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It's Time to Admit It: There's No Such Thing as 'Race': Time to put the term "racist" to rest.
Townhall ^ | 08/15/2019 | Laura Hollis

Posted on 08/15/2019 7:28:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

If the news is any indication, Democrats and the progressive left generally have virtually nothing left in their political arsenal except for claims that their opponents are "racists" and "white supremacists." This pointless strategy -- evidence of Democrats' desperation -- is doomed to failure, for at least two reasons.

First, the word "racist" has become so overused and contorted that it no longer has any meaning. The term used to refer to someone who believed that his or her race was superior to others, and who behaved accordingly. But as the number of actual racists dwindled in the past few decades, those whose careers depend upon the existence of racist boogeymen (leftists in politics, the media, Hollywood and academia, most notably) had to devise a new definition. They now speak in terms of "systemic" or "institutional" racism. By condemning every institution that has been established by human beings characterized as "white" (more on that in a moment) as systemically racist, it's now possible to condemn as "racist" every person who has ever benefitted from those institutions. Thus, if you have been educated in the American educational system; borrowed or invested money in our financial system; purchased property; or worked your way up the American corporate ladder, then you become a racist.

It's tactically clever in that it no longer depends upon the existence of anyone who actually holds racist views (although those people certainly exist). But it's also a political Molotov cocktail with a very short fuse. People may not love being called out for things they have actually done. But they resent like hell being accused of things they haven't done, especially when they're simultaneously told that there's nothing they can do to remove the stain, or that they cannot take credit for their own achievements.

Authors like Tal Fortgang and J.D. Vance reveal the views of those who reject the notion of "white privilege." In 2014, Fortgang wrote an essay for The Princeton Tory that went viral. Titled "Why I Will Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege," Fortgang described his Jewish family's losses during the Holocaust, their escape to America and their penurious existence as immigrants here. Fortgang argues forcefully that his accomplishments are not the product of "privilege" but of hard work and difficult sacrifice.

Vance's bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, paints a bleak portrait of life in the rural Appalachia of his youth, where "white" Americans suffer with poverty, substance abuse, unemployment, broken homes and despair at levels that rival those of inner-city slums. The subjects of Vance's book would be shocked to learn they enjoy a "privilege" that America's black middle and upper-middle classes somehow don't.

In fact, the concept of "whiteness" (which the wokest of the woke are constantly apologizing for in the latest attempt at virtue signaling) is a fiction and a uniquely American creation. It started by describing people from Western Europe but soon expanded to include people from Eastern Europe. And people in South America who came from anywhere in Europe. And some people in the Middle East if they speak a European language.

But anyone who spends significant time in Europe knows that Europeans do not consider Hungarians to be identical to the Irish. Nor is being German synonymous with being Portuguese, and nor do Greeks get confused with Norwegians.

The point is that Europeans from these countries, and dozens of others, have relocated here and intermarried. Our children are blends of ethnicities. In my own case, I am a combination of German, Irish, French, Scottish and a small amount of Choctaw. (Insert Elizabeth Warren joke here ...).

Not only are Americans with different (and multiple) ethnicities intermarrying but those of identifiable "races" are as well. According to a Pew Research study published in 2017, the percentage of newlyweds married to someone of a different race has been on a steady increase since the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws in 1967. One in 6 are now married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. Blacks and whites are more likely to marry outside their race than are Asians or Hispanics, but even among the latter two groups, the numbers are substantially higher for those born in the United States and with more than a high school education.

If these trends continue (and there is every indication that they will), how long before racial designations are as meaningless as ethnic identification is now? When Mom's parents are African American and white, and Dad's parents are Indian and Japanese, what "race" are their children?

Even the racial designations we use now are malleable and indistinct. When Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, the man who shot him -- George Zimmerman -- was infamously referred to as a "white Hispanic." Applications for admission and employment now routinely permit applicants to choose multiple racial identifiers.

"Racism" has become a sloppy catchall accusation and an excuse to shut down argument. Race itself -- often argued to be merely a social construct as it is -- is an increasingly meaningless term, except to those who want to foment anger and resentment.

Will people find reasons to mistrust and discriminate against those who are "different"? Probably for as long as there are human beings. But "race" is just one of many, many things that make Person A different from Person B. It doesn't merit the attention it gets today.

It's time to put the terms "race" and "racist" to rest.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: race; racism
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To: SeekAndFind

We have plenty of posters here who agree with this

They call me racist

At least once a week

If race doesn’t exist

How can these Freepers call me racist ?


41 posted on 08/15/2019 9:58:05 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: Sans-Culotte

Dinesh is confused on race to be honest

He clams the end of racism

Yet race baits over my part of the nation (south) like no other

I’ve always thought he’s got skin tone issues from India and British days


42 posted on 08/15/2019 10:00:04 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: I want the USA back

You can’t have your cake and eat it too


43 posted on 08/15/2019 10:01:11 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: EEGator

Thank you for common sense

Some folks here take platitudes like a quaalude

It’s numbing


44 posted on 08/15/2019 10:02:01 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s not race, it’s culture.

The former you cannot choose, the latter you can.


