Real Equality.

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No one insists whites are racist for being born the colour they are. The argument is based in the fact that white people who grow up in white-majority societies are typically oblivious to the way racism is woven into their societies and the way it benefits their interests and thus tend to accept it without even recognizing it.

You've built a nice strawman but you're not responding to something that is claimed.

The people who say that all whites are racist or only white people are racist, are rather silly. But I think that your analogy can work just as well in favor of black people who get told by white people that racism is over and they are not getting disadvantaged. They think they are helping, but it does nothing about the systematic problems like black people being brutalised by the police

Really, everyone has biases, it is like a natural part of being human, although it does not excuse it. And while some are silly with their white people are racist point, I do think that other times there is a missunderstanding that some make about systems may be racist and those who do not aim to change it or stand in the way of change are complicit in that racism.

Other people on here have pretty much said the same thing I have just in a different way. I realize I'm not good with words but saying I responded to something I havent witnessed is wrong. I have experienced people saying white people are racist by nature, more than once. Thats my reality. Ive been told my opinion doesn't count because I'm white. Thats silencing a wholes groups voice. Aspartofme explained it well. I dont think I'm going to be part of political discussions anymore. I thought it would be safe on here because people would understand how difficult it is to make your thoughts and experiences make sense to others. But I was apparently wrong. No offense, its just to stressful. I think from now on I'll only discuss these things with my family. They are patient enough to keep asking questions to make sure they understand where I'm coming from. Thanks for your time.

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It's not meant to attack you, this is meant a a fact of life. This is what racist by nature means.

If you read about things by black activists, you will start to understand where they are coming from with "white people are racist by nature."

But too many people still get too defensive to even bother trying to learn and trying to understand why is this being said. What do they mean by it, how are white people racist, how can I possibly be racist. Huh.

It seems pretty obvious to me that one cannot eradicate racism by treating people differently based on their race. This appears to be the prevailing strategy being advocated by many activists.

Bad feeling 50 years from now it will be the same 'ole, same 'ole.

The problem with treating everyone the same is it will still discriminate.

Put it this way, the teacher has a policy that everyone must come to class on time and have everything prepared. This policy applies to every student but this would work against those with disabilities who are not able to come to class on time or be prepared due to executive functioning issues.

Or what if the teacher had a policy that everyone must participate. This would work against those on the autistic spectrum and those with anxiety and those who have socialization issues. So they get bad grades in class or get detention for not participating enough. I faced this in school with grades because of my own disability. Back then I didn't know this was ableism because the policy worked against me. I was under the conservative idea that everyone is equal and must be treated the same. But because everyone else had this same policy, I didn't know this could still be discrimination.

So I can understand why it would be called racism even if something applies to all humans or if all humans are treated equal. It's the systemic racism.

Last edited by League_Girl on 31 Oct 2020, 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

"Treating everyone" does not work in making equality when this means acting blind to race ignores systematic racism. Being blind to particular experiences of different groups can mean being complicit in looking away from certain problems. Like pretending that race does not exist does not help when black people get targeted by the police. Just saying all love is equal does not just stop harassment of gay people. And saying that all people are able does not help people with disabilities from being able to manage. Sometimes you need to give some preferential treatment in giving a person in a wheelchair permission to use an elevator, while telling someone who is not to use the stairs.

Treating people equally does not mean being blind to injustice.

Do you want police to treat black people differently than white people or the same?

Do you want gay people to be treated differently than straight people or the same?

We should aim for a society in which race doesn't matter.

The first two paragraphs are completely incorrect.

The only instances in law I can think of that codify the sort of inequality you’re talking about:

- You can’t fire someone because they’re pregnant. You potentially could fire someone because their partner is pregnant. I don’t think the case law would support this but the law as written could maybe be interpreted that way.

- Opposite-sex civil partnerships might not yet be legal in Scotland. A vote to change the law passed the Scottish Parliament but last I heard they needed to update some other laws to make it actually work.

- Bishops of the established Church are granted seats in the House of Commons through their office. This is not the case for other religions or other Christian denominations.

With those exceptions, the law in this country is blind to race, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, etc. So laws against racism protect all races equally, laws on religious freedom protect all religions equally, laws on sexism protect all genders equally, etc.

That isn’t to say that the law will always lead to perfect equality, but your fear that “reverse racism” is codified in law is completely detached from reality.

The problem is that those things are still happening, you are still going to find a lot of police that hold racial biases and people who are homophobia, a law saying that all races and sexualities are equal is not going to just makes things equal. Police are still thinking that people with darker skin are more suspicious, dangerous and pain resistant, and more people are getting harassed for being homosexual than for being heterosexual.

