# Definition of racism



## Edwin

In another thread someone said:


> Most muslims in Denmark don't have blond hair and blue eyes. Most muslims in Denmark are not _Danish_. So an attack against muslims is by it's very nature xenophobic and racist.
> 
> Equating terrorism with Muslims, and with Arabs in the European context is not only stupid and misleading, in that context it's prejudicial, racist, and xenophobic.



The use of *racist* in this context is very puzzling to me. If a person of one "race" insults a person of the same "race", is that racist behavior?

There is a very long article on race Here. and clearly it means different things to different people, at different times in history, and in different countries.  According to the US Census Bureau: the white (race?) is defined as follows.



> *White:*  A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.



So according to the US Census Bureau (take it or leave it!) Arabs, Muslims and  Danes are mostly all of the white race. So any disputes they might have cannot be racist in nature, n'cest pas?


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## Gwynanne

Hi,

I think the more politically correct term now is ethnicity, no?
So by that term, then yes, we are of different ethnicities.  

GA


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## WillyLandron

Race is *not *a biological fact but a social construct. Irish Catholics in the United States were for a long time considered to be *non-whites*. Now if Conan O'Brian is not white I don't know what is. He's uberwhite! But in the not so distant past, he would *not *have been considered "white" in the United States.

To me, most Jews are white. I would say that most Jews in the United States consider themselves to be white people. This does not mean that Hitler's attitudes towards Jews were not racist. He saw them as subhuman even if I see them, and they see themselves, as white people; as white as any white person can be.

There is something about Muslims in Denmark, who make up but two percent of the country, that makes them of a different _race_. Different in the mind of Danes in general.

You see, it's like the Irish when the first waves came; they were poor, they had a different religion, a different language, and the people who were already there felt they were ruining the place.

You should see the cartoons that were drawn of them! 

I think I might fish some up and leave it up to you to determine whether they are "racist" or not.


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## WillyLandron

http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html

Are these "racist"  cartoons?


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## kevinleihuang

Gwynanne said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> I think the more politically correct term now is ethnicity, no?
> So by that term, then yes, we are of different ethnicities.
> 
> GA


 

I agree with that. We often use ethnicity rather than racism in the course of Sociology.


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## Gwynanne

kevinleihuang said:
			
		

> I agree with that. We often use ethnicity rather than racism in the course of Sociology.


 
So following this line of thought, _ethnocentric _or _prejudice _or _discriminitory_ would be better terms instead of _racist. Racist_ is a particular form of prejudice that is aimed against someone of a different race. 

what do y'all think?

GA

PS.
Here is the dictionary.com definition for _race_
So, it could refer to genetics or social groups. Your choice 
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=race


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## Edwin

WillyLandron said:
			
		

> Race is *not *a biological fact but a social construct. Irish Catholics in the United States were for a long time considered to be *non-whites*. Now if Conan O'Brian is not white I don't know what is. He's uberwhite! But in the not so distant past, he would *not *have been considered "white" in the United States.
> 
> To me, most Jews are white. I would say that most Jews in the United States consider themselves to be white people. This does not mean that Hitler's attitudes towards Jews were not racist. He saw them as subhuman even if I see them, and they see themselves, as white people; as white as any white person can be.
> 
> There is something about Muslims in Denmark, who make up but two percent of the country, that makes them of a different _race_. Different in the mind of Danes in general.
> 
> You see, it's like the Irish when the first waves came; they were poor, they had a different religion, a different language, and the people who were already there felt they were ruining the place.
> 
> You should see the cartoons that were drawn of them!
> 
> I think I might fish some up and leave it up to you to determine whether they are "racist" or not.




I'm aware of the use of "non-white" among some immigrant groups in the US. In my wife's family (they are of Greek origin--her siblings all born in the US) they sometimes used to refer to non-Greek Caucasians as "white".  But everybody knows that is an abuse of language. 

