Justice for Zimmerman

Elurin_sl said:

And I'd argue that a lot of the racism towards blacks is self-inflicted. Whether that's by "hood-mentality" or asshats like Jackson and Sharpton. Or just the fact that blacks seem to point out racism way more than any other ethnic group in America. My wife was watching Big Brother last night and some black guy saw a black woman crying and said, "When I see her, that could be my mother or my sister." Why can't it just be any woman crying? What is it about blacks that cause them to isolate themselves from humans moreso than other ethnicities?

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Triangular_sl said:

go live with black people tanoomba. seriously.

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khalid_sl said:

Do you disagree with anything that he said? All he was saying is "This is why people got upset and wanted to see someone punished", he isn't saying he believes the Zimmerman case was an example of black disenfranchisement.

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BoldW_sl said:

I think, at least relative to my life, most Gen Xers onwards don't have much problems with other races. I don't think racism is gone, but is it as big of a problem as it used to be? I'd argue no. The actions of race-baiters (I love that this term is used by the Mainstream Media now) who take an issue that isn't racial and turn it racial only increases racial tensions. For people and groups who make a living off racial tensions, I can become a bit of a skeptic when I see things like this occur.

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Tanoomba_sl said:

Yes, the media caused it by tapping into an already existing unease in the population.

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BoldW_sl said:

I would argue that they caused it.

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fanaskin_sl said:

You want a dystopian police state where the policeman are judge jury and executioner all rolled into one? are you high? you're high aren't you.

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fanaskin_sl said:

You want a dystopian police state where the policeman are judge jury and executioner all rolled into one? are you high? you're high aren't you.

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Tuco_sl said:

Not sure if you (or others in this thread) are aware but there was a poll conducted on this forum a couple years ago. The results iirc were that 40% of this forum is INTJ and 50% of the forum were one character away from INTJ (ex, INFJ, ENTJ etc). The people who were far from INTJ weren't necessarily outcasts on the forum but definitely didn't fit in as much.

I never gave the meyers-briggs shit much credence until I saw that poll and it's a good reason why this community is so great, we're all INTJ master-race.

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hodj_sl said:

On Briggs Meyers: Its a shitty, self selecting test. You can literally make it tell you whatever you want to hear just read the questions and think about the implications of each one. I get INTJ every time, and its because every time I pick the answers that you can tell will lead to it. Its completely pointless, in my view.

On the whole "institutionalized racism" and going off what BoldW said:

I was born in 1980, adopted and raised by a family of Appalachian born white southern Baptists who grew up and came of age in the Civil Rights era. We were always taught to respect people of all races, and that color of skin was irrelevant. My father had a couple of stories, one that always stuck with me. He worked in his late teens and early 20s, before heading off to serve in Thailand in the Air Force during Vietnam, for Armco Steel in Ashland Kentucky (they've been bought out now). He worked with an african american shoveling coal into a blazing hot furnace used to melt steel all day long, when he wasn't pouring 1600 degree molten steel into molds. Him and this african american fellow, now this is like...64/65/66/67 era so just post Civil Rights, prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr (1968). They shared a water bucket down there in that furnace. They shared a water cup. Every day.

One day this fella asked my father "You don't mind drinking after me?" and my father said "Hell man, I'm hot too!"

That's how I was raised. Color of skin doesn't matter, we're all in this fucking thing together.

Racism may exist in this country, especially in older generations, but the majority of institutionalized racism died with the Civil Rights era, and the majority of individual racism did too. People running to race as an excuse for everything bad that happens usually have an AGENDA. They want to MAKE MONEY. Nothing they say is of value, because they intentionally WATER DOWN the seriousness of REAL RACISM by throwing accusations out without any clue as to the background, history, facts, or mindset of others. If anything, the biggest racists in our society today, are the ones who believe that every situation INHERENTLY involves racism just simply because they say so.

As a physical anthropology major, someone who hopes to specialize in...genetic and forensic testing and research arenas, I already have had a full education in the flaws of a biological concept of race. It doesn't exist. Race. Does not. Exist. From a genetic perspective. Its purely. Purely. Socially constructed. Look at Brazil, where your lineage determines your race, so a white can be a "negro" and a black can be a "white" person for a really good example of the social aspects of racial concepts. But race, as a physiological construct, does not exist. The differences in genetics between individuals within a homogenous racial population are more diverse than between two heterogenous racial groups. Homo sapiens have engaged in far too much gene flow over the past 200,000 years for clear, concise racial categories to develop.

Very very little real difference exists between human beings outside of phenotypic displays, which are not the standard metric anymore. Phrenology is as dead a field as astrology. Everyone can still interbreed, no major organ, developmental, or physiological/genetic differences in terms of allele and mutation frequency have developed. The whole idea that human beings are different "races" and can be divided into categories based on these races which are clear, concise, and applicable in most, if not all human societies, is false.

Here is the American Association for Physical Anthropology's statement on race

http://www.physanth.org/association/...pects-of-race/

Spoiler

PREAMBLE
As scientists who study human evolution and variation, we believe that we have an obligation to share with other scientists and the general public our current understanding of the structure of human variation from a biological perspective. Popular conceptualizations of race are derived from 19th and early 20th century scientific formulations. These old racial categories were based on externally visible traits, primarily skin color, features of the face, and the shape and size of the head and body, and the underlying skeleton. They were often imbued with nonbiological attributes, based on social constructions of race. These categories of race are rooted in the scientific traditions of the 19th century, and in even earlier philosophical traditions which presumed that immutable visible traits can predict the measure of all other traits in an individual or a population. Such notions have often been used to support racist doctrines. Yet old racial concepts persist as social conventions that foster institutional discrimination. The expression of prejudice may or may not undermine material well-being, but it does involve the mistreatment of people and thus it often is psychologically distressing and socially damaging. Scientists should try to keep the results of their research from being used in a biased way that would serve discriminatory ends.

