[Ford Prefect]

I honestly find it in rather poor taste, and not remotely amusing.

Oh come on, that picture's one of my favorites! How is the term "special rights" not hilarious in that context?

[Ace]

Originally posted by Goober5000
*throws a firebrand into the mix*

It's widely recognized in medicine that different races have different inherent susceptibilities to certain diseases.  Why should it be such a big deal if different races have different inherent academic or physical strengths?  Look at blacks in basketball or Asians in math for example.

Wow... how the hell can people go around with these sort of ideas still?

First off, "race" is merely a continuum of various biological adapations. Look at people geographically and you'll see just how broad and gradual the changes are over areas. (and this would even be excluding the massive changes and mixing caused by cultural things like wars, empires, etc.)

It is also completely false to mix biological adapations with purely mental constructs. For example in Africa it's more common to have a resistance to malaria due to an increase of sickle-cell anemia in the various populations. It's a recessive trait that can be expressed in heterozygous cases so having full blown anemia is bad, but having some anemia means you're more resistant to malaria.

In SE Asia we see less resistance to alcohol due to boiled water being more commonly used for drinks unlike the massive alcohol use (for clean drinking water and nutritional purposes) seen in the near east. The slow, subtle, removal of non tolerant to alcohol genes in the population through breeding did not occur. We see this definately true with North American populations who seperated from Asia before they developed alcohol/yeast bread. This is a perfect example of the continuum mentioned before.

Just because certain 'traits' can be associated with certain populations doesn't mean that various 'races' are better at basketball, etc. Even if you were going to take the route of a very... very racist stance of "Blacks in America have been selectively bred for sports due to slavery" you'll notice that those selective agents are gone. Even then, all that genes do are make predispositions. If you're working to death you won't express your obesity. So in the end, all of those genes are still around for better or worse. If you keep applying pressure on a small population, and when its released you'll only wind up making gene drift. So no super athletes due to "race."

Now ethnicity, something culture based is a little more solid and valid of an ideal. Looking at the culture in the US versus that of many SE Asian peoples, it's not too hard to see how academics would be taken more seriously and so higher test scores. Of course going into a debate on how China handled scholastics (minus the strange so-called "Cultural Revolution" that wound up later being denounced) versus say Western Europe in the end would wind up becoming quite nasty. However, academic differences between 'races' are related to history, culture, and economic opportunities more than biological traits. (note: "biological traits" as in the idea that there are distinct 'races' with ups and downs, the systematic discrimination based on "race" and the ideas based on it fall under history and culture)

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Goober5000
*throws a firebrand into the mix*

It's widely recognized in medicine that different races have different inherent susceptibilities to certain diseases.  Why should it be such a big deal if different races have different inherent academic or physical strengths?  Look at blacks in basketball or Asians in math for example.

And yet I have yet to hear about a hospital denying or forcing treatment to fulfill a government-imposed racial quota...

Actually, I'm not even sure how this is relevant. Would it really be better if the government were to say, "Japanese people are much smarter, so 70-85% of all higher-paying jobs should go to them...if this quota is not being met, you will be sued for racist business practices"?

Edit: Or better yet, "Black people are much better at heavy labor, so 60% of all labor-related jobs should involve black Americans"

It is just begging to cause racism.

[Nuclear1]

DeepBlue, I've seen of the stuff youve written and I think you just have a personal problem with black people. Get over it.

And from what I've seen of what you've written, I think you just have a personal problem with white people. Get over it.

its been about winning ever since someone decided that they had the right to rape, pillage, colonize, mass murder, enslave, destroy ad nauseum on their way to controlling the world. I didn't make the rules, but I still have to play by them.

That's history. What's done is done, and unless you have some way to go back and change the way that Europeans expanded across the world (also bringing government and many other benefits to some areas around the world, which you seem to have carefully forgotten to mention), then don't bring up past sins (i.e. several hundred years back) that we have little way to make right.

I agree with Flipside: DeepBlue's reaction was hardly racist, just a surprised reaction. I mean, if there's a program for black Americans for higher education, why not offer a program for other minorities? It also just is a little bit of a shock, as "black-only" benefits are a bit of a shock to Americans (this is not intended to start some racist debate, or that "Americans are xenophobic pigs").

Either you understand that the world isn't kumbaya help your brother, or you don't.

Where did any one of us imply this? We all know that races here in America don't get along: hell, I live in Indiana, and that's only a short distance from the KKK rallies in New Palestine or Neo-Nazi marches in Toledo, Ohio. None of us here are racist, though you seem bent on accusing people here that they are.

