Jez

FWIW, we have very significant segregations of ethic groups in many of our UK cities. It's entirely at the occupants' own volition (they are house owners and bought the houses there next to their friends and relatives), our ethnic groups generally prefer to form communities of their own cultural equals. I mean, if you mixed them all up, Governments would probably THEN get blamed for trying to deliberately water down community values.

I took a 'present/future tense' as the meaning of your last post. "But we were talking about MY government disenfranchising an ethnic group." OK, so is it the general proposition now, here, there is no current "government disenfranchising an ethnic group"? Because that seems to have been left vague.

OK, let's just deal with objective facts for a moment. What is your Government doing to disenfranchise "black" people? (Please make sure you do not include any that also disenfranchise others, else that's then just an opinion again that it is directed to "blacks".)

I gave my example in my first post. How can you possibly say that the shape of one's intertragic notch makes no difference to one's opportunities and how one is treated? How could you be so blind? My point is that, yes, of course 'that difference' is a biological reality, but you probably don't even know what that is until I point it out to you and MAKE it a difference. The difference 'itself' is what is imaginary. There is no difference. You are choosing to MAKE it a difference. I choose to make the shape of people's intertragic notch a difference and then show you evidence of how people with one shape are statistically treated differently. Am I now 'imagining' that statistical relationship or not? Yes, of course people are discriminating black people, but that is the issue of the discriminator who has 'imagined' a difference where there is none. They have made it an issue. Deal with them. Heh, ok, sure but I wasn't singling 'them' out, you were. I'll rephrase, stop patronising ANYONE from a different background to yours. Treat them the same as your brother.

I clarified exactly what I meant, 3 pages ago. I don't think you were reading what I actually wrote, but rather were looking for fault because I was being contrarian to your opinion. I replied to you on the very first post back that I accepted everyone had biases. Then I get asked over and over if I think that. Just read what I wrote, it's all there. Everyone with eyes can look, but did you 'see'? I have answered all of your questions before you asked them, again. Honestly, I never actually realised racism was going to be so difficult to fix in the USA. Now I get it! What you see as 'compassion' I see as busy-body interference. It seems to me that the reason you, as a country, went to war over this issue and it STILL didn't solve the problem is that you have two white groups, i) those that see themselves as superior to blacks and can therefore discriminate against blacks accordingly, ii) those that see themselves as superior to blacks because they have the power to solve their problems for them and seek solutions for them accordingly. That's not remotely what I said. I said I would be very cautious over butting in on stuff that's not my concern. (Imagine a march of 'Women who fear men' over abuse by men, and a group of men go and plant themselves in the middle of the group without being invited. Nice!!!) I said did they ask to be invited. I said, if they ask for assistance then give it. America, you need to start listening to people from countries that were abolishing slavery when you were writing new ones. You had a civil war over the issue, FFS, which was extremely destructive and still largely ineffective. Maybe start listening to the 'neutral' viewpoint of others that have not been immersed in this senselessness and don't believe it likely that America will be able to find all the answers for itself any time soon, as evidenced by these serial failures. ..... because if you keep going on with that patronising attitude, that you can't even see because you are so immersed in your middle-class liberal American culture, then you can expect ongoing civil violence. You need to STOP SEEING PEOPLE AS BLACK!!!!! It is AN IMAGINARY CONCEPT that you have been brought up to see. Stop patronising them. You follow your social conditioning as instinctively as 'another' social white group in America which looks down on them. That is what the OP was all about. You see blackboards and whiteboards, you are conditioned to see it and you cannot separate your American social upbringing that's conditioned you to from that perception, whether it is to discriminate or patronise, one way or the other. I see "writing boards". Some writing boards are mean to other writing boards, and we put those ones in the basement.

