> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.

"The way that a society treats its prisoners is one of the sharpest reflections of its character." - Nelson Mandela

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1998/980625_dcshr...

I did not know this but true. I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes. When talking about legal immigrants and refugees there is even less space.

The US is an outliner on prison terms and sizes etc. Under the surface it is hard to tell if the public lead the prisons or if the big prison business shapes public opinion but from the outside it seems crazy.

Different societies are at different places on the prison is for punishment to prison is for rehabilitation spectrum, and their reoffending rates reflect that.

> I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes.

That's exactly what the citation is about: how a society opts to treat its most vulnerable also shows what that society is truly about. Often times we see USians criticize Nordic countries because they lack cruelty in their prison system. How is that not a demonstration of the cruelty imbued in US culture?

This is my touchstone for evaluating any society: how does it deal with people without power?

> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes

Thus the rebranding of humans as “illegals”.

Especially when they arbitrarily change the rules so people who did everything by the book are now “illegals”. Especially when they “lose” paperwork somewhere inside of an enormous overworked and hostile bureaucracy.

It seems that changing rules retroactively is on the run for all capitalist world

I’m going to keep saying it anywho. We will see who was right in the Bardo.

I am slightly over three thousand years old.

oh please, everyone knows that its referring to their immigration status or legality of stay in country.

you surely must realize that any rational person just shrugs off listening to what else you might say when you start with such ridiculous interpretations

I was not aware and thank you for letting me know. When did you meet a rational person?

That term has been in use for at least the half century I’ve been alive. It’s a common word almost every where in the US, shows up in daily conversations, but it’s been deemed not politically correct. That’s why you maybe never heard it in media or from a politician in the past. This presidency is all about breaking political correctness though and it’s on brand. This is why his devotees love him. Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people. There’s unfortunately still a lot of deep seated racism in the US. Will take a thousand more years to really get rid of it. Political correctness is a way to force accelerated the process, it backfires when you push it too hard too fast. You’re trying to change culture faster than humans can be expected to change (pesky long lifespans and all). It doesn’t work well and cause a pressure cooker situation. Trump is the steam venting of years of political correctness and rapid progressive movement.

> Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people.

Nobody said you couldn't say them, it was that open bigotry is something everyone associates with being a person of low class. When it's used by the upper classes it's as a divide and conquer tactic to keep the lower classes from focusing on the group that's actually exploiting them.

The normalizing of open bigotry is a kind of 'death of despair' for US culture: it indicates that, en masse, people have given up on elevating their class in society and being better people, and have decided to just wallow in it. Blaming the 'other' isn't anything new, it's the basic lazy tribal default and it's the 'easy' button for a culture that simply gives up.

White Americans are almost exclusively their own most sensitive wordsmiths. If you heard how other people refer to themselves and others, it can be much worse and they think nothing of it. It’s just a silly word that describes the immigrant status and a segment of our demographic. It isn’t bigotry. You’re deciding to be offended more than anyone is trying to offend you. This is political correctness gone too far.

Counter theory: maybe you don’t know enough non-white people or don’t know them well. But I mean, your last line gives the game away. It was a lie in the 90s when Rush Limbaugh was selling it and it’s a lie now. It’s always a straight white theoretically Christian dude peddling it which, again, you guys show your cards right at the table because you have never had to play a non-rigged game.

As a certified “brown person,” white Christians are the most politically correct demographic on the planet.

Thank you. They can’t hear it from me, not enough melanin to observe obvious things.

As a certified purple person, sure thing.

I know plenty non white people and actually am close enough with their entire family that I know what culture their racisms are aimed towards. Why would i even make that comment if I didn’t.

I also know plenty of illegal immigrants and family. I own a construction company in Texas and have lived here my whole life. They find this sort of American strife comical, it’s not based on their reality. If I were to call them an “illegal” or even other common old school phrase, like “wet back” they laugh and call me the words they have for me. Nobody with real problems cares about this stuff. They generally like Trump even since ICE stuff.

