Today’s police show restraint

[starving student]

nice idea beats but I think I can improve upon it, since nobody is born a racist and racism can only be taught why don't we just keep all humans starting out on earth and whomever decides to accept the doctrine of racism gets shipped off to the moon, or perhaps mercury (my personal choice) to live. Then we'd basically have two planets one for racist and one for non-racist.

[beats me]

nice idea beats but I think I can improve upon it, since nobody is born a racist and racism can only be taught why don't we just keep all humans starting out on earth and whomever decides to accept the doctrine of racism gets shipped off to the moon, or perhaps mercury (my personal choice) to live. Then we'd basically have two planets one for racist and one for non-racist.

It would be an interesting experiment, but then human nature and class distinction will probably kick in for other reasons and they might look to color based racism to keep things a lot simpler. Early America was all about different white races disliking each other. Then they got lazy at some point and just went with color as the distinction. Less explaining to have to do.

[TomViolenz]

nice idea beats but I think I can improve upon it, since nobody is born a racist and racism can only be taught why don't we just keep all humans starting out on earth and whomever decides to accept the doctrine of racism gets shipped off to the moon, or perhaps mercury (my personal choice) to live. Then we'd basically have two planets one for racist and one for non-racist.

It would be an interesting experiment, but then human nature and class distinction will probably kick in for other reasons and they might look to color based racism to keep things a lot simpler. Early America was all about different white races disliking each other. Then they got lazy at some point and just went with color as the distinction. Less explaining to have to do.

Well sure, good thing slavery never existed in the land of the free

[beats me]

nice idea beats but I think I can improve upon it, since nobody is born a racist and racism can only be taught why don't we just keep all humans starting out on earth and whomever decides to accept the doctrine of racism gets shipped off to the moon, or perhaps mercury (my personal choice) to live. Then we'd basically have two planets one for racist and one for non-racist.

It would be an interesting experiment, but then human nature and class distinction will probably kick in for other reasons and they might look to color based racism to keep things a lot simpler. Early America was all about different white races disliking each other. Then they got lazy at some point and just went with color as the distinction. Less explaining to have to do.

Well sure, good thing slavery never existed in the land of the free

I really wonder how much longer people from either side of the argument can milk something that ended nearly 150 years ago. And tossing that into the mix certainly isn’t going to advance the cause of either the ancestors of slaves or racists. It makes for good sound bites though.

[Machinesworking]

the math definitely doesn't lie, and that's from everything from the death penalty down to doing time for good ole' maryjane …
to be fair you did just describe racism in law enforcement without using the word racist or by putting the word benign in front of it, but if someone dies because of it I would probably not call it benign and as it turns out to be the worst when it's institutionalized. If you're neighbor doesn't like watching captain kirk kissing uhura 's black lips then that's one thing and because it's his business I would call that benign but if he goes to work the next day and takes that hatred with him then that's a different story. He could be a cop, a judge, a real-estate agent, apt manager, doctor, politician etc…. and it all becomes quite serious.

The problem is an almost inherent flaw in the way we're wired. If an inner city black police officer was asked to patrol a rural area of Mississippi littered with meth labs, alcoholism and poor white people, it's very likely that that person would pull out the gun, and someone might be dead a little quicker than if they were hired from the same area. This could be applied to an inner city american black cop asked to patrol an ethnic enclave of african black muslims, maybe with a guy from that community who got caught plotting a terrorist attack. That cop is going to be a lot rougher on that community based on their fears. This holds true not on an individual case by case basis, but on a national over the course of a million cases. The way these things work is by the millions of interactions, so white cop for the most part does OK, but in adding up incidences on a nation level you get a much much higher rate of black male deaths by police. It's not institutionalized racism, but a flaw in the way people are wired, we fear what we don't know, and the solution is sadly racist as well, to have all black patrols in black neighborhoods.

Well sure, good thing slavery never existed in the land of the free

Yeah and a certain country never had a genocidal deeply racist war machine of a tyranny than laid waste to Europe.
From a place that never had the history of colonial slavery and subjugation the rest of the european powers have. Then there's the horrors of Belgian colonialism, eastern programs, religious prejudice everywhere, ethnic hatred... Racism/prejudice barely needs anything to take root.