But in a language forum like this I think we should take a little care with the meaning of words. Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of race is. And as I mentioned it varies in time and place. But in the 21st century I think we should recognize that Danes and Arabs are of the same race (for the most part). We don't have to perpetuate Hitler's ridiculous concept of race. 

Blonde hair and blue eyes are not a determinant of race.  Of course, you can be like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass and say, 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

I'm just trying to push a more rational usage of the term.


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## WillyLandron

Gwynanne said:
			
		

> what do y'all think?


Frankly, I don't care what you call it. We have this unhealthy propensity, in this country in particular, of attempting to solve problems by renaming things. 

So *blind people* are supposed to be somehow better off that we now call them *visually impaired* and *black people* have gained so much now the white people call them *African-Americans*. I'm *Latino*, not *Hispanic*! Yeah! A lot of good that does *me*!

Prejudice against people based on differences in appearance, real or imagined, is just as disgusting. You can call it "candy" if you want. It still stinks.

I don't see the point in saying that the Japanese Army, for example, did not commit racist acts during World War II because the Koreans and the Chinese look just like the Japanese to us (or that they are all "Mongoloid" anyway).

It's also not very useful, I think, to say that the enternment of Japanese Americans during WWII was not racist because we all belong to the human race so racism doesn't exist. I don't think something as absurd has ever been written. Not even Ionesco, not even Kafka.

We can play semantic games all we want. The problem is that people everywhere do messed up things to people they perceive to be different. You can stick any label you want and that horrible practice as far as I'm concerned.


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## WillyLandron

Edwin said:
			
		

> I'm just trying to push a more rational usage of the term.


I've included a dictionary definition. I don't see what else it is that you want. Words are not black and white and people do interpret them differently.

I can reword it like this :

Those cartoons pick on a group of people who appear to be physically different from most Danes and which most Danes can generally identify as being of non-Nordic extraction.

But what would be the point?


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## WillyLandron

I see the definition was deleted. If you want to know what a "racism" is, then look it up.


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## Gwynanne

I do agree that I get sick of all the political correctness in the US, but I don't think that clarifying its definition reduces the wrongness of racism. 

It does reduce the inflamatory reaction to it though because of the negative connotations that come with "racism." Indeed though, it is an outdated Darwinistic term and phenomenon that still exists although it really would be nice to not have at all in our language, along with ethnocentricity, prejudice, and discrimination. 

Thanks for your thoughts!

GA


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## WillyLandron

Gwynanne said:
			
		

> I do agree that I get sick of all the political correctness in the US, but I don't think that clarifying its definition reduces the wrongness of racism.
> 
> It does reduce the inflamatory reaction to it though because of the negative connotations that come with "racism."
> GA



I am a young Hispanic male and I look it. When the police decide to stop me on the streets of New York, ask me where I am going, tell me that I look suspicious, ask me for ID, I can read between the lines. 

One time I was pulled over and the police asked for the ID of every single person in the car except for the ONE white person with us. And one of the police officers was black.

You can call that whatever you want. And I think that sort of behaviour deserves to be connotated negatively. Why sanitize that sort of behavior with a more neutral nomenclature? 

When I protested to the police, did I overreact? Or am I sick and tired of being treated like a second class citizen? The white person in the car was *furious*. It's just not fair. I don't know if I associate myself with a particularly enlightened group of people but nobody I know, not matter what color they are, thinks that attitude is cool. We all hate it.

Now that event does not merit setting a cop car on fire but it does deserve people getting angry. Should we just let it sly? And by "we" I don't mean ethnic minorities. This is bad for white people too.


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## Edwin

WillyLandron said:
			
		

> http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html
> 
> Are these "racist"  cartoons?




I wouldn't call them racist.  Since certainly the Irish are not of a different race from the English, Scots, Germans, French, Spaniards, Arabs,... etc.  The fact that someone refers to them as racist doesn't mean that there is any validity to that characterization.  Just as Hitler trumped up his phony theories of race to justify his prejudices, the same has been done to many groups (Irish, Italians--- you name it.)  

