/townhall/ - Townhall

>>12483
>Racial equality is assertion that racial differences are cosmetic and not substantive in terms one's abilities,  ...
As stated, that is clearly false.  E.g., black people have better ability to resist sunburn.  I think the term "racial equality" is better understood to mean equality before the law, equal rights, and lack of unjust racial discrimination.

>>12484
I see that as a component of the meaning of equality.  I think a lack of prejudice factors in as well, even when not part of an overt discrimination policy.

If the sunburn thing is important enough, then you might say it's appropriate to see dark skinned people as more robust.

I know the importance of respecting the state, and the state has preferred enforcing systems of difference based on race.  So I don't wish to challenge state power.  I think maybe that's why you specify unjust discrimination, to mean some is to be tolerated if it comes from the state.

Race is just a socially-created and sustained mental construct based off of gossip and hearsay.

>>12485
Most racial discrimination is unjust, especially by the state.  Examples of racial discrimination that are not unjust are: selecting an actor to portray a character of a specific race, looking for a sexual/ /romantic partner of a specific race if that is what one has a strong preference for, etc.

It is really hard to have sincere discussions with insincere people.

Equality under the law isn't the same thing at all as inherent absolute equality.

Obviously, tall people are different than short people. Height affects health. It even changes one's lifespan in terms of medical predictions. Everything from one's dating life to one's success in looking for job promotions can be affected.

At the same time, it would be immoral to the point of straightforwardly being evil if the U.S. government were to instruct the police to search and arrest short people under suspicion of being terrorists compared to tall people.

This analogy seems to apply extremely well to racial and ethnic groups.

>>12486
Describing race with the words gossip and hearsay makes me think you are in favor of racial equality.

>>12487
I see.  Yes, those things seem minimally objectionable.

>>12489
I have thought about making threads about the politics of the pony world.

>>12490
>Equality under the law isn't the same thing at all as inherent absolute equality.

I would agree.  Equality under the law is a part of what people mean by equality, but not all of it.

>>12487
>looking for a sexual/romantic partner of a specific race if that is what one has a strong preference

I can understand believing that this isn't morally wrong in the abstract, and the argument is reasonable. A preference isn't the same as an ideological belief.

However, in practical terms Americans tend to impose serious negative actions upon each other due to perceived sexual attractiveness. For example, U.S. employers regularly pay female workers seen as 'hot' or such more than other female employees. As well, men seen as "handsome" who are looking to assist U.S. charities raise more funds for them than other men. It goes on.

This appears to be a highly deleterious trend for American society as a whole, although I honestly have little idea what if anything would make it all better. Of course, it's not as if an act of Congress or some legal tweak would fix everything. And there's no one person singularly at fault: this is a broad trend.

>>12483
Depends heavily on what you mean.
There's a range of ideas associated to such things as 'equality'.
Equality of treatment, or equality of outcome, are the big pair.

>>12498
I suppose the common meaning, yes.

Legal equality is the business of the state, but where people are free, I mean that.

Equality of treatment, yes.

If we presume there is no inherent difference between races related to a measure, equality of treatment should lead to no statistically significant inequality of outcome.

>>12500
Then as far as it pertains to equality of treatment, I suppose I'm for that.

>If we presume there is no inherent difference between races related to a measure, equality of treatment should lead to no statistically significant inequality of outcome.
If we presume there's no cultural differences, too, perhaps.
But I do not think this favors reality.

Regardless; I'm not overly concerned about statistical deviation, as statistics, frankly, don't tell you much of individual circumstance.

>>12501
>If we presume there's no cultural differences, too, perhaps.
I guess racial equality would have to mean a lack of inegaltarian culture.  If an outcome is...a general good thing for a human, and something in culture degrades that outcome for a racial group, and you favored equality, the part of culture that caused the degradation would be faulty.

>>12498
>>12500
>>12501
I suppose "equality of treatment" is going to be such an inherently more messy concept versus "equality under the law" because people can do deleterious actions against each other either totally unwillingly or with a lot of great justification without realizing the proper context.

I'd also like to say that even a personal commitment to 'equality' as a moral standard can break down in your own life without too much pressure.

A notable instance that comes to mind is the public outcry over the "Ideal Conceal pistol", a handgun deliberately designed to look identical to a standard cellphone. If I'm a police officer in an urban location, finding out that local criminal groups, especially dangerous gangs, are arming themselves with this will mean that I'm at a far greater danger than otherwise and may be more likely to react violently to people with what apparently look like cellphones acting suspiciously. And this can be have sexist, ageist, homophobic, racist, et cetera implications if the particular criminal gangs are known for being made up of men, of gay people, of black people, of people under thirty, et cetera.

>>12505
>messy concept
I find law to be fairly messy, but perhaps that's personal.  Mostly in that although law has text, it's not text I'm qualified to interpret, so what I really must look at is the use of force by a state, and then I must presume that force to be associated with law.  Which is really just as messy, but maybe if you are qualified to interpret law, it's different.

>personal commitment...break down
Oh, of course.  I suppose the moral perspective determines the aspiration and what is regrettable.  If racial inequality is good, actually -- there's no need to apologize or try to do better.  Although, yes, in both cases there may be instances of prejudice.

