This stems from a discussion I had online this evening with Edana and Robin. Is racism evil? If so, then how do we know? Why? Because it is immoral? Its funny how good and evil so often switch places like I can switch tennis shoes. If racism is now evil, why was it considered good in the past? Who decides whether or not racism is good or evil? Or better yet, why can't I say that anti-racism is evil? Also, what is 'racism' anyway? It didn't occur to anyone that there was such a thing until the 20th century.

Bull**** is evil... so the politically correct orthodoxy which denies all diffrence between races IS evil. But so is hating someone otherwise worthy and even of the same culture of yourself... simply due to race diffrences.

Racism is neither good nor evil.

A better question would be: "Is racism natural?"

A better question would be: "Is racism natural?"
The 'naturalness' of a thing or idea has nothing to do with its value.

A better question would be: "Is racism natural?"
Not racism per se, but fear and distrust of the unknown diffrent ie xenophobia is natural and racism is as a manifestation.

It all depends if you can take it seriously. I do not see evil in it unless a person uses it in an unknowkingly fashion.

Racism, like Sexism, is a modern BS term implemented for propaganda purposes. Ask any anti-racist to create a coherent definition of "racist", and he'll be at loss when you present him with people whom he wants to call racist, yet do not fall under his definition. He is forced to continue broadening his definition until you get the vague, muddled, emotional umbrella term we have today.

Not racism per se, but fear and distrust of the unknown diffrent ie xenophobia is natural and racism is as a manifestation.

A sense of loyalty and closeness to one's own more than to the outsider is natural.

A sense of loyalty and closeness to one's own more than to the outsider is natural.
Both are natural... being cynical often fear and distrust( and yes its often justified im not saying its wrong) of the outsider is MORE a factor then loyalty to ones own.

Medieval Europe united for a time against a common threat in the crusades even though without such an outside threat its kings and nobles fought each other incessentaly.

Same with the Greek city states in response to the Persian invasion.

Racism, like Sexism, is a modern BS term implemented for propaganda purposes. Ask any anti-racist to create a coherent definition of "racist", and he'll be at loss when you present him with people whom he wants to call racist, yet do not fall under his definition. He is forced to continue broadening his definition until you get the vague, muddled, emotional umbrella term we have today.
For once we agree on something. I would add, though, that a term is necessary to refer to irrational hatred based on race, or racial egotism. 'Racism' does not refer exclusively to these, but inter alia the positing of the mere existence of racial differences. 'Racism' (the word) therefore I cannot accept, since I fully acknowlegde racial differences, but I nonetheless choose to use it for propagandistic purposes and for winning arguments.

At least you are honest about using it for propaganda purposes. :)

My second problem with most definitions of "racist" is that they usually double as a straw man argument against people with unpopular views on race. Consider your own definition, for an example. "Irrational hatred based on race". First off, it presumes "irrationality". Second, it presumes that the hatred is based on race, and not another root factor, such as views of another race as a threat to their own or disgust with the general behavior or culture of another race.

Consider the definition of "Sexism" as irrational views of superiority or hatred of the opposite sex.

Someone who recognizes general diffrences between races is realistic.

Someone who doesn't like ALL individuals of a certain race, regardless of known individual merits is a racist.

You're just making up your own definition. "Racist" is whatever people want it to be (which surprisingly always fits those other people and not the self). Instead of purposely restricting the definition to some personal meaning for the purpose of excluding yourself from the label and pigeonholing those other people, I just say term is bogus.

"Every word is a predjudice." -Nietzsche

So quite Frankly racism is not evil.

You're just making up your own definition. "Racist" is whatever people want it to be (which surprisingly always fits those other people and not the self). Instead of purposely restricting the definition to some personal meaning for the purpose of excluding yourself from the label and pigeonholing those other people, I just say term is bogus.
Of course Im making my own definition for this political buzzword, language is arbritrary after all.

You're just making up your own definition.
No he is not. The word is widely used in that sense as well. It is widely used in many different senses (hence a good term of propaganda).

Of course Im making my own definition for this political buzzword, language is arbritrary after all.

It doesn't fly where it matters, though. Since everyone makes up their own definition, communication is hindered when it comes into play.

Example:

Someone listens to your views on Mexicans and reacts by calling you "racist".

You react by stating your definition of "racist", in which you don't belong.

He reacts by stating his own definition of "racist", in which you do.