The present situation of the cartoons in Denmark  has less to do with physical appearance than with specific behaviors of certain people.  Why blame the cartoons on "race".  Rather, it is a form of attribuing guilt by association of            Prophet Mohammed with a group of terrorist who use Islam to justify their actions. 

Suppose the terrorists were Fundamentalist White Christians from Oklahoma and the cartoonists lampooned Christ in a similar way, would you call the cartoonists racists?

As you know, we are already having great difficulty in the US sorting people out by race. Famous example: Tiger Wood.  If the human race survives long enough perhaps all "races" will blend into one and all forms of racism will disappear.


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## WillyLandron

Tocayo, I don't have a problem with the word "racist." You seem to think the way I use it is wrong and I think I really don't care either way.

I don't see how supposing Muslims in Denmark are from Oklahoma helps; they are not and you can tell. And frankly, I don't see the point in this conversatsion.

My opinion is that those cartoons are racist and xenophobic. You or anybody else can think that's wrong or inflamatory or whatever. It's no skin off my teeth.

But don't tell me whites can't be racist against Pakistanis because some social scientist somewhere placed people from the Indian subcontinent in the little Caucasian box.

Have a nice debate (without me).


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## Edwin

WillyLandron said:
			
		

> One time I was pulled over and the police asked for the ID of every single person in the car except for the ONE white person with us. And one of the police officers was black.



A Russian friend, Boris, who speaks English with an accent tells similar stories of playing soccer with guys of a dark complexion in Los Angeles. They were sometimes hassled by police who wanted to see their IDs. But Boris-- probably the only one not a citizen--was never asked for his.  

That's properly called "racial profiling" and is based on physical appearance. It is certainly a problem in the US. However, I do not believe that the Danish cartoons were related to the physical appearance of Muslims. In fact, in most of the cartoons Prophet Mohammed looked "white" except for his beard--which is not unusual for people of his era. I am sure there are plenty of Danes with big black beards.


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## Gwynanne

That's properly called "racial profiling" and is based on physical appearance. It is certainly a problem in the US. However, I do not believe that the Danish cartoons were related to the physical appearance of Muslims. In fact, in most of the cartoons Prophet Mohammed looked "white" except for his beard--which is not unusual for people of his era. I am sure there are plenty of Danes with big black beards.


Yet at the same time, a Scandanavian Dane and a Muslim Dane would look different.  Do you have a link to these cartoons, by the way? You can walk down the street and identify people of the same "race" as the US Bureau defines it as (for example, can you tell by looking at someone if they have Middle-Eastern descent or if they are Scandanavian.  Unfortunately, and Irish American and a Swedish American may look different (one red-haired the other blond) but will be treated the same.  A Muslim American (is that the right terminology?) will be treated in a discriminitary manner (perhaps not by everybody...but it will happen).  So what do you call discriminating people of the same "race" based on their genetic background?  Ahhhhhhh!

I would call it ethnocentricity, which embodies not only physical appearance, but also customs...and other things.  

Ok, I've forgotten what the original intent of this forum was...are you asking about the definition of racism in general, or about this particular cartoon?


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## ampurdan

Race is a cultural construct, but I just don't see the point in including religion in it. Hitler killed jews because of their race, not because of their religion. Some Danes may be afraid of Muslims because of their supposed race, some Danes may be afraid of Muslims because of their religion, some because of both things. I think that calling everything "racism" is simplifying things.


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## Brioche

WillyLandron said:
			
		

> Race is *not *a biological fact but a social construct. Irish Catholics in the United States were for a long time considered to be *non-whites*. Now if Conan O'Brian is not white I don't know what is. He's uberwhite! But in the not so distant past, he would *not *have been considered "white" in the United States.


 
What utter rubbish!

In the good old days of Jim Crow did the Irish Catholics drink from the colored water fountain, sit at the back of the bus, use the colored restrooms and waiting rooms? Go to colored schools?
No, they did not.