POSITION
We offer the following points as revisions of the 1964 UNESCO statement on race:

1. All humans living today belong to a single species, Homo sapiens, and share a common descent. Although there are differences of opinion regarding how and where different human groups diverged or fused to form new ones from a common ancestral group, all living populations in each of the earth's geographic areas have evolved from that ancestral group over the same amount of time. Much of the biological variation among populations involves modest degrees of variation in the frequency of shared traits. Human populations have at times been isolated, but have never genetically diverged enough to produce any biological barriers to mating between members of different populations.

2. Biological differences between human beings reflect both hereditary factors and the influence of natural and social environments. In most cases, these differences are due to the interaction of both. The degree to which environment or heredity affects any particular trait varies greatly.

3. There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.

4. There are obvious physical differences between populations living in different geographic areas of the world. Some of these differences are strongly inherited and others, such as body size and shape, are strongly influenced by nutrition, way of life, and other aspects of the environment. Genetic differences between populations commonly consist of differences in the frequencies of all inherited traits, including those that are environmentally malleable.

5. For centuries, scholars have sought to comprehend patterns in nature by classifying living things. The only living species in the human family, Homo sapiens, has become a highly diversified global array of populations. The geographic pattern of genetic variation within this array is complex, and presents no major discontinuity. Humanity cannot be classified into discrete geographic categories with absolute boundaries. Furthermore, the complexities of human history make it difficult to determine the position of certain groups in classifications. Multiplying subcategories cannot correct the inadequacies of these classifications.

Generally, the traits used to characterize a population are either independently inherited or show only varying degrees of association with one another within each population. Therefore, the combination of these traits in an individual very commonly deviates from the average combination in the population. This fact renders untenable the idea of discrete races made up chiefly of typical representatives.

6. In humankind as well as in other animals, the genetic composition of each population is subject over time to the modifying influence of diverse factors. These include natural selection, promoting adaptation of the population to the environment; mutations, involving modifications in genetic material; admixture, leading to genetic exchange between local populations, and randomly changing frequencies of genetic characteristics from one generation to another. The human features which have universal biological value for the survival of the species are not known to occur more frequently in one population than in any other. Therefore it is meaningless from the biological point of view to attribute a general inferiority or superiority to this or to that race.

7. The human species has a past rich in migration, in territorial expansions, and in contractions. As a consequence, we are adapted to many of the earth's environments in general, but to none in particular. For many millennia, human progress in any field has been based on culture and not on genetic improvement.

Mating between members of different human groups tends to diminish differences between groups, and has played a very important role in human history. Wherever different human populations have come in contact, such matings have taken place. Obstacles to such interaction have been social and cultural, not biological. The global process of urbanization, coupled with intercontinental migrations, has the potential to reduce the differences among all human populations.

8. Partly as a result of gene flow, the hereditary characteristics of human populations are in a state of perpetual flux. Distinctive local populations are continually coming into and passing out of existence. Such populations do not correspond to breeds of domestic animals, which have been produced by artificial selection over many generations for specific human purposes.

9. The biological consequences of mating depend only on the individual genetic makeup of the couple, and not on their racial classifications. Therefore, no biological justification exists for restricting intermarriage between persons of different racial classifications.

10. There is no necessary concordance between biological characteristics and culturally defined groups. On every continent, there are diverse populations that differ in language, economy, and culture. There is no national, religious, linguistic or cultural group or economic class that constitutes a race. However, human beings who speak the same language and share the same culture frequently select each other as mates, with the result that there is often some degree of correspondence between the distribution of physical traits on the one hand and that of linguistic and cultural traits on the other. But there is no causal linkage between these physical and behavioral traits, and therefore it is not justifiable to attribute cultural characteristics to genetic inheritance.

11. Physical, cultural and social environments influence the behavioral differences among individuals in society. Although heredity influences the behavioral variability of individuals within a given population, it does not affect the ability of any such population to function in a given social setting. The genetic capacity for intellectual development is one of the biological traits of our species essential for its survival. This genetic capacity is known to differ among individuals. The peoples of the world today appear to possess equal biological potential for assimilating any human culture. Racist political doctrines find no foundation in scientific knowledge concerning modern or past human populations.

This is an accurate reflection of my true views on race. This statement is what I believe to be true, generally speaking, due to my educational background, and my own family history. So everytime some dipshit tries to call me a racist, all I can do is laugh. I've held the skulls of our ancestors, and the skulls of various "races" in my hands, and you cannot tell the difference between a black person, a white person, an asian person or a latino or a native american merely by the shape, robustness or lack thereof, or prognathism of the face/skull or bones with any degree of certainty. People have tried for literally 150 years, and every time someone claims they've done it, someone else comes along and shows how they failed to follow proper procedures, were using too small, or too select, or too inconsistent a sample size, for instance. Its long winded. and this post is already long winded enough, so I"ll save you the details but even classifications like "Negroid" "Caucasoid" "Semite" etc have been abandoned by the very people whose careers revolve around this issue because they simply aren't descriptive of actual heritage backgrounds. And the truth is that as the world becomes more united, more globalized, the differences, what few may exist, between categories we define as different races will disappear due to gene flow homogenizing the gene pool, an inevitable consequence of the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium principles.

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