Why is racism so villified in the West?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

And what about Roseanne losing her job because she said some woman looked like a monkey? Of course all the racist ''Progressives'' just ASSUMED she was saying it because the woman has a tanned complexion. Now why would they assume that? Are they unwittingly revealing their OWN dastardly thoughts, and trying to impose their misguided 'white guilt' onto others? Actually it's a compliment. I bet there are monkeys who insult each other by saying 'you look just like a human'. Oh dear, how racist!

Gosh. Did this woman even know she was 'black' until the racist ''Progressives'' pointed it out? I think I might be black too then
She's an attractive woman. I'm sure Roseanne must have been complimenting her, but I suppose that would depend on which kind of monkey she was talking about.



I assume it's not this kind. There is no resemblance whatsoever ↓

[Skip]

Seems like racists have suffered such excruciating treatment as having some stranger upbraid them on Twitter.
That would certainly justify refusing aid to millions of refugees you've been bombing out of their homes and farms for decades.
You've made your case.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

Seems like racists have suffered such excruciating treatment as having some stranger upbraid them on Twitter. That would certainly justify refusing aid to millions of refugees you've been bombing out of their homes and farms for decades. You've made your case.

So you think that sexual preference is racist?

And that is so incredibly far away from the case I was trying to make, you ended up in another ballpark; You just said something wasn't happening, and I showed that it does. Now as I said, most people don't have any issue if you have racial preferences in your dating world. In fact most of this PC stuff is grossly exaggerated. But you didn't need to invoke the lives of millions in order to say that the point is insignificant and you don't actually care to talk about it. There are always more pressing issues in the world, those things don't make whatever's being discussed worthless. You're the one who replied to it several times, I mean golly.

[Lacewing]

And what about Roseanne losing her job because she said some woman looked like a monkey?

I really don't get that. I don't think the woman looks like a monkey and I don't think it's terrible to say that she (or anyone) does. So what? It's just one person's opinion/insult. Seems like an overboard reaction. I think there are stupid people on this website who should shut the fuck up WAY BEFORE Roseanne does.

[Greta]

... nations have racially mixed populations with a great potential for conflict. Internal strife is bad for the operation of a country: it destabilizes the administration, threatens infrastructure and is expensive to contain.

Yes, although the attitude of a society towards racism depends on the government's and media's agendas.

Note that when politicians and moguls seek the exclusion of certain groups - in the west or anywhere else - they will certainly encourage racism, often via the "dog whistle". For example, Trump's reference to a group including the KKK as "some very fine people" while lambasting the black side.

The west has a history of this - Hitler and the Jews, Milosovich and the ethnic Albanians. As I write it strikes me (rather late) that racism is to a fair extent just a continuation of ancient battles - the sacking of Carthage, with continuing problems and colonisation between Euros and Africans, between the warring Abrahamic tribes, parties of the Crimean War, WWI and II.

All of these hatreds have been pushed under the carpet for the sake of civil order, but they never went away. Certainly understanding of the simple reality of human diversity has improved remarkably as a result of enforced civility, but there remains a persistent atavistic underbelly of hostility in all societies that readily flares up.

SNAFU. As per above-mentioned diversity, a certain percentage of the population will necessarily be more aggressive towards "otherness" than the majority. Channelling that aggression into something positive has always a challenge for societies.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Seems like racists have suffered such excruciating treatment as having some stranger upbraid them on Twitter.
That would certainly justify refusing aid to millions of refugees you've been bombing out of their homes and farms for decades.
You've made your case.

What do you mean?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Apparently the 'tweet' was so vile and vomit-inducingly horrific that you can't find it anywhere. As far as I can decipher, she compared a 'forty nine percent white' woman to the main female ape character from 'Planet of the Apes'. So where did 'monkey' come from? Do Americans not know the difference between monkeys and apes? You can't compare a human to an ape, because humans ARE apes! And the character isn't even a real non-human ape folks. She's wearing makeup Did the ''Progressive witch-smellers'' think the comment was 'racist' towards white people or black people? I'm confused
I can't really see the resemblance but she might have been referring to one of the many re-makes. So where is the 'racism' in the 'tweet'?
Americans are completely insane.
Roseannegate: more blatant racism from the low-intelligence subspecies of ape known as ''Progressiveape''.
Roseanne, however, deserves no sympathy. Her grovelling and disingenuous 'apology' (for what?) was far more offensive than her inoffensive 'tweet'. She should have just said, 'Oh, get stuffed'.

