Whites Go Away?

[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?

[Purple Knight]

So would you accept that you are a racist, according to the old definition?

Yes. And in a vacuum I'm also immoral to be so. But I didn't just pop out into the world with a bias against white people. I went through a lot of angst and soul-searching and now I believe bias against whites is just, correct, and moral.

My only male friend all through high school was a neo-Nazi. And I thought, he made some sense. After all, if he was the only one who would be my friend, why shouldn't I be his friend? What's wrong with me associating with likes if everyone else can? Well, a lot, because the world is bigger than my tiny little myopic perspective. People like Marley K are looking at the bigger picture.

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.

I actually don't know whether eye-for-an-eye is wrong or not. I may be making a leap when I say that what is necessary to maintain morality is essentially moral, but regardless, we had better become immoral to defend morality itself if that is what is necessary, otherwise we won't have morality anyway and we'll be dead. If morality is truly the better system, we should violate it to preserve it, if necessary.

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.

I think it is. Essentially I think a lot of things normally labeled "cruel and unusual" are justified if the system is unjust and part of the problem, rendering it impossible to get justice from such a system. I think benefiting from power and privilege, and perpetuating it, is a worse crime than murder, a worse crime than rape, a worse crime than anything. I also see how unfair this is because most people aren't doing it intentionally, but I don't care about fairness, I care about justice.

I also think any means are justified if you're fighting for the righteous side. So you know all those Geneva Convention rules they made after WWI because things like mustard gas made it horrible? I think the Allies should have simply disregarded those rules in WWII. I don't think "fair play" applies to the good guys. I think getting the result of justice is more important. If you won't go all-out to win, that can only mean you're not sure what you're fighting for is actually right and thus you shouldn't even be fighting, because at that point you're trading lives for something you're not sure is right, and that's not okay.

It shows just how beneficial a just and fair system is. It lets us not have a war every time we have a disagreement. It lets us have more humane punishments. It would probably be better for that woman to go to court and be proven guilty of benefiting from power and privilege while holding bias and punished in some other way, but the system won't do that, so people have to.

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.

Frankly I think whites have lost the privilege to be forgiven in this way. After slavery and the Holocaust, it's too much. People don't live that long, and the same injustices seem to keep cropping up, and it's the same side always doing it. I say, let's not give them another chance. They care so much about their children, make their children suffer, and they might actually not do it again. Don't let them hide behind the veneer of individualism, always committing atrocities and having their children safe from reprisal when they lose.

If I steal, I go to jail. If I possess the ability to swap out my consciousness, to that of someone who didn't steal, it's not fair that the next fellow who just popped into my brain goes to jail, but let me know I can't use this ability to escape jail and then I don't steal. I come back to this body and it's going to be in jail. Hmm, probably shouldn't steal then. This is just good chess combined with good rulemaking, thinking about the next few moves.

You can't throw up your hands and say, "Oh, that would be unfair, we can't do it," if it allows an even less fair outcome, which is allowing the same people to commit atrocities over and over again. If we'd never had rugged individualism to begin with in America, we probably wouldn't have had whites sitting pretty in their slave plantations getting fat, all the while knowing full well they were doing something wrong, and thinking, well, if we lose this fight we'll just say whoops sorry, enrich our children from the results of stolen labour, demand individualism, and be better off than we ever were.

[Purple Knight]

If you believe that two wrongs make a right, you've already lost morality.

Well there goes the theory of punishment then.

Some libertarians actually believe this. They think that it's immoral to put murderers in jail because the act of murdering does not remove the right of freedom from the murderer. It can't. Rights are absolute; they don't go away because you do something wrong. Doing something to a guilty person is the same as doing it to an innocent one, with the possible exception of monetary reparations. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that. It's actually consistent and I laud them for it but I tend to think it's unworkable in reality.

We all accept that punishment is necessary to maintain an orderly society, and that that is its purpose, and that we're going to keep punishing people regardless of whether it's strictly moral or not. We all accept it, until we disagree with some particular act being punishable and can't defend that, so we attack the theory of punishment itself, because it is, frankly, an immoral system we shouldn't endorse and we're all just okay being cognitively dissonant about it, so because it really shouldn't be, it's easy to attack.

