What is "racist"?

[Kenny Shovel]

*Puts sausage and brown sauce sandwich back on plate*

 

[Motokid]

Nope...not Ward Churchill

Here's the story...http://carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=2869

 

[abecedarian]

I bet that professor was Ward Churchill, who's an incendiary butthole, hate-inciting fraudulent poo-licker.

Gee Novella, would you quit beating around the bush about how you feel about this fella?

 

[MonkeyCatcher]

Is an all-girls school sexist?

I found the defintion for sexist on dictionary.com: "Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women." (I don't particularly agree with the second part of the definition, but it was there so I posted it)

Based on this, I believe that an all-girls school is slighty sexist. Not the best example of sexism, but sexist all the same, IMO.

 

[novella]

All-girls schools may exist but in the US they are not allowed to exclude boys, so if a boy wants to go there, they have to let him in.

They just ruled in Hawaii that a school for 'natives only' has to allow non-natives in, which is funny because their curriculum is all about how non-natives damage the native culture and how to get it back.

 

[RitalinKid]

I bet that professor was Ward Churchill, who's an incendiary butthole, hate-inciting fraudulent poo-licker.

I love you, Novella. You remind me of my girlfriend. I actually agree with some of Ward Churchill's ideas, but I also agree with you.

Riding the wave off-subject, dividing kids up by sex in classrooms can actually improve scores. Plus, young males learn differently from young females, so it makes no sense to teach them the same way. I think they should go to the same schools, have the same organizations at school (for interaction between the sexes), but have divided classrooms.

Wiping out on the off-subject wave, and getting back on-topic, Jesse Jackson accused NASCAR of racism because there's not a black person involved. Of course, he dropped the subject after NASCAR made a $250,000 (I could be wrong on that amount, but it was six figures) contribution to the Rainbow Coalition (his organization) and let them teach race sensitivity classes to the crews. Nah! That's not extortion based on racism. But don't worry; black people know how it is. Jesse Jackson is not popular with the black people I know and work with; neither is crying racism.

At Novella's suggesting, I read Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Good book; there's a thread here about it. The book is all about what happens behind the closed doors in your head; things that you can't access and have limited control over. He points to research that shows even black people have a negative perception of black people. Gladwell's mother is black, and he even has negative perceptions. I don't want to go into all the details, but I suggest the book.

I said all that to say that what may sometimes appear to be racism may not be racism, which I would define as intentionally treating a person or people a certain way due to their physical attributes or heritage. You've all seen it; towns tend to racially segregate themselves naturally due to social norms; think Chinatown, Little India, etc. Are these people thinking, "I don't want to live next to people that don't look like me"? A significant portion of the time, no; people just settle where they're comfortable. However, that being said, I work with a black guy that told me he didn't like to live in the "black community" because of crime and real estate value that won't appreciate.

That leads me to Novella's post about the all-white towns. I know there are cities here in Mississippi that keep their taxes high to keep poor people out; Oxford, home of the first segregated university, Ole Miss, does it. What I think is happening is that people associate poverty and crime with black people (even black people do), but poverty is the real issue. It just gets a racial label slapped on it due to so many black people being poor after slavery and the inevitably (although undeserved) low social position of black people after slavery.

What really pisses me off about the whole situation is just what you guys pointed out: an action is racist if it goes against the minority, but it's acceptable if it goes for the minority. Take for instance the previous mention of the percentages of black baseball and basketball players. One gets labeled racist while the other is acceptable. We accept predominately black colleges, but demand segregation of the "white" colleges. Here in Mississippi, we have way too many universities already, and several are "black" colleges. I think this just divides us people further! I don't see any social or cultural value to allowing the races to further separate culturally.

Even though I don't like preferential treatment either way, I do see the value of affirmative action programs. Because of what goes on behind closed doors in our minds, we have to make incentives for people to employ people that don't look, talk, and think like them because that's the general trend; people want to surround themselves with people like themselves, and what we see (skin color, hair) and hear (dialect, vocabulary) plays a major part in all that. Basically, we have to be parents to ourselves and make ourselves play together to understand each other.

 

[Kenny Shovel]

...don't worry; black people know how it is. Jesse Jackson is not popular with the black people I know and work with...

Oh yes, Jesse Jackson, let me tell you a story about the good Reverend. About fifteen years or so ago there were a couple of Live Aid style ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ concerts at Wembley Stadium in London; one before he was released from prison and one after as a celebration.
Towards the end of the second concert Mandela himself came on stage and gave a speech to a spellbound audience. As the great man spoke images of him and of the crowd were displayed on the giant screens at either side of the stage. At one point we got a shot of the Reverend Jackson in the VIP section at Wembley which is known as the ‘Royal Box’. Was Jesse paying close attention to what Mandela was saying, giving him the respect due such an important black leader? Nope, he was far to busy having a conversation with Patti LaBelle who was standing next to him; I say conversation, but of course I mean he was talking whilst staring at her tits intently. The director allowed the camera to linger on him doing this for a while until, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of himself on the screen. At which point he spun round to face the stage and burst into ‘spontaneous’ applause, with teeth fixed into a beautiful false smile.
I pretty much formed my opinion of Mr Jackson at that point.

 

[leckert]

Jackson is an media hound, and a fraud. How many white, or Indian, or Asian people do you see in his "Rainbow Coalition"? What actual good has he really done? He shows up at places where racism and suffering of African Americans is making the news, but only when it is most likely to get his mug on the news, and only for a token appearance. He's a dick, and a racist.

Rush Limbaugh may be a drug abusing blow hard, but he calls Rev. Jackson's group the "Monochrome Coalition", which is more accurate.



Kenny, were you able to finish your sandwich?

 

[Kookamoor]

All-girls schools may exist but in the US they are not allowed to exclude boys, so if a boy wants to go there, they have to let him in.

I don't understand that. There are all-girl schools, all-boy schools and co-ed schools in most areas. It's not discriminatory to offer kids the option to go to a school of one sex. Unlike race, sexes ARE different, and it has been proven that putting children into single-sex environments during their education has many benefits (girls moreso than boys). If a boy were let into an all-girl school, then it would be detrimental to the girls there who are in that environment because it is the way they want to learn (or the way their parents want them to learn ).

I know this isn't a discussion about sexism so much, but I just wanted to point out that single-sex schools are not the same as racial segregation.

 

[MonkeyCatcher]

I know this isn't a discussion about sexism so much, but I just wanted to point out that single-sex schools are not the same as racial segregation.

I agree that it is nowhere near the same as racial segregation, but is it sexist?

 

[Kookamoor]

I agree that it is nowhere near the same as racial segregation, but is it sexist?

I would say it is sexist only in the way that competitive sports, separated into male and female categories, is sexist. Looking at schools on an individual basis, a girl's school is discriminatory to boys, just as a boys soccer team is discriminatory to girls. But in almost all cases there are schools and soccer teams available to both sexes, meaning that it is not discriminatory at all. To call single-sex education facilities "sexist" implies, in common vernacular, that there is something inherently unfair towards the other sex. Unless one is being ridiculously PC, this simply does not hold true.

Now, if the calibre of teaching and education were lower for boys schools than girls schools (or vice versa), then we can talk about sexism. Although, even then you would probably find that such cases were generally isolated and probably no different than some co-ed schools having lower education standards than others.