I already answered this in the second part of the post on the previous page; https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/131660-physical-revue-says-whiteboards-are-racist/?do=findComment&comment=1241754

I'm just doing a bit of searching into the background of American slavery history. Curious findings. According to the page; https://sittingbull1845.blogspot.com/2015/05/black-social-history-americas-first.html , it was not legal for whites to own slaves until 1670, but it was legalised for blacks to own slaves in 1655. The page says " Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner. Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves. " Again you are conflating bias with neutrality. I've just gone over that SEVERAL times that these are not synonymous. I spelt it out in various different ways. 'Bias' and 'neutrality' are DIFFERENT, and first @iNow and now yourself continue to conflate them. Why do you believe they are synonymous? If we are all biased, then name any 'neutral' person who is capable of passing, or has ever passed, a 'neutral' opinion.

I did not. Our posts just crossed then, I have just clarified what I actually said, and it wasn't 'that'. It was strictly neutrality with respect to the permeation of discrimination in the USA. How could I be less neutral on that than you?

I want to fix this misquote. When have I ever said that? I've been going over to try to find what you are referring to. Quote me. @iNow 's initial post falsely implied it, I never said it. I never related 'neutrality' with 'a lack of bias', I just went over that very point, in depth. I said I am neutral from the point of view of Americans' social views of their own society. I would argue that stands to reason, as I cannot have a view of being an American, given I am not an American. The 'actual' exchange went like this;- Are you seeking to argue that I am NOT neutral with respect to American social influences and you are, even though I have never been part of American society and you have been? How would you argue that?

How can an idea be 'a liar or a fool'? Those are descriptors only of a person, not of the concept of an idea. "Pretending otherwise makes you a liar or a fool. " An idea cannot 'pretend'. An idea could be a misrepresentation, a mendacity, a deceit, a duplicity, even a deception, but it cannot be 'a liar'. How can that be what @inow was seeking to imply? You seem unwilling to see it for what it was. I'll disengage here.

That's completely non-sequitur to what I wrote. If you are listening and have been asked for help, then of course you, and I, and all good people would want to support. Where have I said otherwise? I was accused earlier of not reading the thread, but the problem from my POV is that others don't seem to be reading my posts!# I'll wait to be invited to a march (on a topic that does not affect me) before just turning up unexpected and possibly unwanted, thanks all the same. I accept I could be wrong about all of this. Let me ask you if you accept that you could be?

I think I just wasted 20 mins laying out my thoughts on the subject. Of course I have not got a clue! I would deliberately avoid seeking a clue! What makes you think you do [assuming you are white]? You don't, for a moment, consider implying that you do might be condescending, a white person who tells others they don't know what the obstacles of blacks are? Wow. I mean .. WOW! I'm asking you to dwell on that for a moment, before actually commenting on it! The question of voting raises another aspect of being ingrained into American thinking and not seeing it 'neutrally' from within. Your politics look like a joke from the outside. You are taught that voting actually makes a difference when in fact you can vote for one of two parties whose polices are objectively almost indistinguishable. Of course, you believe you can see the [tiny] differences because you've been conditioned to see them and to argue one end of the egg is better to break than the other. You can vote for the party under whose auspices and by whose members the KKK was set up, fought to keep slavery, and voted in the Jim Crow laws, or you can vote for the Republicans who 'everyone knows' are the worst for black rights but happened be the party formed by the abolitionists. Oh, OK, I'll pick ... err ...... 🤣 In the UK we can vote for multiple parties and I don't even bother they are all as bad as each other. The culture in which Americans are so deeply submerged in is the ironic belief that you live in a 'true' democracy. I don't believe you can say you live in a democracy unless you have the right, and moderate likelihood, of being able to vote in independent candidates that can stand for YOUR rights rather than those of a political party, and to do so on some form of proportional representation basis. But I am not expecting you to see that the US system is a very poor example of a democratic system, I expect Americans to believe they have the highest democratic principles. Difficult to see that, if you are not 'neutral' and outside that system.

