Racism and you.

[eldargal]

Let me see if I follow this... Drew Da Boarder can't truly understand racism because he's white, but you can understand Australia because you've read articles and have Australian friends? Admittedly Drew did say you have 'NO idea' and I guess you have proven yourself to have SOME idea, but this did strike me as inconsistent logic..

No, that isn't what I was saying at all and that misunderstanding has been addressed in an earlier post if you read through them all.

Leaving that aside, I have to say my limited travels in the South of the US certainly seemed to indicate a very well integrated society. Plenty of people of colour going about their business going about their business shopping, dining etc. without any visible tension. Contrast that to certain areas in New York where the only people of colour you saw were staff or beggars. Purely anecdotal of course. Southerners seemed much more polite and certainly not the poorly educated hicks popular culture makes them out to be. Had an excellent discussion about archaeology and art history with a truck driver in a diner in Kentucky for example.

[Drunkencorgimaster]

No, that isn't what I was saying at all and that misunderstanding has been addressed in an earlier post if you read through them all.

Leaving that aside, I have to say my limited travels in the South of the US certainly seemed to indicate a very well integrated society. Plenty of people of colour going about their business going about their business shopping, dining etc. without any visible tension. Contrast that to certain areas in New York where the only people of colour you saw were staff or beggars. Purely anecdotal of course. Southerners seemed much more polite and certainly not the poorly educated hicks popular culture makes them out to be. Had an excellent discussion about archaeology and art history with a truck driver in a diner in Kentucky for example.

My bad. I must have missed the follow-up.

Kentucky Trucker Art & Archeology? Sounds like a story...

[Deadlift]

Thanks to Wolfshade for pointing out that Islam is NOT a race. I can't believe how often those two designations get conflated. There was a lawsuit in Detroit about a year again that cited "racial discrimination against Muslims." I have not read the entire Qur'an but the parts I did read did not seem to say anything about race or ethnicity in them.

Your right, being Islamic isn't about race, but the discrimination that Muslims face isn't so different in comparison to discrimination based on skin colour alone is it ? The effect is just the same. I know you didn't mean it to but your above statement somehow made me feel my experiences are somehow cheapened because they aren't solely based on colour.

For instance here in the UK we had a terrible incidence recently where 2 Muslim men ran an off duty soldier over with a car and then horrifically murdered him in broad daylight. The country as a whole was shocked to the core.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Lee_Rigby[/url]
Within hours my Facebook news feed was full of thinly veiled anti Muslim sentiment. Statements that went from "they should all **** off back home to their own country's" to "Muslims shouldn't be allowed to use the NHS" and much worse. Now I stress I'm not Muslim but my father is and he has lived here since 1968. He started his own business and whilst he is now retired he did at one point employ 25 staff members. He is and was a contributing member of society. But here my friends and even family members from my mothers side were advocating and spouting all this anti Islam sentiment. When I challenged them on it I got the usual response that, it's ok we of course don't mean your father he's pretty much one of us now. The hypocrisy was ludicrous.
I went from 130 odd friends on Facebook to 25. I just found it easier to delete accounts instead of arguing.
This horrible incident really showed to me just how deep routed discrimination still is. Most I guess thought they were being patriotic.

Basically for me calling someone a ****** or advocating "all Muslims go home" aren't really poles apart.

[daboarder]

[url]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-15/anti-us-protests-hit-sydney/4263372[/url]

Now this isn't justification, but there is a reason that people get frustrated with the Islamic community, when large portions of its population get violent over a portrayal of a guy dead for hundreds of years the average person is liable to feel like they are under attack by a subversive group within society.

In Australia Islamic followers make up about 2% of the population, and most of them come from Indonesia or Malaysia, however when the aggressive and vocal portion of that population is demanding that the other 98% of the population follow their laws, customs and whims....well the 98% is going to be pissed off.

Of course the counter point is that the 5 Iranians, 2 Indonesians and 2 Malayan people I work with are some of the most polite people I know.

[Phototoxin]

Firstly I don't find Paki offensive since in Ireland 'Packie' (pronounced the same as Paki) is a friendly shortening of Patrick (we have Pat, Patsy, Paddy but there's so many of them that they need more nicknames for Patrick!) - heck even one of our world cup players at one point was Packie O'Bonner!

I think what your drinking buddy means is that there can be percieved to be 2 kinds of muslim in the UK: those who are British (or Islamic, Indian, Pakistani, Irish, Spanish or whatever) and who integrate, speak the lingo and so on. Then there's those who's culture and 'race' is 'Muslim' (basically non-english speaking, middle eastern Muslims) who don't integrate. It's these that the fears are based on.