Genuinely though, such a lazy response to act like you caught me in something. People like you trying to weaponize political correctness is precisely what puts guys like Trump in the oval.

> am close enough with their entire family

Honey. You just told on yourself.

What does that string of words even mean?

Like I grew up with them and their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, did holidays and really know each others families quite well. More than I had a friend from X in 8th grade. It’s not hard to understand unless you have not experienced it yourself.

I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the US and was pretty poor (not in some white enclave). On my street I think we had families from 16 different countries, all continents represented often multiple nationalities from each, and we frequently had block parties and gatherings out in the street.

I was asking what the other poster meant by “honey you’re telling on yourself.” It seems like some awkward attempt to channel a southern colloquialism but it doesn’t make sense in context.

Oh lol, sorry - that does make sense. I assumed it was a callout how I’m a racist bigot for simply trying to have a conversation on the topic while white.

That they know a single minority family and are extrapolating from that data point.

> like you caught me in something

Yeah, can you imagine?

Imagining a troll

This is the mindset of an abuser. “I don’t like how you’re acting so I’m going to pursue unrelated avenues to disenfranchise you.” People who voted for Trump put him into office. Nobody else.

Those voters were simply exercising their option and desire to change from the status quo. That’s what Trump represents. No different than why Obama was voted for. Those people vote how they vote for a reason and feel how they feel for a reason. Racism is/was part of it in both cases. But without a wide chasm of policy direction they dislike, they aren’t motivated enough to change the status quo or pick a wildcard candidate. You have to look deeper and ask, why did people vote for Trump?

I refuse to believe there’s enough racism in America to run a winning campaign on. I’m in Texas, know a lot of Trump supporters, and the number one thing is how they support his ideas but not his process and how they still view that as a better option on the ballet.

People voted for Trump because they are racist and bigoted on such an abstract and distanced level that it doesn’t seem that way, even to themselves. Lee Atwater, who himself pioneered the strategy, framed it best:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nr, nr, nr.' By 1968 you can't say 'nr'—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is—blacks get hurt worse than whites…”

The system has evolved to the point where if people do not verify their political assumptions in relation to a history of racism, they are voting out of ignorance and bigotry that is essentially synonymous to racism. And this isn’t for a lack of trying on everyone else’s part - you can’t say it’s anyone else’s fault but your own when you were warned multiple times, alarms bells ringing like fucking crazy - that this is the history, these are the dog whistles, this is what you’re signing up for.

I get there was, and still is, a status quo that needs upending. But when you look at people’s actual policy beliefs, they align broadly with the aims of the current DSA movement, and yet they vote in droves for the diametric opposite in the form of the GOP. And even in the modern age, it turns out “ban transgender” and “protect free speech” is not valid economic policy. There’s no explanation for it, other than suicidal stupidity and stubbornness manufactured by years of systemic racism.

In any situation when you create a label that splits "you" and "them" can be problematic. Labelling people illegal while not providing them the refugee status, when that's the correct one seems to be brand them as criminals rather then victims of the weapons sometimes oneself sells.

I mentioned somewhere else, I met a person who have lost money, house, family, everything... The only thing left was his daughter.

I cannot imagine one wanting that for someone else because a rich lobbyist wants more power and creates a narrative of enemies that suddenly arise to destroy us.

>elevating their class

The middle class is disappearing. They're being impoverished.

I’m glad you found an outlet for your fear and hatred. If only there were examples of words that used to be common currency that no longer were that I could show you.

>Trump is not about “racism.” He won more racial minorities

"Of course I'm not racist, I have black friends"

...

I have a family member that is a naturalized citizen. They were in the country illegally for 2 decades before that, and they are the first one to yell "kick those lazy illegals out". So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture.

What's really fucking stupid about this guy is the people he loves to vote for are the ones that would strip his rights and kick him out of the country in a heartbeat for.

Remember when America was a melting pot and not a bunch of redhats goose stepping in line?

> Of course I'm not racist, I have black friends

It’s weird that you think my point is about the superficial optics of having immigrants in Trump’s coalition, rather than about the motivations of the immigrant voters themselves.

