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Date:         Thu, 17 Dec 1992 08:23:02 U
From:         KirkpatrickH <kirkpatrickh@MUMCBM.RFERL.ORG>
Subject:      RE: Spike Lee and Racism
Comments: To: Forum for the Discussion of Politics <POLITICS@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu>

Rick

>Add dictionaries of the English language to the list of your definitional
>disagreement.  Random House has racism defined as "the idea that one's
>own race is superior."  Webster's defines it as "a belief that race is
>the primary determinent of human traits and capacities and that racial
>differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

Ok Let go back to English, although this is a politics discussion. Words can
have connotations and denotations. You have quoted denotations of words. Good
we have that out of the way. They (these denotations) have very little to do
with this conversation. Now connotation can be affect by context, we were
talking about discrimination, racial, in fact. I, in context of our
discussions, assume that humans are not programming languages, they can make
connotational judgements based on context. They can also make conceptual logic
"jumps".

Ask why problems are not solved. One reason is because of semantical arguments
such as the one above. Yes, I agree, distill the many connotations down to some
simple staements and you get the above, useful as a guide, useless as a blind
guide to a detailed argument.

>I'm not sure that I'd call it a "secret" but I agree that we need to
>convince people that racism is not a good thing.  But I disagree that
>all discrimination is bad.  Many colleges admit students because they
>have a certain level of intelligence.  Are they discriminating against
>less intelligent students?  Yes.

No, Not in our connotation (I say our because the connotation is defined by
context) of the word. Again falling back to denotation of the word. This brings
us to a look at your "denotation" of the words Racism and Discrimination. Does
U Berkeley "discriminate (racial)" against Asians by setting the admittance
standards higher for that racial group than any others. I believe so.


>I can justify treating someone differently because of their race:  If
>there is a disease that is prevalent in Native Americans but is virtually
>unheard of in blacks, it would be prudent for a doctor to test his or her
>Native American patients for the disease more frequently than his or her
>black patients.
Had you read further, in fact, you did read further, you would have seen I said
we can deal with the exceptions to this statement
>So much for "no buts, no excepts."  Rather than teaching
>children that you can't treat "someone diffrently because of their (sic)
>race," I'd rather teach them to get along with people who look different
>than they do.  Simpler concept for small minds.

Really. This isn't the same thing.  Do you have the concept yet? Then why do
you say, as does most of our "civil rights leaders"(NOT ALL OF THEM): (I quote
now)

"I'd rather teach them to get along with people who look different
>than they do. "

Why not just teach them to get along with everybody? The point here is the
"concern", if genuine, is not pointed in one direction. We are not concerned
about minorities, we are concerned about people, some of whom are minorities.
(Nice how that works out, isn't it?)

>If, in your world, Spike Lee is a racist of the worst kind, I think that
>the list cannot help but notice the blind part.

Think REAL hard and ask yourself if you just complimented me. Yes I'm blind. I
know that massive RACIAL discrimination occurs in the US. In all directions
believe it or not. As a minority, (White, male, American living in Europe), I
experience it daily, and we don't have laws to protect our interest here the
way minorities have in the US. You can refuse to rent me a house for no reason,
you don't have to serve me in restaruants. I have been refused before. I would
like equality. Equality of opportunity, anything more is patronizing, I don't
need that, thank you.

If we want to eradicate racism and (racial) discrimination (for people who do
not understand connotations, see above) we must relish the differences in us
but first we must emphasize the similarities. We are all in this together.
Let's not form (more) us again them thoughts now. I believe the Spike Lee
contibutes to the emphasizing the differences.

One last thought, I don't need a dictionary to define Racism or Discrimination.
I live in Germany, we are having a problem with this right now (as I'm sure you
are aware 26000 incidents in the last month). I get to watch it happen.

Kirk

/* Sadder still to watch it die, than never to have known it,
for you the blind who once could see, the belll tolls for thee.*/
--Neil Peart