Just to say, I'm uncomfortable continuing in a debate where someone can name call and say that they are right and anyone who isn't on their 'side' is wrong and a fool or liar. I'd expect that sort of proposition to be suppressed in a good-faith discussion. If you are asking me that question in good faith I have to say that I have not alluded to biases, I alluded to neutrality. It was @iNow who created the false synonym and dichotomy by switching the word between phrases. They are probably a lawyer or something? Of course we all have biases, which is why this quoted statement should be viewed with suspicion that it is divisive chicanery merely to win a philological argument, as demonstrated by the later statement 'either stand [with me] or stand aside'. 'Neutrality' cannot mean 'lacking biases', for precisely that obvious meaning and that we all develop within societies subjected to biases, so I assumed we were intelligent people who understood the meaning of words and I did not need to spell it out in a longwinded axiomatically precise treatise. If it were true that everyone has biases and no-one is neutral who has biases, that means no-one can be neutral. No referees. No judges. No mediators in a contract. No international arbitrators of national importance. No academics. No journals publishing the academics. No scientific studies could ever be 'neutral' because they are written by people with biases. This is nonsense. 'Neutrality' means that the person presiding is not 'from' the groups that have these particular vested interests and come from a different background. I have ZERO experience of being an American 'black' person, just as I have ZERO experience of being an American white person, raised either in a sense of white superiority OR in a sense that white liberals must self-flagellate for the wrongs that their ancestors did. Let me offer a small anecdote and maybe we can discuss that a bit more; During the Black Lives Matter events when it started up, there were marches here in UK on that subject too. I had a 'white' acquaintance who joined a march. I asked them why they did that, and they said to show support. I asked if they had been asked to give support, and they said no. I asked how they could show support when they did not know, experience and understand the struggles of the people marching, and they said they wanted to do someting. I asked how the black people on the march felt about an uninvited white person joining them, who had not experienced their difficulties and therefore didn't really understand them. They were unsure. I asked them if joining the march might actually be an act of condescension towards the people marching, as if to say you can't protest on your own, you need white people to help you protest. They were lost for words. The 'neutrality' I speak of here is that (I am guessing) most of you have lived your lives as privileged (to whatever extent) liberal white families and 'that social experience' has indoctrinated you to believe that you must act in some way to remedy and rebalance the past discriminations to black Americans, and also to perceive new discriminations (when in fact the ones mentioned here apply to white people to). The 'neutrality' I describe that I have that you don't is that I am not patronising enough to believe black people need my help to right the wrongs against them, because I am a modern British person and we know full well they are more than capable of holding their own, and I take my hat off to the many colonial 'blacks', Indians, Pakistanis and many assorted other nationalities that came to UK in the post war period, struggled bloody hard for their equality facing disreputable racism (and still do), and won their equality for themselves. Not merely a case that they deserved equality in the first place, but their nailed their rights as British citizens. THIS is the culture I was raised in, where such people are wholly capable of fighting their own grievances, and they proved it before I had any awareness of what had 'gone on' before my time, and it was just the way it was. Multi-cultural Britain was a fact, and a matter of 'equals'. Thus, I am for sure independent of the middle-class American liberal cultural attitude that this 'problem' is something you feel some 'need' to get involved in. You are so deeply immersed in this white cultural view that you don't stop for a moment to consider or try to realise how disabling and patronising it might well be to black people that you want to solve their problems for them, rather than giving them the tools to solve their problems for themselves. Hence, my pressing the point about what is already in your 1st Amendment (that you might have not read to the end?). I am independent of that. That's why I say I am 'neutral', because I come from a culture where there is already respect for 'black' people enough that we wait to be asked for help and if asked we wait to be told what help they want, before I force my own white-liberal belief system on their already large scale problems that are unknown to me. What sort of arrogance would it be if I choose to defined and scope out the injustices black Americans have suffered? As if they can't figure that out for themselves and ask for my help if they want it? Think about the irony of that for a moment. Of course I am biased! I have seen how strong and capable are British non-white immigrants to standing up for themselves, working hard, handing down strong civil values to their children, making them go to school and university (more than the current generation of whites here do) and being the better, more civilised people than many unruly and feral white folk here are. Does that clarify my thoughts on the biases we might all have?

