a few weeks ago there were some old people on our campus testing the doors to the research greenhouses. i talked with them for a while, and they said they were visiting, but weren't visiting anyone in particular.
when i left, i called campus security.
would i have before 9/11? probably not. although we've had vandelism/bombings on campus at the research buildings.
fact is, if someone is walking from door to door to see what's open and they don't have any business being there, i call security now.
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."
It's from John Philpot Curran, a Dubliner from the late 18th century. The irony here, of couse, is that Curran, like all good British liberals of the late-eighteenth century (and most of the nineteenth) is talking about government run amok. He's talking about a government that knows too much about people. He's talking about governments intruding on individual liberties. He's talking about people having to fear their own government.
In other words, he's talking about traditional conservative values here (and there's a flip in the notion of "liberal" in the mid-nineteenth century. Don't ask me to explain it; it's really complicated. Suffice it to say that what the modern world considers "conservative" was often "liberal" in the c19): small government, less intrusion, individual freedoms.
To use this quote, or even this sentiment, in defense of government surveillance of citizens is both a misinterpretation and misapplication. It is possibly even disingenuous.
The other salient quote in all of this is from Franklin, another good c18 liberal thinker:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You want traditional American values? There you are.
The conclusion I'm driving at with all of this?
Simply this: we need some new parties. Democrats and Republicans are more or less the same thing. Libertarians don't like the neo-conservatives, who are being elected as Republicans. Good Lefties don't like the Dems.
I'm waiting for the right's imminent meltdown, which will happen over just these kinds of issues.
You truly are an idiot. The point of asking about the Mexican food was an intentionally over the top way of pointing out how a bigot such as the woman at issue here, and we are working off the premise that this woman is a bigot because she has already engaging in racial stereotypes by her conduct, would ask that sort of racially charged question to get an answer, any answer. If she wants to play the role of the Inspector Closeau of terrorism while looking at the world through a Code Brown terrorist alert, which her actions seems to indicate, then I have no problem ascribing hypothetical prejudiced behavior on someone who we already know is prejudiced. I'm sorry htat you are not smart enough to have figured out that I was giving a hypothetical line of questioning in line with her type of presumptuous behavior to the subject that she was interested in, whether or not he was a terrorist. Sadly you don't seem to get this, among other things. My point was simply that she wasn't smart enough to apply her racial stereotypes in a way to get more information to see if she could confirm them or not with a simple conversation. And if you haven't figured out that yet that stereotypes are a form of prejudice than you're even more ignorant than I thought.
No YOU are working off the premise she was a bigot.
So sorry if I didn't understand your hypotheticals based of your presumptions. Perhaps your knowledge of applying racist thinking far exceeds mine. Perhaps you have had a lot more practice at it since I don't engage in it.
Again if anything you prove the opposite of your point. You say, see this is how she would act if she were racist, except, well she didn't act that way. She didn't order him off an airplane, assume he had weapons
Again did you check to see how many people taking photographs of powerplants she DIDN'T call in because they were white? She attributed the act, not just the color, to her security concern.
So if I report a suspected robbery and the suspect is black does that mean I am a racist?
The thing that makes this ridiculous is we all likely have had situations where we were questioned for not fitting a stereotype and it didn't mean those people were terrible.
Logic can be inconvenient when we have an agenda, can't it.
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
No YOU are working off the premise she was a bigot.
So sorry if I didn't understand your hypotheticals based of your presumptions.
You should apologise, rather, for intentionally misunderstanding him so that it would be easier for you to apply your favourite "my friend, the true racist / sexist / McCarthyite / fascist / bigot is you" technique.
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
Perhaps your knowledge of applying racist thinking far exceeds mine. Perhaps you have had a lot more practice at it since I don't engage in it.
Da-daa.
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
Again did you check to see how many people taking photographs of powerplants she DIDN'T call in because they were white? She attributed the act, not just the color, to her security concern.
Quite how he's supposed to do this is beyond me.
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
So if I report a suspected robbery and the suspect is black does that mean I am a racist?
