If you wish to end racism, stop using language that sustains it
Ending racism will be a long path, but part of the solution lies
in Morgan Freeman's simple suggestion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s
If we all stop using words like "black" "white" etc and teach our children that those are bad words then racism will end in a few generations.
If there are no categories, there can be no opportunity for differential treatment based on those categories
Of course to follow this path, one has to accept that race is an unscientific useless concept.
Some will dispute that and I do not wish to go down that path here.
I am suggesting that for those of us who do believe that the concept of race has no place in our language, then if you really want to end racism then simply stop using words like black white etc.
I have done this for years. If you want to describe someone's culture do so. He has parents who immigrated from Italy but he was born in Brooklyn. If you want to describe someone's physical appearance do so. He has brown curly hair with brown eyes and a fair complexion. This captures our reality in a much more useful way than saying "he is white"
Recent horrible events have brought to the forefront the issue of racism, and if you are truly concerned, start with your language, and teach others to move this way. Just stop using colour words you will soon see how your own conceptual framework leaves no room to be racist.
Moderators, I would appreciate it if you did not combine this thread with the other solutions to racism thread as I would like to explore my suggestion in isolation and with those that are like minded in their dismissal of the concept of race itself.
in Morgan Freeman's simple suggestion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s
If we all stop using words like "black" "white" etc and teach our children that those are bad words then racism will end in a few generations.
If there are no categories, there can be no opportunity for differential treatment based on those categories
Of course to follow this path, one has to accept that race is an unscientific useless concept.
Some will dispute that and I do not wish to go down that path here.
I am suggesting that for those of us who do believe that the concept of race has no place in our language, then if you really want to end racism then simply stop using words like black white etc.
I have done this for years. If you want to describe someone's culture do so. He has parents who immigrated from Italy but he was born in Brooklyn. If you want to describe someone's physical appearance do so. He has brown curly hair with brown eyes and a fair complexion. This captures our reality in a much more useful way than saying "he is white"
Recent horrible events have brought to the forefront the issue of racism, and if you are truly concerned, start with your language, and teach others to move this way. Just stop using colour words you will soon see how your own conceptual framework leaves no room to be racist.
Moderators, I would appreciate it if you did not combine this thread with the other solutions to racism thread as I would like to explore my suggestion in isolation and with those that are like minded in their dismissal of the concept of race itself.
Comments (115)
Sadly, media, politicians and other interest groups seem all to keen on promoting a 'black vs. white' narrative. They get away with it, because gullible people like being told what they want to hear.
I don't think racism is sustained purely by language. If that were the case, where would racism have come from in the first place? Did someone accidentially invent racist language?
I think the real problem is a lot harder. Racism is part of the human condition. And everyone has to actively work to not be racist.
While it's true that genetically there is very little difference between the races, a cultural divide built over many centuries is a very real thing. So words like white, black, asian etc do have a useful meaning. Your post is well intended, but suffers from an overdose of political correctness dogma.
Then the problem is assigning values to different cultures. There is no culture that matters more or less than any other.
I agree racism is a complex problem but changing your own language use is a step in the right direction
try it and see how your own propensity for preference (at least in this one category) vanishes
Ok, but language use seems too easy a way out.
How about we provide totally free education (room and board, books, tuition, everything) to all Black and Indian Americans to use on any kind of education from truck driving school to Phd. This system continues until such time as the wealth gap between whites, blacks and indians is erased. It's paid for primarily by the super rich, those who have benefited most from the rigged system, and those who have the vast majority of the money.
So, erase the wealth gap, at no charge to almost anybody. But we can't do it. We can't even really talk about it. And that's because the reality is...
We don't really give a shit.
Political correctness is a pose. We'll know it's real when the money starts to roll.
The vastness of the issues that stand in the way of utopia at the macro level are utterly depressing
I am offering one simple suggestion that will at least eventually eliminate one of the categories that allow for unequal treatment
Denial of reality is not going to solve any problem. Ever.
like I said, this approach only works for those of us who hold the position that in fact race is not a part of our reality
you won't need equal opportunity for "races" if there are no "races"
It may be, now, but were there any pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority disseminated widely prior to the advent of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?
If not, do you perhaps mean rather that some more general and symmetric relation of xenophobia is innate?
I doubt that anyway (here), but the kind of racism that I imagine I would find especially hard to bear politely would be the kind that dared to assert my natural inferiority. (And compounded the error to the nth degree by seeing my resultant social subjugation as evidence for the theory.)
So I am especially suspicious of the claim of innateness if it is meant to apply to that kind of racism.
Anyway, perhaps by "human condition" you don't mean innate?
https://leejasper.blogspot.com/2020/06/lambeth-metropolitan-police-officers.html?fbclid=IwAR0OTXa5hScnS4qxVsyq2wfBrFS-6OYCgFV592K9f4xCLZsuaxsmOgDa44c
And nothing in this story is part of the human condition, nothing is inevitable. We do not need to behave like this, we do not need to treat each other like this. and learning a different way of speaking will not sort it.
