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Forums - Politics - Explain why racism is wrong...

dsgrue3 on 31 January 2013
Immortal said:
Define "racism". I'm really not sure what qualifies.

If I say that people of African descent have black skin and that people of European origin have white skin, most people would not consider me racist. Even though I'm making generalizations about huge groups of people, there is apparently nothing wrong with this.

Now, just humor me for a second. I don't mean this at all, personally. Suppose there is objective evidence that suggests that the average person of African descent scores 20 IQ points lower on an IQ test than the average person of European descent, adjusted for different environmental factors and such. This kind of research can never be foolproof or conclusive of course, but we've got as close to hard evidence as we're gonna get. With this in mind, would it become alright to say that, on average, people with black skin are less intelligent than people with white skin?

Under the circumstances I presented, saying that Africans are black is as objectively true as saying that they are less smart. So, I guess my real question is, the validity of these claims aside, is it still racist to point out "inferiorities" in other races? Of course, the thing is, calling something "inferior" is a value judgement. That is very easy to condemn. On the other hand, by simply making the statement, "Black are, on average, not as smart whites," are you necessarily doing something wrong, even if it could somehow be proven that this is the truth?

Facts are unbiased. No racism. Just like it isn't sexist for me to say that intelligent males outnumber intelligent females. This is a fact of life and devoid of any partiality or opinion.



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bananaking21 on 31 January 2013
dsgrue3 said:
bananaking21 said:
dsgrue3 said:

I suppose that's fair. Abundance of schools and majors that could suit any individual's needs. 

Now explain why a person who achieved poor grades in school deserves a scholarship.

i did not once say that. i gave an example saying that if two people were up for a scholorship, one was poor the other was rich, give the scholorship to the poor guy instead of the rich one, that way you have two people recieving education instead of one because the rich kid can afford to pay


That's exactly what you said:

bananaking21 said:

now your discriminating against the poor because they dont have the same means of edjucation to recieve high grades. even if lets say that that a poor kid and rich kid are going to the same school, the rich kid is getting higher grades. who should recieve the scholorship? definatly the poor kid. the rich kid has the money to recieve an edjucation, the poor kid doesnt. this way you have two people getting edjucated instead of one

 

You made it about means rather that merit. And that is with what I fundamentally disagree.

 


i said give to the scholorship to the poor kid gets lower grades than the rich kid. i didnt say give the scholorship to somebody with poor grades. there should be a balance between means and merit, if a hard working kid with that is poor has lower grades and a rich kid with better grades are up for the scholorship then the poor kid should get it, if the scholorship isnt wasted on this kid and he will work hard on it then yes. this way more people have an education



IIIIITHE1IIIII on 31 January 2013
dallas said:
Question for people outside of the US/ Canada -- is racism considered a really bad thing in your country and nearby ones?


Hell yes. Criminals are treated with more respect.



dsgrue3 on 31 January 2013
bananaking21 said:

i said give to the scholorship to the poor kid gets lower grades than the rich kid. i didnt say give the scholorship to somebody with poor grades. there should be a balance between means and merit, if a hard working kid with that is poor has lower grades and a rich kid with better grades are up for the scholorship then the poor kid should get it, if the scholorship isnt wasted on this kid and he will work hard on it then yes. this way more people have an education

Yeah, let's REWARD someone for achieving LOW GRADES. What the fuck?



dallas on 31 January 2013
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:
dallas said:
Question for people outside of the US/ Canada -- is racism considered a really bad thing in your country and nearby ones?


Hell yes. Criminals are treated with more respect.


I'm surprised.  I always thought that America was more vehement against racism bc of our history of slavery and what we call the JimCrow era, so that such things wouldnt happen again or whatever.



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bananaking21 on 31 January 2013
dsgrue3 said:
bananaking21 said:

i said give to the scholorship to the poor kid gets lower grades than the rich kid. i didnt say give the scholorship to somebody with poor grades. there should be a balance between means and merit, if a hard working kid with that is poor has lower grades and a rich kid with better grades are up for the scholorship then the poor kid should get it, if the scholorship isnt wasted on this kid and he will work hard on it then yes. this way more people have an education

Yeah, let's REWARD someone for achieving LOW GRADES. What the fuck?

your really not getting my point. and i didnt say that the poor kid got low grades i said he got loweR grades than the rich kid. there should be a balance between merits and means to help poor people recieve education, why is that so hard to understand?



