What is is racism?

Question

Every body knows that some good and bad behaviour and capabilities are more common in some races than in others.Yet If some one comments on that, or starts making comparisons, he/she is met with cries of racism. I think as long as one does not advocate something unjust to other races, he/she should be allowed that freedom of speech. What do you think?

Answer 1

racism is the act of bringing down another race for the benefit of another.

Answer 2

Your contention that certain characteristics are more common in some races than others is hogwash. People are people, and there is good elements and bad elements in each and every race
While i am an advocate of free speech, I believe that with freedom comes responsibility.
I find it irresponsible to stereotype and make commentaries based on false information or myths. I am black but I do not have a large member, am not on welfare, do not buy or sell drugs, don't have rhythm, don't like watermelon,etc.
It offends me to be categorized because of the color of my skin, especially since most of the attributes that your average redneck would apply to my race don't apply to me. The person who would take the time to know me would realize this quickly and have to forego the temptation to sterotype.

Answer 3

Believe it or not, but your question could be considered by some people to be racist. What part you ask? Where you state....."bad behavior and capabilities are more common in some races than in others.." There is an implication there that you feel some people are, by their nature, origin or race - that they are bad - or prone to doing bad things.

Racism is generally viewed as something negative. Look at Adolf Hitler in Germany. He felt and preached that blond, blue-eyed Germans were superior to everyone else in the world and he had a intense hatred for Jewish people.

Basically racism usually means you feel one group of people are just naturally superior or better than another> This is usually based on characteristics such as race, skin color, religion, sex, origin, or sexual preference.

There are some stereotypes that can be positive, but we don't usually refer to it as racism. Some people may remark, for example, that orientals have better studying habits than Americans or Hispanics and blacks are better at dancing that some other groups. When not said in the negative, it usually is not considered racist.

Answer 4

Racism is discrimination based on race. If your "free speech" is not intended to belittle a certain race, then I see no reason why it should be considered racism. On the other hand, comments that are based on negative prejudgements of a certain race can sometimes be offensive.

Answer 5

Your statement is racism, "good and bad behavior and capabilities are more commom in some races ?????

no not everybody knows it, actually everybody should know that all races are equal, and normally it is the social economic level that has more to do with certain behavior.

Answer 6

Racism is the inherit belief in the superiority of one race over all others thereby the right to dominance.

Answer 7

I completely agree with the point you're making. This article does a great job exposing what people really mean when they cry racism: http://www.amren.com/917issue/9107issue.html

Answer 8

Most folks are Racist
A racist is a person who thinks their race is best.

If another persons race is better in your mind then you have chosen that race above your race. You are a racist

If you choose between races in which you are not a member of..You are a racist....We are all racist.........

Answer 9

No everyone doesn't know that because that my friend is racism!!

A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism
Ayn Rand
The Virtue of Selfishness
ISBN: 0451163931
Sept 1963


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Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage - the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas - or of inherited knowledge - which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name" (as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another) - the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at Carnegie Hall (as if the achievements of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another) - the parents who search genealogical trees in order to evaluate their prospective sons-in-law - the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history - all these are samples of racism, the atavistic manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany, the atrocities of today's so-called "newly emerging nations."

The theory that holds "good blood" or "bad blood" as a moral-intellectual criterion, can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.

Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a given race by the historical achievements of some of its members. The frequent historical achievements of some of its members. The frequent historical A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

spectacle of a great innovator who, in his lifetime, is jeered, denounced, obstructed, persecuted by his countrymen, and then, a few years after his death, is enshrined in a national monument and hailed as a proof of the greatness of the German (or French or Italian or Cambodian) race - is a revolting a spectacle of collectivist expropriation, perpetrated by racists, as any expropriation of material wealth perpetrated by communists.

Answer 10

IGNORANCE AND SELF HATE.