This is a very foolish thing to say. No, if you PRESUPPOSE a man is engaged in a robbery because he's black, that makes you a racist (and on the evidence of your last posts in this thread I certainly wouldn't put it past you, if that helps.)
Quote:
Originally posted by trumptman
The thing that makes this ridiculous is we all likely have had situations where we were questioned for not fitting a stereotype and it didn't mean those people were terrible.
Nick
From time to time we run into idiots, do we not? They can be annoying with their presumptions. You can put them straight, if they're amenable, or you can ignore them (or I suppose fight them if you're like that and if they deserve it), and yes, sometimes those people are terrible. I suppose you have to experience prejudice daily to really understand what this is like.
The fact is I would like to think that America is still the kind of country where a man can go and take nice pictures of smoke coming out of a powerstation smokestack without foolish women reporting him to the police. Her behaviour is a different order of police-state creepery altogether to the hypothetical 'questions' you posit above and it's motivated by prejudice, pure and simple.
Maybe you show your own ignorance here. Latino's and Arabic people are both considered caucasian. They both run from dark brown skin and black hair to blond/light brown hair with blue eyes.
Grow a sense of humor. Then show me the black branch of the Saudi family. Cousins to the blonde-haired-blue-eyed branch, no doubt. Arabs are semitic. Most Mexicans aren't. In fact, being the race expert you are, you know that "Chicano" is more of a cultural expression, since it encompasses people of just about every race, and that "Latino" is just an expression of geography. But worry about the sense of humor before you worry about any of that.
The US have been spared what has been quite common for many other people in the last two centuries, and so they aren't used to have major destructions occuring in their big cities due to enemy attacks, as a result they have been hysterical since September 11th 2001; they'll get over it, eventually.
Quote:
Originally posted by ColanderOfDeath
I'm not sure on this. I'm willing to agree in so far as we are comparing the American experience to say that of people in the former Soviet satellites or various African nations or some Middle Eastern or SE Asian countries or what have you where the people have had their countries destroyed in front of their eyes. But I don't particularly buy this theory at least as it applies to Western Europe versus the US and various Western Europeans often are the ones who cite this as a key difference in our collective views of the world.
The impact of two world wars and of organised genocide having taken place on their continent is what, today, sets apart the European side of Western civilisation from the North American side of it. Japan, a non-Western developed democracy, which also had it quite good for the last fifty or so years, is the only one to have tasted nuclear attack on two of its cities, which does leave a few marks as well.
And then there are all those other countries which have known years and years of violent conflicts, some of lower intensities, some of as high as extreme devastation and genocide.
The case of the USA, with no international conflict on its continental territory since 1812, and no war on its soil since 1865, is an exceptional one.
Quote:
Certainly there have been various terrorist problems in Europe, Basque groups, IRA, Red Brigades, 17 September, yada yada yada. But likewise the US has had the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, Khobar Towers etc. I'm skeptical that there is much more than a marginal difference in terrorist casualties.
The US has been less sensitive to organised terrorism than others, so the 1993 attack against the WTC, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the likes, left Americans mostly unimpressed. It took an attack reminescent of popular disaster films to really shake the US as a society.
Quote:
Now as far as how we interpret those terrorist acts, well therein may lie the rub. Certainly I think there is a difference in how Americans and Western Europeans respond to such things.
Perhaps, due to different local experiences of several generations.
Quote:
I think an important element that is not emphasized enough as far as how we responded to 9/11 is the effect of media. Personally I think that if their had not been TV footage of the towers being hit by planes and then later collapsing and the immediacy of the event then the terror would not be nearly as powerful. It is difficult and somewhat silly to quantify such things but I would say that without TV footage the toll on the national psyche would not even have been half as much.
TV has brought the event instantly to people's homes everywhere in the World, but the long term impact on the US of widebodied airliners crashed on internationally-known landmarks of the US most cosmopolite metropolis and its major business and cultural centre, and on the US' political capital, goes beyond the immediacy brought by TV.
