Whites Go Away?

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Purple Knight
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Whites Go Away?

Post #1

Post by Purple Knight »

Question for Debate: If all the white people moved to Mars, would it hurt anyone, even if they remained racist?

I think racists have, if not a good point, a good question, when they continue to wonder why POCs strive to come to majority-white countries only to be discriminated against.

The reason it's not a good point is because the issue is entangled with resources. People will go where resources are despite the political or social system, so you can't claim, as racists try to claim with this question, that POCs are heading into majority-white countries in order to exploit white guilt and gain by that exploitation, and we can't trust the incredulity that nobody would intentionally go where they're so harshly discriminated against and victimised. Because there is no control group of a majority-white area without disproportionate resources and prosperity, one cannot rule out the possibility that POCs come into an environment where they are victimised because they still expect an overall better life, which of course doesn't negate the discrimination or make it okay. People may move to locations with a high murder rate for some benefit that outweighs the risk, but that doesn't mean don't punish the murderers.

Seeking justice isn't suddenly some impropriety just because you are, overall, better off in the environment where the injustice exists. It might seem like looking a gift horse in the mouth, it might seem rude, but it isn't. The analogy is rightly closer to an abusive parent who claims that because they give their child so much, the child is wrong to report a beating. Even if he came from the house next door where he got worse beatings, no. No. Justice doesn't play quid-pro-quo games or ask that people sacrifice it to return favours. Justice is justice.

That's why I'm asking the hypothetical, and disentangling the question from resources. Imagine all the white people just move away, taking no or very few resources with them. They no longer have direct interaction with Earthlings; they are Martians now, and they're isolationist. They have their own media, and they advise Earthlings not to tune in, and in fact they encrypt anything broadcast that Earthlings might tune into, though of course it's possible to descramble if you're really intent on it; we'll say you can watch Martian TV with a black-market box developed for just such a purpose (they're expensive, because you must pay to maintain a satellite relay, so imagine about $250/month). Even if the Martians go full-on Nazi, railing to each other about how bad all the other races are and how great it is to be white, worst case scenario, most racist possible, does it even matter if they're all gone? Or does their existence in that racist state continue to harm those they discriminate against even while completely removed from those other people?

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #41

Post by Purple Knight »

Athetotheist wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 10:42 amWhat "moral reason" could there be for what that rapist did to that woman?
The same moral reason as one has when shooting an enemy soldier who is individually innocent in a just war, if your side is the moral one. And I don't want to hear it's different because soldiers choose to be soldiers, because some soldiers are drafted. I see whites born into the societal structure of white power the same way: They may not have chosen it but there they are, clothed in that uniform someone else put on them, standing as obstacles to change.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #42

Post by Athetotheist »

Purple Knight wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 7:53 pm
Athetotheist wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 10:42 amWhat "moral reason" could there be for what that rapist did to that woman?
The same moral reason as one has when shooting an enemy soldier who is individually innocent in a just war, if your side is the moral one. And I don't want to hear it's different because soldiers choose to be soldiers, because some soldiers are drafted. I see whites born into the societal structure of white power the same way: They may not have chosen it but there they are, clothed in that uniform someone else put on them, standing as obstacles to change.
Spare me the malarky. You can wax self-righteous about "the societal structure of white power" if you want to, but rape is evil. Rape is violent. Rape is an assault. Rape is what soldiers do when they turn terrorist after the other side's soldiers are eliminated. Rape is NEVER justifiable. All the lofty-sounding ideological rhetoric in the world won't give an adequate makeover to the hideous face of a brutal, dehumanizing attack on someone's personhood, nor will it lend even the slightest shred of respectability to any defense of such action.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #43

Post by Purple Knight »

Athetotheist wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 9:25 pmRape is violent. Rape is an assault. Rape is what soldiers do when they turn terrorist after the other side's soldiers are eliminated. Rape is NEVER justifiable.
It's difficult for me to believe that murdering someone in the service of a just cause can be fine but raping them cannot. The one that cuts the person's existence off like so much thread seems worse, and the one where they are a emotionally and physically bruised but still alive seems not quite as bad.