[Athetotheist]

So would you accept that you are a racist, according to the old definition?

Yes. And in a vacuum I'm also immoral to be so. But I didn't just pop out into the world with a bias against white people. I went through a lot of angst and soul-searching and now I believe bias against whites is just, correct, and moral.

My only male friend all through high school was a neo-Nazi. And I thought, he made some sense. After all, if he was the only one who would be my friend, why shouldn't I be his friend? What's wrong with me associating with likes if everyone else can? Well, a lot, because the world is bigger than my tiny little myopic perspective. People like Marley K are looking at the bigger picture.

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.

I actually don't know whether eye-for-an-eye is wrong or not. I may be making a leap when I say that what is necessary to maintain morality is essentially moral, but regardless, we had better become immoral to defend morality itself if that is what is necessary, otherwise we won't have morality anyway and we'll be dead. If morality is truly the better system, we should violate it to preserve it, if necessary.

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.

I think it is. Essentially I think a lot of things normally labeled "cruel and unusual" are justified if the system is unjust and part of the problem, rendering it impossible to get justice from such a system. I think benefiting from power and privilege, and perpetuating it, is a worse crime than murder, a worse crime than rape, a worse crime than anything. I also see how unfair this is because most people aren't doing it intentionally, but I don't care about fairness, I care about justice.

I also think any means are justified if you're fighting for the righteous side. So you know all those Geneva Convention rules they made after WWI because things like mustard gas made it horrible? I think the Allies should have simply disregarded those rules in WWII. I don't think "fair play" applies to the good guys. I think getting the result of justice is more important. If you won't go all-out to win, that can only mean you're not sure what you're fighting for is actually right and thus you shouldn't even be fighting, because at that point you're trading lives for something you're not sure is right, and that's not okay.

It shows just how beneficial a just and fair system is. It lets us not have a war every time we have a disagreement. It lets us have more humane punishments. It would probably be better for that woman to go to court and be proven guilty of benefiting from power and privilege while holding bias and punished in some other way, but the system won't do that, so people have to.

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.

Frankly I think whites have lost the privilege to be forgiven in this way. After slavery and the Holocaust, it's too much. People don't live that long, and the same injustices seem to keep cropping up, and it's the same side always doing it. I say, let's not give them another chance. They care so much about their children, make their children suffer, and they might actually not do it again. Don't let them hide behind the veneer of individualism, always committing atrocities and having their children safe from reprisal when they lose.

If I steal, I go to jail. If I possess the ability to swap out my consciousness, to that of someone who didn't steal, it's not fair that the next fellow who just popped into my brain goes to jail, but let me know I can't use this ability to escape jail and then I don't steal. I come back to this body and it's going to be in jail. Hmm, probably shouldn't steal then. This is just good chess combined with good rulemaking, thinking about the next few moves.

You can't throw up your hands and say, "Oh, that would be unfair, we can't do it," if it allows an even less fair outcome, which is allowing the same people to commit atrocities over and over again. If we'd never had rugged individualism to begin with in America, we probably wouldn't have had whites sitting pretty in their slave plantations getting fat, all the while knowing full well they were doing something wrong, and thinking, well, if we lose this fight we'll just say whoops sorry, enrich our children from the results of stolen labour, demand individualism, and be better off than we ever were.

Nothing you've said here makes any sense. All the fancy talk just dances around what it really amounts to: vengeance. And what's worse is that you aren't talking about just paying injury back; you're talking about paying it forward.

Let me tell you something about your "hero". He isn't just a rapist; he's a coward. There are plenty of real racists out there to combat, but they're heavily armed and taking them on is more of a personal risk. It's far easier to pick a defenseless victim who can't fight back, but that doesn't make a "morally correct revolutionary"; it makes a spiteful, spineless predator, eager to lash out, lacking the guts to oppose injustice honorably.