Were Irish Catholics were affected by the acts forbidding interracial marriage?
No, they were not.

Did any state legislatures pass acts restricting the franchise of Irish Catholics on the basis of "race" or any other factor?
No, they did not.

And how did they tell Irish Catholics from Irish Protestants? Were their eyes closer together?

The Irish Catholic immigrants who arrived in large numbers after the Potato Famine were subject to prejudice, much like nearly every other immigrant group on first arrival.

But the US, being predominantly a Protestant country, has a long history discrimination against Roman Catholics of any sort. For example, the colony of Virginia enforced Anglican religious observance, so the Puritans moved to Maryland, a Roman Catholic colony, where the Puritans were free to practice their religion.

The Puritans then seized the government of Maryland between 1650 and 1658, and banned both Anglicanism (Episcopalianism) and Catholicism. During that period, every Catholic church in southern Maryland was burnt down.


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## Outsider

Edwin said:
			
		

> The use of *racist* in this context is very puzzling to me. If a person of one "race" insults a person of the same "race", is that racist behavior?
> 
> There is a very long article on race Here. and clearly it means different things to different people, at different times in history, and in different countries.  According to the US Census Bureau: the white (race?) is defined as follows.
> 
> So according to the US Census Bureau (take it or leave it!) Arabs, Muslims and  Danes are mostly all of the white race. So any disputes they might have cannot be racist in nature, n'cest pas?


Racist people usually also believe in subraces. Even though they may grudgingly accept that "Arabs are whites", they will still tell you that they are an impure, inferior, form of white, not the real deal. ('Just look at their swarthy skin... Someone in their family tree must have consorted with races less-than-white!')

And then there are those who would tell you straight up that Arabs are not whites, period.



			
				Edwin said:
			
		

> I'm aware of the use of "non-white" among some immigrant groups in the US. In my wife's family (they are of Greek origin--her siblings all born in the US) they sometimes used to refer to non-Greek Caucasians as "white".  But everybody knows that is an abuse of language.
> 
> But in a language forum like this I think we should take a little care with the meaning of words. Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of race is. And as I mentioned it varies in time and place. But in the 21st century I think we should recognize that Danes and Arabs are of the same race (for the most part). We don't have to perpetuate Hitler's ridiculous concept of race.
> 
> Blonde hair and blue eyes are not a determinant of race.  Of course, you can be like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass and say, 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
> 
> I'm just trying to push a more rational usage of the term.


By rational usage, I suppose you mean 'based on objective biological data'. But there lies the rub: race is _not_ an objective biological characteristic. It's subjective, and culture-dependent. Saying that Greeks are not white may be an abuse of language today, but it wasn't 150 years ago, and it still isn't among some neonazi subcultures.

This is why the term *"ethnicity"* tends to be preferred nowadays: it carries no pretense of biological objectivity with it.



			
				Edwin said:
			
		

> Suppose the terrorists were Fundamentalist White Christians from Oklahoma and the cartoonists lampooned Christ in a similar way, would you call the cartoonists racists?


Of course not, because white Christians from Oklahoma have never been a discriminated minority in the U.S.


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## Outsider

Brioche said:
			
		

> What utter rubbish!
> 
> In the good old days of Jim Crow did the Irish Catholics drink from the colored water fountain, sit at the back of the bus, use the colored restrooms and waiting rooms? Go to colored schools?


The classification of Irish people as 'non-white' ended before the Jim Crow laws were put into place.


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## Edwin

Outsider said:
			
		

> The classification of Irish people as 'non-white' ended before the Jim Crow laws were put into place.



Hmmm... Any evidence for that assertion, Outsider?  At any rate, the Jim Crow laws were indisputably racist.  I lived through the last 30 years or so of that era and those laws molded my concept of racism. During my formative years in the South (of the US) I had almost no contact with any other form of racism. Of course, we heard a lot about Hitler's racism. But that was based on his own phony pseudo-scientific concept of race.  Perhaps that's the reason I have difficulty extending the meaning of racism as so many do nowadays.

