I'm Persian and Mexican, asshole.
Yes, I am being deliberately obtuse at times, I guess I'm getting quite a lot of enjoyment out of this thread. But, it's not for you or I to determine what level of inequality we need to get to before we're discriminating. It's not about things we want, it's about what I can and can't do compared to someone of a different race. I want pure equality, which means I have exactly the same rights as a black person, and they have the same rights as me. I don't care what colour people's skin are, if I can't say a word because it is offensive, then it's offensive for anyone to use it. If using that word makes me racist, then a black person using the word is racist.
To expand of the Police situation, there is discrimination against white people in the force, but they have no-one to represent them. The discrimination they face is due to targets that the Police are under pressure to meet, which states that a certain percentage of the work force should be made up of certain races and minorities. The problem comes when a white person and a black person of equal qualification both apply for the same position, and the black person gets the job so the force meet these targets. How is this fair? I'm not suggesting the white person should get the job, but you'd like to think there would be somewhere near a 50-50 split in these instances. That isn't the case.
This comes as a result of one race having representaion at official level, and the other not getting any. There's an imbalance of power.
It has got to the point in this country where the word "equality" means minorities should be treated better than the whites. That's a pretty twisted interpretation of equality, in my opinion.
Well, since I think the white people of America and Britain are, generally speaking, fucking idiots, I'd say I'm miles away from this definition of racism. I think the Japanese and Chinese are superior. Does that make me racist against whites, or just observant?
OngBonga's not racist. He hates white people.
Boog, you might be a dick, but at least you're funny.
Since when did the majority need representation?
Had to be in this epic train wreck.
Not that being a train is bad, or a wreck. ( dont want to offend trainians or wreckafarians)
Since the minorities started to get preferencial treatment. Majorities can be discriminated against too.
Everyone's interests should be represented officially, not just minorities. This is the problem with racism, no-one bats an eye when the majority face discrimination, and anyone who dares stand up for the rights of the majority faces being branded racist.
We live in a fucked up world where we create probelms instead of dealing with them.
And by creating equality, we lose equality.
I'm just gonna troll the shit out of this dumb ass thread.
Your example of the black police union -
After the Steven Lawrence report, the police force was found to be institutionaly racist.
This had wide ranging implications, from cases not being dealt with correctly due to the race of the victms, through to minority officers not getting jobs and all sorts of shit in between.
As a black officer, who would you turn if you had a complaint?
Well, it's failing dismally. Equality will only exist when everyone is treated the same. Right now, we're not treated the same.
Get rid of the NBPA, and have a National Police Association for Equality and Fairness, or something like that. Let them represent white people who feel discriminated against as well as blacks. There should be no conflict of interest, so long as there is no institutionalised racism within the force (pipe dream).
A white person who is not racist would be happy to represent a black person who is claiming discrimination, and vica versa. There is no need to have their own organisation, doing so just means that even at government level, not everyone is treated equally.
The NBPA, and other organisations explicitly for black people, only serves to increase the distance between white people and black. The NBPA is institutionalised racism, there's no other way to put it. Why can't a white person be a member?
Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. A black person is likely going to have a different reaction to you using a slur than a black person using the same slur. I assume you're not a sociopath so this is just you being obtuse. Some sort of "familial agreement" is part of basic behavior in pretty much all mammals. The cunt example given above illustrates this. If I pinch my girlfriend's ass in public and she doesn't mind, that's OK. If you pinch my girlfriend's ass, it's not OK.
Quotas and affirmative action aren't ideal by any means, but generally they exist because of past inequities. I don't know the particulars of the towns/police forces you're talking about, but I'm pretty freaking sure that quotas don't exist because there is an official black police organization. A police force is pretty much a work force where it is not only preferable to have an ethnic mix that reflects the population it serves, but pretty much essential.Quote:
To expand of the Police situation, there is discrimination against white people in the force, but they have no-one to represent them. The discrimination they face is due to targets that the Police are under pressure to meet, which states that a certain percentage of the work force should be made up of certain races and minorities. The problem comes when a white person and a black person of equal qualification both apply for the same position, and the black person gets the job so the force meet these targets. How is this fair? I'm not suggesting the white person should get the job, but you'd like to think there would be somewhere near a 50-50 split in these instances. That isn't the case.
This comes as a result of one race having representaion at official level, and the other not getting any. There's an imbalance of power.
It has got to the point in this country where the word "equality" means minorities should be treated better than the whites. That's a pretty twisted interpretation of equality, in my opinion.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you compared salaries of white officers to black officers, or go up the chain of command, you'll probably have a really difficult time showing that a white cop is being discriminated against.
