Racism

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Ludwig Whitby
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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-04-23, 10:00

linguoboy wrote:Where is the comparable documentation that Jews with disproportionate wealth and influence (who are, it must be remembered, still a minority in the larger Jewish population) are using what power they wield to deny opportunity to those of other racial and ethnic groups? On the contrary, as a group, Jews are one of the most politically liberal groups in the country. They are extremely disproportionately represented in progressive groups (like ACLU and the Civil Rights movement) which have fought for greater equality of opportunity for minorities of all sorts. As a political progressive myself, it's in my best interest to have more Jews in positions of power, not fewer.

As I see, the rules of this society (explicit and otherwise) have long been fashioned to straight White cisgender male Christians. The Jews who came here successfully beat these gentiles at their own game, and I say more power to them. Their success doesn't mean that the deck was stacked in their favour, nor does it refute the fact that it is stacked against members of other minority populations. Changes which favoured less concentration of individual wealth would have the overall effect of disfavouring them, but that shouldn't be the motivating factor behind instituting them.


The rules of your society favour the rich. When the Jews managed to beat these gentiles, as you put it, in the beginning of the 20th century, they've become those rich that the rules favour. And seeing that today, a whole century after John D. Rockefeller became the richest American, Jews are still over-represented among the richest and most influential citizens of the USA, being the chairmen and CEOs of major media conglomerates, heads of big business' and similar, there is surely room for questioning whether they've had some unfair advantage, a head-start that the gentiles don't have. And they did, as they have connections, friends at high positions that were willing to give them a shot. That's something that others don't have, which does constitute inequality of opportunity.

I'm not the one narrowly focusing on Hollywood, that was just one of the examples I gave.

EDIT: And continuing with it, if there is no systemic bias in Hollywood how come that today, decades after the breakthrough of cinema, Jews are still over-represented in acting.

Look at how many young actors that are in this silly list of hottest Jews in Hollywood:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/the- ... .jf31glaPe

How about comedy? Woody Allen - Jewish. Larry David, Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Julia Dreyfus- Jewish. Friends written by Marta Kauffman, starring David Shwimmer, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry- all Jews. The Big Bang Theory? Almost everyone's a Jew there. How I Met Your Mother? Radnor, Segel and Hannigan are Jews.

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Fran Drescher, Seth Rogen, Mila Kunis, Nick Kroll, Jonah Hill, Sarah Silverman

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-04-23, 18:25

Ludwig Whitby wrote:The rules of your society favour the rich. When the Jews managed to beat these gentiles, as you put it, in the beginning of the 20th century, they've become those rich that the rules favour.

Some Jews have. That's what I find tendentious about this whole line of argumentation. "Jews" are not a homogeneous population. Remember what I said about them being more politically progressive than the general population? Well, that's true in the abstract, but if you look at a breakdown by movement, you'll find that the reverse is true about Orthodox Jews.

It's similar to the generalisations made about "Asians", and even more diverse population. Yes, some subgroups do considerably better on average than White Americans. But others (notably Cambodians and Laotians) do much worse. Making broad generalisations about "Asians" has the effect of sweeping these salient distinctions under the rug.

In the USA, there was historically an important split between better-off, more Westernised, German-speaking Jews and their poorer Yiddish-speaking cousins from the shtetls of the East. The differences have lessened over time (just as the distinctions between "lace curtain" Irish and their "shantytown" cousins), but they haven't gone away completely. And that's just among Ashkenazim! Are Sephardic Jews as disproportionately successful in this country? What about Mizrahim?

The rules favour the rich. A minority of Jews in this country are rich, and the rules favour their offspring. That means nothing to the majority of Jews who are not rich, just as the fact that Oprah is a billionaire says nothing about the socioeconomic status of African-Americans as a whole.

Ludwig Whitby wrote:And seeing that today, a whole century after John D. Rockefeller became the richest American, Jews are still over-represented among the richest and most influential citizens of the USA, being the chairmen and CEOs of major media conglomerates, heads of big business' and similar, there is surely room for questioning whether they've had some unfair advantage, a head-start that the gentiles don't have. And they did, as they have connections, friends at high positions that were willing to give them a shot. That's something that others don't have, which does constitute inequality of opportunity.