That "benefitting from power and privilege" line you keep spouting is rightfully laughed to scorn by the many white people who live in utter destitution through no fault of their own, victims in the war of the Have's on the Have Not's. If you would stop reducing everyone to racial stereotypes and recognize that we all have the same cause to fight for, you could do a lot more good for the world than by idolizing and making pathetic excuses for spiteful, spineless cowards who have to rape defenseless victims to make themselves feel like heroes.

[Purple Knight]

That "benefitting from power and privilege" line you keep spouting is rightfully laughed to scorn by the many white people who live in utter destitution through no fault of their own, victims in the war of the Have's on the Have Not's.

I'm one of them. I was very poor as a kid. I got beaten up every day because I had $7 Keds instead of expensive $100+ Nikes.

You're right that there's a war between the Haves and Have Nots. It's not on my radar. I don't care that rich people are rich. They're so rich they have power over our society that if government had we'd call it tyranny and oppression. So what? They earned it. I hope they earn more and continue to gain power.

Let me tell you something about your "hero". He isn't just a rapist; he's a coward. There are plenty of real racists out there to combat, but they're heavily armed and taking them on is more of a personal risk. It's far easier to pick a defenseless victim who can't fight back, but that doesn't make a "morally correct revolutionary"; it makes a spiteful, spineless predator, eager to lash out, lacking the guts to oppose injustice honorably.

Here is what honour means to me: It's a tool to get evil people not to fight with everything they've got. So we can pretend there are rules both sides ought to follow, get the evil people to follow them, and beat them. And evil people eat it up because it gives them a way to pretend they're good. But I will tell you, good is 100% cause and 0% means. The most honourable person, no matter how generous he is to his enemies, no matter how fair he is, if he fights for evil that's all that matters and he's evil.

All that matters to me is justice. Justice any way I get it. I care what's right, I don't give two rat turds about what's honourable. I think anything is justified in the cause of righteousness, and nothing is justified in the cause of evil. I don't think there's such a thing as fair play when you're fighting the bad guys. I don't think there's such a thing as something you shouldn't do, to the bad guys.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #51]

I understand what you are saying, I disagree with your stance strongly, I have nothing more I wish to say.

[nobspeople]

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

Why do the whites have to move? Why not another group? Seems racist to suggest people move based on race alone, as racism knows no race.

[Purple Knight]

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

Why do the whites have to move? Why not another group? Seems racist to suggest people move based on race alone, as racism knows no race.

I'm not suggesting they be forced to. I'm asking what would happen if they did.

Specifically I'm asking about whether they would be hurting anyone if they remained racist.

Isn't the whole problem that their racism is hurting people? And half of them are so bloody stupid they try to defend themselves, saying, no I'm not racist, you're the racist, WHAAAA!!!!

If I see two people, and one says the other one punched him, the second one says, no I didn't he's just trying to hurt me by saying that, my instinct is to separate them. That way, whichever one is actually trying to hurt the other will reveal himself by seeking association and whichever one was not trying to hurt the other will be happy they are separated. If the first one really punched the second, he will go over to the other one and try to do it again. If the second one is really lying to try to instigate harm against the first, he will move closer to the first one and cry again that he got punched.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #54

You're right that there's a war between the Haves and Have Nots. It's not on my radar. I don't care that rich people are rich. They're so rich they have power over our society that if government had we'd call it tyranny and oppression. So what? They earned it. I hope they earn more and continue to gain power.

Let me see if I understand this. According to you, white people are all evil and racist and addicted to power and privilege and should have power and privilege taken away, because that would be "justice".......

.......unless they're rich, in which case all that power has been "earned".

I was disgusted at your proclamation that a rapist is one of your heroes, but imagine my surprise, after your diatribe against "white power structure", to learn that you hold Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch in high regard as well!

It seems that the only white people you really take issue with are the ones without any power. Your views are a remarkable study in cognitive dissonance.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #57]

I'm not suggesting they be forced to. I'm asking what would happen if they did.

It simply made me wonder why you decided, in your scenario, that the whites are the ones that need to move? Seems to me you could have simply have asked any race to move, but you chose the whites . Then go on asking about their racism, seemingly inferring whites are racist and no one else is - maybe going as far as to suggest by removing whites racism is 'fixed'? That might be a stretch but it could be seen as the next step - a slippery slope, as it were.