Media loves to frame things to fit a narrative. Media loves outrage, because outrage draws attention. It's all about language, because it so deviously manipulates us.
Yes, you may be right about that. I should have said "xenophobia". I don't know whether, say, ancient egyptians or the romans had any fixed ideas about race or racial inferiority based on their contacts with africans.
Quoting bongo fury
Well, I don't know it's innate in the strict sense. I didn't want to allude some sort of is-ought-fallacy, where racism or xenophobia are (more) acceptable because they are in some way "natural". I just wanted to point out, partially from personal experience, that not being prejudiced is really hard, and that there are mental mechanisms (wherever they come from) that introduce and reinforce prejudice, of which racism is a subtype.
Just refusing to say the word "black" won't keep your brain from noticing that "these guys over there look different", and if you don't pay attention, your brain may turn "different" into "dangerous".
What would convince you? Not media, obviously. Statistics? Is there something short of a declaration of white supremacy?
Not really.
Somehow racism is poorly hidden, and those racists I have met in my life often had no problem telling me so.
Not only in language, but by extension thinking. If we view individuals as individuals rather than a component of this or that race we negate any foundation for race-thinking.
No I know you didn't. You made it clear you want to guard against the innate tendency. I just suspect the tendency isn't innate at all, and that that might be relevant to the question how best to guard against it.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm not sure this kind of breast-beating (if that's the figure; pardon if I'm over-doing it) is necessary or helpful.
Quoting Echarmion
So, do you at least see how, if I were right about the whole innateness hypothesis being (gladly or not) a racism-serving myth, that repeating these psychologisms might be counter-productive?
Quoting Echarmion
Ditto, really.
Not sure whether I agree at all with the OP about tweaking the language. But the innateness thing gets in the way.
This seems patently wrong-minded, despite my fondness for Morgan Freeman. Racism is not fueld by the names we choose to use as a means to describe people we devalue based upon the color of their skin.
One will devalue black people, if they are so inclined, regardless of the language used to do so.
It's the devaluation that's the problem, not the means for doing so. Language use is the means.
We could sit in a circle together and sing Kumbaya. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Just someone who remembers the 60's here.
Fair enough. I shouldn't go around positing things as fact when I haven't done the legwork first.
Quoting bongo fury
Not really, honestly. Do you mean because it might lead us to misallocte resources for fighting racism? Or could reflecting about how your mind deals with "being different" actually make you more racist?
How do you know that? Do just assume that all racists are proud enough to be open about it? It seems to me that being racist is something one might want to hide because it can get you into trouble, rather like homosexuality can in some places. It would get you banned from this site for instance. It would get a policeman sacked I'm fairly sure, in the UK.
It would be rather odd, don't you think given how very very few people declare racism that is is such an issue in society. Why would Morgan Freeman think it is worth our all changing our language for the sake of a few nutters?
It's hard to imagine a more bright-line example of what privilege is than this thread. Like children closing their eyes and pretending that will make the Bad Thing go away. Bloody infantile.
Because he understands that all of this chasing ghosts is putting more and more emphasis on skin color. It polarizes. It makes people more aware of race.
In fact, I'm convinced that continuously telling people they or others are secretly racist would sooner create racists than solve any problems.
It's saying "Look, those people over there may seem nice, but secretly they hate you and they're the reason you cannot get a job/didn't finish school, etc."
Converse it's saying "You may think you're not racist, but
Of course, "racism" in this context only applies to the "black vs. white"-narrative. Never mind all the racism perpetrated by people of all colors, because apparently that doesn't matter.
This current 'black vs. white' nonsense does nothing but create racial tensions where there were none. It serves to polarize and it has nothing to do with justice. It manipulates people by telling them exactly what they want to hear, while holding up the carrot of moral superiority. The only question we should be asking is who profits from a polarized society filled with hatred for the other?
I was immediately banned on Facebook a third time in two week due to allegations of racism and hate speech. If you can find what is racist or hateful in what I wrote, I'd be glad to hear it.
My second observation is WHY this is happening. What I observe is that, overall, the police has been doing its job very well, more than halving the number of known crimes since 1990. This chart only shows robberies (and not assaults). While one in 20 citizens were robbed in 1990, it was going to be only 1 in 50 this year. Assaults add ~10% to these numbers. Despite the USA's high incarceration rate, only about half of the known felons are in prison, leaving ~3 million felonious thieves on the street, and ~8 million more would-be felons, had the police not been doing its job so well.
Thus there is literally >10 million resentful would-be and actual criminals in the USA, all deeply wishing the police didn't exist at all. It seems to me that it is the black majority in this criminal-minded group which is causing all the racial friction now. I wish I could say otherwise, but that does rather seem to be statistical fact, that it is a black majority in >10 million criminal-minded people in the USA now. I'm not trying to distort the numbers. That just seems to be fact, and I am not so stupid as to post that on Facebook too.
