Race - Dolezal, Dylan roof, white supremacy groups - some comments

Race, yup I'm going there :-)
Its a subject that can be touchy but its also a subject I have been fascinated with my entire life due to my personal race which is biracial.
I was born in Taiwan, my mother is Chinese and my father is white.
1st off for most of my life, I have filled out form after various forms and was always unable to answer the race question with only boxes to check mark.
The Other box just strikes me as a bit disrespectful but its the box I had to checkmark.
As a society, we have come a long way. Last few years I have been able to answer the race question on forms pretty accurately. A lot of choices including various combinations of races. Hooray.
With Dolezal and now the incident in South Carolina, I am thinking about race again.
As I was surfing, came across a fascinating web site examining a white supremacy message board regarding the tragic massacre in SC.
Interesting enough, most of the white supremacists showed sympathy for the victims :-)
They are also very worried for their movement due to the recent tragedy in SC.
I didn't realize this till I read this article but this part of the white supremacy movement is against violence :-)
Now we get into the nitty gritty, they believe in the separation of the races.
Hmm. In order to have separation, we have to define race. Where do I stand in their eyes, clearly not white even though my father was pure Irish/American.
How about my children if I had one with a white wife? Grandchildren?
What percentage determines race?
I have been told by Blacks that if you have a drop of black blood in your ancestry, you are black.
It would not surprise me if Dolezal goes back many many generations, you may find black. If true, could she be considered black.
There are blacks that look like Dolezal because in reality, they are multiracial. But with at least a drop of black blood, they are considered black.
Maybe there should be no races because the reality is different shades of ancestry. My nephew is 1/2 Italian 1/4 Irish 1/4 Chinese.
Maybe we should evolve into defining our racial background in percentages rather then race.

Quote: terapined

Now we get into the nitty gritty, they believe in the separation of the races.

People who advocate this should be taken at their word and be kept separate from the human race.

The whole idea of race is so nebulous and tenuous as to be ridiculous. There are a few genetic implications which are quite real, but that's a private matter between a person and their physician.

Quote: Nareed

People who advocate this should be taken at their word and be kept separate from the human race.

The whole idea of race is so nebulous and tenuous as to be ridiculous. There are a few genetic implications which are quite real, but that's a private matter between a person and their physician.

Race, its an unusual game.
Take Tiger Woods. The world considers him black yet I dont consider myself white even though my father was Irish American?
We are both mixed-racial.
Is Tiger Wood Black? He refers to himself as Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian. That is reality.
What is the percentage to be considered Black? Why is a small percentage of black blood the deciding factor in determining race?

Quote: terapined

Race, its an unusual game.
Take Tiger Woods. The world considers him black yet I dont consider myself white even though my father was Irish American?
We are both mixed-racial.

We all are.

"Race" is nothing more than adaptations to local conditions and practices. There's no larger significance, no deep meaning to it. Except when some widespread adaptations can lead to genetic diseases. Like sickle-cell anemia or Tay-Sachs disease. These arise from adaptations to malaria and tuberculosis. Absent that, the idea of "race" is entirely irrelevant.

Surely Republicans can do a better job of explaining the conservative critique of "hate" crimes without sounding like tone-deaf idiots denying the obvious.

The dumb conservative's response: "Nah, Dylann Roof isn't a racist. In fact, he just loves black people! It's Christians he hates."

The smart conservative's response: "Of course Dylann Roof is a racist lunatic. But I'm not interested in prosecuting Roof for being a racist lunatic. I'm interested in prosecuting Roof for murdering 9 innocent people. In God's eyes, all of us are His children, and all life is precious, no matter the race."

Is that so hard?

Quote: terapined

I have been told by Blacks that if you have a drop of black blood in your ancestry, you are black.

Funny, because that was once a standard to lock people out of various institutions.

Amazing to me is how many people cannot comprehend how you do a % breakdown. If you were born pre-1980s in most cases your grandparents were "pure" or "nearly pure." IOW, my grandmother's mother came on a boat from Hungary. Not sure abut her dad, but at the time, and some research verifies this, they lived in a ghettoized neighborhood and chances of intermarriage to say an Irish kid would be nil. The other three grandparents are all of Irish-German decent of various percents. So I told someone I was 1/4 Hungarian and 3/4 Irish-German. They asked about the percents as though I was splitting atoms. IIRC Michael Scott made up some impossible percent he was American Indian or something on "Diversity Day." Mr. Brown IIRC called him on it.

Quote: reno

The smart conservative's response: "Of course Dylann Roof is a racist lunatic. But I'm not interested in prosecuting Roof for being a racist lunatic. I'm interested in prosecuting Roof for murdering 9 innocent people. In God's eyes, all of us are His children, and all life is precious, no matter the race."

Is that so hard?

Glad you are calling me a "smart conservative" without even realizing it, as that is pretty near my response. I would get rid of all "hate crime" legislation as it causes way more problems than it solves. Of course, I already read an article by a black female kind of spouting off that we only question the mental stability of the perp if the perp is a white male. So we need people on all sides to knock it off.

Quote: AZDuffman

Funny, because that was once a standard to lock people out of various institutions.
.

At one time, blacks we're considered an inferior
race and if you had any of their blood at all,
you were inferior also. You were considered
black even if you didn't look black. Still holds
true now, darker skin tone and any black
features at all gets you labeled black.

Today it's done to promote the black race.
Tiger Woods and Obama and others make
blacks look good in the eyes of the world
and supposedly raises the bar.

Quote: AZDuffman

I would get rid of all "hate crime" legislation as it causes way more problems than it solves.

There's some reasonable logic inherent to the conservative critique of hate crimes: government should outlaw certain actions (murder) but not certain thoughts (hate). Describing it in 1st Amendment terms is rational.

But let me play devil's advocate: vandalizing a Jewish synagogue with a swastika? On paper, that's just vandalism & trespassing; in most states those are misdemeanors, sometimes just infractions. The punishment for vandalism just isn't commensurate with the crime of defacing a synagogue with a symbol intended to terrorize a community. Similarly, a KKK klansman who hangs a noose from a tree in the front yard of a Southern black family, or lights fire to a cross? Those crimes warrant a serious punishment, even though on paper the crime is just vandalism & trespassing.

Even without convicting Dylann Roof of "hate," the punishment for going on a killing spree is already adequately severe. The punishment for certain lesser crimes (swastikas, burning crosses) might not be, hence the need for hate crime legislation.

Quote: reno

Is that so hard?

It requires a lack of a desire for political suicide.

Quote: Nareed

It requires a lack of a desire for political suicide.

Exactly.

Fox News needs viewers, and the Republican party needs voters. But Fox can be extremely profitable even if they only appeal to a very small subset of the American populace. The Republican party, on the other hand, needs to appeal to a wide variety of Americans to get the 51% for an electoral win. When the talking heads on Fox insist that Dylann isn't racist, (!) they're sabotaging the Republican brand name far more effectively than the Democrats ever could.

The Republican party's worst enemy isn't the Democrats. Their worst enemy is Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right-wing media noise machine.