Conversation completely breaks down at this point. Instead of the topic being whether your views have some merit, the topic is whether or not you are a "racist", and no one can agree because everyone just makes up their own definition!

Is racism evil? If so, then how do we know? Why? Because it is immoral?

It would depend upon your personal moral code, as defined by your personal ethical system. Your sense of good or evil arises from that. Ditto your view of moral and immoral.

Its funny how good and evil so often switch places like I can switch tennis shoes. If racism is now evil, why was it considered good in the past? Who decides whether or not racism is good or evil?


Where have good and evil done this? At least in Western thought, it seems to me we’ve moved in one direction. Or, since we’re chatting about racism, when did racism go from good to evil to good? Or, evil to good to evil? Doubtless you can come up with some examples, but it is hardly the sort of thing that changes with regularity. I hope you change your tennis shoes more often than this sort of transition takes place, Fade, otherwise they’d be pretty rancid by now.

Or better yet, why can't I say that anti-racism is evil?

No reason at all. However, I guess you’d have to convince others of your beliefs underlying the claim before they’d believe it.

Also, what is 'racism' anyway?

Why not start with “What is ‘evil,’ anyway?” That seems like a far more interesting discussion than this one.

It didn't occur to anyone that there was such a thing until the 20th century

When did it occur to people that there was something wrong with cannibalism? If we could prove that cannibalism was practiced by humans for thousands of years, in many cultures around the world, well, shoot, maybe we should decide that a prohibition against cannibalism is some sort of social construct, and that Grandma should be turned into cutlets instead of being buried in a casket. Lots of good meat going to waste and funerals aren’t cheap.

Kind of a weird 'counterpoint' to this thread going on over at DA:

http://www.discussanything.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59639

Oddly, Malcolm Wright seems to be struggling with some of Fade's definitional questions.

When did it occur to people that there was something wrong with cannibalism?

It hasn't occured to everyone.

If we could prove that cannibalism was practiced by humans for thousands of years, in many cultures around the world, well, shoot, maybe we should decide that a prohibition against cannibalism is some sort of social construct, and that Grandma should be turned into cutlets instead of being buried in a casket. Lots of good meat going to waste and funerals aren’t cheap.

Opposition to cannibalism is inherently racist. It has been used to promote different cultures as being savage and evil by intolerant European colonizers, like Christopher Columbus. It is said that he even made up the accounts of cannibalism itself to justify the oppression of Native peoples. Perhaps cannibalism would be more popular today if cultural relativism was embraced in the past as it is now. We could be eating our enemies and absorbing their power.

"There have also been reports of tribes in Papua, New Guinea, known to have practiced endo- and exo-cannibalism up until the 1960s for ritualistic purposes. Some of the tribes partook of cannibalism for purposes other than ritual reasons, such as for the taste. However, a majority of the tribes were known to mostly consume their dead relatives' tissues and brains in a ceremonial and traditional display of respect. The practice did have deadly repercussions.

It was discovered that many of the tribe's people were suffering from a fatal disease believed by scientists to be related to their cannibalistic activities. According to anthropologist Margaret Mackenzie, a scientific team led by Carleton Gajdusek and Baruch Blumberg discovered that women were passing on a disease to their children, believed to be the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease in the late 1970s...

It is not disease alone, which has caused a reduction in many forms of ritualistic and spiritual cannibalism. The spread of Christianity by missionary agencies has also led to a significant decrease in the practice. A National Geographic article, Island of the Pacific: For a Man-size Appetite, stated that by the close of the 19th century, Christian influences ended cannibalistic practices on the island of Fiji. In fact, the spread of Christianity is believed to have significantly diminished cannibalism worldwide."

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/cannibalism/2.html?sect=19 (gotta love crime library)

Oh those evil, intolerant missionaries.

>>>It would depend upon your personal moral code, as defined by your personal ethical system. Your sense of good or evil arises from that. Ditto your view of moral and immoral.

So let me get this straight. Are you saying here that 'good' and 'evil' are merely interpretations one makes on the basis of a personal moral code that one constructs?

>>>Where have good and evil done this?

On numerous occasions, actually, but we can start with several examples. In the High Middle Ages, warfare and the values associated with it were glorified in many parts of the West. Warfare was something positive, something one should actually aspire to engage in! Warfare is considered evil and reprobate today, a 'crime against humanity' (whatever that is supposed to mean). Or better yet, take what we consider nowadays to be cruel and unusual punishment. Compare that to the spectacle of the Middle Ages. And of course, there is always race. Colonialism was once seen as something uplifting and noble in that inferior and uncivilised races were being improved. Now we take just the opposite view and consider colonialism to be something evil. The North Pole has literally become the South Pole.