>>12505
>Ideal Conceal pistol
It is a nifty idea, but the sights suck, and so does the ammo capacity (it only holds 2 rounds).  I suppose it would be adequate if you're going jogging and want to be able to neutralize a dog who bites you, but I wouldn't rely on it to deal with two-legged threats.

>>12505
>If I'm a police officer in an urban location, finding out that local criminal groups, especially dangerous gangs, are arming themselves with this will mean that I'm at a far greater danger than otherwise.
Not really.  With a good IWB holster and baggy clothing, it's easy to conceal normal compact pistols and sometimes even full-size pistols.  Gang members arming themselves with only an Ideal Conceal pistol would probably put cops at *less* risk, due to the very low ammo capacity.

>>12520
>>12519
It really has to be asked whether the concealability of such a gun is that much better than your typical derringer.
They aren't especially large, and ultimately, that seems to be all these are.

Who the hell here is racist? I'm about to have to call up my homies to come down there and beat that ass and I'm gonna have to suck on that dick until you isn't racist. And don't call me gay. I ain't ever been gay.

Okay, there seems to be a lot of misunderstandings in this.

Firstly, What is meant by racial equality is equality of intrinsic value, not necessarily of equal instrumental value. Secondly when it comes to ability, racial 'equality' in this sense means equally individualistic, ability can't be generalized in a useful way. Other races are human beings too, all individuals with individual growth and development, with unequal access to resources to nurture and develop innate potentials, too many factors effect development of individual abilities for generalizing across a category as broad if scope as race to have any sort of predictive power. Unfortunately, American culture has a tendency to conflate intrinsic and instrumental value, unfortunately. A thing's instrumental value is how useful it is as a means to an end, a things intrinsic worth is it's value as an end in itself. The former does not always determine the later, for instance happiness, the thing presumably every human has the inalienable right to pursue, is itself useless. Things we, as human beings, value intrinsically are usually the things we consider to have the highest moral consideration, like our family members. What is usually meant by races being equal is that all indivisual people are of equal moral consideration regardless of race. Thus saying they should have equal rights, equal enfranchisement in democracy, and equal access to opportunities. This view on race is something that totally comports with my moral compass and principles. They are worth my moral consideration because they are human, we are all worth equal moral consideration from birth, we are all the ends that civilization exist to serve. One's 'usefulness' is of no importance. And while equal moral consideration may be impossible in certain circumstances, like when needs conflict over scarce resources for instance, that doesn't imply that anyone's intrinsic worth is fixed and determined by any outgroup status. The only thing that, for me, determines one's worthiness of moral consideration is if they themselves devalues any other human's intrinsic value based solely on outgroup status.

As for what's meant by Race being a social construct is that it's a folk taxonomy that is not always consistent across history and more often served political convenience of the state or whomever had the de facto power at the time. It's a concept that served to obscure the much older concept of ethnicity that people in europe had used as the broadest ingroup category one could belong to, regardless of geographical origin, since the days ancient Roman empire, (given that empire's nature as a pan-European/Mediterranean state). Race categorizes people based on two arbitrary aspects of their ethnicities, the color of their skin and continent of origin (where skin color is generally darker the closer an ethnicity has origins near the equator), but is not always consistent where, geographically one race ends and one begins (human ethnicities form a cline across the surface of the earth). And sometimes define some ethnicities as not belonging to the same race despite things like similar skin tone and geographic origins, but reflect a need for justify the oppression an outside ethnicity. Like for example how Americans didn't always consider Irish or Italian people to be white, rooted in anti-catholic bigotry in the 19th century and wave of both immigrating to the US at the time, and used as justification for things such as employment and housing discrimination against both as well as suppression of political enfranchisement or even outright violence. Or take Jews, Judaism is a religion that is very much connected to an ancient semitic ethnic and national identity and which does not generally seek converts, so it was and is considered an ethnicity in and of itself by many but it was also a geographically scattered ethnicity that exist in a global diaspora of different ethnicities that have emerged over the course of 2500 years, all of which also share a lot more physiologically and genetically with their geographically closest neighboring ethnicities than with other acient Jewish ethnicities on other continents ... but have historically been excluded from being considered white, no matter how light skinned and European European jews can be, insanely enough.

Race is a useless layer of categorization for physical anthropologist for this reason, it grossly over-simplifies biological and genetic diversity within the species and of course is not always a logically rigorous taxonomy out of political convenience. It's not quite like subspecies given that no races are reproductively incompatible with each other, and mixed race/ethnic people are not incapable of sexual reproduction either, meaning they all meet the biological definition of a species but not a subspecies. Ethnicity is also a social construct but one more rooted in geographically defined and partially constrained gene pools that, over time, have certain alleles become shared by most of the population of the gene pool, beyond that people of those gene pools still nonetheless share 99% of their genetic code on (typically) 23 pairs of chromosomes with all other humans.

>>13366
I don't think there's anything wrong with being racist

Can you imagine banning someone over their opinion?

yeah, they are pretty much cosmetic. this was established long ago, and everyone should have learned about it in high school.

>>13367
Racism is healthy. Racism is natural. Racism is what separates man from plant. Has a plant ever called you a nigger? Exhibit A.