> So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture

You can’t be “racist” against a culture. Racism is wrong because race is superficial—how much sunscreen someone does or does not need is as irrelevant as hair color or eye color. But culture isn’t superficial. Culture has major impacts on the types of societies people create.

Your family member’s viewpoint is totally rational, and frankly, more rational than the opposite. If you come from a country that’s dysfunctional and unsuccessful, why wouldn’t you dislike that place’s culture? It’s like someone who left some failing dinosaur company to go to a high performance startup saying that the culture at the new company is better.

Your article clearly describes that as a concept that as been put forward for debate but hasn’t been generally accepted. And it shouldn’t be accepted. It’s just an attempt to use people’s rightful aversion to prejudice based on skin color to Trojan Horse cultural relativism through the gate. Cultural relativism is not morally required. People’s attitudes, beliefs, customs, habits, and ways of looking at the world substantively impact the societies people create. And we can judge cultures on that basis. In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.

> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.

That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.

That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.

> guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed.

I need you to both explain what this is all about and workshop up a treatment we can take to ONAN or something to start their sci fi division.

How would someone show up late to dinner on a spaceship?

Why is it people who tell me about a post-racial society always make it sound like they mean “post me erasing the Others”?

Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.

Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race.

Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era.

Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'

Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.

European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.

> You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.

Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures, and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? Or 'Roman culture' for that matter. I'm honestly lost.

> Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures

Building steam engines, rockets, the Internet, etc.

> and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is?

European culture is one of the most well studied subjects in the world. It’s the culture that resulted from Roman colonization, followed by German conquest of Rome and the spread of Roman customs, language, law throughout Europe alongside Christianity. It’s why Slovenia and Spain both have a legal tradition built on Roman civil law. It’s why British law is full of Latin terms.

It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program.

Culture doesn’t need to be “discrete” or “homogenous” in order to exist. “Arab culture” also exists, despite regional variations. Law and language are critical aspects of society that indicate a shared culture despite local variations. Yes, during the relevant period, Romans were Christian. It became the majority religion in the roman empire by 400 AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_Christia...

European culture is one of the most well studied things in the world. You should read about it.

> It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program.

But you’re saying that it’s the inventions that make certain cultures superior, the other stuff is just there to enable the inventions. So for example China is building far more advanced infrastructure and high tech equipment right now, thus their culture is superior to European culture.

What’s your proposal to help European culture the level of advancement that Chinese culture has achieved ?

> “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture.

No idea how you came to that conclusion. There are many counterexamples to this claim.

It’s not racism when, for example, some Koreans discriminate against each other on the basis of skin tone. It was racism when some Hutu did pogroms against the Tutsi.

I agree with mulling. Give up these language-games and just admit that you can’t be a culture realist without also indulging in a little race science.

Those examples are also about immutable characteristics. E.g. There is no reason to prefer lighter skin to darker skin other than irrational prejudice. It’s completely superficial and irrelevant. That superficiality and irrelevance is the very thing that makes it morally wrong.

Culture, by contrast, is about how parents raise their kids. And that’s a choice. Treating culture as coextensive with race is just racism for leftists: https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/926/d5f/a334baf0d43cd480b3ea.... It’s horseshoe theory. And the implications of that theory are depressing. Your theory would mean that places like Bangladesh can’t fix themselves, because, according to you, their culture is a manifestation of their race and everyone has to accept it. That’s literally the same thing the Groypers say.

Are you saying gravity is not a fundamental force?

I honestly think he is not racist. He does not even consider no billionaires as people.

He did settle with the DOJ over claims of housing discrimination while president of the company. Whether he approved of the policies or knew about them, I have no idea.

You treat them like they are people without personal agency.

Temporary worker programs are a deal offered on open terms: people can come to work, but they have to leave afterward. The laws are plastered with the word “temporary.” People take advantage of the deal knowing the terms and there is nothing wrong holding people to the deal.

This is not that, these are people seeking to immigrate to the United States legally getting jerked around instead of a process that approves or denies them on a set timeline.