[Greta]

The sensitivity stems from a long history of black people being treated as subhuman, ape-like. Not fully human. This was used as an excuse for generations of atrocities. It's hard to know what it's like to carry that history without being part of that black culture and experiencing race discrimination first hand.

Meanwhile Pygmies of the Congo have long been treated as sub-human by the neighbouring Bantu population: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cong ... SKBN14W2IQ.

I thought NdGT had an ideal response to the idea when he noted that the only ones who are hairy like other apes are whites

But yeah, people are too often ignorant in not parsing monkeys and apes when we are so obviously and unmistakeably the latter. Unfortunately, there's some bad history involved with the idea of our "apeness" (as above) because ideally we should all be happy to recognise the fact that we are all apes.

You'd think that surely we were not STILL insecure about our similarities to our simian relatives after building skyscrapers and space programs. We humans we might have proved the point that we are not quite like other species by now. Hopefully we don't have to kill them all to realise it.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

The sensitivity stems from a long history of black people being treated as subhuman, ape-like. Not fully human. This was used as an excuse for generations of atrocities. It's hard to know what it's like to carry that history without being part of that black culture and experiencing race discrimination first hand.

Meanwhile Pygmies of the Congo have long been treated as sub-human by the neighbouring Bantu population: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cong ... SKBN14W2IQ.

I thought NdGT had an ideal response to the idea when he noted that the only ones who are hairy like other apes are whites

But yeah, people are too often ignorant in not parsing monkeys and apes when we are so obviously and unmistakeably the latter. Unfortunately, there's some bad history involved with the idea of our "apeness" (as above) because ideally we should all be happy to recognise the fact that we are all apes.

You'd think that surely we were not STILL insecure about our similarities to our simian relatives after building skyscrapers and space programs. We humans we might have proved the point that we are not quite like other species by now. Hopefully we don't have to kill them all to realise it.

No one in their right mind would be offended by that tweet. 'Offended-on-behalf-of' is not the same thing. "Progressives'' spend their whole existence sniffing around looking for things that might be 'offensive' to a hypothetical person or 'group of persons'.
I'm not responsible for human activity of decades or hundreds of years ago in another country. Not one single living black person in the US has EVER been a slave, and if a tiny group of white Americans thinks black people are an inferior species then ''Progressives'' need to take it up with them.
Fuck. The English considered the Irish to be sub-human. They treated them like shit. My Irish ancestry is pretty recent, Fenians and all, and I would look like a proper pillock if I got all offended when someone cracked an 'Irish joke'.

[Skip]

[Internal strife is bad for the operation of a country: it destabilizes the administration, threatens infrastructure and is expensive to contain.]
Yes, although the attitude of a society towards racism depends on the government's and media's agendas.

That doesn't affect the outcome. Fomenting racial or ethnic tension is always going to cause trouble for a population and a nation. The governments - no, not entire governments, but a faction taking over governance, the way the fascists are doing all over Europe right now - playing up those tensions don't care what happens in five or ten years: they're going to take the loot and abscond and leave the mess behind.
Anyway, no society has a single, unanimous attitude. The attitude - genuine or misrepresented - of 38% carries the nation.
To its doom. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cyprus....
Those conflicts are never about race or ethnicity. Most of the traditional enmities are between peoples who look similar and have common ancestry. The genuine conflict is always over resources/territory: peoples who seek to occupy the same place at the same time, without sharing. Often, these peoples have been squeezed into a too-small space by conquering and colonizing power beyond either of their strength to resist. That engenders friction which, clashes, feuds, traditional hatreds, armed conflict. Which, in turn, waste manpower and material and diminish even further the wealth over which they're fighting and create new victims, new villains, new bitterness and rage. Like fighting cocks or dogs thrown into the pit, they have no recourse.
The tension can be defused by intelligent leadership and co-operative efforts to increase the wealth and distribute it equitably.
But that's hard work.

