Senate should western views or race, apply to non westeners

Race doesn't matter anymore. It used to matter, but not now. Stop identifying people by the color of their skin. It doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

 

If it effects the way you are treated, and it sill does, in my opinion it does matter.

 

If everybody would start seeing people as people, not black, white, Asian, whatever, then racism would just disappear. I already perceive people that way. That's a start. Now it's your turn. You start doing it, then tell everyone you know to start doing it, and eventually it will happen everywhere.

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/colorblind/201112/colorblind-ideology-is-form-racism

http://news.illinois.edu/news/10/0421online.html

http://www.blogher.com/new-study-finds-links-between-colorblind-ideology-and-racism

http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-36-fall-2009/colorblindness-new-racism

 

Still doesn't mean that race isn't a stupid concept.

By this I don't mean that it doesn't exist, but that it doesn't have a genetic basis and it's really a sociocultural phenomenon that has caused a crapload of annoyance.

 

You're right. It is blindingly obvious. One of those men is talented and the other is not.

 

From the first link.
Let's break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = "People of color — we don't see you (at least not that bad ‘colored' part)." As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don't want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn't talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can't talk about it, you can't understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.

Man, I feel dirty even copying it. What nonsense. I can only chalk such jibber jabbering up to a simple need for attention.

 

Yeah it is pretty obvious that color blind doesn't mean ignoring people of color. It is clearly a type of equivocation.

 

I find the most annoying part of that is the philosobabble that tries to say "lets break this down" that way. It implies that someone who is, say, red-green colorblind can't see anything that's red or green because those things are invisible to them, or that red is somehow worse than green but they ignore that.

 

To me, what the author pretends the need for colorblindness implies is the most irritating. "that there is something shameful about me or my culture". Because I am pretty sure the author knows that that's not what it implies at all.
Strawman decapitated; hidden agenda exposed.

 

I've not read the link, and I'm not sure I'd make give the guy an academic appointment in philology, but he does have a point. "Color-blind" policies make it impossible to discuss any experience to that arises out of the historical or present-day realities of race. This is problematic because these experiences, even when painful, have value and help shape who we are both as individuals and as a society. For instance, exactly what sense does someone make of "color-blind" reading of "A Raisin in the Sun"?

Also, this task is made problematic because of what is assumed to have a culturally neutral valence, and the validity of that assumption. Consider an analogy to gender relations. In English, masculine pronouns are considered gender neutral. Except that they are, in fact, masculine. So the effect of trying to implement a "gender-neutral" language would simply be to eliminate anything making reference to feminine pronouns. How would that advance the cause of gender equality? How wouldn't it advance the cause of those who wanted to marginalize the concerns and voices of females in the public sphere in the first place?

 

Thats not really true on a sociological scale, It is a nice sentiment.

Racism is not the concept of race. They are related concepts but still seperate.

Racism is based on the believe that one race is superior to another and affording precived members of a certain race social privilages based on that perception. This snowballed(though it came about earlier) when through the early 1800 through Mid 1900's many sociaties mostly European or European based embraced the racist concept of white privilage along with white mans burden(to justify domnation and subjegation of countless regoins acorss the planet and an insane racial cast sytem) and tried to make it a reality.

This is not to say other cultures did not have beliefs that could be considerd racist or bigoted, it was just the first time a culture tried to mold the physical world to fit its belifes.

And while this is not the source of many problems around the world, it has none the less flavored thoes problems. It has caused regional devisions, national divisions, social divisons, that have been detrimental all parties involved. And it has not, can not, nor will not, be stopped or ended by basicly "pretending it does not exsist".

The belife of inherant superiortiy has not disappeared, and the resentment infered inferiority is as pontent as ever, to ignore it is in my opinion extremely dangerious.

Thought this is not the topic of this thread, I just wanted to point out the diffrence between race as a concept and racism.

 

However, once you eliminate race as a concept, racism will disappear of its own accord.

 

True.. but I think that's a tautology. If race is undefined, racism must be undefined as well.

However, if underlying human tendencies to bigotry of all sorts don't change, it will just be replaced by some other -ism.

 

Unfortunately human nature is such that we tend towards social differentiation and stratification. We assign labels and differences and then ascribe value to those differences. We even do it here on these forums with member dates, post counts, stars, titles etc.

 

I think this really gets to the heart of it. There's a very tribal nature in people... skin colour is one of the easiest ways of defining people as 'others', but it's not the only one. The one thing that does mean it's not a one for one change if racism is pushed out is that a lot of the others are harder to immediately classify someone. It's very easy for me to tell someone is of a different skin colour. It's substantially harder to do so with nationality, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation. So, it makes it harder to know when one 'should' discriminate, if someone does have bigoted views on those other issues.