Discussion thread [Serious]

[Anonymously Famous]

If you are serious, I would see someone qualified to make a diagnosis and get you the help that you need.

[thecoolestusername]

tedy roooselvt is our only lord and savior

[vraiment]

Another serious discussion. I may be insane.

what kind of insane? there's a lot of kind

If you are serious, I would see someone qualified to make a diagnosis and get you the help that you need.

^that, not doin' so will cause you a lot of problems

[Arkannine]

Yeah, everything from schizo to bipolarity or even mild depression can get a lot worse without treatment.
Also Anonymously Famous what do you have an MA in? That's interesting.

[assdef]

His MA is in being Mostly Anonymous.

Welcome back, Sir Ark!

[Arkannine]

Ha! Thank you. Looking forward to drinking all the knowledge people can give out.

[RandomBomb]

The Ark has returned for the first time since... when?

[mynameisjustin]

shrek is love, shrek is life. shrek is lord.

it's never ogre.

[assdef]

So I realized today no one has posted in the SRS discussion thread in several months. Thought I'd try and get a convo kicked off:

Do we live in a post-racial society? I realize the perspective on this likely varies significantly from country to country, which is why I think it is an even more fascinating subject to talk about here.

What do I mean by post-racial? In America, specifically, there are some that believe we have moved past racism in our society because we elected a black president, inter-racial marriage is now somewhat commonplace and universally accepted, whites and blacks live together in the same neighborhoods, shop in the same stores together, etc. There are others that believe the notion of a post-racial America is a load of crap, and cite recent issues with potentially racially-motivated police killings as examples that racism is still very much part of our social system.

What about in your country? Is there racism between people of different skin colors? Share your perspective!

[lunar_furor]

I feel like the younger generation is much more past the bias than you old fogeys. As a nation I'd say we are clearly not past it yet though.

I'm a data person and once I take a little time I'll round up some of the figures and see what the numbers say. However, I totally feel like it's an issue, and not one anyone wants around.

If I had to put feelings to it it'd go like this.
Everyone who isn't white isn't being treated with pure equality.
Those of us who really give our best to be equal however still also feel
uncomfortable in that one side will judge you for not following bias, and the other side doesn't believe you care.

Further it goes beyond just race but to gender and sexual orientation.

My girlfriend and I take turns buying each other lunch/movie tickets w/e. She wants to pay, I say are you sure, she says she wont let me pay
However when she does pay, I cant help but notice the nasty looks I get from workers. I'm trying to let my girlfriend be free and empowered to pay when she wants.
Further I still pay 2 thirds the time. I believe in that equality, but also hate the social pressure on having to be "the man".

Too many extremes, too many closed minds.

[atomtengeralattjaro]

So after assdef's post back in May, I bookmarked this page for a while, planning to answer, but kept putting it off. I realize it's September now, I really am an expert at procrastinating. I now looked at this thread with the intention to try and post something about the current European refugee/+/migrant crisis, but we'll see what I manage to cobble together.

Do we live in a post-racial society? I realize the perspective on this likely varies significantly from country to country

First let me be pedantic because I'm terrible like that. Every time someone mentions "our society", I cringe a little at our apparently-still-strange global series of tubes that we use to yap at each other. Even as assdef makes it clear he realizes it's not just one society, it's sort of an afterthought, because the question itself is still phrased in the popular way. It's okay though. But I don't think there is a single human society. We're just too many for that. There isn't even a single online society. And no, there isn't a single Western society either, because there are many countries with Western or westernised cultures, all different.

But I don't know of any society today that I could consider post-racial, sadly.

I can try to give you an idea of what it's like in and around Hungary, very briefly. For this you need to have a general idea of our ethnic composition: there are few black or arabic people, many Asians (mostly Chinese tradespeople), and a great many gypsies. There are also of course people from neighboring countries, anything from brand new to many generations assimilated. Now, racially, the only ones that aren't white are the chinese and the gypsies. (If you don't know about gypsies, they basically look like people from India.) I personally haven't seen any serious racism against Asians here in my life, the worst of casual racism being mocking their accents. But even that is something most kids grow out of. And I think Hungarians treat black and arabic people totally normally, but there are so few of them I don't have a lot of experiences.