[H20nly]

Cons:

I'm pretty pissed off about how how planet ______ gets more _______ than planet _______! It's an outrage! They get to enjoy _______ while the hard working citizens of _______ pay for all the _______. We need to cut funding for ________ and make them work for their own _______!


Pros:

All you have to do is distribute the ________ evenly. If that happens then everyone from _________ all the way to _________ would have the same amount of ________ and the war on _________ would be over.

[beats me]

All planetary inequality disputes will be handled through galactic sports leagues. This of course will have zero impact on an individual’s reality, but it will allow them to go ape shit with patriotism which is good enough.

[H20nly]

^ well my money is on Katniss Everdeen and/or Ben Richards.

[TomViolenz]

It would be an interesting experiment, but then human nature and class distinction will probably kick in for other reasons and they might look to color based racism to keep things a lot simpler. Early America was all about different white races disliking each other. Then they got lazy at some point and just went with color as the distinction. Less explaining to have to do.

Well sure, good thing slavery never existed in the land of the free

I really wonder how much longer people from either side of the argument can milk something that ended nearly 150 years ago. And tossing that into the mix certainly isn’t going to advance the cause of either the ancestors of slaves or racists. It makes for good sound bites though.

Except that racism was the ad hoc rationalisation for slavery.
Without slavery and the later resulting (pseudo scientific) eugenics movement, racism in this modern form would not exist.

No need to feel guilty about owning people like cattle, if they are not really human, you know...

[TomViolenz]

Well sure, good thing slavery never existed in the land of the free

Yeah and a certain country never had a genocidal deeply racist war machine of a tyranny than laid waste to Europe.
From a place that never had the history of colonial slavery and subjugation the rest of the european powers have. Then there's the horrors of Belgian colonialism, eastern programs, religious prejudice everywhere, ethnic hatred... Racism/prejudice barely needs anything to take root.

See above

Racism is a fairly recent achievement.

And for much of the time slavery existed in the US, it was did as well in Europe.

They were basically still the same people doing it.

[beats me]

Except that racism was the ad hoc rationalisation for slavery.
Without slavery and the later resulting (pseudo scientific) eugenics movement, racism in this modern form would not exist.

No need to feel guilty about owning people like cattle, if they are not really human, you know...

Still a red herring that doesn’t offer any solutions, just excuses.

[TomViolenz]

Except that racism was the ad hoc rationalisation for slavery.
Without slavery and the later resulting (pseudo scientific) eugenics movement, racism in this modern form would not exist.

No need to feel guilty about owning people like cattle, if they are not really human, you know...

Still a red herring that doesn’t offer any solutions, just excuses.

Excuses? What needs to be excused?!

It was an explanation for the source of it.
This is not really all that controversial either, but the state of knowledge in the political sciences.

[H20nly]

many different skin tones made up the slave pool throughout history.

just sayin.

it's only because what was to become the United States has a whopping 600 years of history to scrutinize... and African people that were purchased from people of a variety of complexions (often African themselves) had the misfortune of being the last in line in terms of widespread slavery... that the issue is a black and white thing.

FACT: slaves were typically the citizenry of a town or country that was defeated during a battle or war.

those battles or wars were usually about money and resources more so than racist motivations.

[TomViolenz]

many different skin tones made up the slave pool throughout history.

just sayin.

it's only because what was to become the United States has a whopping 600 years of history to scrutinize... and African people that were purchased from people of a variety of complexions (often African themselves) had the misfortune of being the last in line in terms of widespread slavery... that the issue is a black and white thing.

FACT: slaves were typically the citizenry of a town or country that was defeated during a war.

those wars were usually about money and resources more so than racist motivations.

The slavery of old should not be confused with the modern one (and with modern I mean the one in the US and 18th century Europe).
The bolded part was the slavery of old which had been mostly done away with in Europe after the fall of Rome. (Not that the feudal societies that followed were that much better).

When the African continent was colonized (by yes Europeans), they took advantage of the old form of slavery that still existed there, pretty much industrialized it and formed something totally different out of it.

Racism as we know it was a result of this development of dehumanizing people as lesser beings.
The rest was done with the ad hoc excuses that Eugenics delivered.

Again, none of this is really controversial. Most of it can be found on Wikipedia.

[lowshelf]

and African people that were purchased from people of a variety of complexions (often African themselves)