Brit Dems wrote:Hobbes' Choice wrote:David Handeye wrote:Actually Brit Dems is saying that he's a victim of racism.
If you, any public officer you could be, after questioned, answer to the questioner to be "white", then automatically you are making the questioner a victim of racism.
Only if you classify yourself as "human", and not as white or black or yellow, you are not a racist. I think Brit Dems is saying that racism has becoming institutional classifying method. If so, that's not a good news.
If you feel you are a victim of racism, the only response is to not be racist yourself.
For myself, I am 100% against all forms of racism; positive and negative. It is simply wrong to judge a person's character on their skin colour. In the same way we do not judge a person on the colour of their eyes, so we ought not to judge on the colour of their skin.
How can one be a victim of Racism and a Racist at the same time?
What do you mean by "positive and negative" Racism?
Are you saying the British Government is wrong to record Race and Ethnicity?
Easy. When you define yourself by a race then you are a racist. When you provide favours to others or restrict access and privileges to others you are a racist. It ought not take too much imagination to see how you can disadvantage, say, a white person who identifies himself by his colour. Racism knows no colour bar. Racists can be found in all "races".
When you provide one race with an advantage you are disadvantaging another race.
Positive racism is an organisation like the NAACP, which provides grants to education for black people in the USA, or the Jewish Writers Guild of America. Whites of similar circumstances to blacks achieving those awards, cannot apply for those grants and are thus the victim of a racist policy.
Negative racism is when you seek to specifically disadvantage a person because of their race. In South Africa blacks where prevented from using certain facilities, and attending certain schools. This in turn, gave advantage to whites.
I think that recording the "race" of a person is a racist policy
ipso facto.. Whilst it might have intentions to study the impact of the idea of race, and to understand how different races are treated, it bolsters the thought that it is okay to define people by their race, and in doing so establishes "race" as a valid category. This is a vicious circle, that is hard to break.
For there to be racial equality (and by that I mean even unprejudiced access to rights and privileges), a person's "Race" whatever the fuck that is, should not be a factor.
Whenever I answer one of those idiotic forms I always put "OTHER", and "homo sapiens". If there is no space for it, I add it to the page.