Easier and faster to ignite dormant resentments, scrape the scabs off old wounds, feed negative stereotypes, encourage open hostility. Then offer the favoured side all the spoils wrested from the 'less deserving' other people. The spoils can be as obvious as the Sudetanland or as nebulous as "good-paying jobs'. The leader who fuels enough unthinking rage and hate, sweetened with just enough unthinking self-importance and greed can persuade his followers to literally any level of atrocity against the designated target. He can get anything he wants, short-term.

All of these hatreds have been pushed under the carpet for the sake of civil order, but they never went away. Certainly understanding of the simple reality of human diversity has improved remarkably as a result of enforced civility, but there remains a persistent atavistic underbelly of hostility in all societies that readily flares up.

It's not atavistic. It's practical. Civility may be enforced; public education may stress tolerance, but the disparity is real and continuous. In political and economic power; in influence and social status, the dominant groups goes on being dominant behind a polite facade. Lip service doesn't tear down the ghetto. One sentence added like a 100-year afterthought to the constitution doesn't fill the gaps. Pretending everyone is middle-class now doesn't erase the working-class and underclass experience.

Segregation might be an answer, if there were any place to segregate. But, like all the other assholes pushing this agenda, that's really shorthand for " I want it all to myself; make them go away."

[vegetariantaxidermy]

[Internal strife is bad for the operation of a country: it destabilizes the administration, threatens infrastructure and is expensive to contain.]
Yes, although the attitude of a society towards racism depends on the government's and media's agendas.

That doesn't affect the outcome. Fomenting racial or ethnic tension is always going to cause trouble for a population and a nation. The governments - no, not entire governments, but a faction taking over governance, the way the fascists are doing all over Europe right now - playing up those tensions don't care what happens in five or ten years: they're going to take the loot and abscond and leave the mess behind.
Anyway, no society has a single, unanimous attitude. The attitude - genuine or misrepresented - of 38% carries the nation.
To its doom. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cyprus....
Those conflicts are never about race or ethnicity. Most of the traditional enmities are between peoples who look similar and have common ancestry. The genuine conflict is always over resources/territory: peoples who seek to occupy the same place at the same time, without sharing. Often, these peoples have been squeezed into a too-small space by conquering and colonizing power beyond either of their strength to resist. That engenders friction which, clashes, feuds, traditional hatreds, armed conflict. Which, in turn, waste manpower and material and diminish even further the wealth over which they're fighting and create new victims, new villains, new bitterness and rage. Like fighting cocks or dogs thrown into the pit, they have no recourse.
The tension can be defused by intelligent leadership and co-operative efforts to increase the wealth and distribute it equitably.
But that's hard work.

Easier and faster to ignite dormant resentments, scrape the scabs off old wounds, feed negative stereotypes, encourage open hostility. Then offer the favoured side all the spoils wrested from the 'less deserving' other people. The spoils can be as obvious as the Sudetanland or as nebulous as "good-paying jobs'. The leader who fuels enough unthinking rage and hate, sweetened with just enough unthinking self-importance and greed can persuade his followers to literally any level of atrocity against the designated target. He can get anything he wants, short-term.

All of these hatreds have been pushed under the carpet for the sake of civil order, but they never went away. Certainly understanding of the simple reality of human diversity has improved remarkably as a result of enforced civility, but there remains a persistent atavistic underbelly of hostility in all societies that readily flares up.

It's not atavistic. It's practical. Civility may be enforced; public education may stress tolerance, but the disparity is real and continuous. In political and economic power; in influence and social status, the dominant groups goes on being dominant behind a polite facade. Lip service doesn't tear down the ghetto. One sentence added like a 100-year afterthought to the constitution doesn't fill the gaps. Pretending everyone is middle-class now doesn't erase the working-class and underclass experience.

Segregation might be an answer, if there were any place to segregate. But, like all the other assholes pushing this agenda, that's really shorthand for " I want it all to myself; make them go away."