>>>At least in Western thought, it seems to me we’ve moved in one direction.

There has been a reversal of values. At one point in time, human life was not thought to possess intrinsic value just as all races were not thought to be equal. Anyone who suggested otherwise would have been seen as a charlatan, a madman. Now we live in the exact opposite of such circumstances.

>>>Or, since we’re chatting about racism, when did racism go from good to evil to good? Or, evil to good to evil?

Racism was considered to be a positive thing in the South, for both races, since mixing them was once thought to lead to degradation, as Southerners could clearly see was the case in Latin America. Those who proposed racial amalgamation were once seen as lunatics, evil people out to subvert and destroy civilisation, which is precisely why such people were often viciously attacked when they came here from the North.

>>>you can come up with some examples, but it is hardly the sort of thing that changes with regularity.

I can't say I agree with this. Much of what goes on today in America would have been unthinkable just three generations ago. Take homosexual marriage for example. It is something that is actually contemplated today, something already legal in many parts of the West. Once again, just several generations ago this would have been considered thoroughly evil, a blasphemy.

>>>I hope you change your tennis shoes more often than this sort of transition takes place, Fade, otherwise they’d be pretty rancid by now.

What is considered to be 'moral' and 'immoral' is highly disputed today. Another example of this is abortion. At one point in time, in the Classical World, infantcide was quite widespread. A Roman father could kill any of his children at any time for any reason. This changed during the Middle Ages. It has changed once again during since the beginning of postmodernity.

>>>No reason at all. However, I guess you’d have to convince others of your beliefs underlying the claim before they’d believe it.

I can construct my own ethical paradigm and stigmatize things that I consider socially reprehensible on the basis of it. Also, I have recently become aware that this has always been the case. The populace comes to be 'convinced' of the 'truth' of such new values by habitualization, by being encouraged to regurgitate these values socially, usually through taboos. The new values are then sanctified (through rituals) in order to privilege them above other interpretations which are marginalized in turn.

>>>Why not start with “What is ‘evil,’ anyway?”

Evil is a word that some people use against others to privilege their own point of view. That's about it though.

>>>That seems like a far more interesting discussion than this one.

There is no ahistorical good or evil. There are only conflicting interpretations. Some of these interpretations manage to force themselves upon the public and institutionalize themselves through habitualization and rituals. The public is simply bamboozled and mystified by these new idols. Think of how a primitive shaman brings the idol before his tribe and incants certain phrases in order to legitimize the social system.

"they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

"they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

"they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

^^ this is precisely the basis ofthe anti-racism of many (if not most) people. It goes no deeper than a superstitious fascination with the repetition of a cliché that is considered socially acceptable by elites.

>>>When did it occur to people that there was something wrong with cannibalism?

There is nothing inherently wrong with cannibalism. It is still widely practiced in some parts of the world.

>>>If we could prove that cannibalism was practiced by humans for thousands of years, in many cultures around the world, well, shoot, maybe we should decide that a prohibition against cannibalism is some sort of social construct, and that Grandma should be turned into cutlets instead of being buried in a casket. Lots of good meat going to waste and funerals aren’t cheap.

The prohibition against cannibalism is a social construct. The same can be said of racism, sexism, heterocentrism, xenophobia, colorism, lookism, eurocentrism and so forth. Then again, cannibalism does not have anything logically to do with what we are discussing here.

Most people today look back on the past as something they have 'progressed' beyond. They associate Medieval Europe with 'superstition' and 'ignorance'. After all, everyone knows that we are 'enlightened'. It seems crazy to us that people once believed that things like demons were an ever present part of their world, something one had to be vigilant against lest one fall into corruption. We are actually their spitting image. The only difference is that we have ourselves created and reified all sorts of similar fictions that simply go by different names. This will be quite obvious to future generations.