Right. So racism isn't created by a legacy of a culture of colour-based slavery justified by a racist narrative of white superiority, followed by years of jim crow laws Klan terrorism and lynching, endless propaganda and jokes against black people and so on. It's created by anti racists. As long as we're clear. I rather disagree.
It's so fucking stupid.
Quoting StreetlightX
Solid argumentation.
I'm guessing the two of you were told something you didn't like to hear, and now feel the need to resort to... whatever this is?
Historically the problem of racism has linguistic roots in the USA independent of the black/white color dispute due to the Sapir/Whorf debate. These linguists posited that thought is constrained by the language one knows, most eloquestionly put in Whorf;s article here about how Hopi indican verbs have no concept of fixed time intervals, which he claimed explained why Hopis could not keep punch cards like other people when they went to work. It's a very persausive argument:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/44763816/WHORF-An-American-Indian-Model-of-the-Universe
The Sapir/Whorf debate caused an immense amount of friction in the 1970s due to attempts to modify school curricula, and to redefine scholastic tests such IQ and SAT, such that different linguistic groups would not be discriminated against.
The anti-racist groups considered this attempt to be a huge insult to African Americans, and the entire debate as to whether language must predate thought became discredited as bigoted hate speech.
Do these people hear themselves speak? Or do they just vomit out words and expect to be taken seriously?
I agree with you that the police not doing their job is not going to solve anything. But the police is not there to solve social issues. That's not their role and yet they get most of the money in most US cities. If your only tool is a hammer, there's a very limited amount of problems you can reasonably fix and you'll make most problems worse.
For example, in Western thought, two negatives cancel each other out to make a positive, as per Aristotle and mathematics. But in African American communities, multiple negatives emphasize instead, e.g., I ain't not want nothing to do with it <-> I aint want nothing to do with it <-> I want nothing to do with it.
In the 1970s, they observed the different speech patterns for African Americans and deduced, from the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, that people who learn to use double negatives to increase emphasis, rather than to cancel each other out, are naturally handicapped in mathematics and science.
That made the anti-racists very, very angry indeed. The anti-racists said, African Americans ONLY did not perform so well in mathematics and science as others because of racial prejudice.
One can also deduce, from the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, in exactly the same way, why Western music is heavily metric, but African-American music, like jazz, reggae, and blues, leans on syncopation instead.
The problem remains for the anti-racists that no one has yet been able to define a way to disprove the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, although obviously there are long debates on the topic, probably in these forums too.
I don't know if anyone has tried to demonstrate how that could be true, and I was in Oxford in the 1980s, so my own education far predates any discussion that has taken place on that topic, sorry.
It mnight appear dumb to you, but it has been a big problem for pre-collegiate educators, particularly those with a Masters in Education who are required to define shool tests for college aptitude. A very big problem.
Uh no, you can't because it's not true. The earliest Western music didn't have metrics (early Greek dances, gregorian chants). After the introduction of meters, Western music has been heavily syncopated since Bach and Händel. Waltzes swing just as much as Jazz does, just differently.
They say it 'swings' a different way. The problem is, linguistics has become a soft science, which is partly why Chomsky abandoned it. There is no way to prove or disprove anything, one just modifies the arguments to fit the real world, and it is subject to the same criticisms as string theory in subatomic science, but on the other hand, it still provides predictive models, so it cant be denied absolutely either.
The Sapir Whorf hypothesis, aside from not being testable, has another problem. It's been established for quite some time now that socio-economic background and educational level of the parents pretty much predict academic achievement. So if a certain group of people, from a certain socio-economic background, that widely use ebonics and also test poorly on mathematic tests exists, it is quite frankly very ludicrous to say that their mathematics performance is caused by their language use.
Ockham's razor man.
Thats exactly what the anti-racists demanded that science decide was true, and one could argue about it forever if one wants, because neither theory can ever actually disprove the other, as for all social sciences it remains a matter of opinion. The problem is, the decision as to which theory was 'right' was decided by the anti-racists for sociological reasons. It was not decided so because it's actually true, which is why, whatever you might want to argue publicly, there are now spatial tests in IQ scores. Those were included to level the playing field by linguistic theorists, not the people you are endorsing, and the anti-racists are still very annoyed about it, because they actually do level the playing field a bit, which is not what they wanted to be true at all.
And the assertion that no quantitative research is done in sociology is also an outdated notion. There have been plenty of controlled, twin tests, where twins grew up in different environments that prove the environment determines educational and criminal outcomes.
I'm not sure why you're so hell bent on defending a bad hypothesis. Do you want to suggest blacks cause poverty, crime and being bad at maths for speaking a certain way?
Have little think about that, and you might come up with a hypothesis.