I still think Brioche makes a good point. Any discrimination the Irish suffered was pretty trivial (and short lived) compared to that suffered by African Americans.


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## Outsider

Edwin said:
			
		

> Hmmm... Any evidence for that assertion, Outsider?
> 
> [...]
> 
> I still think Brioche makes a good point. Any discrimination the Irish suffered was pretty trivial (and short lived) compared to that suffered by African Americans.


I think Willy's point was not exactly about discrimination, but about whether or not they were ever regarded as 'non-white'. See the following:



> Benjamin Franklin's essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc." narrowly defined White to include only the English (Anglo-Saxons) and North Germans—Anglo-Saxons also originally North Germans, from Angeln and Lower Saxony—even then excluding nationalities such as the French and Swedes. In 1751, he wrote, "[The Germans] will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. … The Germans are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion."
> 
> There's more. Keep reading.


The following three links are not exactly about race, but they describe how poorly the Irish and other white minorities were treated, in some periods of history:

"But the very first slaves that the English made in the Caribbean were Irish. And there were more Irish slaves in the middle of the 17th century than any others."
"Weren't 19th century European immigrants 'raced'?"
"They write about the Irish in a very contemptuous way. In fact, they use words and phrases that they wouldn't use of the Indians."



			
				Edwin said:
			
		

> Of course, we heard a lot about Hitler's racism. But that was based on his own phony pseudo-scientific concept of race.


All racial classifications are phony and pseudoscientific, Edwin. All of them, without exception.


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## feuerbach

Brioche said:
			
		

> What utter rubbish!
> 
> In the good old days of Jim Crow did the Irish Catholics drink from the colored water fountain, sit at the back of the bus, use the colored restrooms and waiting rooms? Go to colored schools?
> No, they did not.
> 
> Were Irish Catholics were affected by the acts forbidding interracial marriage?
> No, they were not.
> 
> Did any state legislatures pass acts restricting the franchise of Irish Catholics on the basis of "race" or any other factor?
> No, they did not.
> 
> And how did they tell Irish Catholics from Irish Protestants? Were their eyes closer together?


 
Brioche, excellent reflections! I'm not black but if I were black and someone dares to compare the sufferings of my people with the sufferings of the Irish, I would beat the living sh*t out of him/her. Yes, I know, that would perpetuate the myth that blacks are innately violent people. I'd take my chances but, on the other hand, I would have kicked your l*ttle wh*te *ass. ¡Quién me quita lo bailado!

I also found the links that Outsider shared with us extremely insightful and informative, especially the interview with Audrey Smedley. I'd like to highlight two powerful ideas.

(1) "Race is an ideology that says that all human populations are divided into exclusive and distinct groups; that all human populations are ranked, they are not equal. Inequality is absolutely essential to the idea of race." 

(2) "Race represents attitudes and beliefs about human differences, not the differences themselves." 

Very well put! Thank you Outsider.

My definition of race and racism is very simple. I associate race mainly with skin pigmentation. In most countries that have been colonized by European countries, there's a scale that whites have developed and implemented that predicts social acceptance and self-esteem. Your chances of being accepted or rejected by others and even by yourself varies with the pigmentation of your skin. Of course, lighter is better than darker. This is what happens in Argentina and other Latin America, Central America and Caribbean countries.


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## eironi

If anyone was ever in any doubt about who the bad guys of history were, I thoroughly recommend you take a degree at New York University with Professor Karen Ordahl Kupperman. Some pre-course reading here: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-10.htm ...yeah.


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## eironi

feuerbach said:
			
		

> I'm not black but if I were black and someone dares to compare the sufferings of my people with the sufferings of the Irish, I would beat the living sh*t out of him/her.


http://www.irishholocaust.org/


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## ampurdan

lighter is better than darker... Mmmm... I don't think so. If racism only took into consideration the colour of our skin, racists would not go to the beach... It's not only about the colour of your skin... It's rather about physical traits.