I think this just shows you make broad generalizations.Quote:
Well, since I think the white people of America and Britain are, generally speaking, fucking idiots, I'd say I'm miles away from this definition of racism. I think the Japanese and Chinese are superior. Does that make me racist against whites, or just observant?
And here in lies the problem. Why the different reaction? If the word is offensive, it's offensive for anyone to use it. If a black person says I can't say a word that his black friends can use, then he's the one being racist. I can't use the word because I'm white? Hello discrimination.
you need to lay off the weed
Neither. I'm just saying you're fundamentally wrong for some reason.
However I'm thoroughly enjoying all the troll-lol-lol-ing itt
That's just a for instance. I know you have no woman that would go near you, so don't get all pointing out my mistakes and stuff.
Waiting for an over-sensitive reaction...
YouTube - My President iz Black--Young Jeezy feat. Nas{Brand New}
Why they gotta go and make songs about black people? That's racist.
Apparently fat chicks give the best head because they're hungry
I've never dated a fat chick but I'm def. curious about it
fat chicks give better head because they have to.
This thread has really educational, thank you everybody for the educational thread. I hope it can keep up being such a useful contribution to our community. <3
Can we have some 'that's racist' goodness now?
http://i639.photobucket.com/albums/u...ats_racist.gif
OngBonga, why do you wanna be part of this Black Police Association thing so bad? it's not all spin the bottle and truth and dare; it's mostly treasury meetings and paperwork . . . they might serve coffee but that's about it
on a more serious note, though, i assumed that they do, or at least can, have women police associations and disabled police associations and so forth. if they tried to form something like this and it was rejected because it included white people, then you'd have a point.
if they reject your proposed "White People Who Just Wanna Complain About How Joe Called Me a Poopyhead the Other Day Association," then i wouldn't really see this as discrimination. i'm guessing you would . . . agree to disagree?!
You're missing the point. I don't want to be in their club.
Recently, the British National Party (facist political party) lost a court case in which they were ordered to admit black people who wish to join, since not allowing them to join is against the law. Of course, no black person wants to join them, but that didn't stop the courts saying they weren't allowed to refuse anyone entry based on skin colour.
It doesn't matter if I want to be in their club or not, it's about discimination. I don't want to see anyone, white or black, discriminated against by an institution that is supposed to strive for equality.
If it is illegal for an organisation to refuse entry to a black person based purely on colour, then it too should be illegal for an organisation to refuse entry to a white person just for being white. That would make the NPBA an illegal organisation, unless they change their policy.
Why can't they just have one organisation to deal with equality as a whole?
And I'm not talking about white people blah blah poopy head, or whatever you're on about. I don;'t really want to see a white police association, that too would be racist. I want to see one body to deal with all forms of prejudice. That's isn't too much to ask, is it? At the very least I expect government agencies to treat whites and blacks as equals, then maybe the rest of society will begin to follow suit.
see, but you're making the point for me here:
1) it's not against the law to use any word at all. i know you're being hyperbolic for effect, but there's a serious difference here. you can say whatever the fuck you want in the eyes of your gov't (except a few extreme cases of people hanging nazi flags at their campus and being asked to take it down or getting a more severe sentence for calling someone the N-word or calling them a fagot while assaulting them). you just might offend some people if you use certain words in certain contexts, and some might perceive you as a douche if you don't seem to care about it, and some might even call you the R-word for it.
2) it's NOT acceptable for you to call someone fat, and there are a million situations where people prefer to find different ways of expressing it, or just avoid it altogether. when i met the roommate i'd be living with and realized she was pretty hefty, i found a sly way of telling my girlfriend "she didn't need to worry about anything happening because she's far from attractive." what exactly i said wouldnt' make sense here because it's a bit of an inside joke, but the point is, if i'd said "don't worry, she's a big, fat slob," then there'd be a chance my girlfriend would think i was being a prick and be defensive OF A COMPLETE STRANGER! you might say my girlfriend (and most girls) are overly sensitive to this sort of thing, but i also know that there's a lot of pressure on girls to be attractive and in a lot of ways it's nailed into their heads that being fat is like the ultimate taboo and the worst thing you could possibly be (like a guy being gay), so it's a touchy subject. i don't wholly understand, but whatever, it's not worth it to convince every girl i talk to to stop being such a sappy pussy over the whole thing, and in the interest of not being an asshole, i accommodate.
there will NEVER be a law against saying "fat," but you can see that it operates in much the same way as other touchy subjects of discriminated peoples (even in the way that fat people can get away with making a lot more fat jokes, etc)
Not personally.