LOL look at all the ignorance and the garbage in this thread:

http://www.discussanything.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59639

Its unfortunate (well, for their sake) that I quit posting at DA, as the debates at that place have really gone downhill ever since I left. Notice how they seem to have missed out on that:

1.) There was no such thing as 'racism' until the twentieth century.
2.) Since no one was aware there even was such a thing, it was not considered to be a social problem, much less a 'mental illness'.
3.) 'Racism' did not come to be seen as socially reprehensible until just several decades ago.
4.) The meaning of 'racism' has changed considerably over the last several decades. Things that are considered 'racist' today were not considered 'racist' in the past.
5.) The discussion there entirely ignores just where the concept came from and how it has become a part of social reality.

What we call 'racism' today actually originated, if I recall, in Communist circles as a propaganda weapon to be used in the service of class warfare. It was constructed with a specific purpose in mind -- to delegitimize the contemporary social order. It was simply meant to be a tool to advance the interests of some people over others. The reification of this idea began in leftist circles before the Second World War, but it was only during the anti-colonial struggles and the so-called 'Civil Rights Movement' (what are 'civil rights'?) that the objectification of this term began in earnest. It has simply been popularized by the media over the last forty or so years. Now almost everyone (with few exceptions) actually believe that such a phenomena as 'racism' is something out there in the world, what's more, that there are people we can call 'racists' and that these are 'bad' people (even though this is already a type of narrative). In other words, a totally fictitious construct has until now been able to pass itself off as something real. This is the best illustration of the point I have emphasized again and again on this new board that language structures thought, that discourses about 'knowledge' are by no means neutral and objective but actually serve specific power interests, that discourses (not brute force) legitimize political power, that language is the key to understanding how the social system is controlled indirectly by elites.

Thus, I have come to conclusion that the first assault upon the legitimacy of anti-racist discursive regimes must take place at the level of language (which has hitherto been neglected by racialists, to their misfortune). If there is to be any social change, these idols (which bamboozle most people) must be smashed and destroyed once and for all. Once the foundation is gone, the superstructure will collapse. These ideas must be thoroughly deconstructed and reversed. I intend to show how they were created by specific groups to advance highly specific political interests only a particular moment in time, how these concepts are used to legitimize the rule of some populations over others, how the lie was constructed that they out there as part of some neutral and objective world.

Here is an excerpt that might be of interest:

Derrida and Deconstruction

This structuralist account of how stable meanings emerge from organised signs was challenged, most famously, by Jacques Derrida (b.1930). He pursued the insights of Saussure to their destructive conclusions. If signs are 'arbitrary', then their meanings cannot possibly be fixed, and will always be inherently unstable. Derrida is a subversive anti-philosopher whose 'deconstructive' readings of other philosophies reveal semantic instabilities. Derrida doesn't engage in arguments with philosophers, but re-reads their texts to reveal that their inconsistent language can never have one set of meanings.

Deconstruction shows that any collection of linguistic signs can always produce different sorts of meanings, many of which may be wholly unintentional. All writers, even the most careful and 'objective', are unconscious prisoners of the sign systems that constitute their thoughts, and will inevitably leave traces of this in their work. Creative re-readings of any text will reveal how some ideas signified by any binary system are 'privileged' over others. If it is correct to say that meaning is generated by difference, then some differences will be given priority over others, whose meanings are 'deferred'. Meanings are inherently unstable, and so will inevitably 'slip' when exchanged. There can be no 'presence' of stable meaning when communication takes place between writer and reader, speaker and listener. So Derrida subverts any claims a philosopher might make about permanent truths somehow lying outside or beyond language.

Derrida's conclusion is that language is always 'metaphorical' in the uniquely Nietzschean sense. This has several serious implications. One is that philosophers cannot go 'beyond' language to reach some kind of objective 'truth' that lies beyond their own immediate history and culture. A text can never have one single meaning. Language can never penetrate the inner meaning or pin down the 'essences' of concepts like 'truth' or 'knowledge'. The belief that it can do this is usually known as essentialism. Even more radically, Derrida's conclusion means that the fundamental belief in 'identity' -- that A can and always will mean A -- is no longer guaranteed. Like Nietzsche, Derrida is a great advocate of transition and transformation, and critical of the belief that language can somehow prevent change and fix ideas, a belief he calls 'logocentricity'. The conviction that language can generate stable and 'total' certainties is dangerous as well as misguided. Language can only be made to do this by repressing alternative readings or by excluding whatever is considered to be 'other'. In practice, this has usually meant the establishment of hegemonies that marginalise all those whose values and beliefs don't conform to some limited and contingent world view.

Dave Robinson, Nietzsche and Postmodernism, pp.37-39