Quote:
I suppose that the Southern experience in the Civil War could lend support to your argument. 138 years later and they are still bitter. So the historical role of that conflict in terms of instituting cultural dogma is undeniable. On the other hand, the Southerners who do still dwell on that war certainly don't loathe war at all as a result of that brutal time of war, but rather they are just bitter cause they lost.
The Civil War left profound marks on the US, including the North (though to a lesser degree), as the last time war was waged in the continental United States. On September 11th 2001, for the first time since the cannons fell silent in 1865, Americans felt a war had been brought to their homeland, this time by a foreign enemy.
While most speakers of Arabic vernaculars (and other Semitic languages too) can be described as ?Mediterranean-looking?, similar to most speakers of Italian (an Indo-European Romance language) or Turkish (a Turco-Mongol Altaic language), for more than a thousand years they have been of varied appearance going from the blondest hair to the blackest skin, as such can be expected between Morocco, Oman, Yemen, Sudan, and Lebanon..
Grow a sense of humor. Then show me the black branch of the Saudi family. Cousins to the blonde-haired-blue-eyed branch, no doubt. Arabs are semitic. Most Mexicans aren't. In fact, being the race expert you are, you know that "Chicano" is more of a cultural expression, since it encompasses people of just about every race, and that "Latino" is just an expression of geography. But worry about the sense of humor before you worry about any of that.
Hey I gladly display humor, however I am not the one who declares people racist at the drop of a hate as so many here are prone to do.
That sort of takes the humor out of the situation.
along those lines, a lot of Iranians would be considered "white".
blond hair, blue eyes and all.
just a question as to the original post in this thread. do we know for a fact that the woman told the cops it was "a brown skinned fella" taking pictures of the power plant?
for that to be the case, the cops would have had to tell your friend this, which would surprise me if they did.
There are plenty of black Saudis. Their ancestors were taken from East Africa as slaves. Half the Saudi national football team is black.
I'm only putting this in so that trumptman can't answer your post by accusing you of racism for not knowing the ethnic history of Saudi Arabia.
If people don't like their faulty reasoning turned against them, then perhaps they shouldn't display it.
The contention was that this woman made an ignorant assumption based off his skin color. This to some here = racism.
They then go around making statement that shows... ignorant assumptions of groups based off their skin color and that = .... uh... hey my heart is in the right place and you are just a humorless guy who doesn't understand.
The same actions should draw the same results if you want credibility.
Originally posted by trumptman Regardless of what you wish to claim, stereotyping is a function of the brain.
If you are trying to say that prejudging people based on their skin color is innate, then you are ignoring the fact that everyone knows it is not.
I had to LEARN that black people are considered violent by US whites, I had to LEARN than Latinos are considered thieves and stupid by US whites, and I had to LEARN that even though it is dramatically more likely for a US terror attack to be perpetrated by a WHITE person, all Arabs are still considered potential terrorists by US Whites.
The contention was that this woman made an ignorant assumption based off his skin color. This to some here = racism.
They then go around making statement that shows... ignorant assumptions of groups based off their skin color and that = .... uh... hey my heart is in the right place and you are just a humorless guy who doesn't understand.
The first assumption was that a man who is not white taking a photograph of a powerstation is likely to be a potential terrorist. This is an assumption born of prejudice and it is, if you like, racist.
Towel's assumption was that there are no Saudis of African descent. This is an assumption born of ignorance of a little-known (outside the Middle East) piece of Arab history. This is not a prejudice, merely ignorance.
Furthermore, Towel did not contact the History Police.
Towel's assumption was that there are no Saudis of African descent. This is an assumption born of ignorance of a little-known (outside the Middle East) piece of Arab history. This is not a prejudice, merely ignorance.