Introducing the concept of 'social justice' is a very popular attack on Sapir/Whorf, but really it has nothing to do with the argument of whether language predates thought. The problem you have is that you now need to modify your theory of "socio-economic background and educational level of the parents" to explain why African Americans outperform Caucasians on spatial tests. If they are disadvantaged for the reason you say, then they should perform equally poorly as on other tests.
I'm sure you could add some bells and whistles for that, and the theory survives.
But then you are stuck with another problem, and that is Occam's razor. The fact is, linguists predicted African Americans would do better on spatial tests than cacuasions, directly from the tiny handful of facts I stated on it so far, and it turned out they were right. So Sapir/Whorf does work. Most inconveniently so, but that's the fact of it.
The argument is to do with syntax and semantic of different languages, and I am not going to try to restate what Whorf wrote so elegantly. If you have particular issues with anything he writes in the link I provided, I'd be glad to discuss that with you.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/44763816/WHORF-An-American-Indian-Model-of-the-Universe
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/judicial-college/ETBB_Ethnicity__finalised_.pdf
Look what that language gone and done; look what them antiracists made happen.
The dispute between Arabic nomadic tribes and Isreali settlers is much the same in nature. In fact, if one looks to Israel, one can see all attempts to exercise Western Justice there have obviously resulted in the Israelis always winning, for pretty much exactly the same reason as there are problems here, and therefore a great deal of violence, just as there is here.
Wait I didn't know apartheid was Western Justice.
You’re really quite pathetic. It’s getting really tiresome.
Im not an expert, but what I hear is that apartheid conceptually derived from Gandhi's partition of Pakistan, which went much better than anyone expected, so much so Apartheid was initiated in South Africa the following year, but tried to minimize relocation, which did turn out to be a rather major effort in India.
Firstly, the black community in the UK is not African American but overwhelmingly either African or Afro Caribbean. Secondly, this is not the report of black people but of the UK Judiciary, about how black people and other minorities are treated by the justice system. What the people stopped and searched, arrested, and sentenced,, disproportionately think or are incapable of thinking has no bearing on the matter at all.
There you go. Why take anything you say seriously?
Keep going , you’ll reveal yourself eventually.
Quoting StreetlightX
You are taking ernestm way too seriously if you think that his take on the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis has much to do with "ivory tower" anything.
I shared the following letter to Brad Heath, Journalist at USA Today:
I was immediately banned on Facebook a third time in two weeks, due to allegations of racism and hate speech. If you can find what is racist or hateful in what I wrote, I'd be glad to hear it, because UI have had no success at all so far. A few democrats who are not black did comment on what i wrote that i was a total idiot to think more black people would be murdered without the existence of police intervention, despite proven history in the above article, that the likely result is a tripling of murders in all-black neighborhoods.
And I got really insulted as a white animal for trying to save those black lives, which I thought was meant to be the point of 'black lives matter.'
in essence. I am led to believe the conversation is now dominated by sociopaths on Facebook who care more about themselves, and the dubious virtues they anticipate for themselves of there being no police intervention at all, than the lives of the black people their actions are killing, despite whatever claims they make.
What do you think?
you don't need to stop describing people's physical characteristics
people clearly have different physical characteristics
but if we want to end racism, we all must stop describing people as if they were parts of different categories like "black" "white" etc.
My suggestion only makes sense for those of us who do not endorse the concept of race as socially useful and scientifically valid
You clearly do endorse the concept of race
oh but it is about the language, if children were taught from the beginning of their lives that humans are humans and not that there are sub-categories of humans like "black" "white" etc then they would not have a conceptual framework in their brain structures that would allow them to prefer one sub-category over the other
racism would be gone in a matter of a generation or maybe 2 depending on the extent of rate of adoption of this amongst parents
absolutely, I am starting from this foundational point that in fact we are all humans and that the evolutionary differences we see in our skin colour and other physical characteristics are just that, physical differences
so by not using words like "black" "white" etc I am simply aligning by language with the structure of my thought
if there is no such thing as "black people" in our language then "black people" can not be devalued
if you truly see everyone as human, then at least one potential category of devaluation "race" is eliminated
I'm a follower of a facebook page that puts up art by women artists through history, and the person who runs it has been banned many times for posting nakedness. Facebook is shit.
Looking at the article, and with a large caveat of ignorance, I'd say you have a completely valid point, and there is nothing inherently racist in what you say.
But, from what I read there is a big problem in Baltimore. Let me say that I do not absolve black people of all responsibility on the grounds of racism. I am an antiracist, and that means I believe black people are just as capable of being assholes as anyone else. And in general, I am in favour of assholes being dealt with by the police.
But we have deaths in custody, we have convictions for corruption, we have suggestions of unlawful use of police power. I assume, (correct me if I'm wrong,) we are dealing with a predominately white police and a predominately black community. And a long history of antagonism. In such a case, it is almost inevitable that there is an identification on all sides of white corrupt police v. black criminals. I pity the cops here, because whatever they do including if they do nothing, it looks racist. and doing nothing probably costs more black lives, than are lost in the back of police vans.