My question to you, if you really believe that murder in a just cause is potentially justified but rape is not, is why we would not simply kill all rape victims in any situation where the murder would have been justified but the rape not. That would end the emotional distress and effectively reduce the act committed from the greater rape to the lesser murder.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #44

Post by Bust Nak »

Purple Knight wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 2:25 pm The subconscious has to be aware of my actions and what I am doing to adjust my actions toward bias. If the subconscious is aware of me being in a position where I am giving out six marbles, or six jobs, and able to adjust on the fly or justify or do whatever else it does so I can do evil, I must conclude it is aware of what I am thinking despite that I am not aware of what it is thinking.
Yes, but how does that explain how the subconscious is supposed to be able to figure out since you gave away 6, you need to take 5 marbles/jobs back? The subconscious isn't capable of doing complex planning.
By the old definition a lot of things look different, but I don't think using different definitions changes anything in a meaningful way as long as they're consistent. Definitions are categorisations. And all that really matters here is what's put into the impermissible and immoral category and what's permissible. By the old definition, I think black racism is permissible and in fact moral, while white racism represents extreme injustice, because whites have power.
That's fine, picking definition is purely semantics, but if you acknowledge it does not change things in a meaningful way, that's all the more reason to coin a new term. The old term has a bunch of excess baggage tied to it.
I only bother about definitions when someone is pushing an unuseful definition. I will reject an unuseful definition.
And I am telling ya, it's not useful when keeping a slave based on their skin color doesn't qualify as racism.
You just have to look at the bigger picture before you separate, just like how you have to zoom out (temporally) and look at what just happened in order to get a correct moral picture of the man who is still alive, standing over his attacker, whom he just killed in self-defence. I should mention though that I do not know if self-defence is morally permissible or not; I'm just giving it as an example because so many people think it is. And this system also makes it vastly more difficult to sort wrongdoers, but people prefer it to simply, "Violence is always wrong, no matter why."
I am just going to have to disagree here, by whole picture you are treating white slave owners as part of the same entity as white slaves.
Yes it does. But I think it's sometimes necessary to take the eye when everyone around you is playing hardball. Always being the side giving up eyes and never taking any because, "Well, I don't want you to be blind too," doesn't serve anything. You have to play the game that's set up in front of you.
Well Black people has made some headway into combating old school racism, not every white is playing hardball.
Ideally yes I would like him to be free. But I admit I don't know how this works. Should courts be allowed to fairly assess claims to being a morally correct revolutionary? How in the world would they do that since all they do now is simply assess whether a law was broken and they do a bad enough job of that? Should the police assess it before they arrest someone? What if the police are the problem or part of it? Ultimately I don't think there's a workable way to say people who break the law shouldn't be arrested, even if they were right to break the law.

But that's why I think checks and balances don't work. I don't think there's a way to design a system so that once it goes bad, it somehow corrects for that and doesn't actually go bad. I don't think you can be Hank Hill and use the boyscout way and work within a bad system to defeat a bad system.
Do you really want to share your society with rapists and slavers, as long as they are hurting the right people?
I don't think what the black slavers in your scenario did was injustice.
How do you reconcile these two thoughts, "unconscious bias causes injustice, no matter how slight" and "Black slaves keeping white slaves due to bias against whites, is not injustice."
I worry that too, but I think that in fighting for the victims, we can put ourselves on the right side of history, because I don't think the result of bias counts as injustice if it's pushing against the unjust system instead of helping it.
Then you need to abandon the claim that "unconscious bias causes injustice, no matter how slight."
We may be caught in a neverending cycle where we strip power from one group after another and never achieve justice, but this is because people suck.
Or we can lose the revenge attitude and eat historic losses and strive for present equality. The author of the article tries to reassure the reader that Black people aren't looking for revenge and it wasn't about comeuppance. How can we believe her, when here you are defending rapists and the keeping of white slaves? That is not going to be part of the blueprint for solving the problem permanently.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #45

