Racism

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vijayjohn
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-27, 7:20

Ludwig Whitby wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
Патрислав Андреевич wrote:Why should illegal immigrants be a priority (I've read many of them are not actually refugees, but economic immigrants) and not the citizens? Finally, if it's the will of Czech people not to accept them, then they should not be accepted.

But these immigrants are also humans; you can't just dump them into the sea. They have to stay somewhere, so where will they? Someone has to accept them, so who will?

How about those countries that are responsible for the reasons the immigrants were forced to leave their country in the first place?

Oh, you mean like the US? I don't think I have anything against that, and we probably should, but I'm pretty sure we won't.

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Re: Racism

Postby Saim » 2015-06-27, 7:28

I would say that it's NATO countries in general, which incidentally includes Hungary.

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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-27, 7:32

Saim wrote:I would say that it's NATO countries in general, which incidentally includes Hungary.

And the Czech Republic and Poland.

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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-06-27, 9:58

Yes, although I'd put most of the blame on USA, UK, France and Germany. Other NATO members are more like puppet states with a relatively high degree of autonomy (compared to the former Soviet, Japanese and German puppet states) than truly independent states and thus haven't as much responsibility.

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Re: Racism

Postby Johanna » 2015-06-27, 22:59

Ludwig Whitby wrote:How about those countries that are responsible for the reasons the immigrants were forced to leave their country in the first place?

For Syrians that would be the Syrian regime and IS at the moment, so... Sure, if Iraq hadn't already been destabilised, IS would probably not have gained such a foothold, but Iraq in itself is a weird construct and pretty much all major European powers of the early 20th century is to blame for that one. Plus NATO of course.

The case of Eritrea has very little to do with the US from my understanding, instead after the war that lead to independence from Ethiopia, the country became a dictatorship, and the very nature of dictatorships is that people who don't like the current state of affairs have to flee. Also, IIRC it ranks below North Korea when it comes to freedom of the press :shock:

Edit: Most Eritreans I know have nothing against Ethiopians, instead they hate both regimes and recognise that Ethiopians had to flee their country for the same reasons they or many of their countrymen fled Eritrea. Also, there are Tigrinya people on both sides of the border.
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Re: Racism

Postby Saim » 2015-06-28, 8:34

Johanna wrote:
Ludwig Whitby wrote:How about those countries that are responsible for the reasons the immigrants were forced to leave their country in the first place?

For Syrians that would be the Syrian regime and IS at the moment, so...


ISIS got its arms from Western funding of Islamists in the Syrian opposition.

Also the whole "war on terror" declared by the US has raised the prestige of these groups and given them more "anti-imperialist" legitimacy. If NATO wants to treat all of these movements as one pseudo-country that they're at war with they must also treat refugees and other victims of it in the same way.

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Re: Racism

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2015-06-28, 18:57

vijayjohn wrote:
Патрислав Андреевич wrote:Why should illegal immigrants be a priority (I've read many of them are not actually refugees, but economic immigrants) and not the citizens? Finally, if it's the will of Czech people not to accept them, then they should not be accepted.

But these immigrants are also humans; you can't just dump them into the sea. They have to stay somewhere, so where will they? Someone has to accept them, so who will?

Why someone has to accept them? "We must not let our compassion imperil our civilisation." A possibility is deporting them.

Anyway, I have nothing against them staying here. It's just that they expect to get all the welfare benefits, free shelter, food, job... And that will be paid from the taxpayers' money. Why don't the politicians who ordered that take them and care for them themselves instead? They have enough private money - if they want to show compassion and how great they are, let them be first to take care of them, from their private wealth. Let them be an example to the rest of the society! But nah, it's easier to spend someone else's money, and be the "good guy" without any price or consequences - the society will pay and feel the results of their actions instead. :roll:

Tl;dr: private charities and individuals should accept them. We don't need even more people on our welfare, for the price of own citizens.

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Re: Racism

Postby Saim » 2015-06-28, 19:10

Refugees once they are allowed to stand on their own two feat are capable of working (and hence spending money and paying taxes), you know. It's not as if they come in and live in refugee camps forever, you just have to give them a chance. Eastern Europe has such a high emigration rate that I have no idea why they should be so picky about who comes in. If anything, from a capitalistic perspective an increased in population means an increased economy if it's managed well.

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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-28, 19:32

Патрислав Андреевич wrote:Why someone has to accept them? "We must not let our compassion imperil our civilisation." A possibility is deporting them.