"If they don't like us killing them, we'll leave them kill each other."
Said probably no one, but it's what has been done. But I don't think it would be right to lay the blame for this at the door of those who protest the police injustices aforementioned. The black community needs policing; every community needs policing. And every community needs policing it can trust and assent to. The best way to do that is not to start from here, as the Irish proverbially say. But failing that, police corruption and violent prejudice needs to be called out and rooted out, black officers need to be predominant in black neighbourhoods, segregation need to be tackled, and drug dealers need to be harassed. We need justice and we need it to be fair and proportionate.
Well I hav eto say, from the huge outpouring of hate for raising this point on democratic forums, I have to admit, I had come to the conclusion, everyone seems to be very keen on letting them kill each other. I wanted to stop it, but if no journalists respond either, I have to give up and let them kill each other.
I understand what you are saying about systemic prejudice but my own experience, once after I had to throw out a room mate for taking cocaine, who filed charges against me and I had no idea what was happening until I ended up in jail, that at least in San Jose, they dont care what color you are. They mistreat everyone for fun. Its just about the only perk their job has.
I find it hard to beleive the abuse could amount to anywhere near equivalent to a murder a day.
But I do understand your point. After some time in jail, I discovered they had phones there where I called a friend to bail me out and I was acquitted of all charges. It was a very unpleasant and highly educational experience, and some of the bruises lasted weeks.
It's not a great advert for policing though is it? "Safer than the Mafia!"
You are overthinking it. We should just raise everyone in the world as non-racist. There, problem solved.
This may sound like a joke, but that's because your proposal is a joke. Even if such a language change could accomplish anything (of course not), how the hell is this supposed to work? If you have no idea and are just daydreaming, then why set your sights so low? Why not daydream about everyone living happily ever after? If that could be achieved, then we wouldn't have to worry about such petty concerns as racism.
(Of course, daydreaming about reforming language in order to cure racism is only marginally more asinine than daydreaming about a world social revolution as a cure for all ills.)
I am not daydreaming I have modified my language in such a way to not include race referring language and when I did so I could see that my own tendencies towards categorization and resulting preference slowly melted away.
How could it work? It would work like any other change in our language that better reflects our understanding of reality, adjustments would have to be made, just like we had to so when we stopped seeing the world as flat.
And yes I recognize it won't land us in Utopia, but it will move us away from racism and its harms. It's at least a move in the right direction.
It is natural to have words for phenomena that are clearly noticeable since then it’s possible to talk about what we see. We notice there is a general difference between how people look and like any other difference it’s convenient to place them in approximate categories. That’s not the same as claiming there’s a fundamental difference.
Suppose you were witness to a crime and the police asked you to describe the people involved. If one of them were, well black, negro, African American, whatever, it would be a lot easier for you to convey that idea by using one word that would be directly understood. If you said the person had a dark complexion and dark curly hair, that could also be a description of a person normally referred to as white or Caucasian. Why then make it so difficult? Would you try to invoke racial stereotypes, like broad nose, to slowly give the police the idea of what you were talking about? What you saw was a man who looked as if his ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa and it’s just convenient to have a word for that.
Whether such a thing as race exists, is not an interesting question in this context. Something exists, and we need a word for it.
Whether such a thing as race exists, is not an interesting question in this context. Something exists, and we need a word for it.[/quote]
right so again you are starting from the position that in fact racial categories exist that people should be put in
what is this something that you posit exists?
I would suggest the only thing in our reality that we need to describe are the physical differences we see. the categories of black, white etc are not merely categories of physical difference, they are used to denote subspecies of humans
it is that tendency to divide humans into subspecies that is at the root of racism, take away the root and the weed of racism can not grow
Carlos hoyt expresses the strategy well here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Fo-IBh_yMqo9PJYXHsLizUgF0FgTnRze/edit#slide=id.p62
You just referred to race.
Don't think about a pink elephant.
word play
I clearly meant I don't use words in a way that sustains the concept of race and the resulting racism
We notice that a person looks as if his ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa. We notice that a person looks Chinese. (He could be Japanese, Vietnamese or American, but he looks like people generally look in China.) A person has an Indian or Arab appearance, we notice that, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We put people into categories whether we like to or not and there’s no use pretending it isn’t so.
It would be rather silly to avoid talking about what everyone is thinking about. Concealing one’s thoughts in vague language is one definition of hypocrisy.
Suppose one person in a group is a friend of yours and you want to point him out. He happens to be the only black person in the group. Why wouldn’t you just say “That black man is my friend” instead of going through an elaborate description of his clothes or other characteristics that he may share with other people in the group?