Post by Athetotheist »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #43
My question to you, if you really believe that murder in a just cause is potentially justified but rape is not, is why we would not simply kill all rape victims in any situation where the murder would have been justified but the rape not. That would end the emotional distress and effectively reduce the act committed from the greater rape to the lesser murder.
I never stated that murder was just.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #46

Post by Purple Knight »

Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amHow do you reconcile these two thoughts, "unconscious bias causes injustice, no matter how slight" and "Black slaves keeping white slaves due to bias against whites, is not injustice."
It causes the effect. I don't think the effect of unconscious bias is bad if it's a Black person doing it. When I said it always results in injustice, I meant when a white person is doing it, because our system is already skewed in that direction.

People already try to train unconscious bias away, and it doesn't seem to work.
https://www.beapplied.com/unconscious-b ... 2wQAvD_BwE

This is an ad but it has a link to a paper that supports training to account for bias not changing behaviour.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amAnd I am telling ya, it's not useful when keeping a slave based on their skin color doesn't qualify as racism.
I can as easily use the old definition. I'll just have to talk about racism+power+privilege instead, or I can say, yes that is racism by your definition but I don't believe it is injustice.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amWell Black people has made some headway into combating old school racism, not every white is playing hardball.
Every white has unconscious bias and that comes out as racism, and since whites have power, that equals injustice. So every white hurts Blacks unacceptably, thereby taking the eyeball, even if it's unconscious. In a system where your enemies are taking your eyeballs, you can't leave theirs be in order to appear nicer.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amDo you really want to share your society with rapists and slavers, as long as they are hurting the right people?
Of course. We already share our society with people who kidnap people away from their lives and hold them in tiny rooms against their will, and it's perfectly fine as long as they do it to the guilty. These people are called judges and jurors and police, and they're all just walking around like regular people. What you do doesn't matter; it's about whether you're doing it to the right people or not.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amOr we can lose the revenge attitude and eat historic losses and strive for present equality.
If the bully punches you and you do this once, you're the bigger man. If he does it every time he can, it's a constant fight, and if nobody comes to your rescue or punishes him, you need to hit back to get him off you.

If you live in a state of nature and there's no system in place for dealing with his violence, you probably need to hit back until he's dead, because if you don't, you may win 246 fights, but when he gets lucky and gets you in your sleep, he'll win fight #247 and you'll be dead, or worse, he'll forget about you and go kill someone else.

This, especially the latter, isn't a matter of right. I admit it's wrong. It's a matter of necessity and self-preservation. And we're preserving morality too because if we don't do this, we will lose morality along with anyone inclined to be moral, since we're just letting this person kill everybody he can.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #47

Post by Purple Knight »

Athetotheist wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 6:50 amI never stated that murder was just.
So what do you think about murder then? What happens if there's a war? Can you murder enemy soldiers or not?

Call it killing instead if that's a sticking point; my previous argument applies just as well to killing as to murder: If killing is potentially just but rape is not, why not take every rape victim in a situation where the killing would have been just and simply kill that rape victim? They don't suffer the trauma anymore.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #48

Post by Athetotheist »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:31 pm
Athetotheist wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 6:50 amI never stated that murder was just.
So what do you think about murder then? What happens if there's a war? Can you murder enemy soldiers or not?

Call it killing instead if that's a sticking point; my previous argument applies just as well to killing as to murder: If killing is potentially just but rape is not, why not take every rape victim in a situation where the killing would have been just and simply kill that rape victim? They don't suffer the trauma anymore.
No one rapes in self-defense.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #49

Post by Athetotheist »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:27 pm
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amHow do you reconcile these two thoughts, "unconscious bias causes injustice, no matter how slight" and "Black slaves keeping white slaves due to bias against whites, is not injustice."
It causes the effect. I don't think the effect of unconscious bias is bad if it's a Black person doing it. When I said it always results in injustice, I meant when a white person is doing it, because our system is already skewed in that direction.

