Questionable defintion of racism

If you're just worried about the racial direction of it, well, that's the thing ... this is describing overall racism in the sociological sense, the sense in which one race can actually dominate others. And that sense is really different from the "personal antipathy toward another race" sense -- though yeah, it wouldn't hurt to mention that sense in passing.

Merritt Affair PWNED: their definition of "cultural racism" includes "identifying only Whites as great writers or composers!"

Healthcare in the US (10 matching messages)
Why is it my responsibility to pay for the healthcare of 45,000,000 uninsured people?
I'm not going to pay ridiculously high taxes for a service which is not an obligation of the government to provide--that said, I will also not support something so inherently anti-Constitution.

Egalitarian polemics to enslave me with feelings of guilt over my own material well-being and individualistic virtues have all eventually begun to sound the same.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 27th, 2005.

OSCARS 2006 (5 matching messages)
I've been reading lots of stuff on the IMDB message boars since last night's shock announcement that the Academy was giving the Best Picture Award to "Crash" and not the heavy-hitting favorite, "Brokeback Mountain."
I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain (BBM), so I can't really comment on its merits as a film. What I have seen for the past few months though is the passionate, ludicrous fanboyism related to BBM. It seems that no matter how you slice it, if you don't feel like seeing BBM or don't like it, you're a "homophobe."

How fitting it is, then, that a movie dedicated to the problems of racism, intolerance, and bigotry won best picture at a time when the fans of BBM were screaming about intolerance and bigotry.

I was honestly surprised when BBM came out, because it brought back those (ridiculous, IMO) arguments that if someone isn't moved by gay interactions, they too must be gay. I remember thinking that I didn't want to see 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Trying," and wondering if that meant I was a racist...or an in-the-closet rapper.

But such is the rhetoric of BBM fans and the gay-activist community. It isn't enough to accept homosexuality and respect people's decision to live their lives as they see fit. What the activist community clearly wants is not tolerance but endorsement.

How else can one explain how on one hand BBM fans and the community which has risen around it claim that BBM is just like any other love story, it just happens to deal with same sex love instead of different sex love, while on the other hand they claim that because of the fact that it deals with same sex love it is somehow "more important," "more meaningful," and "more beautiful?" Is tolerance really what's being requested?

While I thought "Crash" was a bit dopey, predictable, and cliche, I can't help but applaud how its victory exposes the forces behind the BBM movement as hypocrites and liars. Of course gay people should be able to love on another and straight people should of course respect that love. But this movement wasn't about respect. It was about the same sense of superiority which plagues all bigoted communites.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), March 6th, 2006.

"America needs a new foreign policy" (4 matching messages)
In terms of foreign policy, the US could try strict isolationism: pull out of everywhere, immediately halt all forms of foreign aid, and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist.
I'd love to see where the globe would go from there, but unfortunately, I think it would be hard to sleep for the frantic screams of the world willing to suck the US collective wang to get them back into the game.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), December 29th, 2005.

Pakistan Condemns Deadly U.S. Airstrike (4 matching messages)
Ever heard the saying "war is hell'? just take a look at pictures at any one of the bombed out cities in WW2. You got to do what you got to do.
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), January 14th, 2006.

Hamas wins a clear majority in the Palestinian elections... (3 matching messages)
This is huge. There aren't going to be any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians when the Palestinians' government is dominated by a popularly elected group dedicated to the destruction of Israel. We now know where the majority of Palestinians stand. Israel has already made it clear that they will not negotiate with a Hamas, and neither will the US. No one should unless Hamas renounces their stated goal of destroying Israel.
This situation poses some interesting questions about the applicability and efficacy of democracy in the Middle East when applied to societies dominated by radical Islam. Also, now that the Palestinian people have elected a government dominated by a group both directly and indirectly associated with terrorism, are the Palestinian people more responsible for any future terrorist attacks in Israel, and should they therefore suffer increased consequences for such attacks? Will this election in the territories influence the coming election in Israel away from the moderates, who had been gaining in popularity? I don't think the answers to any of these questions are particularly good for the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), January 27th, 2006.

Ah-ha, what's that fuss, Rosa Parks moves to the back of the bus (2 matching messages)
I understand that the culture required something to rally around at the time, but I never really saw what she did as that daring, or whatever.
Many blacks did far more then merely sit on the bus around the same time, and weren't recognized in anywhere near the same measure.

Whatever. It's too bad that she died, though.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 24th, 2005.

Free Trade C/D - Why does it work in Asia but not in South America? (1 matching message)
What's everyones opinion on this? I dont know much about the issue and would appreciate some input from all you fine people.
There is another thread but it seems to be more specifically about wal-mart.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 15th, 2005.

UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH (1 matching message)
But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
WE HAVE OPENED YOU
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 18th, 2005.

I Dream of Jeannie (1 matching message)
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/numa.php
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 23rd, 2005.

Do you believe in the hetero/bi/homosexual line? (1 matching message)
Ehm...you're theory is good and all...but i dont act steriotypically gay at all, and...im not attracted to girls AT ALL...like i can see when a girl is hot...but i find the thought of sexually interacting with a girl repulsive...and that feeling is not situational...
I get the feeling i misunderstood you perhaps.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), October 30th, 2005.