I apologize for my humorless attempt to poke fun at the assumption that, to your average white American, all "brown" people look the same. I should have known that, just like all asian people really do look the same, all brown people do as well. And, of course, as any asian could tell you, all white people look the same, too. I confess to having no Saudi acquaintances who could have educated me to the fact that they are, in fact, indistinguishable from Mexicans. I will have to remember, next time I talk to to all my "I-thought-they-were-Mexican" friends, to ask if they are, in fact, Saudi princes. Thank you, trumpetman and Hassan, for serving as my Saudis-in-abstentia. I appreciate, as always, the education. ;P
I stick by my guns about the House of Saud, though. "Saudis" are more than half non-indigenous, and so, I would imagine, are quite the melting pot. I have yet to see a black or blonde Saudi prince on TV. Though it would certainly be interesting if royalty could claim descent from slaves. A meaningless point, since terrorists aren't all royalty, but let me salvage a bit of my dignity here.
I think I just made an interesting point. I've been educated and now work in a pretty international environment, and I've never made a Saudi's acquaintance. Ditto Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, "Gulf Arab". Yet I've gotten to know more than a handful of Iranians, Pakistanis, and, of course, Israelis. Why are there so few immigrants from the other countries in the region? Iraqis are probably the largest Arab Muslim community in the US, and there certainly aren't many of them outside Michigan.
My sharp-as-a-brick wit aside, I know, and thank you. I do have a question for you, though. I know most Saudis aren't (indigenous) Saudi. I know that indigenous Saudis are famous for their, erm, restricted selection of mates. Almost every genetic study of human disease ever published relies heavily on Saudi families. So how much interbreeding actually goes on between indigenous, Arab, semetic Saudis and everyone else? Correct me (please) if I'm wrong, but aren't indigenous Saudis (exemplefied by the House of Saud) still pretty homogenous?
My sharp-as-a-brick wit aside, I know, and thank you. I do have a question for you, though. I know most Saudis aren't (indigenous) Saudi. I know that indigenous Saudis are famous for their, erm, restricted selection of mates. Almost every genetic study of human disease ever published relies heavily on Saudi families. So how much interbreeding actually goes on between indigenous, Arab, semetic Saudis and everyone else? Correct me (please) if I'm wrong, but aren't indigenous Saudis (exemplefied by the House of Saud) still pretty homogenous?
Bloody hell. I don't know. If anyone here does, it's Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the Party!
Comments
when i left, i called campus security.
would i have before 9/11? probably not. although we've had vandelism/bombings on campus at the research buildings.
fact is, if someone is walking from door to door to see what's open and they don't have any business being there, i call security now.
make of that what you will.
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."
It's from John Philpot Curran, a Dubliner from the late 18th century. The irony here, of couse, is that Curran, like all good British liberals of the late-eighteenth century (and most of the nineteenth) is talking about government run amok. He's talking about a government that knows too much about people. He's talking about governments intruding on individual liberties. He's talking about people having to fear their own government.
In other words, he's talking about traditional conservative values here (and there's a flip in the notion of "liberal" in the mid-nineteenth century. Don't ask me to explain it; it's really complicated. Suffice it to say that what the modern world considers "conservative" was often "liberal" in the c19): small government, less intrusion, individual freedoms.
To use this quote, or even this sentiment, in defense of government surveillance of citizens is both a misinterpretation and misapplication. It is possibly even disingenuous.
The other salient quote in all of this is from Franklin, another good c18 liberal thinker:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You want traditional American values? There you are.
The conclusion I'm driving at with all of this?
Simply this: we need some new parties. Democrats and Republicans are more or less the same thing. Libertarians don't like the neo-conservatives, who are being elected as Republicans. Good Lefties don't like the Dems.
I'm waiting for the right's imminent meltdown, which will happen over just these kinds of issues.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by ColanderOfDeath
You truly are an idiot. The point of asking about the Mexican food was an intentionally over the top way of pointing out how a bigot such as the woman at issue here, and we are working off the premise that this woman is a bigot because she has already engaging in racial stereotypes by her conduct, would ask that sort of racially charged question to get an answer, any answer. If she wants to play the role of the Inspector Closeau of terrorism while looking at the world through a Code Brown terrorist alert, which her actions seems to indicate, then I have no problem ascribing hypothetical prejudiced behavior on someone who we already know is prejudiced. I'm sorry htat you are not smart enough to have figured out that I was giving a hypothetical line of questioning in line with her type of presumptuous behavior to the subject that she was interested in, whether or not he was a terrorist. Sadly you don't seem to get this, among other things. My point was simply that she wasn't smart enough to apply her racial stereotypes in a way to get more information to see if she could confirm them or not with a simple conversation. And if you haven't figured out that yet that stereotypes are a form of prejudice than you're even more ignorant than I thought.