Sure, there's room to question it. But it takes more than that to prove causality. All you've presented are some vague opinions about people sticking with their own kind. ("Jews prefer to work with other Jews. Whites prefer to work with other whites. Men prefer to work with other men.") That's not evidence. Again, if you have studies showing how Jews have benefitted unfairly due to the actions of other, more influential Jews--similar to all the studies I linked to regarding racial discrimination--by all means present them. Otherwise there's nothing to talk about here.

I'm not the one narrowly focusing on Hollywood, that was just one of the examples I gave.

That is the only specific industry you mentioned. The only other sector you talked about (and the only one for which you provided anything representing verifiable evidence) was the 25 richest Americans.

Ludwig Whitby wrote:EDIT: And continuing with it, if there is no systemic bias in Hollywood how come that today, decades after the breakthrough of cinema, Jews are still over-represented in acting.

Look at how many young actors that are in this silly list of hottest Jews in Hollywood:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/the- ... .jf31glaPe

Dude, the first three on that list are Adam Sandler (48), Seth Rogan (33), and Mandy Patinkin (62). I think you and I must have different definitions of what constitutes "young".

This also strikes me as a completely bass-ackwards way of approaching the question. Instead, why not find a list of the hottest young actors and then demonstrate how many are Jewish? Or--better yet--find a list of the highest paid (which strikes me as a better proxy for success and influence than "hotness") young actors.

Ludwig Whitby wrote:How about comedy? Woody Allen - Jewish. Larry David, Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Julia Dreyfus- Jewish. Friends written by Marta Kauffman, starring David Shwimmer, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry- all Jews. The Big Bang Theory? Almost everyone's a Jew there. How I Met Your Mother? Radnor, Segel and Hannigan are Jews.

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Fran Drescher, Seth Rogen, Mila Kunis, Nick Kroll, Jonah Hill, Sarah Silverman

So what? There are a lot of Jews in entertainment. I should care about this why? Because their faces are famous? Moreover, a simple list of names proves nothing. You want me to randomly list popular gentile comedians? We'd be here all day.

But, hey, you like lists, have a look at this list: http://www.forbes.com/sites/vannale/2013/07/11/jerry-seinfeld-tops-list-of-the-highest-earning-comedians/. Ah, hell, I'll be nice and spare you having to click through the damn slideshow like I did:

  1. Jerry Seinfeld
  2. Terry Fator
  3. Russell Peters
  4. Jeff Dunham
  5. Louis CK
  6. Kevin Hart
  7. Larry the Cable Guy
  8. George Lopez
  9. Daniel Tosh/Gabriel Iglesias
  10. Ron White
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-28, 20:45

linguoboy wrote:It's interesting that you focus so narrowly on the example of Hollywood. There are quite easily understood historical explanations for how this dominance came about.

This reminds me of something I've been wanting to say for months. Sometimes, I see white people (mostly here, on Unilang!) saying things like "I have a different view on X from you because of cultural differences" or "I don't like Indian culture." I find culture in this context to be an unnecessarily vague and confusing attempt at explaining things that actually can be explained pretty straightforwardly by just looking at (in the case I'm talking about, Indian) history. I also think it's missing the point that if the historical circumstances were just a bit different, white people would be in the same boat.

I don't agree, for example, that the differences in terms of how Indians and Americans view education should be explained away as cultural differences. I believe it has much more to do with colonialism, what Indian schools traditionally looked like, who was even allowed to go to one, and, on top of that, an extremely shitty political and economic situation in the 70s when the Indian job market was very, very competitive, bomb threats were frequent (at least in major cities), employers were paranoid about communism, and only the very best students could expect to get a job.

