Racism: It sucks, but your solution is probably worse.

College Confidential Community
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<p>Myth: By ignoring race, racism will disappear.</p>

<p>Truth: By ignoring race, you also ignore the problem associated with racism because how can racism exist if you’re “colourblind”? Let me put it this way, a couple of years ago, the Mayor of North York, then a municipality of Toronto (don’t ask me to explain Toronto’s former system of government, let me just say that it worked REALLY well until the Conservatives bloated it and amalgamated the various regions) claimed that Toronto did not have a homeless problem. He based this on the number of homeless people in his region of North York of which there were very few. As a result, when Toronto was amalgamated into a megacity and Mayor Mel Lastman took this philosophy with him and simply ignored the problems associated with homelessness, why? Because HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN THE HOMELESS. That was until of course, a homeless man died in Queen’s Park (where the Ontario legislature is located). So in conclusion, ignoring race is not a very good solution, because even though it’s just a social construct it still prevails every part of our society and just because you, the individual - a nobody from Nowhere Important simply pretending that race doesn’t affect society in anyway DOES NOT MEAN RACISM MAGICALLY DISAPPEARS. Yes, folks, it’s might be hard to swallow, but combating racism actually does require work beyond covering your eyes and ears and saying “NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH!”</p>

<p>Here are some ACTUAL solutions to Racism: </p>

<p>Every race has it’s own homeland. - Unrealistic and the lines that distinguish one race from another is vague at best. Scientifically, race doesn’t even exist, so what we’ll be left with is basically a bunch of rich white men telling people what’s what.</p>

<p>Genocide - Anyone who supports this is obviously trying to show how edgy they are by supporting such an extreme solution. Note to those people: Misanthropy got old, go listen to some Burzum you pasty faced losers. As for the rest of you who think this is funny, the joke isn’t funny anymore. George Carlin attempted a bit like this once and it was about as funny as having the doctor diagnose you with a cancerous tumour.</p>

<p>Live with it - Cynic’s solution. Cynicism just makes the world stagnant and your negativity is not cool, it’s lame and tired. You folks yearn for a return to the early 90’s but you’d be lame then to. At least back then people had a reason to be cynical, crappy economic times.</p>

<p>Understand, learn and educate. Keep an open mind. All that jazz. No, you won’t have to dress up in a dashiki but it’d be nice if you’d learn the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim or not make comments like, and I quote: “I don’t say the N word because black people KILL!”. Also, pretending to be offended by every ethnic joke you here isn’t required either. Just realize that some jokes are off limits to you. Yes it’s a double standard, but I think the fact that it’s taboo for white people to say the N word is a fair trade off for things such as: Benefitting from more lenient prison sentences and lower prosecution rates or being able to walk into a store and not have the clerk eye you up and down like a twelve year old girl at an R.Kelly show. Yes, it sucks that life isn’t fair, I’m sorry you’re not able to say everything you want to whomever you want whenever you want to say it without taking a hit to your reputation but there are far greater race issues at hand in our society then your fear of being beaten up and/or called a racist (even if you’re not) because you dropped the N-bomb at a Wu-Tang show.</p>

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<p>What is this, ICrisis’s version of the fireside chat? Didn’t you do a thread like this 2 days ago?</p>

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<p>No, that was Affirmative Action for white people in prison. </p>

<p>Cut me some slack man, I’ve been on campus since 8 and it’s 9PM. Brother’s gotta take a break sometime.</p>

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<p>In addition, most incidents of violence happens within “races”. Ultra-conservatives love to spread the fear of the black man or the Muslim man, but what about the centuries upon centuries of white-on-white violence in Europe?</p>

<p>Also, “races” rarely follow scientific terms. Carleton S. Coon’s categorization of race is the following: Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Capoid, Australoid, and Negroid. However, in the American perspective, there are many more than that, such as Latinos, Jews, and even Muslims/Arabs (although many Muslims are not Arabs). </p>

<p>Basically, race becomes a tag you get burdened with if you disagree enough with the white people.</p>

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<p>Icrisis- didn’t you post a thread about gay terrorist or something just a few days ago?!?! Where do you come up with this stuff?</p>

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<p>Most of the crazy stuff I come up with comes from the blantant hypocrisy and unintentional hilarity from the self righteous uptight political discussions you often see on a campus. Have you ever heard a Losertarian speak about the free market or some envirohippie whacko with no shoes handing out pamphlets preaching against terms like “free trade” and promoting “sustainable development”? Campus political rhetoric is often times more ridiculous than the presidential elections.</p>

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<p>are you seriously saying that someone was preaching on campus about gay terrorist marriage ?!?! o.0</p>

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<p>Racism would end if people didn’t make it such a focal point of their lives. Just because you are a certain ethnicity, it doesn’t mean you necessarily need join groups that are pro your ethnicity. That’s my opinion. Don’t make race determine how you breathe, who you hang out with, the music you like, etc…</p>

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<p>There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to keep in touch with your culture, or perhaps even exploring other cultures. Nobody wants to live in a world where everybody listens to the same music, eats the same food, wears the same clothes, etc. Some people take it too far and ONLY hang out in these groups, which is probably the point of your argument. And I agree, mono-ethnic/cultural groups have a dangerous ability to narrow one’s mind.</p>

<p>But what I absolutely detest are racial groups. </p>

<p>(Now, a special exception must be made for black Americans as they were uprooted from their homelands centuries ago and thus have no knowledge of their past history. Thus, they are united only by very recent cultural developments and their skin colour.) </p>

<p>Look at things like Asian groups. Asia’s probably more threatened by in-fighting than any external forces. I think the grievances in the China-Korea-Japan triangle far outweigh any ill feelings towards other foreigners. And there is disagreement about the term “Asian”. There doesn’t seem to be any logic in grouping such diverse peoples as Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos as one collective identity. </p>

<p>Or what about white? What is white anyway? Are Jews who have thoroughly inter-married with Europeans white? Are swarthy Italians white? Are Turks white? Are other Caucasians like Iranians white? So in essence, there is this congregation to celebrate the great unifying achievement of… skin colour??? What could be more stupider or shallower than that? It’s the most brainless assessment of an individual: “Since I’m too lazy to really get to know you, I’m going to assume a bunch of things based on your facial features.” Wow, haven’t we civilized ourselves past that point?</p>

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<p>"Racism would end if people didn’t make it such a focal point of their lives. "</p>

<p>The problem is, OTHER people make your race, if you’re not white, an issue. Of course, this is exacerbated by self-segregation (I hate it too), but self-segregation wouldn’t be such an attractive option to people if society was less racist. The defense mechanism would be less prominent if there was less to defend against.</p>

<p>As for these groups, I suport people keeping connections to their heritage; it gets nasty when they start hanging out EXCLUSIVELY with these groups, acting as though they’re in the in-group, etc.</p>

<p>I was actually just having a discussion about this with some classic upper-middle class Long Island-liberal friends. The whole “your race doesn’t matter, we’re all one big happy family”-ish line that’s so popular among certain types of liberals drives me crazy. Race IS an issue, both because of institutional racism in this country and because it is so often a part of someone’s heritage. This country is very divided along racial lines; being “colorblind” and pretending these don’t exist is ridiculous and accomplishes nothing, except to offend a lot of people and make the rich white liberal feel better.</p>

<p>(In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those decently well-off NY white people, but my politics are weird and my family is more working class)</p>

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<p>Has anyone seen Survivor: Race Wars? It was the white contestants who said race doesn’t matter. Typical.</p>