No YOU are working off the premise she was a bigot.
So sorry if I didn't understand your hypotheticals based of your presumptions. Perhaps your knowledge of applying racist thinking far exceeds mine. Perhaps you have had a lot more practice at it since I don't engage in it.
Again if anything you prove the opposite of your point. You say, see this is how she would act if she were racist, except, well she didn't act that way. She didn't order him off an airplane, assume he had weapons
Again did you check to see how many people taking photographs of powerplants she DIDN'T call in because they were white? She attributed the act, not just the color, to her security concern.
So if I report a suspected robbery and the suspect is black does that mean I am a racist?
The thing that makes this ridiculous is we all likely have had situations where we were questioned for not fitting a stereotype and it didn't mean those people were terrible.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
No YOU are working off the premise she was a bigot.
So sorry if I didn't understand your hypotheticals based of your presumptions.
You should apologise, rather, for intentionally misunderstanding him so that it would be easier for you to apply your favourite "my friend, the true racist / sexist / McCarthyite / fascist / bigot is you" technique.
Originally posted by trumptman
Perhaps your knowledge of applying racist thinking far exceeds mine. Perhaps you have had a lot more practice at it since I don't engage in it.
Da-daa.
Originally posted by trumptman
Again did you check to see how many people taking photographs of powerplants she DIDN'T call in because they were white? She attributed the act, not just the color, to her security concern.
Quite how he's supposed to do this is beyond me.
Originally posted by trumptman
So if I report a suspected robbery and the suspect is black does that mean I am a racist?
This is a very foolish thing to say. No, if you PRESUPPOSE a man is engaged in a robbery because he's black, that makes you a racist (and on the evidence of your last posts in this thread I certainly wouldn't put it past you, if that helps.)
Originally posted by trumptman
The thing that makes this ridiculous is we all likely have had situations where we were questioned for not fitting a stereotype and it didn't mean those people were terrible.
Nick
From time to time we run into idiots, do we not? They can be annoying with their presumptions. You can put them straight, if they're amenable, or you can ignore them (or I suppose fight them if you're like that and if they deserve it), and yes, sometimes those people are terrible. I suppose you have to experience prejudice daily to really understand what this is like.
The fact is I would like to think that America is still the kind of country where a man can go and take nice pictures of smoke coming out of a powerstation smokestack without foolish women reporting him to the police. Her behaviour is a different order of police-state creepery altogether to the hypothetical 'questions' you posit above and it's motivated by prejudice, pure and simple.
Originally posted by trumptman
Maybe you show your own ignorance here. Latino's and Arabic people are both considered caucasian. They both run from dark brown skin and black hair to blond/light brown hair with blue eyes.
Grow a sense of humor. Then show me the black branch of the Saudi family. Cousins to the blonde-haired-blue-eyed branch, no doubt. Arabs are semitic. Most Mexicans aren't. In fact, being the race expert you are, you know that "Chicano" is more of a cultural expression, since it encompasses people of just about every race, and that "Latino" is just an expression of geography. But worry about the sense of humor before you worry about any of that.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
The US have been spared what has been quite common for many other people in the last two centuries, and so they aren't used to have major destructions occuring in their big cities due to enemy attacks, as a result they have been hysterical since September 11th 2001; they'll get over it, eventually.
Originally posted by ColanderOfDeath
I'm not sure on this. I'm willing to agree in so far as we are comparing the American experience to say that of people in the former Soviet satellites or various African nations or some Middle Eastern or SE Asian countries or what have you where the people have had their countries destroyed in front of their eyes. But I don't particularly buy this theory at least as it applies to Western Europe versus the US and various Western Europeans often are the ones who cite this as a key difference in our collective views of the world.
