CorruptUser wrote:Then there is a fourth camp, the Libertarian argument, though it's much smaller than the others (at least from what I see). As racism is irrational no solution is the solution. For example, let's say a restaurant refuses to hire brunette waiters. Blondes will get paid more, because they are in higher demand. But the other restaurants in the area will hire the cheaper brunette waiters and undercut the first restaurant, driving it out of business. For an example of how this works in the real world, the Brooklyn Dodgers began winning many games after getting Jackie Robinson. The extra wins translated to more ticket sales, and soon other baseball teams realized that they had to allow all players on their team, regardless of demographics.
I can think of several things that are wrong with this approach. Just basing my response on the blonde vs brunette situation you illustrated the concept with, it makes no bones about the fact that brunettes are to be paid less than blondes for however long it takes for this groupism to evaporate of its own accord. That is a problem if you are a brunette. Furthermore, if blonde favouring individuals have significantly more economic power than hair-indifferent people, the time till evaporation eventually occurs could be rather huge. From what I can garner from a brief glance at your baseball example, it was significantly longer than half a century that the game was played segregated.
zookap wrote:There should be no "hate crimes" because that sets the precedent that people can be punished differently depending on what groups they belong to, which is BULLSHIT.
That's not what hate crime laws are about. They merely continue the principle that people can be punished differently depending on their thoughts and intentions as revealed by their actions. If I a white man beats a black man with a baseball bat, that is one kind of crime, but depending on the circumstances (a planned ambush vs over heated tempers on a sports ground) it will be punished differently. Likewise, if the perpetrator uses slurs to refer to the black man whilst he's beating them, then there is a different crime that has been committed.
zookap wrote:Again, someone's beliefs or even words can't do ANYTHING to you, only their actions. If someome is assaulted there is a problem, otherwise there isn't. Lately I've seen people going to great lengths to be offended by groupism, specifically by racism. I remember on the news there was a segment about an 'incident' in which someone got on the loudspeaker at Wal Mart and said "all black people need to leave the store." This idiotic prank got national attention and so did the black woman who began to cry and talk about how deeply upsetting that day had been. Was the news coverage really necessary? All it did was show people that racist words can somehow cause great inner pain to black people. All that should have happened is that the people in the store should have found it slightly amusing.
You propose that the hurt that people experience from racism is manufactured and then you go on to propose that the correct response to a racist joke is amusement. An interesting correlation to say the least.
I don't think solving racism is about working out who to blame for what. Nor do I think that government action is the complete solution, though I do consider that it can significantly hasten the reduction of the harm done to individuals by these sorts of memes.
I think the best thing that can be done is to analyse how the culture in general essentializes being a racist, or a sexist or what have you. Being a racist is seen as something that one might be, rather than racist actions being something that one might do. It creates a false dichotomy in peoples minds, racists over there, non racists over here, and never the twain shall meet. If instead we perceive racist actions as something that we are all capable of, and something that we can be forgiven for and move on from, that a simple slight does not imply that we habitually beat people of other races, it becomes more possible to get at the 'small' racist actions that we're all capable of, like laughing at a racist joke.
