Anti-Nazi Riots

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'Racist', means "the belief that a particular race is superior to others or discrimination based on predudice or fear. So black people can be racist by several defenitions. By saying that black people cant be racist it sounded like you see it as a lesser crime when a black person is duscriminatory.

Incidentally i have less power than most black people so does that make me not able to be racist? What if a black guy sacks me from work because of my race, is that not racist because he is the one with the power? I take it i cant be racist to a black man in Africa or that an Irishwoman cant be racist towards an Englishman here? Il need to make up a different word for when catholics here descriminate against protestants rather than the other way round because it is because we are the minority and so hold less power.

To me making up a different word for anti-white discrimination rather than racism sounds like there is more tolerance for it coming from people who insist on using this term. You say that it is all down to education but educated people can and are regularly biased and come to different conclusions about things. Please educate me as to why in the broader picture that ethnic minorities cant be racist and women cant be sexist?

I agree this hate is wrong but you do seem to be condoning it just a little when it comes from women or minority groups. We should be brutally truthful with ourselves and how we are acting or saying something that is discriminatory or biased before we can really point the fingers at others without a wiff of hypocrasy.

The trouble is that we all discriminate to be able to survive, eat and date and we all see a little of ourselves in that racist, sexist anti-anything that isnt like me or i dont like person but we would all rather blame it on the big bad wolf, just that we differentiate what the wolf is according to our personality, experience, biases and society's current trends and sensibilities.

i'm not saying this. i am merely pointing out that there is a political definition about power in the isms, and that the effects of "backlash" have to be taken into account - no it's not acceptable, but one has to view it with all the history in mind. i was also giving the politics of the issue - as i said, personal situations may be different to political ones. it's the difference between the wider view and the more concentrated view, and depends on which you are using. (which is to address your second para above). and i'm talking about the isms which cause real harm to people on a grand scale - institutional racism, sexism etc.

of course i would argue that any abuse of power, or even any hate behaviour against anyone is wrong, and neither should be tolerated. and those "educated" people you speak of are not educated in these issues, believe me. my explanation of the broader issue is in my first post on this, although i did not say that black people can't be racist and women can't be sexist.

i am most certainly not condoning hatred - see the first sentence in the para above.



absolutely. those sentiments, to me, are realism, which is an ism i thoroughly approve of. what you describe above though, as far as racism and sexism etc. are concerned, is prejudice rather than discrimination - the latter being the physical manifestation or expression of the former. there's a big difference. and we're talking about the isms which cause real harm to people on a large scale - institutional racism, sexism etc.

to give an example (and it's going to be about sexism - groan if you must): i can wibble on about sexually degrading images or stereotypes of men all day (if i had the urge to, and i don't). but the bottom line is that me saying that, whilst cruel and damaging to self esteem and ego, (and i'm not saying that's trivial, by the way) does not make men more at risk of sexual abuse or rape by women, does it? i do not have the power to rape you, unless there are very special circumstances. if i rip your being a man to shreds, do you feel more scared of walking about after dark, for a jusitfiable reason?

and i'm still not condoning any hatred shown towards anybody.

one reason that i won't agree with radical feminists is that they're always banging on about how evil men are, and how superior women are. what rot. whilst i enjoy the sort of joke "women need men like..." etc. as much as a lot of women, i don't feel that threatens men, or turns them into sexual objects (and i couldn't do anything threatening about that, even if it did), i also spend as much time trying to have a relationship as anyone does.

does that make things clearer?

Last edited by vetivert on 24 Oct 2005, 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"breaking news", as they say in the states...

i have just this minute heard on R4 that defintions of racist attacks (as per my explanations) are being rethought, due to both recent events in brum, and police statistics on attacks in london.

this obviously challenges the "orthodox" (R4's word) view, which is what i was giving earlier. i shall be following this debate with interest, and i shall start rethinking my own views in this light, as i hope i'm not a bigot.

edit: i'll have you know i interrupted my knitting and rushed to my computer to bring you this news.

and i know it might make me look a bit of a prat, but i hope i'm big enough to take it.

