Subject: Re: On interracial relationships, or anything
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:05:56 GMT
Rich Thompson (thomprr@ego.psych.mcgill.ca) wrote:
: > Er... if race is a "false premise", then "race-based" practices
: > would not be possible. The original poster's statement was
: > that "race does not exist". Quite simply, my point remains
: > that if it does not exist, actions based on it also
: > could not be possible, and would not exist.
: I'm really having trouble understanding how this is necessarily true.
: Isn't it rather like saying, "If Jesus Christ weren't divine, Christianity
: would not be possible"?
No. There is a difference between a belief premise and a
fact premise. Say the police department has a height requirement
for its recruits. Then discrimination based on height could
not be possible unless it were possible to observe, and
presumably measure, height. Race is like height. Racial
characteristics are a matter of external observation, like
height. The *fact* of racial difference does not ipso facto
require discrimination based on race, but it enables discrimination
based on race because of its existence. The police department
is free at any time to drop its height requirement. White
folk are free at any time to stop racism (white supremacy), and
to apologize for past crimes, to beg forgiveness, and to pay
a few trillion dollars owed in reparations.
The divinity of Christ is another matter. Christianity is
predicated upon a doctrine of belief, which Christians presumably
hope corresponds to reality. The premise though is the belief,
as distinct from the reality. Thus, Christianity could not
exist (that word again), unless people believed, or
professed to believe, in the divinity of Christ. That is not
the same as saying that Christianity could not exist unless
Christ were in fact divine.
: Aren't people capable of acting on false premisses? The fact that people
: believe that something exists surely isn't prima facae evidence for its
: existence, is it?
To deny a "belief" in race, qua observable physical and
physiognomic fact, is to me like denying a "belief"
in height. If you can measure someone's height, and I
can measure that height also, and your measurements
pretty much always accord with my measurements, then
"belief" as such is not at issue. It is the same with
race. If you ask anyone in America, what race is
Colin Powell, or Whoopie Goldberg, or George Clinton,
or Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, you will find that
their is unanimity on the (honest) answers. Therefore
race exists. Now, whether you take race and make it
the premise of certain behavior is a separate issue.
It may then become an enabling premise for such behavior,
in the same way that height is an enabling premise
for police recruitment predicated on height as a
variable of discrimination, but in the same way there
is some other value premise at work motivating such
discrimination, racial discrimination is more importantly
premised on a moral debility that we have seen time
and again wherever the European has gone. That debility
is *not* a universal condition, although *reactions*
to the conditions created by racism (white supremacy)
may mislead one into thinking that that may be the case.
: Many white people act on the mistaken (or evil, or false- all fit) belief
: that Black people are intellectually inferior. Is this evidence that Black
: people are inferior?
No, but it might be evidence of the contrary.
(( cuts ))
: > The simple truth in this matter is (a) that race exists, and
: > the fact of its existence allows a global system of racism
: > (white supremacy) to be practiced, even as (b) it is clear that
: > this racism (white supremacy) is not so much "stupid", as evil.
: This isn't necessarily true. Stupid and evil aren't mutually exclusive
: options. utilitarians would argue that it is an action's (or belief's)
: stupidity that makes it evil.
No, but you don't hear on the evening news "A man was
charged with jay-walking today. He had just emerged
from a bank carrying a brown bag stuffed with cash he
had just obtained from a teller in a hold-up."
: What, other than the existence of a global system of racism, do you
: believe constitutes evidence of the existence of race?
The sense faculties that allow us unerringly to classify
by race, to an even greater degree of inter-personal
consistency than estimating height, say, by eye.
: > and perhaps another thread. "Stupid" though, is not what
: > racism (white supremacy) is, and I see through such an attempted
: > disguise, which racism (white supremacy) is not above attempting.
: It certainly fits many definitions of stupid, actually. It also fits
: 'evil' as well. Characterising such a theory as stupid is only problematic
: if you have a mistaken dichotomy between evil and stupid.
No. I don't think we want to refer to the bank robber
as being merely a jay-walker, even though he may be both.
: Peace,
: Rich
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