First of all, let's face it: we all have some subconscious racism in us. After all, it's because we're human. Somebody might be the most open, accepting person on the planet, but even at the core, simply because of being human, they have some underlying racial separation.

Until a few hundred years ago, whites have always lived with whites on one continent (Europe), blacks have had theirs (Africa), Native Americans had the Western Hemisphere, and Asians had their own regions. When cultures and different colors of skin collide, people get nervous, especially when they've been raised and have grown comfortable with people of their own groups.

We're not racist here, so don't assume that we are.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Ace
Wow... how the hell can people go around with these sort of ideas still?

Those ideas were taken as self-evident as recently as the first half of the 20th century.  While a great deal of that was probably attributable to prejudice, there may have been some truth behind it.

Have a look at this article for example:
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/atoms/xtra1/herrnstein-murray-tnr.html
It's rather long, but well-reasoned IMHO.  Here's an interesting quote:

...The studies that have attempted to measure motivation in such situations generally have found that blacks are at least as motivated as whites. But these are not wholly convincing, for why shouldn't the measures of motivation be just as inaccurate as the measures of cognitive ability are alleged to be? Analysis of internal characteristics of the tests once again offers the best leverage in examining this broad hypothesis. Here, we will offer just one example involving the "digit span" subtest, part of the widely used Wechsler intelligence tests. It has two forms: forward digit span, in which the subject tries to repeat a sequence of numbers in the order read to him, and backward digit span, in which the subject tries to repeat the sequence of numbers backward. The test is simple, uses numbers familiar to everyone and calls on no cultural information besides numbers. The digit span is informative regarding test motivation not just because of the low cultural loading of the items but because the backward form is a far better measure of "g," the psychometrician's shorthand for the general intelligence factor that I.Q. tests try to measure. The reason that the backward form is a better measure of g is that reversing the numbers is mentally more demanding than repeating them in the heard order, as you can determine for yourself by a little self-testing.

The two parts of the subtest have identical content. They occur at the same time during the test. Each subject does both. But in most studies the black-white difference is about twice as great on backward digits as on forward digits. The question then arises: How can lack of motivation (or test willingness) explain the difference in performance on the two parts of the same subtest?...

Why do you think we have stereotypes?  They're observed patterns based upon a general impression of the group as a whole.  It doesn't mean that the stereotypes will apply to every individual; it just means that the stereotypes are likely to apply to the average member of the group.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Why do you think we have stereotypes?  They're observed patterns based upon a general impression of the group as a whole.  It doesn't mean that the stereotypes will apply to every individual; it just means that the stereotypes are likely to apply to the average member of the group.

They're not, though.  Thanks to, for example, the mass media.  I'd be that any stereotypical view of a scot from, say, the USA, Canada, Hong Kong, etc, would swiftly prove to be completely nonsensical.  Even if they have a basis in fact, their continual re-use - and reinforcement - renders most stereotypes out of date and thus completely irrelevant to the modern day world.

[Flipside]

If I even began to run of the various stereotypes people in the UK have about other people in the UK, you'd be amazed how so much misconception could exist in such a tiny area, then take a look at how people from one state view people from another state in the US and suddenly becomes apparent that this happens absolutely everywhere, we form little models of 'them' in our heads and pretend we understand 'them' because we have this model. It doesn't require a skin colour or anything really, all it needs is for one person to be different from another, and since we are all, apparently, unique, that's not a hard scenario to find.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Flipside
we form little models of 'them' in our heads and pretend we understand 'them' because we have this model.

For my Imperialism class, we had to read a book called "Orientalism" by Edward Said. The whole notion of "Them" and "us", The Occident and the orient, he claims, were simply used for Europe to define itself.

And I think this works for stereotypes as well. We'll make a stereotype of another group of people so that we can say "They" do things that way, and "we" do things this way. It's all about identifying ourselves as something that others are not, or as not being osmething that others are..............

[StratComm]

I read part of that, for a very similar class actually.  Thought Said was full of crap myself.  He makes some very valid points, but he places far too much blame in what is really just a statement of a human trait.

[Taristin]

Well, yeah. I hated his book too... But I do see that the human trait could be one in the same with Identity verification, like this.

[Ford Prefect]

The other misleading thing about stereotypes is their highly self-perpetuating nature. Simply the knowledge of the existence of a general prejudice often influences people's behavior. There have been studies, for instance, where white students were given a test and told that Asians tend to score better. The result was that the white students actually fulfilled the prediction because that prior "knowledge" caused them to second-guess themselves while taking the test.