I'm sure alot of people do "project their problems" when it comes to critism but like the saying goes, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, you might expect me to feed it some crackers. Same thing with words. If it sounds to me like someone is insinuating a certain thing, even if it's pure conjecture, I'm going to say something about it and I'm not apologetic about that at all. I see you are from Scotland so you may not know most of the history of African-Americans in the U.S. and therefore, not know the things that we have had to endure to make it illegal for people like the Klu Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis and other hate groups to intimidate us with threats of getting beaten, lynched and murdered.

I'm from Memphis, TN, the very place were Martin Luther King was assassinated and a negative racial climate that even today, hasn't abated at all. How much you know about the Civil Rights Movement, I don't know, but think about South Africa's Aparteid and you'll have an idea. It was indeed, a time when many black people in the South were jailed, lynched, murdered and beaten just because they dared to demand equal rights. Even as blacks marched in protests peacefully, that didn't stop authorities from the police to governers of southern states to break the law in their attempts to squelch them.


Here, it's as if it's still 1964 as neighborhoods and school systems are still segregated, even though now, it's a matter of "white flight" which is what happened when integration laws were passed. White people, rather than sending their kids to school with black kids, either placed their kids in private schools or moved so far out they didn't have to bother with black kids being in the suburban public schools. So even though the racial divide was exposed, it did no good for the minds of Memphis's white or black citizens. Our inner city school system is 90% black....in 2005 so any attempt at integration did no good.



Your reference to Neo-Nazis being just another political party was as if you were down-playing what they were, which is a group of people who go around intimidating others they don't like, not unlike gangs do. As for gangs committing crimes and Neo-Nazis not, that's not true.....at all. I know it may be different over in the UK but over here in America, they are notorious for threatening people and using physical violence to commit hate crimes.

And last I heard, a gang is a group of people going around and intimidating others with violence and other threatening behavior.
If they were, say, like Pat Buchanen, as racist as he is, he at least, stays within the perimeters of the law and runs a legitimate.....and violence-free campaign.



Like I said before, racists can say whatever they want. It's a free country. But when they start hurting others to further their agenda, that's when it's no longer about freedom of speech. We wouldn't give Al Quada free reign because they are terrorists who use threats and violence to gain power. Why is it that we give people who physicaly hurt others a free pass just because they were born here in America and go by a certain name?

I realize that you didn't mean any harm concerning your comments but you've got to understand, when you're talking about hate-groups like that being just another political party, you're saying it's okay for them to do to me whatever they want and that includes committing crimes against me....which they would gladly do if they ever got their hands on me and that scares the heck out of me. What if someday, we swing so far to the political right what was legal in 1950 becomes legal again? From what is happening in the political arena right now in America, that's not as far fetched as it sounds.

I do apologize for presuming something about you that's not true and do not mean to come across in my posts as being a racist, which I'm not. It's that any injustice and prejudice toward African-Americans, I take it very personally and don't hesitate to speak out when I believe it's being committed. I think where you live is an entirely different climate from here in the US and you judged what's going on here from the perspective of what goes on in your country. I wish we as a nation were more united and thought of each other in terms of being fellow countrymen, not each other's skin color but we are not and that saddens me. Maybe if we stop condoning hate and start demanding tolerance and understanding, we would become a better country.[/i]

I agree that it is a hard balance and we arent as far away from a facist world as wed all like to believe. Humans should never feed ducks and as it leads to fighting, disease malnutrition etc.

I have read the entire thread and i feel that i must comment on the statements made about minorities being incapable of racism.

http://www.dumpalink.com/media/11305808 ... _Americans

The man in that video calls for the complete extermination of every white person on the planet, and yes if you watch the entire video he actually says that. People cheered at that statement which sickens me, much the same way that a neo-nazi person saying the same thing about any race would sicken me. This man had the right to speak on live television, why shouldn't a neo-nazi group be allowed to hold a peaceful march? They were protesting about black people commiting crimes in that area and the riots only made them feel justified in that situation. These are the type of people that you have to ignore to make them go away, if you start a riot that only furthers their cause.