45 posted on 08/15/2019 10:03:20 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SeekAndFind
Interesting to me is that those who call themselves liberal or progressive implicitly accept the definition of black used by the slaveowners and Jim Crow segregationists. Any black blood makes a person black. They don't use the word octoroon, but they accept the concept. Obama is half white and half black, but he, his family and his fellow "liberals" accept without question that he is black. There are prominent athletes who appear to have more white ancestry than black, but all agree they are black.

So, just who is it who has the implicit bias in this country?

46 posted on 08/15/2019 10:06:03 AM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: akalinin

I sure hope I can have a child that looks absolutely nothing like me...


47 posted on 08/15/2019 10:07:50 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: SeekAndFind; EEGator

So the black race has problems anywhere in the world it exists ....and it does I’ve lived worked and traveled pretty much all of it

And it’s all their cultures fault?

Their culture is a product of their inherent capabilities not the other way around although it does become the dog chasing his tail at some point

I blame the geographic isolation the black race lived in until slavers transported them around the world

It’s hard to catch up en masses in the blink of an eye human history wise and sub Saharan blacks weren’t the only isolated peoples

Yet blacks in America live under this illusion that their ancestry weren’t really tribal near Stone Age hunter gatherers just a few hundred years ago but rather had vast civilizations that created all manner of advancement and culture as you call it and that white people came and stole it all and set them back into 75 average IQ land

But then switch to Kunta Kinte and shucks that tribal was actually idyllic with days spent with mom happily making cassava pancakes and dad teaching you how to hunt and fish on the veld

We are a product of whom we descended from

And arguing that is denial

Some get lucky some not so lucky

Like a football team play the best with what you got and western civilization and America gives everyone from stupid to smart the best chance of success

And to be fair it’s not just black

Compare Latino culture

Latino culture with less Amerindian DNA is more successful

Take all your oriental or Asian nations

Which succeed most....the ones with a more Chinese or Japanese basically living in them

Is that racist?

God made us equal to him....I’ll go along with that...but we aren’t equal in capabilities here


48 posted on 08/15/2019 10:15:24 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: EEGator; SeekAndFind

And before anyone reminds me..Koreans

The Chinese Japanese hybrid


49 posted on 08/15/2019 10:16:31 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: SeekAndFind

Who made the races?

When you drive through a city, do you not see Hispanics, Asians, Italians, Blacks, Indians and so forth congregate in small communities?

By in large, folks that have the most in common with one another tend to congregate, whether at home, work or play.

It is not racist to do so...unless you are a white male.

Folks need to realize, stupid people do stupid things...no matter the race. Being proud to be white is not racist anymore than being proud to be black.

Furthermore, if folks of the same race choose to watch programs that speak to them because of skin color, culture or whatever should be allowed to do so w/o criticism.

Good grief, I’ve seen programs for decades that are ALL black...even named “Blackish” or BET.

Folks need to get over themselves. Hate is hate. Racism is only a dirty word as ammunition to hurl at someone because you hate them. Period.

I for one am very proud to be a Southerner, Christian, Anglo, Conservative, Texan, American. I don’t hate anyone and I like hanging out with other folks I have things in common with...even if it happens they are white.


50 posted on 08/15/2019 10:19:13 AM PDT by servantboy777
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There are different BREEDS of the one human race. Lots of “mutts” now, though.


51 posted on 08/15/2019 10:21:36 AM PDT by USCG SimTech
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To: wardaddy

https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html

Just massive coincidence...


52 posted on 08/15/2019 10:26:40 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: EEGator

Indeed and Israel is lower because of they included Arabs who make up 25-30%

Naysayers will also say IQ tests even if the universal sorts of tests not based on contemporary knowledge but more on pattern and shape and other cognitive markers are indeed a social construct as well

Hence they always have a reply to deny what they see around them

It’s just an excuse to not have to accept the harsh reality of the human existence

I’m not bitter that my Scots Irish Anglo southern ancestry is likely not as smart as Jews or high Chinese or Germans

I do the best with what I’ve got as did my hardscrabble kin going back to plowshares and pikes days of lore long ago did long ago


53 posted on 08/15/2019 10:32:47 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: EEGator

I’m curious who tested Mongolia ..lol

I’m suspect on that one

My cousin married a Mongolian girl

Schwin

Kinda like the bicycle

She’s very pretty and clever

Mongolia has a lot of semi tribal folk but they always had a rigid communist compulsory education platform


54 posted on 08/15/2019 10:36:16 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: Migraine

Racist the new N word.


55 posted on 08/15/2019 10:38:20 AM PDT by ActresponsiblyinVA
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To: wardaddy

I’m of Irish descent. Stubborn, gift of the gab, and tough can get one pretty far in life. I do engineering as well, so I’m not a total idiot...


56 posted on 08/15/2019 10:38:38 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: wardaddy

Testing IQ in the most sparsely populated country in a high desert. That sounds like fun...


57 posted on 08/15/2019 10:39:49 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: EEGator
I sure hope I can have a child that looks absolutely nothing like me...

And not like the mail man either...
58 posted on 08/15/2019 11:14:20 AM PDT by farming pharmer
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To: SeekAndFind

In modern times only two political parties have fixated on race: The National Socialists Workers Party of Germany and the Democrat Party of the United States of America.


59 posted on 08/15/2019 11:20:24 AM PDT by sport
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To: SeekAndFind

bkmk


60 posted on 08/15/2019 11:25:24 AM PDT by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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