Am I a racist? Please tell me if I am, I so desire to know.
Hello members of Think Atheist. I am about to post a comment I made in the 'The black people' discussion.
It is as follows.
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"It depends on 'how' you criticize a group of people.
It is a fact that in the USA , the highest %'s of crime is due to Blacks - and generally there is a positive correlation between the population density of blacks in large cities to an increase in crime rate.
It is also a fact that most inner city schools are a majority Black. They also have the lowest test scores.
It is also a fact that most 'hip-hop' and 'rap' music on the market includes a lot of Black people cursing, and talking about doing drugs in their cars, killing cops, hittin up dem 'hoes', dropping out of school, etc.
It is also a fact that there are many Blacks in this country who openly speak out about the Black community and criticize them ... and rightfully so.
But this is obviously not because they are Black. It is because of social and economic reasons. You need to be careful how you analyze the situation - to say these symptoms are because they are 'Black' is just disgustingly ignorant. But the fact does remain that blacks are a problem in the USA communities.
My uneducated reason for this - is because after slavery was abolished - Black people were still either feared / hated / put down / segregated , etc ... and only in the past few decades have they started to be accepted as 'human beings' by the vast majority of whites.
But I will say publically that they are not doing their job as a group in our country to better themselves and to make great lives for their children. Many are too busy putting down education - getting involved in drugs - getting young teen women pregnant (or getting themselves pregnant) - and paying too much attention to popular black media that makes millions of dollars every year keeping blacks in their same positions.
It's not cool to impregnate - be a drug dealer - talk about killing cops - breaking the law - poppin bottles in da ice like a blizzard - or using extremely vulgar language - or using a form of music lyric ebonix.
With all that said, if evidence was put forth that white populations were in fact less intelligent - this would easily be accepted. If it points to Blacks - riots would occur. I personally believe that Black people as a race are stronger - bigger - more athletic compared to their white / asian counterparts. This is easily observed.
Why can't the IQ or intelligence also be relative? I'm not saying it's true - I'm just saying it's a possibility - as I assume intelligence is part of the genes. As is your height - weight - etc.
Fire away at me - I'm sure most of you who criticize my post will have misread it thinking I'm being racist - when in fact I'm not.
"********************************
Ok, so my question is - does this comment of mine exhibit racism?
I would honestly like to know your opinions.
Just as Atheists say they are 'open' to evidence that Gods exist - so I am 100% open to discovering a certain racial group may have increased or decreased intelligence. I in no way was saying anything remotely close to implying Black people are less intelligent as a 'race'. If my comment implied this, I apologize. But I don't think it does.
I am only posting this because I believe I am being unjustly flamed by another forum member. I did not result to name calling , or flaming in any such way. I expressed an opinion , however 'racist' that opinion may be, I leave it up to the reader. But even so, I don't believe it justifies the response given by said forum member. I also apologize if posting a new discussion is improper forum etiquette , as the other discussion is a bit confusing to read, with the other poster and myself flaming / defending each others posts.
Thanks again.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Galen on -
Your comments aren't racist, but they ARE ignorant.
Everything you describe is caused by POVERTY, not race. Impoverished white people behave in the same ways. Blacks make up a much larger percentage of the lower economic classes, which is why it LOOKS like it's a race thing. It's not. Higher crime rates and such are caused by poverty, not race.
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Permalink Reply by Dustin on -
I said in my first post that these are all due to SOCIO - ECONOMIC issues. People seem to have missed that.
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Permalink Reply by Shine on -
I said in my first post that these are all due to SOCIO - ECONOMIC issues. People seem to have missed that.
You keep coming back to this...
If it's a socio-economic issue, then why are you even mentioning race and genetics? I'm failing to see what link you are attempting to make when you then virulently deny any link when people respond to the genetic and racial elements of your posts.
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Permalink Reply by Chris G on -
"Just as Atheists say they are 'open' to evidence that Gods exist - so I am 100% open to discovering a certain racial group may have increased or decreased intelligence."
Atheists typically don't frame points this way because they usually know better, but that's just a generalization.
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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on -
Dustin,
You have to remember that racism is still alive and well out there. Racists can no longer speak openly about their thoughts, so they speak in "code". You have, perhaps inadvertently, used one of their code phrases.
I am a big fan of objective facts, too, but IQ tests really don't qualify. Too often the tests use education as a proxy for intelligence, and a person's education is highly effected by the environment in which he or she grew up--including the education and economic circumstances of one's parents, the schools one attended, one's classmates' abilities and attitudes, one's own psychological state, etc. All of these things can be and usually are negatively effected by racism and the history of racism in our society.
Those who are concerned about these problems want to create an environment which nullifies these many negative factors. This process will take generations. In the meantime, it is important for us all to be aware of the unspoken rules of the political situation. This can be hard, because the rules are almost always unspoken. A big clue, however, is when people seem to overreact to what you say. Whenever this happens, then you can bet that you accidentally used words or phrases (or sometimes just ideas or implications) that seem to those listening to be code words for something you didn't really intend to say. Don't try to defend it or yourself. Just say: "Oh, I didn't mean anything like that" and drop it.
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Permalink Reply by Dustin on
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Too often the tests use education as a proxy for intelligence
Ahh, I actually didn't consider that point. So even if IQ tests did sort of establish that asians are more intelligent than whites - perhaps it has to do with them being very strict about Education.
Great post, thanks.
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Permalink Reply by T A A on -
Forgive me for little nitpicking, and as a francophone I try not to do this in English... but you and Jon and Reggie (3 people in one topic is a bit much) are all using effect and affect interchangeably and erroneously, and it's driving me a little nuts.
is highly effected by the
Please read this: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx
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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on
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Typos happen--especially early in the morning. Life's a bitch, ain't it?