Because if no one accepts them, they'll just die, which is inhumane, pure and simple. It's a humanitarian crisis. I dunno about you, but I feel no one should have to die just because of that. It probably goes against like everything in the UDHR, and honestly, what does that even say about us as humans except that apparently we're a bunch of selfish assholes who can't be bothered to respond to a literal emergency? Of course, lots and lots of people already have had to die that way, but to me, that is all the more reason why we shouldn't allow this to continue.

(Also, what Saim said).
Anyway, I have nothing against them staying here. It's just that they expect to get all the welfare benefits, free shelter, food, job... And that will be paid from the taxpayers' money.

Does it really bother you that if you pay taxes, that money you pay will go to people whose lives literally depend on it? I wouldn't be bothered by that. If I'm paying money to save somebody's life, why should I complain?
Why don't the politicians who ordered that take them and care for them themselves instead? They have enough private money - if they want to show compassion and how great they are, let them be first to take care of them, from their private wealth. Let them be an example to the rest of the society! But nah, it's easier to spend someone else's money, and be the "good guy" without any price or consequences - the society will pay and feel the results of their actions instead. :roll:

But what exactly do you mean by "take them and care for them themselves"? Stuff millions of people into their own private residences? I'm just asking because they still have to live somewhere, and that solution would not do anyone any good.
Tl;dr: private charities and individuals should accept them.

How?
We don't need even more people on our welfare, for the price of own citizens.

IMO, your (and our) citizens are paying a much greater price for the politicians they elected than for welfare.

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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-06-28, 19:42

Saim wrote:Refugees once they are allowed to stand on their own two feat are capable of working (and hence spending money and paying taxes), you know. It's not as if they come in and live in refugee camps forever, you just have to give them a chance. Eastern Europe has such a high emigration rate that I have no idea why they should be so picky about who comes in. If anything, from a capitalistic perspective an increased in population means an increased economy if it's managed well.

As if a completely foreign culture, religion and world-view simply makes no difference at all.

I'm not really convinced in the economic benefits either. Many of us here are capable of working, the problem is the lack of (good) jobs, which is incidentally the reason our emigration rates are so high. Getting more people capable of working in the country doesn't really help.


Does anyone have any idea why Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and other wealthy countries in the Gulf regions don't want to accept refugees? Why wouldn't Muslim Arab countries want to accept Muslim Arab refugees? Especially if it's so good for the economy?

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Re: Racism

Postby Johanna » 2015-06-28, 19:49

Considering that the average time it takes for a refugee in Sweden to start working and pay taxes is seven years, which could be shortened tremendously if our integration policies didn't suck, and the average refugee has several decades left before retirement, that initial cost is more like an investment. It's not like kids in Sweden are very productive for the first 20 years or so, and schools and daycare cost a lot of money to run.

Our sucky policies include for example no Swedish courses until you get your residency, which takes several month, often around a year, in extreme cases it takes several appeals and close to a decade; said courses usually don't care about your previous experience learning languages or even studying as a whole either, it's not unknown to see someone who couldn't read or write before coming here in the same classroom as someone with a master's degree. On top of that it's very hard for people from the Middle East and Africa to get their degrees validated here, so instead of getting a highly paid job and paying lots of taxes they are stuck working low-paid menial ones.
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-28, 19:55

Ludwig Whitby wrote:As if a completely foreign culture, religion and world-view simply makes no difference at all.

It makes way less of a difference than you seem to think it does and is probably less different than you think it is, too.
Does anyone have any idea why Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and other wealthy countries in the Gulf regions don't want to accept refugees?

Frankly, the leaders of those countries seem racist as fuck to me.

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Re: Racism

Postby Saim » 2015-06-29, 5:54

Ludwig, I'm not saying that these countries should actively pursue immigration as a solution to anything, but that refugees are not just some permanent drain on a system. They work, they spend money, they pay taxes. If the reason is that you don't want to many foreigners around then just say that, not that it's draining on the welfare system (and Patrislav is in favour of welfare cuts for the local population as well so this concern seems incoherent to me).

Ludwig Whitby wrote:Does anyone have any idea why Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and other wealthy countries in the Gulf regions don't want to accept refugees?


In many of those countries the migrant population is much higher than the autochtonous population. The difference is that the immigrants are practically enslaved; they are given next to no rights as far as participating in the local society goes and even need to apply for "exit visas" to go back home for example.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 77149.html

http://www.firstpost.com/world/the-sham ... 36787.html

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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-06-29, 12:28

vijayjohn wrote:
Ludwig Whitby wrote:As if a completely foreign culture, religion and world-view simply makes no difference at all.