Now with gypsies, our Facebook relationship is "it's complicated". There is a lot of baggage to it.
I think Hungarians are only racist towards gypsies. (I certainly hope we aren't just about to extend our well-tended racism to arabic people, now that they're storming our gates.)
So the basic layout is, as you can expect, gypsies are mostly poor, often uneducated, and they have a slightly different culture (they like to have huge families with lots of kids in a single room, yell a lot, solve most problems in-house, etc.). Also, as you might expect, gypsy crime. They often pass the trade of stealing down in generations. So this naturally causes a lot of divide between the races. I don't have statistics on this, but I think the typical gypsy is either a manual labourer (in the shittiest jobs you can imagine), a musician (doing magic with a violin or a dulcimer), a full-time mother, or a thief (ranges from street thug to burglar). It is said that gypsies play the best Hungarian folk music.
There is a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear and hate. Discrimination in jobs and schools alike. The whole "second-class citizen" issue.

I don't know "the" solution, but it seems sometimes a solution can come from within the community. I've read an article a few years ago about a village that had a predominantly gypsy population, and lots of crime, disorder and poverty described the place. Then they got a new gypsy mayor, who was not only well qualified for the job, but also a true leader who understood his community perfectly. He may have used unusual methods (going to have lunch with families, sometimes yelling at them, slapping a thief in the face, etc.), but he turned the village around, eradicating crime and putting the people to work, most of whom were thankful to him afterwards. But I realize this kind of thing wouldn't work in an urban community.

From what I see about what's going on across the ocean, you guys aren't quite there yet either. Police seem to have some serious issues there..

For a bit of a taste about the "other side": I've just spent a month in Kenya, where it's relatively rare to see a white person. I didn't spend much time in the capital (partly because Nairobi is nicknamed Nairobbery), I spent most of my time in a rural area. What I saw I can't honestly call racism, but definitely not post-racial either. The way uneducated Africans think of the white visitor is that he must be rich, and American. And they call you "white one" in their language, everywhere, all the time. Not always in a friendly tone.
But I fortunately haven't gotten a close look into the issue of tribal conflicts, of which there are still many in sub-saharan Africa.

------------------------------------------------

And if nobody else wants to continue this subject, allow me to switch to religious freedom and migration.
In light of recent events (both European refugee crisis and Ahmed the clock-builder's case in Texas), what scares me the most is Islamophobia.
(You could say that I have islamophobiophobia? heh)
Our prime minister said things like we don't want a lot of muslims in our country, on the basis of us being a mainly christian country.. this really didn't sit well with me. In fact, I think this kind of attitude even goes against christian values.
I've just seen Istanbul, a predominantly Islam, but truly multi-religion and multi-race metropolis, and I don't see what people are afraid of. Christians and muslims can and do live together in peace.
What do you think? Is the U.S. paranoid of Islam? Is Europe going to be? Feel free to share you opinion on refugee migration as well.



In any case, we certainly can't afford to help so many refugees, especially not the ones that throw rocks at our police officers (a vocal and active minority). Fencing our border is something that needed to be done, not to keep everyone out, but to manage the chaos and prevent illegal entry. We also have a responsibility as the border of the Schengen region.
But I think our gov't should've created some sort of a distribution center for refugees, later sending the bill to Bruxelles. But most importantly our humanitarian effort should be greater.
(And all this EU bureaucracy baffles me. They decide to meet next week about something that should've been done a month ago.)

I will stop rambling now.

[lunar_furor]

We in the U.S, as you said, certainly aren't there yet. However don't take any media's word for it. I can't speak for news coverage in Europe, perhaps your news is more legitimate but in America, money is basically law. What I mean by that isn't that banks own everyone blah blah which may be the case but what I mean is that good stories don't make money for news, so while I wouldn't say our police are perfect, they certainly aren't as bad as the news makes it out to be.

Further the lack of trust became a small self perpetuating machine (maybe it still is). The police had a string of bad incidents in the news, the people stopped trusting the police and went after everything they did. A large group of police saw a small group of police punished and started to ease up for fear of losing their job at one small slip. The people saw the police ease back and crime in some areas went up. The people got angry at the police for not being tougher on crime. Circle repeats.

I've never had a problem with the police and I only know of one small incident that fixed it's self near me or friends or family. The issues that followed this incident that were lasting were because one of our local news decided to gussy up the story and not correct it for weeks, leaving the particular family in a bad way.

I need to explain my location a little I think. We're going through a large oil boom and as such our population is exploding from all over. While large cities like Chicago, New York and LA etc etc may be used to this kind of thing. We aren't. The city I live in used to be on the same sort of terms as Maybury (look up the Andy Griffith show) where everything was fine and good, crime was VERY low, and everyone basically got along with the police. So when things explode and these crimes are starting to worry everyone, along with everyone just taking the news as gospel (drives me crazy). When a news story doesn't get corrected after being printed incorrectly, it has lasting effects.