However, the organisation has come in for critisism from MPs.
Wiki page
Ali Dizaei the former National President of National Black Police Association was jailed for perverting the course of justice in February 2010. Anjana Ahuja a British Asian reporter for The Times criticised the organisation for its vocal defence of Dizaei and called for its disbandment, calling it "pointless and possibly harmful", asking, "why partition members of the same profession along the lines of skin colour?[3]. Whereas Minette Marrin called the NBPA "racism in action" saying "if anything is institutionally racist, in the strict sense of the term, it is the existence of the NBPA itself: it is a separatist union for officers who call themselves black."[4] Conservative MP David Davies criticised the organisation, while speaking as a guest at a NBPA meeting, for not allowing white people to become full members, saying: "To me it is a shame that full membership of the BPA is open only to those of black, Asian or Middle Eastern origin."[5][6][7].
Their policy must change if they are to be taken seriously.
surviva...
I'm not sure about your claims. I think in this country, calling someone from Pakistan a Paki directly to their face would be a criminal offence. I don't know this for sure, but certainly racial hatred is indeed illegal. I guess the court would have to prove that your comments were based on hatred, or perhaps it's for the individual to prove it wasn't based on hatred. I don't know.
Calling someone fat I would say is normally worse than calling Chinese food a chinky. The difference is that usually when you call someone fat, it is intended as an insult. There's your context. It's not the word, it's the fact you're insulting someone.
Shall we just make it illegal to insult people in any way?
It's clearly hypocrisy at best and illegal at worst if they don't allow someone membership based on their race, sure.
But that just makes them as bad as a racist with white skin. No one is denying that is racism as well. The point is that making an issue of race is wrong, you're not able to justify your actions and words by saying, "well, they're doing it too", which is what your argument amounts to.
OngBonga,
Using your logic, would it be ok to refer to going to an Ethiopian restaurant as "going to the nigger"?
I think you're misinterpreting my position. My "well they're doing it too" argument is not an excuse to do it myself, it's an attempt to make people see that there is a great deal of hypocrisy when it comes to racism. I don't really care what they're doing or saying, so long as I have the same rights as them... I don't want more rights than anyone else, nor do I want any less. I want equality. Equality means we're all equal in the eyes of the law. That isn't the world I currently live in.
i already addressed this when i made the point about how you're a white, healthy, heterosexual male so you don't understand being offended by words or being discriminated against; this doesn't mean that people who DO get offended by certain things are stupid.
i think rilla makes really good points and words it really well (especially with the "that's my white male perspective, but does that make me wrong?"). we don't know what it's like, we CAN'T know what it's like, and we're just left guessing on a lot of things. like rilla, i'd like to think that in their shoes, i wouldn't get so offended, and in fact i have the type of sense of humor to where i'm pretty sure if i were fat i'd be the type of jolly fat guy who laughs at himself all the time, etc, so maybe i wouldn't be all up in arms if i had darker skin over people using certain words, etc?
point is, i don't know. i tend to give other people the benefit of the MASSIVE amount of doubt and play it on the safer side (the touchier the subject and the less i understand where the other person is coming from, the safer i tend, like i don't play it all that safe with terrorist jokes with BooG because it doesn't seem to be all that touchy of a subject, and i don't play it safe with jesusdiedlol jokes because i understand where they're coming from and i think it's all a heap of shit that i can't make jokes about it).
pretty sure i don't wanna get into the semantics of the R-word and how it's way overused and, thus, loses it's resonance with people 'cause that would just be way to long and epically boring for people who don't care about rhetoric as much as i do
It shouldn't matter whether I'm white, black, healthy or not. However, I do indeed know what it means to be discriminated against and called names, I had retard and spacker at school for years. It's not nice, but then it's not the worst thing that can happen. I'd rather be called a spastic than punched in the face.
And I never suggested that those who get offended are stupid... I said they were too sensetive.
what's this should or shouldn't matter crap? it DOES matter! you can't change that. if you have not discriminatable quality about you, then you're not going to understand discrimination [period] being called names in grade school is NOOOOOOOOOT the same.
jesus, next thing you know you're going to accuse me of being racist for saying because i'm saying that black people are allowed to be discriminated against and you're not. THAT'S UNFAIR!
I would imagine that pretty much every race in the world has well established slurs for us, and in many instances, these words will be so common that they don't appear offensive to them. That's how chinky is seen in this country, at least in my experience. I'm actually yet to meet someone who has found the term genuinely offensive.
