Hedra42 said:
Bolded - a straight up example of the overanalysing mentioned in Shiken's post. It doesn't help. It's true that talking about racism will not make racism and racial inequality go away. It's also true that ignoring it won't make it go away. But doing something positive that will unite all groups, will certainly go a long way into making that happen. Nobody can deny that there has been progress towards complete equality between groups, and nobody can deny that there's still a long way to go. Unfortunately, it will take generations before that goal is achieved, because the horrific way in which various groups have treated other various groups are still within living memory. And it will never be achieved until all groups realise that history is in fact something that should be learned from, not something that is used to antagonise one another and perpetuate rifts. Until that is realised, there will still always be groups, meaning that people will never be able to work together to stamp out racism and inequality. All they'll do is keep talking about it, accusing one another of it, and racism in all its various guises will continue to flourish. |
(above is quoted for context)
RolStoppable said:
It's not an overanalysis. It's an observation of bias. Whether said bias is conscious or unconscious is unclear, but it's there. Why is it there in the first place? Maybe the person in question has concluded that whites are superior based on his own observations, or maybe it's a result of their upbringing and education. How can racism go away? Or better question, what can the average person do? My answer to that is that everyone can examine themselves. If everyone made an honest effort to lay off their own prejudices, racism would become a lesser issue in society. This shouldn't be looked at on a group level, but rather on an individual basis. If you consider yourself a part of a group and said group's actions do nothing to reduce racism or even fuel it, then you become prone to use the group's actions as justification for your own inaction or racistic behavior. After all, racism is all about putting humans in groups (Team White, Team Black etc.). Personally, I have racistic tendencies. But that's something I have to work on myself, not have some group do it for me. Shiken's point that Morgan Freeman said it best is terribly flawed. Not talking about a topic doesn't make it go away, it makes it ignored. Willful ignorance is denial. That helps nobody. |
Call it what you like, but it is still an example of overanalysis that can ignite and/or perpetuate hatred. See Shiken's response to Final-fan a couple of posts up from this. In fact, your entire first paragraph could be construed as overanalysis. It doesn't help deal with racism, and as Final-fan said, all talk does is upset racists.
Upsetting racists doesn't stop them from being racist. It can easily exacerbate the problem.
I agree with you that the best way to tackle racism is on an individual level, and it would be great if we all did that, and of course, many people do. But it's human nature to feel the need to identify as part of a group, whether it's nationally, culturally, linguistically, religiously or by the colour of skin. It may be a trivial example, but ask yourself which national football team do you support, and why? There's a basic tribal instinct that exists within us all, which as humans, we can't get away from.
Unfortunately, one by-product of this instinct is that some will, in their minds, put other people in groups and will prejudge them in that context. Look at the thread title as a prime example. Read through this thread and you'll see posts from members here making assumptions of the ethnic background of other members, based on what those members have posted.
Its this basic tribal instinct that has formed the basis for pretty much every war, atrocity, act of racism and intolerance ever. And it's not one that we can overcome, because it's deep within every one of us, whether we care to admit it or not. But we have learned some lessons from our history, and we are still learning. And we can only succeed in tackling racism by using our history as something from which to take positive action - but willingness needs to come from all sides.