We know that race is a cultural construction, thank you Willy, Feuerbach and Outsider, but why should we include religion in the term of race? Religion is something you can choose, whatever we consider race to be, it's not normally a thing you can choose (despite Mr. Jackson's efforts). 

So, I agree that "equating Muslims to terrorists" may be called xenophobic... But "racist"?


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## cuchuflete

eironi said:
			
		

> If anyone was ever in any doubt about who the bad guys of history were, I thoroughly recommend you take a degree at New York University with Professor Karen Ordahl Kupperman. Some pre-course reading here: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-10.htm ...yeah.



This absolutely contradicts the notion of racism being based on skin color.  Seems evolution has focused modern narrow-mindedness on that aspect of difference.


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## swingbolder

> I'm not black but if I were black and someone dares to compare the sufferings of my people with the sufferings of the Irish, I would beat the living sh*t out of him/her.


 
Well, I am black (black American to be exact) and while it's true that the Irish did not experience as much discrimination as blacks -- and certainly for not as long -- they were harshly discriminated against. In New York City during the 19th century, for example, when they started immigrating here in large numbers, businesses would put signs outside saying "No Dogs or Irish Allowed." There were few jobs open to them except for the lowest-paying, etc.


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## WillyLandron

ampurdan said:
			
		

> So, I agree that "equating Muslims to terrorists" may be called xenophobic... But "racist"?



To say discrimination against, say, Presbyterians in the US is racist is a stretch. In a crowd, you cannot pick out the Baptists from the Presbyterians or the Lutherans or the Episcopalians. When the police set out an APB on a criminal they don't say : "The suspect is tall, heavy-set Lutheran male."

They DO say things like "Hispanic male." I consider myself white but I know that people can look at me and say "This person is Hispanic." So in that sense, Hispanic is a race. Yes, even if Hispanic can be Alberto Fujimori, Susana Gimenez, Hugo Chavez, or Sammy Sosa. 

In Denmark, if you wanted to round up all of the Muslims and put them in a camp you could be reasonable accurate. There would be some problems with this because some Danes have converted to Islam and not all people who are Muslim look a certain way. Not all Muslims dress like it and some are very secular.

(My personal opinion is the you would have a much harder time in Spain but I have never been there.)

I think that if you look at someone in the United States and can tell that they are of Slavic descent and mistreat them because of that you are being "racist" even though I, and most people today, consider Slavic people to be white.

Racism is when, I think, in your tiny little head, you set a group of people apart based on their physical traits, and treat them unfairly.

In the Danish context, these drawings are racist. Especially coming from that paper. They were meant to provoke people so that they can later say : "See? We told you those people are not like us! They are dangerous! We need to keep them out."

If in my town Catholics are two percent of the population and 90 per cent of them are from Austria, cartoons in the local paper which portray all car theives as Catholics or the Catholic religion especially conducive to stealing cars, in that context, those cartoons are anti-Austrian. If Austrians are considered of a different race in my town, even if my town is 100 percent white according to what you and I think, those cartoons are racist, methinks.


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## ampurdan

Sorry, Willy, I don't agree with you on this. In that case, portraying "car thieves as Catholics or the Catholic religion especially conducing to stealing cars" could dress up racism, but in itself, it wouldn't be racist. I think it's good to distinguish. Discrimination because of your ideology or because of your race is not the same... Religion and culture are halfway between both, though, but strictly speaking, "religion" is a thing one can change. Abstractly, it's stupid to criticize one race, but it's not stupid criticize one religion.

I'm not sure if there was a racist ideology behind the publishers of the cartoons, there might be or not. I agree with you that they were very stupid... But there are many things I don't like in the prevailing religion in my country, and I want to be able to pointing at them. Taking your definition, I would be being "self-racist" (I know it's not the appropiate word, I mean something like that nazi jew in the film "the Believer") and I'm obviously not. 