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Re: Racism

Postby Dormouse559 » 2015-04-28, 21:39

Arguing over "culture" versus "history" seems beside the point to me. The two influence each other so strongly that using one term or the other sometimes feels like a question of emphasis. I do see a problem in saying something like "Our views of education are different because of cultural differences" instead of "Our views of education are different because of the cultural memory among Indians of a highly competitive job market where academic excellence was paramount". That difference between the vague and the specific is what I think is the real issue.
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-28, 21:44

Personally, I think of history as being part of culture and see "culture" as a vague term in and of itself, because it includes not only history but also language, politeness behaviors, social organization, etc. But anyway, that's what I'm really trying to say, that it's the vagueness that concerns me and the failure to acknowledge that there were specific circumstances that explain the differences we see today.

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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-12, 6:59

This is a YouTube video entitled "The Most Racist Cartoon Ever!" that I found...maybe a few weeks ago? From the video description:
Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat is a cartoon centering around a port city of black people. The cartoon is satirizing black people in a racist manner. The short is awash with blackface stereotypes of African-American people and culture, and of life in the rural Southern United States.

It's a banned cartoon now, and yeah, it's really bad. What's even worse is that there are plenty of other cartoons from the same period (and later) that are not even that much worse.

Anyway, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sls5H4xVHys
:|

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-15, 20:39

This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear. I was a little taken aback. "You'd never see this on television nowadays," I told my friend. Sometime during the next cartoon, which features an equally racist caricature of a Southwestern US Indian chasing Bugs Bunny, he said to me, "But they would show this one?" and I had to acknowledge the operative double standard.

On the subject of race, the story of the week on this side of the pond is Rachel Dolezal, a woman born White who has been passing herself off as Black for nearly a decade. It's an odd story, and one that is drawing confused and polarised reactions. A lot of people seem to be drawing a false equivalence between her and Caitlyn Jenner (whose gender transition was the big social media story the previous week), which in turn has annoyed a lot of people who for years have been using the term "transracial" to refer to cross-racial adoptees. One of them penned a particular cogent piece on what bothers them about the whole mess. For sheer brevity I found this string of tweets stands out among the responses I've read, but there's lots lots more where that came from.
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-15, 21:22

linguoboy wrote:This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear.

Yeah. That's exactly the kind of cartoon I was talking about when I mentioned "other cartoons from the same period (and later)." :|

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-15, 21:39

vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear.

Yeah. That's exactly the kind of cartoon I was talking about when I mentioned "other cartoons from the same period (and later)." :|

Neither one of these, though, is among the notorious Censored Eleven.
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-15, 21:43

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear.

Yeah. That's exactly the kind of cartoon I was talking about when I mentioned "other cartoons from the same period (and later)." :|

Neither one of these, though, is among the notorious Censored Eleven.

Neither is "Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat." :(

Ironic?

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-15, 21:49

vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear.

Yeah. That's exactly the kind of cartoon I was talking about when I mentioned "other cartoons from the same period (and later)." :|

Neither one of these, though, is among the notorious Censored Eleven.

Neither is "Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat."

Different studio. The ones I mentioned were both Looney Tunes, but "Scrub Me Mama" is Walter Lanz (of Woody Woodpecker fame).
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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-15, 21:52

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:This reminds me of when I was living in Germany and an English friend of mine came over to watch a tape of old Looney Tunes. Among the selection were "The Little Lion Hunter" and "A Feather in His Hare". The first introduces the character of Inki, a pickaninny character with a bone in his hair and a hunting spear.

Yeah. That's exactly the kind of cartoon I was talking about when I mentioned "other cartoons from the same period (and later)." :|

Neither one of these, though, is among the notorious Censored Eleven.

Neither is "Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat."

Different studio. The ones I mentioned were both Looney Tunes, but "Scrub Me Mama" is Walter Lanz (of Woody Woodpecker fame).

Ahh, okay.

BTW, there's more than a whole hour's worth of banned cartoons in this video (and they include "Scrub Me Mama" and the first one is "Little Black Sambo." Not all of them were banned specifically for racism though):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNr2cB3mplE
Is it just me, or do these racist cartoons tend to have plots that don't make a whole lot of sense? :lol:

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Re: Racism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-15, 22:00

That's par for the period. Or, to quote from the description of one of the Censored Eleven, "Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land has a rudimentary plot, unlike most of the Merrie Melodies of the time, which barely have any plot at all."
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Re: Racism

Postby Johanna » 2015-06-15, 23:05

linguoboy wrote: the notorious Censored Eleven.