Why is it that you understand exactly what I mean when I say “black”? If it wasn’t something existing, you wouldn’t have understood what I meant. You know that people of European descent have certain general characteristics that distinguish them from people of east-Asian descent so why pretend otherwise? We notice it anyway.
no one would dispute that people have differing physical characteristics
but it is archaic and unscientific to describe these physical characteristics using terms like
"black" "white"
yes it is more complicated and requires more effort to describe people in more complex ways, but it better reflects our reality instead of using imprecise language that sustains racism
it is a radical change and your response is the same as most who enjoy the comfort of conventionality
but real change often requires radical shifts that feel uneasy and difficult at first
But if I refuse to use the word black isn’t that suggesting that there’s something distasteful about the colour?
Edit: remember, it’s “Blacklivesmatter”.
How can we stop racism if we don’t talk about it? What would it have been like if it wasn’t mentioned that Floyd was black? “A man with dark hair wearing --- was beaten to death by the police.” That would correctly draw attention to police brutality, but if it had a racial dimension (which most people think it had) it would be neglected.
We need is words that approximately refer to the phenomena we have in mind and if there’s no word for it, it inhibits our ability to talk about it. A description of hair color and skin complexion would in this case totally fail to get the point. The victim was not a dark-haired person with a tan of European descent but of African descent, and therefore it’s likely to have been a racist incident.
Quoting dazed
Most words we us are not “scientific”. We don’t attempt to make a precise description of a thing when merely using a word to refer to it. Why is it called a smartphone when it’s much more than a phone? How imprecise! Why do we call something a shoe and something a boot? How high around the ankle should the shoe be to become a boot? No one knows exactly, so it’s unscientific! Yet, we are quite comfortable with using those words.
look at Carlos Hoyt's writings, he more completely lays out the approach we would have to take
it's not a perfect approach by any means, and some groups might oppose it because of the disadvantages that might come with no longer being recognized as a group worthy of special protection, but what people would gain outweighs what we would lose
if we taught our children words like "black" "white" were bad words that promoted discrimination, they would grow up with conceptual frameworks that would not leave room for them to not prefer based on racial categories
if we don't do this racism will never end
you are also pretty much arguing that there is something that actually exists "race" that we still need to refer to, the approach I am advocating for here is for those of use who see that there is no such thing in our reality just as we know the world is not flat
IN REALITY some people look like their ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa, some seem to be of European descent and some of East-Asian. Is that relevant for anything? Probably not, but there are those who think it is, and they are the ones who are called racists. They would keep noticing it even if they had no word for it. They see that those people have an origin different from themselves, and they don’t like what seems foreign. The problem is not really the black hair, for some of their own have black hair, and it’s not really the dark skin, for they admire a nice tan, but the totality tells them they are dealing with something foreign.
How are we to explain that people with curly hair tend to be socially disadvantaged. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? It must be due to some arbitrary circumstances then and not at all anything caused by what used to be called racism since we are now not allowed to use that word.
You and other well-meaning anti-racists (or whatever it should be called) may perhaps stop using words that refer to race, but the racists will sure find a term to designate what they consider significant. By taking away the word you just reduce your own ability to talk to them and explain their error.
The point is the error can't even be made if you don't see the difference
case in point look at all the physical differences between people who are currently placed in the category of "white"
there are a variety of skin tones, hair textures and colours and yet those people are all seen as the same "white"
my suggestion is to use that language that reframes the brain such that all people are all seen as the same and the physical differences we see are recognized as just that, insignificant physical differences that don't signify different subclasses of humanity
That is a good point actually, but the argument works in my favor. There are no words for the subdivisions of the white race, but there is certainly racism among whites. In Northern Europe, Southern Europeans are being looked down upon as they tend to have darker hair and skin. There is no doubt that the Turks are discriminated against in Germany even when they are completely assimilated and speak perfect German. Even though they belong to the white race and there is no particular racial term to denote them, their racial difference works against them.
In the US the racial term “brown” is relatively recent, but of course there has always been racial discrimination against the nameless racial groups that now self-identify as brown.
People of Arab descent and people from the Indian sub-continent have always suffered discrimination in the West without there being a definite racial term for them.
People tend to dislike those who look different from themselves. Kids bully other kids for their looks and grown-ups are skeptical towards people whose appearance indicate that they belong to another group. No particular word is needed in each case for this lamentable but quite universal phenomenon to exist.
A friend and I claimed to be Ferengi from the Star Trek show on a census because we object to the race questions. However it is not as easy as just not using those racially identifying terms because people in different classifications get special benefits and perhaps they should. Native Americans and people of color deserve those benefits.
However, I hate talk of racism too and wish we talked about the values of democracy and why our nation is worth defending and what it means to be a good citizen of a democracy. Thomas Jefferson thought education was essential to being a strong and united Republic and I agree.