Self-proclaimed ''Progressives'' are feeding the 'right' and playing RIGHT into its hands. Ironic that you mention 'fascists'. You've descended into Walker-style gobbledygook, Skip, because you don't really have a clue what you stand for.
''Progressives'' claim the moral high-ground and lion's share of empathy and kindness, but when was the last time they did ANYTHING practical that carried any kind of risk to themselves eg. full-on anti-war protests, or anti-death penalty ones, said or did anything that was critical of the military, or in fact did ANYTHING of any practical use to anyone? Social justice warriors they are NOT. Their despicable misuse of the 'r' word is unforgivable, but it's so much easier to throw that around than to actually do something useful.
The trouble with ''Progressivism'' is that there is no real passion behind it, and a whole lot of cowardice. What could be more cowardly than targeting the most vulnerable in society: children? The Nazis had this tactic down to a fine art. Is that where y'all get your ideas from?
I have far more respect for organisations like PETA, which at least knows what it stands for, has a worthy agenda, and does something practical about it. Snivelling ''Progressivism'' is nothing more than a creeping, cancerous mob-think, practiced by hypocrites with no real heart or passion. 'It's all about IMAGE, darling'.

[Skip]

You'd think that surely we were not STILL insecure about our similarities to our simian relatives after building skyscrapers and space programs. We humans we might have proved the point that we are not quite like other species by now. Hopefully we don't have to kill them all to realise it.

You won't sell that to the Bible Belt: they still don't "believe in" evolution or climate change. To the white supremacists, and all their quieter, better-behaved (so far) fellow travelers, calling someone an ape or a monkey is all the same, and as insulting as you can be. It is a categorical denial of humanity to people of a very specific phenotype and both the offender and his target know the significance. This, in the form of taunts, jibes and outright bullying, is what black people in the south have been living with for 150 years after their supposed emancipation. It's not just a sensitivity; it's a real and constant fact of life.

I hope you understand where my reaction comes from. You know something about propaganda and how it works.
The bottom line of the OP is segregation. Everything about dating and aesthetic preference, tweeting and sexual attraction and gormless entertainers, that's all smoke. Cover the big important evil with a pile of small, silly and trivial material to divert attention from the real intent.
The only significance of that message is to make discrimination so mundane as to become acceptable.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

Apparently the 'tweet' was so vile and vomit-inducingly horrific that you can't find it anywhere. As far as I can decipher, she compared a 'forty nine percent white' woman to the main female ape character from 'Planet of the Apes'. So where did 'monkey' come from? Do Americans not know the difference between monkeys and apes? You can't compare a human to an ape, because humans ARE apes! And the character isn't even a real non-human ape folks. She's wearing makeup Did the ''Progressive witch-smellers'' think the comment was 'racist' towards white people or black people? I'm confused
I can't really see the resemblance but she might have been referring to one of the many re-makes. So where is the 'racism' in the 'tweet'?
Americans are completely insane.
Roseannegate: more blatant racism from the low-intelligence subspecies of ape known as ''Progressiveape''.
Roseanne, however, deserves no sympathy. Her grovelling and disingenuous 'apology' (for what?) was far more offensive than her inoffensive 'tweet'. She should have just said, 'Oh, get stuffed'.

While your workaround here is.. interesting, if Roseanne really did compare this woman to an ape from planet of the apes because she was black, I have to say that's almost definitely someone with racist thoughts in mind.

She shouldn't have had her show taken away, though - only if her viewership took a hit because of it. Audience is what should be deciding what stays and goes, not a vocal bunch.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Apparently the 'tweet' was so vile and vomit-inducingly horrific that you can't find it anywhere. As far as I can decipher, she compared a 'forty nine percent white' woman to the main female ape character from 'Planet of the Apes'. So where did 'monkey' come from? Do Americans not know the difference between monkeys and apes? You can't compare a human to an ape, because humans ARE apes! And the character isn't even a real non-human ape folks. She's wearing makeup Did the ''Progressive witch-smellers'' think the comment was 'racist' towards white people or black people? I'm confused
I can't really see the resemblance but she might have been referring to one of the many re-makes. So where is the 'racism' in the 'tweet'?
Americans are completely insane.
Roseannegate: more blatant racism from the low-intelligence subspecies of ape known as ''Progressiveape''.
Roseanne, however, deserves no sympathy. Her grovelling and disingenuous 'apology' (for what?) was far more offensive than her inoffensive 'tweet'. She should have just said, 'Oh, get stuffed'.