The impact of two world wars and of organised genocide having taken place on their continent is what, today, sets apart the European side of Western civilisation from the North American side of it. Japan, a non-Western developed democracy, which also had it quite good for the last fifty or so years, is the only one to have tasted nuclear attack on two of its cities, which does leave a few marks as well.
And then there are all those other countries which have known years and years of violent conflicts, some of lower intensities, some of as high as extreme devastation and genocide.
The case of the USA, with no international conflict on its continental territory since 1812, and no war on its soil since 1865, is an exceptional one.
Certainly there have been various terrorist problems in Europe, Basque groups, IRA, Red Brigades, 17 September, yada yada yada. But likewise the US has had the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, Khobar Towers etc. I'm skeptical that there is much more than a marginal difference in terrorist casualties.
The US has been less sensitive to organised terrorism than others, so the 1993 attack against the WTC, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the likes, left Americans mostly unimpressed. It took an attack reminescent of popular disaster films to really shake the US as a society.
Now as far as how we interpret those terrorist acts, well therein may lie the rub. Certainly I think there is a difference in how Americans and Western Europeans respond to such things.
Perhaps, due to different local experiences of several generations.
I think an important element that is not emphasized enough as far as how we responded to 9/11 is the effect of media. Personally I think that if their had not been TV footage of the towers being hit by planes and then later collapsing and the immediacy of the event then the terror would not be nearly as powerful. It is difficult and somewhat silly to quantify such things but I would say that without TV footage the toll on the national psyche would not even have been half as much.
TV has brought the event instantly to people's homes everywhere in the World, but the long term impact on the US of widebodied airliners crashed on internationally-known landmarks of the US most cosmopolite metropolis and its major business and cultural centre, and on the US' political capital, goes beyond the immediacy brought by TV.
I suppose that the Southern experience in the Civil War could lend support to your argument. 138 years later and they are still bitter. So the historical role of that conflict in terms of instituting cultural dogma is undeniable. On the other hand, the Southerners who do still dwell on that war certainly don't loathe war at all as a result of that brutal time of war, but rather they are just bitter cause they lost.
The Civil War left profound marks on the US, including the North (though to a lesser degree), as the last time war was waged in the continental United States. On September 11th 2001, for the first time since the cannons fell silent in 1865, Americans felt a war had been brought to their homeland, this time by a foreign enemy.
Originally posted by Towel
Grow a sense of humor. Then show me the black branch of the Saudi family.
There are plenty of black Saudis. Their ancestors were taken from East Africa as slaves. Half the Saudi national football team is black.
I'm only putting this in so that trumptman can't answer your post by accusing you of racism for not knowing the ethnic history of Saudi Arabia.
Originally posted by Towel
Grow a sense of humor. Then show me the black branch of the Saudi family. Cousins to the blonde-haired-blue-eyed branch, no doubt. Arabs are semitic. Most Mexicans aren't. In fact, being the race expert you are, you know that "Chicano" is more of a cultural expression, since it encompasses people of just about every race, and that "Latino" is just an expression of geography. But worry about the sense of humor before you worry about any of that.
Hey I gladly display humor, however I am not the one who declares people racist at the drop of a hate as so many here are prone to do.
That sort of takes the humor out of the situation.
Nick
blond hair, blue eyes and all.
just a question as to the original post in this thread. do we know for a fact that the woman told the cops it was "a brown skinned fella" taking pictures of the power plant?
for that to be the case, the cops would have had to tell your friend this, which would surprise me if they did.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
There are plenty of black Saudis. Their ancestors were taken from East Africa as slaves. Half the Saudi national football team is black.
I'm only putting this in so that trumptman can't answer your post by accusing you of racism for not knowing the ethnic history of Saudi Arabia.
If people don't like their faulty reasoning turned against them, then perhaps they shouldn't display it.
The contention was that this woman made an ignorant assumption based off his skin color. This to some here = racism.
They then go around making statement that shows... ignorant assumptions of groups based off their skin color and that = .... uh... hey my heart is in the right place and you are just a humorless guy who doesn't understand.
