrelevant, while essentially making an entire post to ridicule an event intended to be a positive race-meeting event.

But then, who else would ridicule a positive networking event that tries to get two disparate racial groups together to get to know one another better?
 
ataraxia said:
You ask a good question.

I read a book a few years ago that I think is relevant to your question. It's written by the late Richard Rorty, professor emeritus of philosophy and humanities at Stanford, and former chair of the American Philosophical Association. It's a bit of a heavy reading, and it probably would help to have a bit of background in intellectual history before reading it, because he makes a lot of references to thinkers from Plato to Heidegger. But even without it, I think reading it is interesting and you can still get some takeaway points from it.

https://www.amazon.com/Contingency-Irony-Solidarity-Richard-Rorty/dp/0521367816.....
Click to expand...

Wow! There's a lot in there to discuss and I haven't read Rorty so I can only discuss what you have written.

Yes, it's a good idea to meet new people and engage with different ideas and different outlooks on life. Yes, doing, with the intent of learning AND UNDERSTANDING, so tends to bring us closer together. However, "black" isn't one of those things we need to understand.

Skin color is not determinative of ones intellect, one's beliefs, one's cultural background, one's life experience, one's values or one's potential. If I am to meet you merely because you are black then what do I learn? Great, your skin is darker than mine and your hair is more curly. I'm done with my learning.

If we want to get to know each other the focus shouldn't be on race. It should be on who we are as people.
 
Mach said:
This isn't a church, why would you compare the two? It makes no sense.

They listed the statics, let's just say 90% of whites don't have blacks as friends, and 90% of blacks don't have whites as friends. <- that's a racial disparity.
We have a racial divide in the nation, and a long history of black vs white. <- that's a racial disparity.
So they decided this is the problem the want to explore solutions to, hence, a meet-up that is based on...wait for it...race.

It's like you have a class full of kids that cannot read. So you have a get-thereto where you learn how to read.
And then you question why it's "all about reading" and not about art and science? It's nonsensical.

It seems petty and Steve Bannon-ish to be griping about racial differences being irrelevant, while essentially making an entire post to ridicule an event intended to be a positive race-meeting event.

But then, who else would ridicule a positive networking event that tries to get two disparate racial groups together to get to know one another better?
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Um, if you read what I replied to you'd understand why I mentioned churches.

With regard to the rest of your post, I'll keep saying it, if you seek to expand your social circle merely because you don't have the "proper" proportion of people of color around you, you just might be a racist.
 
Lutherf said:
Do blacks have a different belief system than other people?

Churches regularly hold various events to introduce people to their beliefs and expand their congregations. The focus there is religion, not race. It's about an idea, not skin color.
Click to expand...

Well, I think people may want to interact with different people based on race. It could close the racial divide in America, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. I see nothing wrong with the event.
 
Lutherf said:
[url=http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/us/meet-a-black-person-networking-trnd/index.html]A Georgia networking event wants to help white people 'Come Meet a Black Person' - CNN[/url]

https://www.facebook.com/events/166061020654788/?active_tab=about



Alright.

I'm not going to dispute the statistics. Based on my experience they're probably accurate. I also figure that the organizer's goal is to encourage interaction. That's fine.

However

Why do this as a "Meet a Black person" event? Why make it all about race? Can't you do the same thing with a "Help clean up the park" event? What the hell am I supposed to do at an event like this? Do I pay my $15 and get to ask the black person if he or she really likes fried chicken and basketball? If I cough up another $5 can I touch their hair? What the hell is the point of this!!??

Seriously, if you want people to get together and talk about stuff that matters then build your event around something that matters. This is......I really don't know what it is.
Click to expand...

i believe the word you are looking for is "stupid"
 
ecofarm said:
Exposure to people of other races, religions and such has proven, time and time again, to reduce racism and other bigotry. The military is an excellent example. I knew more than one person who abandoned racism as a result of knowing a black person/people. It dispels prejudice resulting from ignorance and provides opportunity for friendly discussion of race issues.
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Exposure is one thing. A contrived "Come meet a black person" is another. I'm exposed to other races every day. Mostly I don't even think about it.

Come meet a black person sounds to me more like a petting zoo than something that will further race relations.
 
Lutherf said:
Wow! There's a lot in there to discuss and I haven't read Rorty so I can only discuss what you have written.

Yes, it's a good idea to meet new people and engage with different ideas and different outlooks on life. Yes, doing, with the intent of learning AND UNDERSTANDING, so tends to bring us closer together. However, "black" isn't one of those things we need to understand.

Skin color is not determinative of ones intellect, one's beliefs, one's cultural background, one's life experience, one's values or one's potential. If I am to meet you merely because you are black then what do I learn? Great, your skin is darker than mine and your hair is more curly. I'm done with my learning.

If we want to get to know each other the focus shouldn't be on race. It should be on who we are as people.
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I am glad that's how you feel. But I assure you that's not how large portions of the country feel.

But clearly, that's not how large portions of the US population think, because such views toward "the other" reverberate with them strongly. Trump was able to tap into such feelings of "otherness" of others, the new, the strange, the different, the unfamiliar, etc... to get himself elected. When you see them as "the other", you will dehumanize, stereotype, and be willing to do things to them that you wouldn't if you just saw them "one of us".

“There’s a new sheriff in town — President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he’s going to start with you Muslims.”
_Mass mailing of letters to mosques throughout California after the election of Donald Trump
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"When Mexico sends its people,... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
-Donald Trump
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ecofarm said:
Exposure and interaction works regarding race issues. There's nothing wrong with events based on this fact.

How can one reject government programs and regulations and, at the same time, reject grass roots efforts? That seems to paint an ugly picture of the person.
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Exposure and interaction works. Contrived exposure and interaction does more harm than good.
 
ataraxia said:
I am glad that's how you feel. But I assure you that's not how large portions of the country feel.

But clearly, that's not how large portions of the US population think, because such views toward "the other" reverberate with them strongly. Trump was able to tap into such feelings of "otherness" of others, the new, the strange, the different, the unfamiliar, etc... to get himself elected. When you see them as "the other", you will dehumanize, stereotype, and be willing to do things to them that you wouldn't if you just saw them "one of us".
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And now we’re on to Trump and his supporters. It was bound that get here eventually because, apparently, everything can mes back to Trump at some point.

SMH
 
poweRob said:
I seriously doubt that.
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I am pretty sure that's true actually... We may call them Hispanic.... but they are really white-hispanic. Sure, a good number of them probably have some native blood in them... but most have majority Spaniard ancestry.

I looked it up for you. In all of Latin America it's 36.1% white, 23.6% black, 30.3% Mestizo(mix-white), 9.2% Amerindian
 
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