Specifically I'm asking about whether they would be hurting anyone if they remained racist.

Get it. But what about the other races remaining? Would they, too, remain racist? Are those remaining groups hurting each other? Or does that not matter?

If I see two people, and one says the other one punched him, the second one says, no I didn't he's just trying to hurt me by saying that, my instinct is to separate them.

Odd. I would think one's instinct would be to try to fix the problem by understanding each one and their POV; trying to get each to compromise and understand the other. Removing one from this scenario only prevents physical hurting. Oft times it heightens racism, as has been my experience.

It just seemed your rant here is anti-white. Which is fine, if that's what you want to be - makes little difference to me, personally.

[Purple Knight]

It simply made me wonder why you decided, in your scenario, that the whites are the ones that need to move? Seems to me you could have simply have asked any race to move, but you chose the whites

Well they're the ones disproportionately occupying lands they stole, so I think it's fair.

Then go on asking about their racism, seemingly inferring whites are racist and no one else is - maybe going as far as to suggest by removing whites racism is 'fixed'?

Whites are the only ones that can be racist by my definition. Others can be biased, but not racist. If you define racism a different was that's fine and it doesn't bother me and I can use your definition, just understand that I am only concerned with eliminating the category of racism that is counted as racism under the new definition. I read the article by Marley K and agreed with all of it, but nevertheless, I think it's perhaps unfair to punish people for crimes they can't help. She says, all white people are racist no matter how hard they try not to be, therefore they should try harder. I agree this is moral but it's perhaps nonproductive. I wonder if it might be more productive to simply separate from people who continue to hurt you if they're trying to change and not one of them has succeeded. There comes a point of stabbage where I'm going to admit that sharing my house with 100 porcupines is perhaps not the best idea, turn them out, and get something less dangerous instead.

This comes dangerously close to I'm blaming the victim. This comes close to the sort of victim blaming that people do when they suggest that women not wear extremely revealing clothes in known dangerous areas, because they might get raped.

Get it. But what about the other races remaining? Would they, too, remain racist? Are those remaining groups hurting each other? Or does that not matter?

To me, it doesn't matter until one of those races builds a power structure like the one we've got now to advantage their kind and artificially disadvantage other kinds. I think bias that doesn't reach that level is an inevitable part of human existence that we all just have to deal with, and that it's possible to deal with if the person being biased against you has no real power over you. It might hurt, but at this point, sticks and stones.

If I see two people, and one says the other one punched him, the second one says, no I didn't he's just trying to hurt me by saying that, my instinct is to separate them.

Odd. I would think one's instinct would be to try to fix the problem by understanding each one and their POV; trying to get each to compromise and understand the other. Removing one from this scenario only prevents physical hurting. Oft times it heightens racism, as has been my experience.

Well it might heighten bias. I'm wondering if that even matters if we can eliminate the harm caused by bias + privilege + power. And even if it does matter, I'm wondering if going for the brass ring of diversity and equality is really worth the pain it causes as we try and fail, letting POCs pay for the mistakes we make because we think we can, though some degree of trying, just stop being racist.

It just seemed your rant here is anti-white. Which is fine, if that's what you want to be - makes little difference to me, personally.

I would classify myself as vehemently anti-white. But I also approach everything as if it is simultaneously true. I have heard whites say they contribute just as much as anyone else to society. Knowing how they (overall) scream like stuck pigs when a sick clubfooted child in a wheelchair enters their country "because he'll take my job!" I tend to roll my eyes at this but if they left and society became worse I would have to reevaluate. Note that I'm not saying there is no white person that contributes anything; I just see that overall they're protectionists who scream for minimum wage hikes they don't deserve and cry when they get undercut. No matter how absurd something seems, I keep it in my head as potentially true until I can show that it's not, and it's not beyond my imagining that they're not lying, and they're overall contributing somehow, in some way that I'm just missing. The ones that say they're contributing and are against immigration in any fashion do have to think they're lying, however, to be upset when competition enters, but they could always think they're lying and turn out to be telling the truth. There is even one specific way I could imagine that this is true, I just don't think it's likely.