If you're willing I'm glad you started the topic Atom, I was going to ask what the whole migrant thing looks like from your point of view, or generally what (as far as you have heard) people think about the whole thing. Firstly because I'm just generally a curious cat about [where I'm not] and secondly to compare to our news (I know not super accurately, but it's still fun). ]

I wish it wasn't 10 month's savings to travel to anywhere from America.

EDIT: While the Colbert post is funny, it's shockingly accurate. People get angry and confused even if you just don't subscribe to a religion.

[Arkannine]

I live in Brazil, a country that definitely got more black and mixed-race people than America and Europe.

I must say, even here we're far from completely eradicating racial bias. Still, I don't think it's all a mindset thing, though; like Atom said (it's a comparable thing to the gypsies in Hungary) it's sort of somewhat justifiable in the sense that black people in general are in fact poorer and thus more susceptible to adhering to a life of crime. If I'm walking through a poorly lit and desert street at night I feel more threatened by a black person passing by me than I would for a white one, depending on their looks. I think this happens in other countries too, but there's something of a "culture" mostly among poor people of some really flashy or "gangsta" stuff, and it does make you reasonably suspicious of someone wearing it. Crime rate is indeed higher on poorer areas in which that culture is predominant, at least with younger folks.

If you don't look "suspicious" though, race is not an issue at all. I myself am mixed-race (not a dark black, but not white either) and I have never been discriminated against. The "gangsta" culture thing doesn't really attract me and I dress and act like a grown-up, so I have never had any trouble with anything. People have never treated me any different than they would have if I were aryan. I am today part of a research group at my college (there are public colleges in Brazil funded by the government and they're known to be top-quality, better than paid ones, though there's tests to get in) in the south -which was colonized by German folks and has a fewer non-white people- and all that counts is my work. They appreciate it just the same and my race does not matter at all. Never had any trouble with police either, though they admittedly are more suspicious of gangsta-style people (who can be white too, though it's less common).

I think in the end it's on the vast majority of cases not about race, but about historically less favored people (won't get into whether they could or not have done something to change it, that's an entirely different and more difficult question) and how they're more prone to criminality and achieving less than the average white person. I, and I believe really most people today, judge people for the values and culture that they show, and not anything else.

I just remembered, Brazil in general and my city specifically has been receiving some Haitian refugees recently too. I didn't get to know any, but general consensus among my friends seems to be that they're pretty cool guys, though it seems to me that most, if not all, haven't got much education and are destined to work in mostly laborious jobs. I have seen through TV though that their families have been putting their kids in schools and seem to really have the right mindset to grow professionally and achieve successful lives. They're quite noticeably darker than Brazilian blacks.

On a side note, I think it's really great to see how much diversity of world views we have here. It's quite interesting to see that Atom has seen more of the world, and it's pretty awesome to be able to learn from that. I'm dying to go on a student exchange to get to know Europe and all kinds of people too, and I'm actually pretty confident that I'll be able to soon enough.

[human almighty]

I am Human Almighty. We all never die. We just transcednde... you know what I mean.

[atomtengeralattjaro]

Hello Human almighty, welcome!

[soloman]

question: the forums keep needing me to relog after what seems like a few minutes. ive tried posting this question 3 times now and it always boots me back to login screen when i hit the submit button. so this is the short version i guess.

had to come back and actually edit in my question so i wouldnt lose the post! why is this happening?!?!?!

[atomtengeralattjaro]

No idea! Never happened to me.
What browser are you on?
Anyone else had the same issue?
The board's phpBB version is out of date, but other than that I don't see what can cause this. Maybe you have a cookie eater browser addon or something.

[soloman]

im on a work terminal that uses firefox. your probably right about the weird add on, its a pretty screwy version of ff. this is almost unbearable.

anyway, i hope Bernie Sanders gets elected POTUS. thoughts?

[atomtengeralattjaro]

Ah, a work terminal is likely to have an old version of everything.

Sure, Bernard seems like a cool guy from over here. I don't have much faith in him getting elected though.
To be honest I'm not sure how it works, who actually elects the president? The public only chooses a party, don't they?

[Shai'tan]

Don't they also vote who will represent the party first? Which is what they're doing now and Donald Trump is winning for the Republicans?