People already try to train unconscious bias away, and it doesn't seem to work.
https://www.beapplied.com/unconscious-b ... 2wQAvD_BwE

This is an ad but it has a link to a paper that supports training to account for bias not changing behaviour.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amAnd I am telling ya, it's not useful when keeping a slave based on their skin color doesn't qualify as racism.
I can as easily use the old definition. I'll just have to talk about racism+power+privilege instead, or I can say, yes that is racism by your definition but I don't believe it is injustice.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amWell Black people has made some headway into combating old school racism, not every white is playing hardball.
Every white has unconscious bias and that comes out as racism, and since whites have power, that equals injustice. So every white hurts Blacks unacceptably, thereby taking the eyeball, even if it's unconscious. In a system where your enemies are taking your eyeballs, you can't leave theirs be in order to appear nicer.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amDo you really want to share your society with rapists and slavers, as long as they are hurting the right people?
Of course. We already share our society with people who kidnap people away from their lives and hold them in tiny rooms against their will, and it's perfectly fine as long as they do it to the guilty. These people are called judges and jurors and police, and they're all just walking around like regular people. What you do doesn't matter; it's about whether you're doing it to the right people or not.
Bust Nak wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:00 amOr we can lose the revenge attitude and eat historic losses and strive for present equality.
If the bully punches you and you do this once, you're the bigger man. If he does it every time he can, it's a constant fight, and if nobody comes to your rescue or punishes him, you need to hit back to get him off you.

If you live in a state of nature and there's no system in place for dealing with his violence, you probably need to hit back until he's dead, because if you don't, you may win 246 fights, but when he gets lucky and gets you in your sleep, he'll win fight #247 and you'll be dead, or worse, he'll forget about you and go kill someone else.

This, especially the latter, isn't a matter of right. I admit it's wrong. It's a matter of necessity and self-preservation. And we're preserving morality too because if we don't do this, we will lose morality along with anyone inclined to be moral, since we're just letting this person kill everybody he can.
If you believe that two wrongs make a right, you've already lost morality.

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Re: Whites Go Away?

Post #50

Post by Bust Nak »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:27 pm When I said it always results in injustice, I meant when a white person is doing it, because our system is already skewed in that direction...
Okay. I see where you are coming from, but I disagree. With me being a moral subjectivist, I won't argue about feelings and perspectives, suffice to say we feel differently.
People already try to train unconscious bias away, and it doesn't seem to work...
That's fine, we don't need to get rid of unconscious bias, we just need to work round it consciously.
I can as easily use the old definition. I'll just have to talk about racism+power+privilege instead, or I can say, yes that is racism by your definition but I don't believe it is injustice.
So would you accept that you are a racist, according to the old definition?
Every white has unconscious bias and that comes out as racism, and since whites have power, that equals injustice. So every white hurts Blacks unacceptably, thereby taking the eyeball, even if it's unconscious. In a system where your enemies are taking your eyeballs, you can't leave theirs be in order to appear nicer.
It's not about being nicer, it's about being moral, which you seem to accept that an eye for an eye is wrong from what you says at the bottom.
Of course. We already share our society with people who kidnap people away from their lives and hold them in tiny rooms against their will, and it's perfectly fine as long as they do it to the guilty. These people are called judges and jurors and police, and they're all just walking around like regular people. What you do doesn't matter; it's about whether you're doing it to the right people or not.
Judges and jurors don't punish people for mere association though, they punish the actual perpetrators. Here you are suggesting rape is the appropriate punishment for the crime of benefiting from power and privilege and also for holding unconscious bias.
If the bully punches you and you do this once, you're the bigger man. If he does it every time he can, it's a constant fight, and if nobody comes to your rescue or punishes him, you need to hit back to get him off you.
That's why I said "historical losses" and "present equality." Be the bigger man.
This, especially the latter, isn't a matter of right. I admit it's wrong. It's a matter of necessity and self-preservation. And we're preserving morality too because if we don't do this, we will lose morality along with anyone inclined to be moral, since we're just letting this person kill everybody he can.
Well, I have to say what you are suggesting here sounds rather counter productive. Now you need to win hearts and minds, you need sympathy. Setting aside morality isn't going to do that.

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