So kids at your school called you a retard? Do you actually have down syndrome? That would explain a lot actually.
Oh. And I can't wait for OngBonga to reveal that he is actually iopq and leveled us all.
Surviva, you're going off on a tangent now. You told me I didn't know what I meant to be discriminated against and called names, I told you that wasn't true, and now you tell me it doesn't matter anyway. After telling me it does matter.
Let's just make one thing clear... I'm autistic, which means calling me retarded is akin to calling a black man a nigger. Why should I consider that less offensive than racial slurs? I can't do anything about it, it's how I was born, so when someone calls me a retard, I don't care. It bothered me at school, because I just wanted to be friends with everyone, but now I don't give a crap at all. Maybe my experience at school made me less sensetive to other people's problems with name calling and discrimination, but then I had to deal with it, and did deal with it, so why can't everyone else?
You should create an organization for autistic people...and then let people that don't have autism (or have any kind of relationship with anybody that has autism) into the organization.
so ongbonga your claim is since you got over it thus everyone else should just get over it as well?
Well good then. Free game on calling you a retard.
FYI, reading up on the controversies surrounding the NPBA is hilarious. It seems the NPBA came under criticism primarily for urging minorities not to join London's Metropolitan police force because of ...<drumroll> ... "racially hostile environment." Most of the Times' (Murdoch paper, if you didn't know) stuff is bashing the minority officers for publicly criticizing the Met force.
YouTube - Bizarre Foods - Raw Meat in Ethiopia
LOL so evil Boog
BTW damn that episode
hahaha you're crazy
Ong, I'm pretty sure that someone smarter than I could use game theory to show that on an equal playing field with X players where Y is a majority and Q, Z, and K are all minorities, Y will come to dominate Q, Z, and K. Even if the bonds between members of all subsets of X are not particularly strong, collusion is sure to take place, and the majority will have an easier time successfully colluding.
I'd also like to point out that it is possible for all members of Y to reasonably claim that they are in no way racist. Yet their preferential actions as a whole create a racially imbalanced society.
Affirmative action, professional groups which cater to minorities, etc are all measures that seek to correct this naturally occurring imbalance. Are the the best solutions? I'm not sure.. there are probably better ones... but claiming that they are themselves the problem is just wrong.
Your argument is pretty much exactly the same as the libertarian claim, "Regulation just gets in the way of business and messes everything up!" The sad truth is that capitalism has no built in altruistic qualities.. take away regulation and we will see children in coal mines with a life expectancy around 25 years in no time. If we take away programs and organisations which set out to level the playing field, we will see the majority dominating and oppressing the minorities through collusion in no time.
Meh people all over the world eat raw stuff, be it fish or meat. Europeans with their steak tartare, Japanese sashimi (also horse sashimi), and so on. Don't see raw meat per se as being "bizarre". Although the way it's presented there, it's pretty damn brutal! I definitely had some resistance to eating with my hands in that way, but somehow it makes the whole eating experience a LOT more carnal, if you know what I mean. Like you're supposed to have a wild orgy after the meal.
This is probably the strongest argument against my position I've read in this thread. All I can say in response is that I don't see these groups themselves as the problem, they are just part of the problem. They do not succeed in bringing equality to the table, despite their intentions, they just further reinforce intolerance because they are exclusive.
I guess what I'm looking for is a playing field where there are X players and there are no majorites, because Y and Z don't consider themselves any different. Y=Z. But I know this isn't the real world. However, I feel it's important to recognise that's it's natural for humans to stick to their kind, as a rule to thumb. A lot of the Asians who come to England remain in their circle, they live in areas together and work together, meaning Y does not = Z. But people must understand, if minorities are given an advantage to counter the numbers advantage the majority have, then we are nowhere near acheiving equality.
I don't know what other solutions there are, if I knew then I'd be very famous indeed. All I know is that the way things are, there will always be inequality, and there will always be conflicting arguments about what it means to be racist, and how we should conduct ourselves.
All I can do is try not to offend people. If I do offend someone, well, I'll say sorry and leave them alone. I'll say to my friends "Why are people so fucking sensetive?", but I won't say that to the person I've upset. Will I change my behaviour? Perhaps, but it will be because I decide I am in the wrong, not because other people tell me. I'll decide for myself what's right and wrong.
I hate how sensitive people are these days. I can't even wack off in the park anymore without some prudish mother-type calling the cops on me.
If only everyone was as progressive as I, we all could wack off indiscriminately without fear of persecution.