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Soundwave on 27 August 2016
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Hedra42 said:
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.

 

Hedra42 said:

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.

 

Final-Fan said:

Hopefully my other post will clear up everything that Shiken misunderstood and make myself clearer to you, too, Hedra.  Upsetting racists is, all else being equal, undesirable (as is upsetting anyone).  However, when people expose racism in action, and especially when they take action to put a stop to it, racists becoming upset is going to be an unavoidable side effect.  It's very rare that society makes progress without having pushback from those who like things the way they are. 

(Let me be clear:  I am not saying that everyone who gets upset about these issues is racist.  But "all talk does is upset racists" is not what I meant at all.)

My initial point in all of this was about how overanalysis just doesn't help the cause.

Shiken: "Unfortunately we are beings who over analyze every little thing to find SOMETHING to complain about. That in mind, racism will never end."

I had highlighted a paragraph in your response to that comment (which I have requoted at the top of this post here) as an example of just that kind of overanalysis, which subsequently sparked the debate between Rol and myself.

The misconceptions in the resulting fallout between you and Shiken pretty much demonstrate the negative effect overanalysis can have.

I stand by what I say -  upsetting racists will not stop them from being racist. Talking about racism, exposing racism, highlighting issues, putting in laws to improve racial equality and monitoring statistics are all well and good, and that's moving everything in the right direction on the surface. Yes, it will upset racists, but it won't stop them from being racist, nor will it guarantee against a racist backlash further down the line.

If you really want progress in society, racism has to be educated out of people, and I mean educated out of people from all sides, over a period of generations in a positive way. The change of heart has to come from all those people, and they need help and encouragement to be able to do that.

 

 

The one thing that I do think is a positive is I do think racism decreases each successive generation. Maybe not quite as much as we'd like but I do think by and large it does. Even take a person who is a racist dick face, odds are their parents are actually more racist, so it's something that seems to be lessening with each generation. 

The US is also basically now a pluralistic society. More than 50% of the babies under the age of 5 in the US right now an ethnic "minority", and for kids overall under the age of 18, it's basically now become a 50-50 split which by 2020 (only three years from now) will also become less than 50% white. This is your future US ethnic mix. The main pool of where white people dominate the age demographic (70%+) are aged 70 and older, and many of them are going to die off in the next 10-15 years (I don't mean that in a positive/negative way, it's simply a fact of life). So basically the US is looking at being a society where there is no clear racial majority and people are just going to have to learn to fucking live with each other.