The fear that Europe has shown towards Islam is not a racist one, is more an ideologic-cultural one. People generally don't fear them because of what they look like, but because what they think that they might think...
Many people would feel released if they saw Muslims abandoning the practices which make them look as different from laicized Christians.

As for my country, there's much stupidity in Spain, but racial stupidity is not a big issue by now. People have a racial mental scheme which may differentiate Arabs from Spaniards (quite inaccurate, I agree) or not, but that's not what makes people fear, methinks.


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## WillyLandron

ampurdan said:
			
		

> Sorry, Willy, I don't agree with you on this. In that case, portraying "car thieves as Catholics or the Catholic religion especially conducing to stealing cars" could dress up racism, but in itself, it wouldn't be racist.


Oh no! We *DO *agree. I agree with what you said. It dresses up racism without being racist within itself. I think hating people, not ideas but *people*, because of their relgion is just as bad as hating them because of their race.

I don't think saying a religion has aspects that are problematic, or that all religions do, is necessarily bad. 
I have big problems with the Catholic Church and don't consider myself self-hating. But a great deal of anti-Catholicism in the US has a racist and xenophobic element that cannot be denied. I think that can be argued pretty well.

I think we need to at least question the motive behind these cartoons. If _*they *_are free to draw them, I think _*we *_are free to pick them apart. And I think we are free to speculate that they are racially motivated, class biased, xenophobic, anti-people-with-beards or anything else we can think of.


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## feuerbach

WillyLandron said:
			
		

> To say discrimination against, say, Presbyterians in the US is racist is a stretch. In a crowd, you cannot pick out the Baptists from the Presbyterians or the Lutherans or the Episcopalians. When the police set out an APB on a criminal they don't say : "The suspect is tall, heavy-set Lutheran male."
> 
> They DO say things like "Hispanic male." I consider myself white but I know that people can look at me and say "This person is Hispanic." So in that sense, Hispanic is a race. Yes, even if Hispanic can be Alberto Fujimori, Susana Gimenez, Hugo Chavez, or Sammy Sosa.
> 
> In Denmark, if you wanted to round up all of the Muslims and put them in a camp you could be reasonable accurate. There would be some problems with this because some Danes have converted to Islam and not all people who are Muslim look a certain way. Not all Muslims dress like it and some are very secular.
> 
> (My personal opinion is the you would have a much harder time in Spain but I have never been there.)
> 
> I think that if you look at someone in the United States and can tell that they are of Slavic descent and mistreat them because of that you are being "racist" even though I, and most people today, consider Slavic people to be white.
> 
> Racism is when, I think, in your tiny little head, you set a group of people apart based on their physical traits, and treat them unfairly.
> 
> In the Danish context, these drawings are racist. Especially coming from that paper. They were meant to provoke people so that they can later say : "See? We told you those people are not like us! They are dangerous! We need to keep them out."
> 
> If in my town Catholics are two percent of the population and 90 per cent of them are from Austria, cartoons in the local paper which portray all car theives as Catholics or the Catholic religion especially conducive to stealing cars, in that context, those cartoons are anti-Austrian. If Austrians are considered of a different race in my town, even if my town is 100 percent white according to what you and I think, those cartoons are racist, methinks.


 
¡Me gustó el post de Willy ¡Y tenía que ser un Latino, o Hispano, o Spic, etc.! (Would this be considered a racist comment? Let's see what white guys think). Willy shared with us personal experiences that perfectly illustrate and prove that his definition of racism is on the mark: "Racism is when, I think, in your tiny little head, you set a group of people apart based on their physical traits, and treat them unfairly." (I'm glad that Willy emphasized tiny). 

In that sense we are all racists, that is, we have our own filters and categories in which we put people according to their looks (external physical traits.) If we get to know them, we might use more refined filters and classifications. Racial profiling would be a good way to summarize this cognitive process that we use daily and unconsciously. We have inherited these filters and categories from our parents and they got them from their parents, and so on. We have also been socialized into this cognitive process by the culture in which we are immersed. (What they don't teach you at school but you pick up.) 