Immortal on 31 January 2013
dsgrue3 said:

Facts are unbiased. No racism. Just like it isn't sexist for me to say that intelligent males outnumber intelligent females. This is a fact of life and devoid of any partiality or opinion.


If only things were that simple...

There's a couple of enormous leaps I knowingly made there that I'm gonna have to go back to now that someone's given me such a straight answer without even hesitating.

Let's take your example. You say that the number of intelligent males is greater than the number of intelligent females. What has led you to this conclusion? If it is at all related to what you've experienced in life, we can immediately rule out impartiality since you could easily have had a biased sample in your life. In fact, if, in life, you've actually seen that there are more smart males than females, there's a strong argument to be made for the fact that you're subconsciously more likely to believe any study or statistic showing that there are more smart males and that you'd more easily discard counterarguments such as environmental factors.

The only way you'd know for sure that there are more smart males is if you counted them individually. Since I know you haven't done that, you're either going on personal experience or some statistic you got somewhere. The first one is evidently flawed. For the second, you'd need to make an argument as to why your source is more reliable than, say, Women's #1 "Men are Morons" magazine. And if you have to make this kind of argument, I hope you can realize that you're treading on subjective grounds and a relatively grey area, which means that there are no clear-cut for-sure facts anywhere.



 

“These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” – Groucho Marx

dsgrue3 on 31 January 2013
bananaking21 said:

your really not getting my point. and i didnt say that the poor kid got low grades i said he got loweR grades than the rich kid. there should be a balance between merits and means to help poor people recieve education, why is that so hard to understand?

Yeah, let's also give athletic scholarships to to HS bench players because, you know, they work hard.

Stupid argument is stupid. Merit or bust. No race, money, location, etc should be considered at all.



dsgrue3 on 31 January 2013
Immortal said:
dsgrue3 said:

Facts are unbiased. No racism. Just like it isn't sexist for me to say that intelligent males outnumber intelligent females. This is a fact of life and devoid of any partiality or opinion.


If only things were that simple...

There's a couple of enormous leaps I knowingly made there that I'm gonna have to go back to now that someone's given me such a straight answer without even hesitating.

Let's take your example. You say that the number of intelligent males is greater than the number of intelligent females. What has led you to this conclusion? If it is at all related to what you've experienced in life, we can immediately rule out impartiality since you could easily have had a biased sample in your life. In fact, if, in life, you've actually seen that there are more smart males than females, there's a strong argument to be made for the fact that you're subconsciously more likely to believe any study or statistic showing that there are more smart males and that you'd more easily discard counterarguments such as environmental factors.

The only way you'd know for sure that there are more smart males is if you counted them individually. Since I know you haven't done that, you're either going on personal experience or some statistic you got somewhere. The first one is evidently flawed. For the second, you'd need to make an argument as to why your source is more reliable than, say, Women's #1 "Men are Morons" magazine. And if you have to make this kind of argument, I hope you can realize that you're treading on subjective grounds and a relatively grey area, which means that are no clear-cut for-sure facts anywhere.

I didn't say your example was a fact.

My example is from multiple studies. They show that although males and females have the same average IQ, the distribution is quite different. Women cluster around the middle, men cluster around the extremes (high and low). You could also say there are more stupid males than stupid females.

I never bring personal assumptions into logical debates - that's stupid.



bananaking21 on 31 January 2013
dsgrue3 said:
bananaking21 said:

your really not getting my point. and i didnt say that the poor kid got low grades i said he got loweR grades than the rich kid. there should be a balance between merits and means to help poor people recieve education, why is that so hard to understand?

Yeah, let's also give athletic scholarships to to HS bench players because, you know, they work hard.

Stupid argument is stupid. Merit or bust. No race, money, location, etc should be considered at all.


please dont insult my point of view because it disagree's with yours. and how should money not be considered when scholorships are all about money?