"Democracy is a way of life and social organization which above all others is sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual human personality, affirming the fundamental moral and political equality of all men and recognizing no barriers of race, religion, or circumstance." General Report of the Seminar on "What is Democracy?" August 1939
Martin Luther King didn't make up new values, he repeated the values of democracy in the US and people of color and the American Japanese thought they were fighting for these values when the served in military service during the second world war.
I don't see anyone talking about democratic values so I want to stress I think talking about democratic values is the solution to the problem. Why aren't people speaking of democratic values?
The US has rather fucked views on democracy, the American dream is about the opportunity to succeed even if the majority don't. The US is barely a democracy to begin with, US policy barely takes public opinion into account and the US government actively manipulates and lies to its population.
The US just doesn't address its own issues with the urgency and effectiveness that justice demands. Either the US population just doesn't care about their own problems or the US government thinks those problems aren't actually important. It's just hard to see so many social, economic, environmental, governmental issues being ignored and still think "yeah this is a democracy and what the people want". The resources are there but why does nothing happen?
Oh I recognize that people will find all kinds of other reasons to discriminate and treat each other differently, but we can at least remove one category of discrimination, i.e. racial, if we move into a conceptual framework and use language that excludes the concept of race
yourQuoting Congau
it's clear that you believe in and endorse the concept of race and so of course my suggested course of action to end racism makes no sense to you
you can retain benefits for certain historically disadvantaged groups through cultural identification. Clearly people belong to distinct cultures, but people do not belong to distinct races as there is no such thing as race in our reality.
It's really just a matter of getting more sophisticated in our language. Describe people's physical attributes, dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. Then describe their cultural ties, he was born and raised in Jamaica. This more accurately describes someone as the complex individual they are, instead of the harmful, unscientific and imprecise label "black"
That is not at all how an old text describes democracy in the US. It is not how books written during the world wars describe the US democracy when we were called to war to defend it. However since 2000 plenty of books have been written about what has gone wrong in the US. We stopped education for democracy and began educating for a technological society with unknown values in 1958. Could that have lead to the lost memory of what democracy? But even when we had education for democracy, that was a very White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant education that supported prejudice and inequality.
How about autocratic industry could that lead to weakening democracy when most of us became dependent on corporations for employment, instead of owning our own businesses? And we do have a history of exploiting laborers and focusing on gaining wealth. That was curb with laws against monopolies but corporations have gotten around those laws and we remain in denial of that.
It is not like the US does not have problems, but it seems they all center on not understanding democracy?
But Martin Luther King's dream speech had nothing to do with an African culture. It was 100% the culture of the US that children were once taught is our democracy. Since the 1958 National Defense Education Act our culture has radically changed. Some of that change is very good. Women were discriminated against as much as people with dark skin. We liberated women and have been moving on liberating people of color as well, except in the South where the culture of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy is strong. The South has the aristocracy from the old world. The federal government enforcing change on the South became violet. However, I will go back to the democracy that is in old school books, and books about democracy written during the war years, the democracy people of color and the Japanese Americans thought they were defending in war.
Thomas Jefferson devoted his life to free education for all because he thought that was essential to a strong and united nation. Especially in times of war, before we came to depend so much on military technology, and relied very much on patriotism, we focused on democratic values. I repeat, Martin Luther King was 100% the US culture not at all an African culture. I think we have a huge problem believing the color of a person's skin means the person naturally has a different culture. That just is not so. But it can very much mean they experience a culture of hate because of injustices or an unwillingness to change as is the case in the South. Manifest Destiny came with serious problems because it was also White Anglo Saxon Protestant and that is not a culture for democracy. Without education for democracy we do not have a culture for democracy any more than there would be Christians if churches stopped preaching Christianity and prepared everyone for a technological society with unknown values.
People would continue to discriminate people of different skin colors and differences in appearance that indicate that their origin (their own or their ancestors’) was somewhere else. Sometimes these dissimilarities are very small as when regional characteristics in appearance are said to be detected even within the same country and sometimes large as when it refers to separate parts of the world. The larger the differences the greater the danger of discrimination, but not necessarily. People who look like they come from the Middle East probably have greater problems with discrimination in the West than people from East Asia.
There are no racial terms referring to differences of a more regional nature, but there is still significant discrimination. Would you call it racism when a person from the Middle East faces discrimination in the West? Whether you do or don’t, the phenomenon is not dependent on what anyone calls it since discrimination against Arab looking people is in principle exactly the same as discrimination against sub-Saharan looking people, even though there exists a racial term for the latter but not the former.
Can you please explain to me why people of Middle Eastern origin often face discrimination (racism) in the West even though there is no racial term to signify that group?
Wrong. Kids need to know they are different. Kids need to know their ethnic background. I agree that terms like "black" and "white" are social constructs and aren't scientifically accurate to describe human groups however there is essentially nothing wrong with being black and white, and because we don't live in a society where humanity is primary and all others are secondary it is good for kids to know their distinctive qualities.
