I am a racist (and so are you).

[Doktor Howl]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

[Cainad (dec.)]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

[Nast]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

We are are only prepared as far as our Rascal scooters can run.

[Freeky]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

We are are only prepared as far as our Rascal scooters can run.

I think if we could but harness their supernatural ability to consume anything, we'd be a world superpower again!

THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES! WE'D BE UNSTOPPABLE! :madscience:

[Nast]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

We are are only prepared as far as our Rascal scooters can run.

I think if we could but harness their supernatural ability to consume anything, we'd be a world superpower again!

THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES! WE'D BE UNSTOPPABLE! :madscience:

UNLIMITED POWER!

[Remington]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

"Sorry" actually works for all 4 of those. If a Canadian says it.

[Suu]

I'll have to point GS to this thread. He had to take a class on Race in college and a lot of discussion came up on what constituted racism. Apparently the professor started the class with, "Everyone in here is racist. Why? Because racist means that you simply denote race" and it went downhill from there.

[Jasper]

According to my psychology textbook here, Kai is more or less right.  To use a computer analogy, we do not have "administrative" privileges to our own cognitions, even if we can cultivate more powerful means of accessing and modifying them, and as humans we look to the in-group for solace, normality, and reassurance against out-groups.

That said, you do have a choice of who your in-group is, and if you choose a shitty one, then you have no excuses.

People will probably feel the need to pick at that last line, but you're talking to a guy who has carefully tailored his in-group  for half his life.  In my experience the friends you keep are the best way to see who you are, and I pick and choose my friends with that in mind.

That was sort of a roundabout way of saying that, despite the human failing of prejudice, you have the means to rise above it and being human is no excuse for racism.

I think awareness is as good a solution as we're going to get.

On a related note, what disturbs me is that while racism is largely frowned upon, classism is widely accepted.

On another note, you can change classes, moving from poor to rich may be difficult and unlikely, but moving from rich to poor is easy.

Yeah, but there is a pervasive myth of "upward mobility" in America.  Not sure how it's survived this long, but it has to be acknowledged.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Labels and more labels...

"Most people appear to default to a slight preference of their own 'tribe' when meeting a new person for the first time, but most people seem capable of consciously overriding this initial reaction."
"Some people consciously, or subconsciously,  judge people based on race, religion, class, sexual preference.'

Out of those, I think the label 'racist' (as used by most people in the Western world) would apply only to the second group.

There seems to be a great difference between someone who is prejudice and someone who notices that another persons skin is a different color.  One indicates a psychological problem where judgment is based on bais. The other indicates that the individual has functioning rods and cones.

It seems imprecise to use the same term for these two very different positions.

[hooplala]

What about mixed-race people? What about a guy who is part black, part chinese, part white, and part American indian? It gets a lot harder to be unconsciously racist when everybody looks a little like family.

Then you hate on Canadians.  Not hard to do, what with them mooning us with their frozen bits from across the border, from their disgustingly clean and underpopulated permafrost.  Fuck those guys, they're nothing but trouble.  And they make shitty whiskey.

We hate you guys back 

We do it quietly and politely, though.

And with such nice smiles and...HEY! 

What I worry about is that one day the Canadians will invent a word which carries the meanings of "thank you," "I'm sorry," "please," and "you're welcome" all in one horrific superword of politeness. Are we, as a country, prepared for such an attack?

Clearly you've never been to Etobicoke.

[Cain]

So if this is the same experiment I'm thinking of they showed the participants pictures of people of various races that flashed quickly next to a word with either positive or negative connotations.  I forget specifically what the participant had to do, but something like identify the word as generally considered positive or negative.  They then found that people are quicker to categorize a positive word when shown a picture of a member of their own race and likewise a negative word when shown a differing race?  I'm not really describing it well enough to hold up to scrutiny, but the general idea is that there was a significant effect and pretty much across the board to one degree or another.  What it really suggested was that we have a slight preference for features similar to our own, the converse of which is a slightly negative reaction to different features.  Makes sense to me.

I did that test as a psych student, several times.  Apparently I have a slight preference for black people.

I'm white, and have always lived in predominately (if not overwhelmingly) white areas.  I'm still not sure how I got those results.

Did/do you have any close friends who are black?  I vaguely remember reading about that experiment, and how the results were often different in certain circumstance, i.e. "positive experience" with members of a different race would alter the results to be less superfically racist.  Still I figrue that the biological impulse in this example is pretty overrideable.

x

Nope.  I live in one of the most ethnically homogenous parts of the country (so much so, the BNP actually doesn't have any traction here, since when they show up complaining about foreigners, people here go "what foreigners?").  Back then I didn't even listen to much hip-hop or anything.

[Cain]

It's probably because you're one of those WHITE DEVILS.

srsly, though, you people are evil incarnate.

[E.O.T.]

TECHNICALLY

          i have two seperate chicken flocks, seperated by about six months in age. for the most part, they wander, generally together, as a group. they have a fair amount of space to scratch at and do seperate throughout the day.

WHEN THEY DO

          the black feathered Jersey Giant, black feathered Australorp and the black feathered maran move around together. similarly, the rhode island red and the red sex-link, which look nearly identical, are almost always side by side. often, the arguably red feathered aumericana joins them.
the maran, even though she's of the younger flock, which have their own hen-house, began sleeping with the other two black feathered hens.
i'm pretty sure Nigel and i have discussed this and hers do the same thing.

[Elder Iptuous]

EOT,

my folks have the same situation. (actually had... the australorps became stew not too long ago)
i thought it was also interesting that, although they did segregate themselves, the australorps were more aggressive, but would only really peck at other australorps, not the americanas...  the australorps eventually all had bald heads.... 

then they stopped laying and became stew.

[BabylonHoruv]

I'm actually going to come out and say that I think a preference for your own tribe is a positive thing.  Especcially if the other people in your tribe feel the same way.  The problem is when the tribe gets homogenized to the point of being equated with skin color.  Tribes produce a resilient support system and a way of getting a basic idea of what people you can go to first in a strange and alien place.  This is not a bad thing.  I would say most functional tribes in the US base their visual identification procedures more on clothing, hairstyles, and tattoos than they do on skin color, eye color, or geneticaly determined physical features.