It makes way less of a difference than you seem to think it does and is probably less different than you think it is, too.

To me it doesn't make that much difference. I feel threatened by any kind of worldview that would want to curb my freedom, in which case I'm threatened both by the conservative, nationalists Serbian Orthodox Christian worldview as much as by the rigid, fundamentalist Islam which many Iraqis, Syrians and Afghanis ascribe to. Still, I prefer the former to the latter, which is quite natural.

On the other hand, it is a really big deal for others in my country. We've already been at war with the most secular Muslims in the world, and with a Muslim nation that speaks our language, that we have lived in the same country with for decades. I'm pretty sure that a major influx of 'true' Muslims that don't speak our language would lead to conflicts.
(and this is not exclusive to Serbia, I'm sure. Most countries in SE or Eastern Europe have very tense relations with ethnic or religious minorities and especially with Muslims.)
Last edited by Ludwig Whitby on 2015-06-29, 12:35, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-06-29, 12:32

Saim wrote:Ludwig, I'm not saying that these countries should actively pursue immigration as a solution to anything, but that refugees are not just some permanent drain on a system. They work, they spend money, they pay taxes. If the reason is that you don't want to many foreigners around then just say that, not that it's draining on the welfare system (and Patrislav is in favour of welfare cuts for the local population as well so this concern seems incoherent to me).


Oh. Right. Our position as the a stop on the road towards Germany actually does benefit the economy, as all of these refugees need a place to sleep, they need something to eat and drink and they need a bust-ticket to Hungary. I've spoken to a guy who works at a fast-food restaurant near the train station and he hated the immigrants, despite the fact that they constitute half of all his customers. That's really weird.

But if they were to stay here, it'd probably take them years before they start working and paying taxes. For most jobs they'd need to know the language which is really not that easy to master.

And thanks for the info on the Gulf states.

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-29, 16:25

Ludwig Whitby wrote:On the other hand, it is a really big deal for others in my country. We've already been at war with the most secular Muslims in the world, and with a Muslim nation that speaks our language, that we have lived in the same country with for decades. I'm pretty sure that a major influx of 'true' Muslims that don't speak our language would lead to conflicts.

I wonder. Most people in the USA prefer dealing with African or Black Caribbean immigrants to dealing with African-Americans. We don't have the same ugly history with them. Their quirks are "exotic" rather than being the tokens by which we've built our class system. Having lived in Black-majority countries which were generally worse governed than our own, they tend not to have the same resentment of the dominant class nor the same sense of entitlement as the native-born.

I'd be surprised if none of these things were true for the foreign-born Muslims in your country.
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Re: Racism

Postby Koko » 2015-06-29, 19:43

vijayjohn wrote:Because if no one accepts them, they'll just die, which is inhumane, pure and simple. It's a humanitarian crisis.

I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but to be honest the world could do with less people. It's crowded enough as it is. So, however inhumane it may be, it doesn't hurt us that badly.

But, I do agree with this,
I dunno about you, but I feel no one should have to die just because of that. It probably goes against like everything in the UDHR, and honestly, what does that even say about us as humans except that apparently we're a bunch of selfish assholes who can't be bothered to respond to a literal emergency?

and so wouldn't accept letting them to just die.

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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-29, 20:00

Koko wrote:I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but to be honest the world could do with less people. It's crowded enough as it is. So, however inhumane it may be, it doesn't hurt us that badly.

No, I agree. The world already has a ton of people as it is (although birth rates are also falling). But as you see, the point is there's no particular reason why we should force these people to die.

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-29, 20:05

Koko wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Because if no one accepts them, they'll just die, which is inhumane, pure and simple. It's a humanitarian crisis.

I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but to be honest the world could do with less people. It's crowded enough as it is. So, however inhumane it may be, it doesn't hurt us that badly.

Who is "us"?

You don't think inhumane behaviour hurts the people behaving inhumanely as well as those being treated inhumanely?
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Re: Racism

Postby Koko » 2015-06-29, 20:29

linguoboy wrote:Who is "us"?

People as a whole.

You don't think inhumane behaviour hurts the people behaving inhumanely as well as those being treated inhumanely?

Of course I think it hurts them. I just don't think that it hurts the world entire. In the bigger picture, it helps us in terms of less people we need to feed, less people we need to pay, then the less people there are, the less need to expand cities and tear down trees and rip up the earth for housing.

Of course, it's not at all a pleasant solution to those problems and like I said, I don't agree with it and would rather it not even be happening that they're forced to die like that. I'd rather find a better solution for both.


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