I'm also a Latino and I look Latino. Whenever I'm stopped by a white cop, with a close haircut, and wearing dark glasses, I say to myself: "I'm f*cked!" When a white woman is walking down the street and she sees a group of Latino teenagers coming her way and yelling and blasting music out of a huge boombox that one of the guys is carrying on his shoulder, she says to herself, "I'm f*cked!" Interesting enough, most of the time your worst nightmare doesn't come true. However, your racial profiling system, based on your own or others' experience always kicks in.

I have no problem with racial profiling. As I said, we all do it regardless of our race, ethnicity, country of origin, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) My problem is, as Willy said, when you act upon your racial profiling and treat people unfairly. My other problem is when white people forget what white privilege means and they lecture minorities on these topics, especially when you are being discriminated against. As the the late African black nationalist Steve Biko said: "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked."


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## Outsider

Here's an interesting picture of four well known public figures. Rhetorical question: which one of them has the lightest skin?


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## feuerbach

Outsider said:
			
		

> Here's an interesting picture of four well known public figures. Rhetorical question: which one of them has the lightest skin?


 
Outsider, unfortunately the visual test is sometimes deceiving. Blacks (not whites) have come up with the word "Oreo": "Black on the outside, White on the inside."

They apply the term to other blacks who they believe betray their roots for dressing too white, talking too white, thinking too white, acting too white, dating white people, etc. 

There's a good example of its use at the Urban Dictionary site: "Damn Marcus, have you seen Deon lately? The brother is a total Oreo, he's all drivin' a BMW with his white b*tch. The brotha forgot where he came from!" 

In that sense, and in relation to your picture, I would say that Ms. Rice is "blacker" than Mr. Powell.


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## DDT

IMHO "racism" is a synonymous of "fear". Racists are simply afraid of what they don't know. The point might be a different skin colour, culture, sexual orientation, religion, habit etc etc

DDT


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## cuchuflete

feuerbach said:
			
		

> Outsider, unfortunately the visual test is sometimes deceiving. Blacks (not whites) have come up with the word "Oreo": "Black on the outside,* White on the inside*."
> 
> They apply the term to other blacks who they believe betray their roots for dressing *too white*, talking too white, thinking too white, *acting too white*, dating white people, etc.


Assuming that a range of pigmentation constitutes a "race", as in the words bolded above, seems to be a good example.
One's color is 'x', therefore there exists an expectation of behavior.  

An interesting question: Does color initially create an expectation of behavior, or does frequent collective behavior come to roost under a color associated rubric? 

Do politically kerrect terms like "people of color" foment racism?


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## Outsider

What I wanted to show was that raw colour itself is not an absolute indicator of race. The same person can look very different under different lighting. And here we have a picture where, at least at first glance, Colin Powell has lighter skin than the two white men to his left! We already know that Colin Powell is considered black, of course, but what if we didn't? How would we describe him then, based on this picture?...
Race is not just about this or that set of physical traits. It also involves what we already know, or think we do, about people.


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## cuchuflete

Outsider said:
			
		

> Race is not just about this or that set of physical traits. It also involves what we already know, or think we do, about people.


 In other words, prejudice and racial assumptions are the same thing.


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## Zahab

Racism is not to accept another person that have a different skin colour and different culture than other group of person. i think this is problem in many wars th racism prevails this is the reason of the concentrations camps an holocoust, and the reason that the continent of africa does not have good advances in their economy and in other aspects.

thank you


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## frenchtranslater

You are on the wrong track, we are not talking about the definiton of white, we are not talking about skin color but we started out with religion. There is a difference between Muslim and Arab and between Jewish and Israeli. The people who drew the cartoons were attacking Muslims. 

The cause of the caricature of Mohamet was the fear of Europe and the U.S. of the growing terrorist threat. Medias focus on the Muslim terrorism. This was 'maybe' the same race, white, but not the same religions.


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