It's Okay To Be White

[Octavious]

So what if your a white guy? Because at the end of the day, we all bleed the same blood, regardless of skin colour

That's not really true, though, is it? Indeed, if you look at issues like organ donation the reason that there's such a big push for more BAME (seriously, why has the term the progressives use for non-white keep changing?) organ donors is because using organs from different races to the patient has a significant risk of causing complications.

[Stressedlines]

Ogion, tell me AGAIN how if an Asian does not like blacks, he is a Fing white supremacist???

Lets hear this one oh great Wizard of Oz Cue the song "lets twist agaiN' please, as I get popcorn for this answer

[Jamiet99uk]

http://www.southendnewsnetwork.net/news ... d-london2/

[CommanderByron]

Blink twice if they're standing behind you and you need help...

Lol, no, this was on my own accord.

[CommanderByron]

So what if your a white guy? Because at the end of the day, we all bleed the same blood, regardless of skin colour

That's not really true, though, is it? Indeed, if you look at issues like organ donation the reason that there's such a big push for more BAME (seriously, why has the term the progressives use for non-white keep changing?) organ donors is because using organs from different races to the patient has a significant risk of causing complications.

The danger isn't in defining the races as different but allowing those differences to define how we treat people or how we value them.

People of african descent have a higher chance of inheriting Sickle Cell Anemia.
People of northern european descent are more likely to inheret Cystic Fibrosis.
People of Asian and Native American descent are more likely to be lactose intolerant.

These are just facts. Does that make any of these groups less than the others? Absolutely not.

So no we all don't necessarily bleed the same blood. But we do feel the same pain and experience the same life.

[CommanderByron]

Prejudice will NEVER be removed from our society. It is natural for humans to group people and things and make broad generalizations to easier understand our world. If we don't have racial prejudice, we will have economic prejudice, religious prejudice, gender prejudice, and a plethora of other prejudices to contend with.

However, this doesn't mean we give up and that doesn't make it okay. We will never completely rid the world of rape and sexual misconduct but that doesn't mean we stop trying or grant it a pass; the same is true for racism and prejudice.

Do I know the answers? No. Do I know the best way to solve our problems? No. But I do know allowing people to promote hate and allowing people to promote lies about others is NOT the answer and solves nothing.

[Durga]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5-P9v3F8w

[Incrementalist]

Do I know the answers? No. Do I know the best way to solve our problems? No. But I do know allowing people to promote hate and allowing people to promote lies about others is NOT the answer and solves nothing.

Obviously the people providing this forum can shape it however they want to, but in general, preventing the promulgation of undesirable ideas is an illiberal goal akin to the Catholic imprimatur.

One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that it has a tendency to allow itself to be undermined; and it is doubly paradoxical as almost any method for addresing this produces an illiberal outcome.

[CommanderByron]

Obviously the people providing this forum can shape it however they want to, but in general, preventing the promulgation of undesirable ideas is an illiberal goal akin to the Catholic imprimatur.

One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that it has a tendency to allow itself to be undermined; and it is doubly paradoxical as almost any method for addresing this produces an illiberal outcome.

Clarify, that's my personal belief not the site belief. Also I don't consider myself liberal by any measure other than socially. I believe the world is nuanced, and a million shades of gray. When I say "allowing" I don't mean we should ban the use of rhetoric that supports racist ideas. I mean we shouldn't sit idly by watching and NOT telling them they are wrong and challenging their ideas.

[CommanderByron]

Racism is wrong.
Claiming to be superior based on race is racism.
Using that belief to justify treating people differently is prejudice.
Prejudice and racism are wrong.

^ Facts ^

[Incrementalist]

Racism is wrong.
Claiming to be superior based on race is racism.
Using that belief to justify treating people differently is prejudice.
Prejudice and racism are wrong.

^ Facts ^

Those actually aren't facts as such, they are moral assertions, being cast as "facts" because science is fashionable nowadays.

Yet science and morality are (or should be) completely orthogonal domains.

It's dangerous to base morality on scientific truth because the way that science progresses is by modifying (and occasionally overturning) previous understandings. This is not something that is generally desirable to do with morality.

EDITED TO SUMMARIZE: Having a "fact-based" morality leaves it susceptible to being undermined by new discoveries.

[CommanderByron]

You say "undermined" I say "evolved"

[Incrementalist]

You say "undermined" I say "evolved"

Fair enough, but what if science "evolved" in a direction that undermined the idea of equality of humans by ethnicity? Would that remove the moral necessity to treat people fairly?

You're allowing current scientific understanding (that no ethnic group is "superior" to another, presumably in any category) to serve as the cornerstone of moral behavior. My point is that this is dangerous, since science may "evolve" in a direction that contradicts the notion of equality in the future. To believe that it never will do that isn't science at all, it's faith.

It's safer to avoid basing morality on science, to avoid the potential for it being overturned. A non-scientific notion of fairness would be a better basis.

[CommanderByron]

Fair enough, but what if science "evolved" in a direction that undermined the idea of equality of humans by ethnicity? Would that remove the moral necessity to treat people fairly?

You're allowing current scientific understanding (that no ethnic group is "superior" to another, presumably in any category) to serve as the cornerstone of moral behavior. My point is that this is dangerous, since science may "evolve" in a direction that contradicts the notion of equality in the future. To believe that it never will do that isn't science at all, it's faith.

It's safer to avoid basing morality on science, to avoid the potential for it being overturned. A non-scientific notion of fairness would be a better basis.

Science may drift in a direction that my current morality doesn't agree with. I will cross that bridge when i get there. I do not claim to be consistent. I am human. I am myself a work of various grays.

Science is facts, how you use those facts, what you use those facts for, and what you derive from those facts can very easily change.

[Incrementalist]

I will cross that bridge when i get there. I do not claim to be consistent.

OK, but if the morality you describe is fact-based contingent on the facts agreeing with the morality, and if they're not, you're going to cross some bridge of consistency later... then it's not actually fact-based. It is better, and in the long term more robust, to remove the empirical basis for morality altogether, and simply declare equality to be self-evident as the framers of the US Constitution did.

[CommanderByron]

OK, but if the morality you describe is fact-based contingent on the facts agreeing with the morality, and if they're not, you're going to cross some bridge of consistency later... then it's not actually fact-based. It is better, and in the long term more robust, to remove the empirical basis for morality altogether, and simply declare equality to be self-evident as the framers of the US Constitution did.

Again, i never claimed to have a purely science based morality, nor did i claim to base all my thoughts on that. That is words you placed in my mouth. However, I do use science for a significant portion of my morality. That does not mean I am exclusively science based. Like I said, myself and the world are hundreds if not thousands of shades of gray. So I don't disgaree with you... but I also don't agree with you.

[Incrementalist]

I did not put words in your mouth - you labeled your list of moral principles as “facts” which implies that they are empirically verifiable and in the domain of science as such. I was challenging that on the basis that fact-based morality wouldn’t even be desirable.

If you had labeled your statements as “truth” rather than “fact” that would have been a less fraught categorization, since not everything that is true is verifiable (which is why some are declared self-evident i.e. unproven).

I have to object to the way you framed this because 1) it does a disservice to science to bring it in as an authority on morality and 2) ultimately it is risky to have morality contingent on future discoveries.

[CommanderByron]

Semantics.

[Ogion]

Science tells you what is. It's not very helpful with morality, which is about what you think about what is.

however, one hopes morality changes, because morality for much of human existence has been downright evil. There's a reason it has such a bad reputation.

[JamesYanik]

also why does EVERY racist HAVE to be a WHITE supremacist?

that seems kind of bigoted guys

*tips fedora*