I saw a few of these on Swedish TV in the 90's :shock:
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Re: Racism

Postby razlem » 2015-06-16, 18:15

linguoboy wrote:On the subject of race, the story of the week on this side of the pond is Rachel Dolezal, a woman born White who has been passing herself off as Black for nearly a decade. It's an odd story, and one that is drawing confused and polarised reactions.

She grew up with four black siblings and it's not like she lives a double life, she lives exclusively as a black woman.

But she lied about her experiences, and did use her white privilege to get into Howard University. She is not a racist herself - from her interviews it appears strongly that she genuinely wants to help the advancement of the black community. But she took away the opportunity for an actual black woman to take the spots she's held, which is what a lot of people seem to be upset about.
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Re: Racism

Postby הענט » 2015-06-26, 17:49

The EU is about to redistribute the immigrants who flee Africa and Czech Republic is getting mainly Syrians and Eritreans.
Now the islamophobia and xenophobia is really prevalent here and I don't understand why. Just today I read a poll where 90% of votes were for accepting no immigrants at all!!! How hypocritical it is from Czechs who used to flee their homeland because of the communist regime...

The only trouble I can see here is if the Eritreans get to meet the Ethiopians (just around 100 of them here). Oh and it seems that nobody here speaks Tigrinya and only a few people speak Amharic. That's really little for a 10 million country. :(

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Re: Racism

Postby Levike » 2015-06-26, 17:54

Dr. House wrote:The EU is about to redistribute the immigrants who flee Africa and Czech Republic is getting mainly Syrians and Eritreans.

The Hungarian parliament clearly stated that it won't accept the redistributed immigrants.

And in the mean-time Hungary is preparing to build a 175 km long fence along the Serbian border.
I don't know how effective that's going to be though.

This has been the topic of discussion for a long while now in the local news.

Although xenophobia and islamophobia are a part of it, a good part of the anger comes from not wanting to take care of others. It's more of a "Not my problem" thing.

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Re: Racism

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2015-06-26, 20:03

Dr. House wrote:The EU is about to redistribute the immigrants who flee Africa and Czech Republic is getting mainly Syrians and Eritreans.
Now the islamophobia and xenophobia is really prevalent here and I don't understand why. Just today I read a poll where 90% of votes were for accepting no immigrants at all!!! How hypocritical it is from Czechs who used to flee their homeland because of the communist regime...

The only trouble I can see here is if the Eritreans get to meet the Ethiopians (just around 100 of them here). Oh and it seems that nobody here speaks Tigrinya and only a few people speak Amharic. That's really little for a 10 million country. :(

What's concerning to me is how EU wants to force sovereign nations to do whatever EU wants, even though there are many homeless people living in the country already. 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.

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Re: Racism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-06-27, 0:38

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?
Dr. House wrote:Now the islamophobia and xenophobia is really prevalent here and I don't understand why.

Okay, all of this is just the way I personally see it and my own attempt to understand it. I really can't tell how much of it makes any sense on my own, so think whatever you like of it. But here's what I think anyway.

I've been thinking about this for a while now - not specifically in the Czech Republic really, but I guess more generally about xenophobia worldwide and what motivates it. As I see it, people tend to see foreigners in their land/community/whatever as a threat, and the more turbulent the history of their country has been and the more impoverished their country is, the more likely they are to see them that way. Also, I think the more time has passed since a large-scale migration into the country took place, the more likely they are to be xenophobic.

As developed as the Czech Republic is, it has had a much more violent history even over the past century than e.g. Germany or Luxembourg and is not as developed as them. And the fact that Czechs used to flee their homeland perhaps serves to reinforce the attachment of modern Czechs to their homeland and to view an influx of immigrants as another invasion of sorts.

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Re: Racism

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2015-06-27, 6:03

There's really a lot of them in Serbia now. Like a lot. We can't take care of them and Hungary is closing the border, so it's not looking that good for them.

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?


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