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Permalink Reply by T A A on
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LOL, well like I said... three. After the first I let it slide, then after the second I let it slide again, you just happened to be the third, nothing personal :)
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Permalink Reply by Shine on
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I am a big fan of objective facts, too, but IQ tests really don't qualify. Too often the tests use education as a proxy for intelligence, and a person's education is highly effected by the environment in which he or she grew up--including the education and economic circumstances of one's parents, the schools one attended, one's classmates' abilities and attitudes, one's own psychological state, etc. All of these things can be and usually are negatively effected by racism and the history of racism in our society.
Excellent point.
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Permalink Reply by Bianca on -
Kirven, Texas 1922
On May 4th, 1922, after the last full day of school in Kirven, Texas, 17-year-old Eula Ausley was taken from her horse, carried into the thick brush, sexually mutilated and then beaten to death. Her disappearance was noticed immediately and family members organized a search party to investigate. Her nearly decapitated, naked body was found soon after and the search became a manhunt. The members of the hunt, which one estimate put at 1,000 men, combed through the woods, armed with whatever weapons they could find, looking for something which might lead to the killer or killers. Early into the search, the disgruntled wife of a black search party member alerted neighbors that her husband, McKinley "Snap" Curry, had come home on the afternoon of the murder bloodied from what he claimed was a rabbit hunt. Curry now became the hunted. Despite the fact that Sheriff Horace Mayo already had two white suspects who were enemies of Eula's family in custody, Mayo changed the focus of the investigation. He arrested Curry and apparently forced a statement which implicated two other men, 19-year-old Johnny Cornish and 46-year-old Mose Jones, that had been arrested on the suspicion that they were friends with Curry. A mob consisting of most of the search party assembled outside the jail to sate its hunger for vengeance. After midnight on May 6th, the mob forced its way into the prison and dragged the three black suspects out of their cells. They were driven to a lot between the old Baptist Church and the Methodist Church in Kirven. The gruesome ritual began. Approximately fifty men started gathering wood and a heavy plow was dragged into the lot to act as an anchor for the burning Negroes. But, as these preparations were being made, the crowd became anxious for a quicker punishment. Curry, Jones and Cornish were taken from the cars and thrown to the ground in front of the crowd. A knife appeared as the three men on the ground probably had the dreadful realization that some of these farmworkers had gained experience in the gelding of calves. Accounts vary as to what happened next. All agree that Curry was castrated. In an interview with filmmaker Gode Davis during June of 2000, 104-year-old Hobart Carter, Cornish's best friend in 1922, revealed that Cornish might also have been castrated. When enough wood was available, the bloodied Curry was bound to the plow's seat and doused in gasoline. The wood was stacked up all around him and a match was applied. The flames consumed him and within ten minutes he was dead and his flesh was nearly all burnt to a crisp. Next, Jones was brought forward. As the metal of the plow was too hot to touch, a water soaked rope was used to tie up Jones hands and drag him back and forth through the fire. Witnesses say that when he would come out on one side of the fire, members of the lynch mob would beat him back in. Supposedly, Jones made one attempt to break free from the ropes and ran directly into Eula's uncle, Otis King. King then hit him with a radius rod from a Model T Ford, dislodging an eye from its socket. Jones was then pulled back into the fire and died. Cornish, having seen the slow, painful deaths of his friends, cursed the sadistic lynchers. After being pulled through the flames only a few times, Cornish grabbed the plow and stuck his head deep into the fire, inhaled, and died. The three dead bodies were then piled up, doused again with kerosene and oil and lit afire. Whatever ashes the wind did not sweep up that morning were taken home as souvenirs. The hardened livers of the men were also recovered from the fire and then sliced up so they could be divided among the spectators.
With the three alleged murderers lynched before a crowd of between 500 and 1,000, the bloodlust should have ended. It did not. Terror reigned for days afterwards as aftershocks of the three burnings claimed more lives. On the morning of May 8th, Shadrick Green, a friend of Cornish and Jones who was said to have been fishing with the two on the fourth, was found hanging from a tree. He was naked with his neck broken and his body was riddled with bullets. It seems as if after this lynching, open season was declared on all Negroes and yet, ironically, whites were just as terrified as blacks. White paranoia suspected that legions of armed blacks were approaching Kirven to retaliate for the lynchings. Whites began to leave all their lights on in their houses so no imagined black murderer could sneak in during the night. Blacks, on the other hand, left all their lights off attempting to avoid the notice of the actual roaming bands of armed whites. The mobs roamed the streets killing any blacks they could find. Survivors claimed that hanged blacks were found daily and that other bullet-ridden bodies were discovered in outhouses, fields and shallow graves. By June 9th, 1922, the rash of murder and lynching had ended but the effects on Kirven were grim and lasting. Many of the town's workers disappeared as nearly the whole black population left the area. The oil economy dried up. Now, Kirven is a vestigial place almost a ghost town.
A recent investigation and book, Flames After Midnight: Murder, Vengeance and the Desolation of a Texas Community, by Monte Akers, concluded that Mose Jones and Johnny Cornish were innocent. McKinley "Snap" Curry is now believed to have accepted $15 to assist two men in murdering Eula Ausley. The two men, Claude and Audey Prowell, were the same two men in custody when Curry was arrested. Their bloody tracks led from the murder site to their house but they were released after four black men, Curry, Jones, Cornish and Green, had already paid the price.
When you grow up hearing stuff like this.....
You tend to hide out in your own little villiages,safer.
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