Being told that I dont know what racism is because I'm white.
Or that I'm inherently racist because I'm white.
Or that in a democratic nation the majority of the population must accept the culture of the minority because otherwise I'm racist.
Or that if I'm not ashamed of my ancestors I'm racist.

Lol the Irish would disagree. Or the Welsh.

[Build]

I don't think you over-reacted at all.

We all have our break points and limits, these can often be pushed, but then some stupid oxygen thief comes along and says something that crosses the line in a very bad way. I find 99% of all Hitler memes amusing, light hearted and generally not something I take offence to. However I DO have my limits. When I was younger I was introduced to two lovely people from Poland.

They were both sent to concentration camps and endured some really terrible ordeals, so much so that they wrote a book about it, I believe it was privately published, but I've included a link below.

[url]http://books.google.com/books/about/Two_Hells_to_Happiness.html?id=RuGdXwAACAAJ[/url]

Now some of the things listed in that book are so horrible it makes you question whether any human being could be capable of such cruelty. As I said, we all have our limits, but with that comment your mate made I would have lost my cool too, the biggest problem with ignorant or closed minds is that they don't come with closed mouths.

[Necron2.0]

I definitely feel your pain, Dead. My dad is white (German mostly), while my mom is half-Spanish and half-Native American. As long as I avoid exposure to the sun, I favor my dad in appearance. If I see any sunlight at all I'll darken up, with a slight stereotypical reddish hue.

As a child I was singled out for special abuse by a racist teacher, because she'd thought I was a good white boy until the first parent-teacher conference, when she came to the realization that the woman who brought me to school wasn't the nanny. She used to intentionally misdirect me on assignments, and then drag me in front of the class and ridicule me. When I fought back against it, she had me sent in for psychiatric evaluation. I've been spat on. I've been beaten up. When I've complained I've been ignored. When I've gotten even, I've been labeled violent. When I've outsmarted and outmaneuvered the idiots, I've been labeled a troublemaker.

Just the other day I had to bow out of a facebook forum because I happened to mention I'm Hispanic, and a bunch of retards kept telling me I should go back to Mexico. Amusing, first, because I happened to be agreeing with them on the particular topic, and second, because on my dad's side I can trace my lineage back to the American Revolution, while my mom's family (the Spanish side) can trace their presence in North American to the 1600's, and nowhere in there is Mexico involved.

This is why I get amused and slightly annoyed with people who complain of persecution when all that has happened is they overhear slightly disparaging comments directed at them or their social group. Basically, they don't know what real persecution is. It always brings to mind an old Saturday Night Live (US comedy show) mock news skit, involving Scientologists complaining of possible religious persecution by the German government for not recognizing their religion. The anchor said, "This response in from Germany: 'Hey ... we're GERMANS! If we're religiously persecuting you, you'll know about it.'"

So, yes, I definitely get where you're coming from. And no, I don't think you overreacted.

[Drunkencorgimaster]

Your right, being Islamic isn't about race, but the discrimination that Muslims face isn't so different in comparison to discrimination based on skin colour alone is it ? The effect is just the same. I know you didn't mean it to but your above statement somehow made me feel my experiences are somehow cheapened because they aren't solely based on colour.

Interesting. Prejudice is prejudice regardless of its basis. We have a tendency to assume racism is an "ultimate" form of hatred or something but religious-based hatred is still hatred, right? Plenty of people have died through religious violence as well as racial violence through the years. I find it curious that you would see your experience as a victim as "cheapened" somehow. Perhaps since the last great genocide of European history was based on race, religion has less impact today somehow? Maybe if we were living in the sixteenth-century religion would seem like a bigger deal.

[Phototoxin]

It is weird. Why is beating 9 bells out of someone because they're black/white/green/whatever any different than doing it because you 'hate' their philosophical outlooks or 'hate' their political affiliations? Or even if you don't hate them and just want to mug them, then why does it make a difference. Why is it worse?

[daboarder]

Its all hitlers fault.

Industrialised genocide is just about the worst thing one population of people has ever done to another.
Now I know other genocides have been successful where hitlers was not. But to gear an industrial nation towards the destruction of people just because of their race is taking the ideal to a pretty sick new level.

Its my belief that he gave the west a pretty big guilty conscience about how they had been treating ethnic minorities.

That and people are better educated these days.