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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

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donotdespisethesnake:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on July 07, 2020, 09:50:31 am ---I know all of that, but you've missed the point. It's no coincidence the word black, rather than African or even brown, were originally chosen to describe Africans, because it has negative connotations. Black animals are often seen as bad/evil, avoid black cats, the black sheep of the family etc.

It's stupid to talk about black and white people, because the terms aren't even descriptive! No one is black or white, but brown or pink.

--- End quote ---

No you have missed my point. It is a coincidence that African people were called black, and the association with evil. They were called black long before the idea of white supremacy. Historically races  mixed and treated equally. For example, a commander at a Roman camp in Britain was black. Of course, Romans thought their culture was superior, but the people who became Roman citizens was very broad.

It wasn't until Europeans were looking for excuses to go colonising and enslaving other continents, that the idea of white supremacy was created to justify it, backed up by bogus theology and science. The idea that Africans were called black because of association with evil is a modern retrofitting.

coppice:

--- Quote from: paulca on July 07, 2020, 02:04:51 pm ---I have seen those statistics, they are correct, but they don't describe the issue.

I recall they show that more whites are killed or injured by police than blacks each year.

However only roughly 12% of the USA is black.  Therefore you are three to four times more likely to be injured or killed by police.

I believe this was an example by one of those YouTube mathematicians on when statistics are used incorrectly with serious consequences.

--- End quote ---
Why would you expect people to be killed in proportion to their number in a fair society? Some groups have far more interactions with the police. The number of black and white people killed by the police in the US is roughly in line with the number of interactions their group has with the police. The interesting question is why black people have far more interactions with the police in the US.

coppice:

--- Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on July 07, 2020, 04:31:37 pm ---It wasn't until Europeans were looking for excuses to go colonising and enslaving other continents, that the idea of white supremacy was created to justify it, backed up by bogus theology and science.

--- End quote ---
This is nonsense. Nobody ever felt the need to justify these things. Most of the colonising and enslaving through history has been between neighbouring groups of roughly the same ethnicity. In the first World War people in the UK could be riled up to fight by bizarre assertions like "Belgians eat babies". Finding adequate ways to demonise "the other" has never required any significant effort, and certainly no iffy intellectual underpinnings.

maginnovision:
The Hodge twins once told a story that one of them got pulled over for speeding 3 times in one day. It was because of racism... No wait it was that he was speeding. But he might have thought it was racism at the time because he had a poor mindset(victim mentality). They stopped thinking that way and things got better. It's not applicable to one race though. The same mindset pervades poor white people, poor Hispanics... If you think you can't change anything and people are keeping you from success you'll react accordingly and usually make things worse. It's the real problem with many people and communities that feel underprivileged. It's literally in their heads and nobody is stopping them from doing their best except themselves.

james_s:

--- Quote from: paulca on July 07, 2020, 02:04:51 pm ---I have seen those statistics, they are correct, but they don't describe the issue.

I recall they show that more whites are killed or injured by police than blacks each year.

However only roughly 12% of the USA is black.  Therefore you are three to four times more likely to be injured or killed by police.

I believe this was an example by one of those YouTube mathematicians on when statistics are used incorrectly with serious consequences.

--- End quote ---

That is still only part of the story though as it assumes that the same percentage of all races encounter the police with the same frequency, and it assumes that the crime rate is identical across all races, which does not seem to be the case. I don't have the numbers in front of me but my recollection is that 12% of the population commits a much larger percentage of the serious crime in the nation. Now I don't actually think it's caused by their race but there are certainly cultural and socioeconomic factors. Anyway the point is that statistics can be twisted to show almost anything but selectively ignoring various factors and only looking at the portion that favors the results you want to show.

I kind of suspect that most of the people who see racism everywhere they look are simply projecting their own racism on everyone else. Likewise not being racist myself I tend to assume that race was not the motivation behind an incident. My first impression on most of the police incidents is that they were not racially targeted because why would the police target people of a particular race? I mean I wouldn't, I'd target people who are committing crimes, that's what the police are supposed to do and from what I see, it's what most of them are doing.

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