The same actions should draw the same results if you want credibility.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman Regardless of what you wish to claim, stereotyping is a function of the brain.
If you are trying to say that prejudging people based on their skin color is innate, then you are ignoring the fact that everyone knows it is not.
I had to LEARN that black people are considered violent by US whites, I had to LEARN than Latinos are considered thieves and stupid by US whites, and I had to LEARN that even though it is dramatically more likely for a US terror attack to be perpetrated by a WHITE person, all Arabs are still considered potential terrorists by US Whites.
Not innate. End of story.
all Arabs are still considered potential terrorists by US Whites.
no stereotyping going on there......
That's exactly my point.
Originally posted by trumptman
The contention was that this woman made an ignorant assumption based off his skin color. This to some here = racism.
They then go around making statement that shows... ignorant assumptions of groups based off their skin color and that = .... uh... hey my heart is in the right place and you are just a humorless guy who doesn't understand.
The first assumption was that a man who is not white taking a photograph of a powerstation is likely to be a potential terrorist. This is an assumption born of prejudice and it is, if you like, racist.
Towel's assumption was that there are no Saudis of African descent. This is an assumption born of ignorance of a little-known (outside the Middle East) piece of Arab history. This is not a prejudice, merely ignorance.
Furthermore, Towel did not contact the History Police.
The two cases are different.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Towel's assumption was that there are no Saudis of African descent. This is an assumption born of ignorance of a little-known (outside the Middle East) piece of Arab history. This is not a prejudice, merely ignorance.
I apologize for my humorless attempt to poke fun at the assumption that, to your average white American, all "brown" people look the same. I should have known that, just like all asian people really do look the same, all brown people do as well. And, of course, as any asian could tell you, all white people look the same, too. I confess to having no Saudi acquaintances who could have educated me to the fact that they are, in fact, indistinguishable from Mexicans. I will have to remember, next time I talk to to all my "I-thought-they-were-Mexican" friends, to ask if they are, in fact, Saudi princes. Thank you, trumpetman and Hassan, for serving as my Saudis-in-abstentia. I appreciate, as always, the education. ;P
I stick by my guns about the House of Saud, though. "Saudis" are more than half non-indigenous, and so, I would imagine, are quite the melting pot. I have yet to see a black or blonde Saudi prince on TV. Though it would certainly be interesting if royalty could claim descent from slaves. A meaningless point, since terrorists aren't all royalty, but let me salvage a bit of my dignity here.
I think I just made an interesting point. I've been educated and now work in a pretty international environment, and I've never made a Saudi's acquaintance. Ditto Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, "Gulf Arab". Yet I've gotten to know more than a handful of Iranians, Pakistanis, and, of course, Israelis. Why are there so few immigrants from the other countries in the region? Iraqis are probably the largest Arab Muslim community in the US, and there certainly aren't many of them outside Michigan.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Towel I was trying to defend you, sir!
My sharp-as-a-brick wit aside, I know, and thank you. I do have a question for you, though. I know most Saudis aren't (indigenous) Saudi. I know that indigenous Saudis are famous for their, erm, restricted selection of mates. Almost every genetic study of human disease ever published relies heavily on Saudi families. So how much interbreeding actually goes on between indigenous, Arab, semetic Saudis and everyone else? Correct me (please) if I'm wrong, but aren't indigenous Saudis (exemplefied by the House of Saud) still pretty homogenous?
Originally posted by Towel
My sharp-as-a-brick wit aside, I know, and thank you. I do have a question for you, though. I know most Saudis aren't (indigenous) Saudi. I know that indigenous Saudis are famous for their, erm, restricted selection of mates. Almost every genetic study of human disease ever published relies heavily on Saudi families. So how much interbreeding actually goes on between indigenous, Arab, semetic Saudis and everyone else? Correct me (please) if I'm wrong, but aren't indigenous Saudis (exemplefied by the House of Saud) still pretty homogenous?
Bloody hell. I don't know. If anyone here does, it's Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the Party!
Don't read into this post.