Is anyone else tired of seeing guys with these kinds of shirts? (1 matching message)
I don't like clothing that look like it's made from plastic, like a lot of the shirts you see at American Eagle. Also, I don't like it when guys where ridiculously baggy jeans half-way down their asses, or any other "ghetto" clothing, on both males and females, it's terrible. Dress like a productive member of society, please
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), January 4th, 2006.

I don't think we have any discussion about the Danish Muhammad cartoons.... (1 matching message)
It is ludicrous to assert that Europe as a whole should compromise on fundamental civilizational values such as societal liberalism to avoid offending a minority group of immigrants who do not yet share such values. As they are the ones who immigrated and are a minority, why are they not expected to assimilate into the mainstream value system of their new culture to at least a degree that easily allows for peaceful coexistence like any other group of immigrants? After all, they are the ones who actively chose to immigrate.
Europeans would do well to take a page from the way immigrants are assimilated and incorporated into American culture. This would hardly even be an issue here with American Muslims.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), February 6th, 2006.

It's February 2006 in Iraq... (1 matching message)
If civil war breaks out it has little to do with the US. All Saddam was doing was delaying the inevitable. Anyways, minorities seem to be able to live in peace better under democracies, this test will be a true foundation shaker.
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), February 23rd, 2006.

Do people have free will? (1 matching message)
"There is no way to prove free will, and endless ways to prove that everything is fated. Free will, like a lot of other beliefs humans have concocted for themselves, is just a blanket concept that fills a void comprised of thousands of gaps in our understanding of how the universe works. Unsurprisingly, it's a remarkably egotistical belief, and we frequently use it to put our species on a special pedestal, as if somehow a huge sea change in the way the world works occurred on the way up from our squirming littoral ancestry. As science advances further and further, the free will concept will recede, until it becomes strictly the territory of religious fundamentalists and the demented - just like our creation myths, geocentrism, etc.
Of course, how we choose to act given the information that free will doesn't exist is up to us."

Most who put humans on that pedestal do not ascribe the species to a "squirming littoral ancestry."

Also. Look. I just chose to respond to you.

-- clouded vision (lightlin...), February 23rd, 2006.

Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years? (1 matching message)
What I think we on the sidelines so often fail to understand and acknowledge is the fact that Bush has sent the message to terrorists and hostile powers around the world that the era of limp-wristed, Clintonian responses is over. Even if the rest of the world starts to hate us, even if people at home cry foul, we will pre-empt anyone who looks at us the wrong way. Crazy? Perhaps, but time will tell.
-- clouded vision (lightlin...), April 13th, 2006.

NY Times piece on the War on Contraception (1 matching message)
The problem with many of the people who advocate certain extreme laws like this is that, while they nobly strive to create a culture of life, they often focus their attention on creating that culture through liberal democractic process, which tacitly affirms a culture of death contrary to the culture of life those people are trying to create. Modern politics is founded upon an anthropology of primordial violence, a war of all against all, and it is thus unclear that modern politics is the best means of creating a culture of life.
Religious folk interested in creating a culture of life need to create that culture apart from modern politics, so they need another domain besides the US government to do their work. That domain is the church, which should be a counterculture of life that calls into the question the legitimacy of the prevailing culture of death, but does not entangle itself in the culture of death. LIberal politics should be resorted to only when it is an urgent necessity, such as in the immediate defense of living human beings.

-- clouded_vision (light_lin...), May 8th, 2006

Which is to say: This is defining "racism" as a social condition, a general state which is then made up of individual actions. (The individual actions are both large and small, innocent and evil, conscious and unconscious, etc.) Whereas you're maybe looking more for a discussion of racism as an individual personal belief.

It was a blatantly obvious answer that anyone with post-high school reading comprehension skills should be able to get by reading the link, though.

No offense to Nabisco, obviously; I think he'd agree he didn't DROP SCIENCE on this thread so much as point out something obvious.

yeah, that is the problem with these kind of definitions of racism. I suspect that Tutsis in Rwanda would be pleased to hear that there is no racism in their country. Having said that, maybe it makes sense IN THE USA to talk about racism in USA specific terms.

I don't quite get why this thread has gone all roffle, surely definitions of racism are something one can rationally discuss?

having a future time orientation

I'm white and I've been living in Asia for the past year. People are generally friendly but also often condescending. It's not too bad though.

so yeah you can map it to elsewhere, but you gotta bear in mind that any divisions going back over 200+ yearsish might have elements of race in them now, but couldn'ta even been about race as an issue much before that.

why would that not count?

Nairn if I find out you're over there tryin' to win souls for Christ I am going to personally see to it that the rapture leaves your ass behind

The advantages created for Whites are often invisible to them, or are considered “rights” available to everyone as opposed to “privileges” awarded to only some individuals and groups.

This is interesting. Just what rights are "really" just tools by the White Man to oppress everybody and keep the system going? Are these so-called rights things like Freedom of Speech and other basic parts of the Constitution? What is to be done with these rights now that we know they are just bourgeoisie ploys? Shouldnt' take too long to guess I'm afraid.