While your workaround here is.. interesting, if Roseanne really did compare this woman to an ape from planet of the apes because she was black, I have to say that's almost definitely someone with racist thoughts in mind.

She shouldn't have had her show taken away, though - only if her viewership took a hit because of it. Audience is what should be deciding what stays and goes, not a vocal bunch.

How is it 'racist? The tweet didn't even mention 'race' as far as I'm aware. Perhaps the woman does look like that character. How the fuck is it racist to say it? Roseanne even said 'Oh, I thought that woman was white' because apparently, if she'd said it about a 'white' person, then there wouldn't have been a problem. I mean, how twisted and fucked up is that??? I've seen actors who look like chimps especially, and they can be either black or white. Say it about a 'black' person and it's 'racist' (even if it's true). All humans look like chimps, but some people have faces that more closely resemble them than others. A lot of white people look like chimps rather than gorillas while some black Africans look similar to gorillas. No human can look exactly like them because there are too many differences that we all have. Chimp and gorilla faces don't have external lips like humans, so if anything, the thin lips of many white people is closer to a chimp's mouth. The biggest differences are in the body shape. The humans that most closely resemble chimps in body shape are babies and toddlers, with the short legs and long body.
If yanks think it's 'racist' to point it out then boo hoo hoo. I'm not a yank and I don't give a flying fuck what any of those lunatics 'think'.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Apparently the 'tweet' was so vile and vomit-inducingly horrific that you can't find it anywhere. As far as I can decipher, she compared a 'forty nine percent white' woman to the main female ape character from 'Planet of the Apes'. So where did 'monkey' come from? Do Americans not know the difference between monkeys and apes? You can't compare a human to an ape, because humans ARE apes! And the character isn't even a real non-human ape folks. She's wearing makeup Did the ''Progressive witch-smellers'' think the comment was 'racist' towards white people or black people? I'm confused
I can't really see the resemblance but she might have been referring to one of the many re-makes. So where is the 'racism' in the 'tweet'?
Americans are completely insane.
Roseannegate: more blatant racism from the low-intelligence subspecies of ape known as ''Progressiveape''.
Roseanne, however, deserves no sympathy. Her grovelling and disingenuous 'apology' (for what?) was far more offensive than her inoffensive 'tweet'. She should have just said, 'Oh, get stuffed'.

While your workaround here is.. interesting, if Roseanne really did compare this woman to an ape from planet of the apes because she was black, I have to say that's almost definitely someone with racist thoughts in mind.

She shouldn't have had her show taken away, though - only if her viewership took a hit because of it. Audience is what should be deciding what stays and goes, not a vocal bunch.

How is it 'racist? The tweet didn't even mention 'race' as far as I'm aware. Perhaps the woman does look like that character. How the fuck is it racist to say it? Roseanne even said 'Oh, I thought that woman was white' because apparently, if she'd said it about a 'white' person, then there wouldn't have been a problem. I mean, how twisted and fucked up is that??? I've seen actors who look like chimps especially, and they can be either black or white. Say it about a 'black' person and it's 'racist' (even if it's true). All humans look like chimps, but some people have faces that more closely resemble them than others. A lot of white people look like chimps rather than gorillas while some black Africans look similar to gorillas. No human can look exactly like them because there are too many differences that we all have. Chimp and gorilla faces don't have external lips like humans, so if anything, the thin lips of many white people is closer to a chimp's mouth. The biggest differences are in the body shape. The humans that most closely resemble chimps in body shape are babies and toddlers, with the short legs and long body.
If yanks think it's 'racist' to point it out then boo hoo hoo. I'm not a yank and I don't give a flying fuck what any of those lunatics 'think'.

"I'm not a yank..." Thank God.

PhilX