Ending slavery against black people meant that who had a whole race of people who were poor, and segregation kept them in poor places and disadvantaged that heritability of wealth built up certain cultural biases against them. The preferable answer would be that people are boosted up by class for equality, but that would require even heavier resources and does not take into account things like poor representation and biases in things like hiring.

Equality across the board is preferable, but we are not even at the part where there is no discrimination. Many people still see it as political when a TV show or movie has a queer person in it, let alone that it might be the main character. Apparently saying that a young boy might be gay is sexualising him, when a lot of people don't care when they put their baby in a shirt that says "lock up your daughters".

Yes, but how do we fix it? Do we fix it by treating people of different races/sexualities different in an attempt to correct for past injustice? Or do we do the long hard work of striving for a society where these things don't matter.

I look at it as an accommodation. We have the 504 Plan or the IEP for children with disabilities and we also have wheelchair ramps, sign language speakers, caption, and we have interpreters.

So how would race be any different?

In terms of sexualities, I imagine signal boosting those of minority sexualities. Straight parents already have all sorts of expectations where they want their kids to be straight too; also get with an opposite sex partner and have a child, really so much of heteronormativity in culture. That Pride of LGBT stuff does not go astray.

Are a whole bunch of non-binary toilets going to become available in every location that binary toilets are? I assume not, can either be expensive or infeasible in a short term. Since full equality in places seems low, there would preferably be some protections harassment more than what binary genders would probably have, since non-binary people are already at a disadvantage for things like a lack good representation. Preferably there would be a point in time we are not just considered jokes anymore, with a fair amount of allowances in society and within culture itself, but that is only going to be slowed down by saying that it is open season on making them clowns. Or that there can be something gained from an enby or other trans people make fun of the way gender is treated such as pointlessly gendered stuff.

Make Kirby non-binary in the west.

MG as I get older I begin to accept there is nothing we can do about people who think they are better than us. I also pity that you have to live in the UK where people are so class obsessed.

I see you are a fan of Cindy Lauper. There's a beautiful song she wrote called "True colours". It all goes back to loving who you are and we all know you are loveable person with beautiful hobbies.

If people don't accept you then they were never worthy of being your friend in the first place.

The way the UK laws pan out are very unfair. Here is just one example.

When I was working on the railway, someone who also worked as a conductor had moved to our depot from another company for the last 10 to 15 years of his career because he had been working trains to London and back and he wanted a change. He did not mind a drop in pay to do this. The advantages of our depot was that many of our trains worked countryside routes which were pleasantly scenic, and on these routes the people were nicer and more pleasant to deal with. (We still had troubles when we worked the main lines but at least it was more of a mix).
Now the problem was that in his new job he had around 45 to 50 miles of travelling to do, so he sold his house and was going to get a new house around here. The problem was that while he was doing this, the house prices doubled in a matter of weeks to months because people had een putting off buying during the war in Iraq, and suddenly with the war over they turned to want to buy houses, and the prices were going up and up. This left our friend with the problem that no way could he now afford to buy another house anywhere, evenback where he used to live.
Now here in the UK, we have council owned houses. A small amount of everyones taxes go into maintaining them, and when they were built everyone who was classed as a UK citizenwas supposed to be able to get one if they wanted one, but as there are more people then houses, they had long waiting lists. So he thought he may as well go on the list, as he ad his wife and 15 year old daughter were living in crampt conditions in a small holiday challet.
So he went to the local council to put his name down on the list. Due to the recent law changes (Recent back some 15 years ago) to protect minorities they now get priority where it had been first come first served to get a house. (My parents never applied choosing to get a mortgage and get their own private house).
So he went to the council office to apply to be put on the list. The lady said "Are you an ethnic minority. He said "No". She said "Are you gay?" He said "No". She said "Are you dissabled?" He said "No", she said "Sorry, you can't go on the list".
He explained that he and his wife had a 15 year old daughter, as under our laws if children are involved they get priority, but unfortunately this only works if the children have single parents and this does NOT work if the single parent is male, as it is assumed that single parents are only of the female gender (My brother has had difficulties with this one as officially our laws state that children with women have to be cared for but children with men must be taken into care rather then end up homeless, and the men have to go homeless in tese circumstances).
The lady told him quietly how to get round the system. She said "Divorce your wife and seperate from her. She would get emergency accomodation for her and the child. Then go in and live with them... But she said "I have not said this"".
This is just ONE example of how the UK laws are discriminating against straight white males.

Talking about toilets, I do not mind the idea of having single gender neutral toilet units. All I want to do is go to the loo! But in my locality women were making a fuss about it as they did not want to go where a man had been (Sexist for a start!) Most of our toilet blocks have five cubicles. One larger gender neutral one for dissabled who have a special key, and there used to be two for men and two for women, which were converted to be gender neutral, but since women complained, they now have three womens toilets and one mens. This creates big problems for someone like me who has to go from toilet to toilet.