Quoting dazed
True, but that is theoretical. We aren't an androgynous society therefore categorization is a consequence of language.
Quoting dazed
This is not realistic and it doesn't address the problem. Simply not using terms alone doesn't end racism as racism is taught and behavioral. We need to teach generations to value each others as members of the same human family.
Quoting dazed
This doesn't work. I wish people stop using Morgan Freeman because all that tells me is some whites are just merely uncomfortable engaging discussions on racism hence is why many agree with him. Ridding ourselves of racism is beyond simply stop using words.
False. If that were true Jim Crow wouldn't exist. If that were true, then the civil rights movement wouldn't exist.
the fact of non-race based discrimination does not mean we should not make efforts to eliminate race based discrimination.
but they are not different, and the language you use highlights that that's where it all begins
if we truly teach them the reality that there are no racial categories of humans then racism would end eventually as children would grow into adults who did not see races but only saw faces
but I suspect you actually believe in racial categories (but use more palatable language like ethnicity instead of race) so again my suggestion wouldn't make sense to you
By experiences they are. I was raised in an environment where my mother was an activist and racially conscious. I’ve personally experienced racism not just from whites, but other ethnic groups. My experiences differentiate me from the many of you here because I can probably bet that all of you have not experienced what I have, and vice versa.
Quoting dazed
The existence of racism, it’s sustainability, and it’s perennial influence in society does not solely rest in language alone that is the whole point. Racism is also an experience. Racism is also behavioral.
Quoting dazed
We are not at the point yet in human existence. First off we just need to treat each other with respect. Equality is the key. People need to see each other as equals in humanity before we can discuss the particulars of racial categorization.
Quoting dazed
No because your suggestion is quite stupid and others here have told you racism is beyond language. We cannot simply start with language alone. We simply cannot ignore it as you’ve tried to do with the Morgan Freeman video. You see, there lies the crux of the issue. When I have discussions with some of my white college buddies on race they love to use me. Freeman as a go to reference because, what it tells me is that white people in the United States at least most are, are uncomfortable with acknowledging the dark history behind American colonialism.
So while we all always talk about never forgetting 9/11, people want to avoid discussing racism. This is why many like yourself use Morgan Freeman because you see him as a black man that thinks like you because one black man that thinks like you is a representation of validity. No. Getting rid of racism doesn’t just start with language or forgetting our pigmentation. Getting rid of racism is generational, and it begins by teaching future generations that we are all a part of the same family and that we all are equal. However knowing that I will prepare my kids to know they’re black because we have yet lived in a society that will see them as equal parts of the same species. I invite you to watch this:
As I said racism is beyond language. I apologize for the graphic language but this is the reality many blacks have faced.
Jane Elliot points out how long she has been doing the same exercise. Interestingly she herself ends with the point that there is only one category of our existence, i.e. human. This highlights that the real solution lies in changing our conceptual frameworks to reflect our true reality.
We can talk about Martin Luther King's dream for decades, as we have done, but the key is to restructure our brains so that there is no room for racial discrimination. The only way to do this is to actually change our language to reflect the reality of our existence.
Carlos Hoyt better articulates this approach than me and also has a more developed thought out approach to implementing it. Here is a link to one of his presentations
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Fo-IBh_yMqo9PJYXHsLizUgF0FgTnRze/edit#slide=id.p62
this approach won't work right away, it will take generations, but it is the only true solution. We can talk about seeing our differences as not mattering, but the truth is that there are no differences to see.
Getting to a point where human brains no longer place people in different categories of human existence based on skin colour is the true path to the end of racism. When differences in skin colour are perceived the same as differences in eye colour (i.e. varied physical adaptions within the same species, and not as signifiers of different kinds of people), then we will achieved our aim.
but as Hoyt points out so long as you continue to use racial language you are sustaining the conceptual framework upon which racism depends. As he suggests, use "racialized black" and "racialize white" if you need to really go there. But don't talk about race as if it exists, because it doesn't and talking about it as if it does allows racism to continue.
I’m again trying to make you answer my question. People from the Middle East suffer from racism in Europe and North America. Or do you deny that? If so why?
They are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin, which is a phenomenon normally referred to as racism. Yet, there exists no particular racial term for that group of people: They are called white.
According to your theory racism against people from the Middle East wouldn’t be possible since a racial term is lacking, but as far as I can see, it is clearly happening. Please explain!
if as you suggest this group belongs to the race "white" then the discrimination that you refer to must be based on characteristics other than "race", so it would still occurr in the absence of the process of racialization
Agreed however this is also preceded by ridding our society of stereotypes, changing. In order for us to rid our society of racism we need to rid our society collectively of the policies and the continued resistance against an egalitarian model. Simply changing our language is not enough.
Quoting dazed
Yes, but that also means collectively of changing systems where categories continuously place people in boxes which also perpetuates oppression.