As you have alluded to there, I think this is a perception issue. An optical illusion of which there are many brilliant examples. My wife and I would disagree all the time on what was green or blue. I think perception of green is the issue. I snapped the plots off wiki page about this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation, and realigned them;- Seems to me that 'most of the photons' from the sky are actually 'green' (if one can say an individual photon even has a colour), but the ways our eyes work (we can't see the peak colour of black body green radiators) and the relatively small but positive shift due to Rayleigh scattering give us the sense that it is blue. I think the sky would be more accurately described "bluish-white light" but our visual attention focuses on the blue because that's an unusual colour in nature. With all those green and red photons filling my bucket, more than blue, there is plenty enough of all colours to expose the true colour of the page. Another case of this, I think that 'recent' dress example is amazing. I see white and gold, and simply can't imagine how anyone can see anything else. I have done this and there is a problem. Cameras can't automatically pick a white balance. We can make cameras follow an algorithm that repeats our expectations of what we see, but (I think we already realise) it's the brain that paints a picture, not the eyes seeing a reality. I can take a picture and make it look white or bluer, I just have to toy with the white balance. I can't figure what is reality. Like the dress. It is unbelievable to me that anyone can see black and blues.

The way I have tested this is to look at a white piece of paper down the bottom of a deep blue bucket with the opening pointed away from the Sun. It's still white. How can Sunlight get from the Sun and scatter at just the right angle to go into the bucket. What is it scattering off above?

If I picture going out in an all sky blue boat dressed in a sky blue body suit with a sky blue mask and I take a piece of white paper, I picture a clear sky with an occasional cloud. If I imagine waiting for the Sun to be obscured behind a cloud, I look down at the piece of paper in the bottom of the boat and, oh, it's white. Is there any paradox that it looks white?

Honestly, I do want to back out but that's no way to let me do so gracefully. Yes I gave a dislike for that post because in it you basically said I was a liar or a fool. I am surprised that is allowed here. Is it? That's name calling. I think moderators should be reviewing that sort of language. You put it behind a vague conditional statement, but I think you know full well you sought to name call, and besides it is an ad hominem fallacy to imply I am wrong 'even if' was a liar and a fool. There are a lot of liars and fools who are still right, are there not? I can provide a statemented logical argument for you to argue the case I am more independent than you if you like, but I'd prefer moderators to review your previous comments, I don't think it is fair and reasonable for you to undertake name calling, even it if is veiled behind a vague conditionality to have avoided that directly. Ah. The old 'you are either for or against us' fallacy. Really, I think this is a fallacy too far and shows you are part of the problem, not its solution. You are asserting there is only one solution and resort to veiled name calling when contradicted (and seems that you might be getting away with it?). Is there any balanced debate possible here after a comment like that?

Please excuse me for not engaging further, I see no reason for that sort of negative rhetoric. Biased or otherwise, one is an outside neutral observer when one is not part of either of the groups being discussed, it stands to reason. That is all I meant.

Accepted. It was just a discussion, I think there are always different points of view in politics, I just hope and wish everyone, everywhere, remains civil like this, gets fair treatment and recompense, and just talks rather than reacts. Easier said than done, I think.

I didn't 'not' realise it either. It's simply irrelevant to people's lives today. If someone makes an issue of it, it is 'they', today, who are making an issue of it, and perpetuating the concept of the discrimination. Doing so is purely in 'their' imagination, nothing more. I agree I am not in a position to make informed recommendations, but nor is anyone else. The place for such informed determinations is a court, with sides putting forward the case, free of bias and prejudice by being embedded in the (supposed) dispute, or at the very least the court has the duty to be unbiased. I am Celtic in origin (I'm not Irish but a few generations back) and at some stage some Vikings came along and kicked us off into Ireland, and who knows that might be your heritage too as there are many Irish in the USA. I have absolutely zero case to argue that Danish people, today, should give me so much as the time of day because their ancestors beat up mine! That'd be insanity. What WOULD make it a case for today, though (and this is, in essence your argument) is if some Dane came along, taunted me over being a Celtic slave and beat me up for it. But ... that is STILL nothing to do with what happened 1000 years ago, it is purely about something that has happened today, and what it is is something has gone wrong in this Dane's head. They are delusional. If I then believe that, indeed, it is the spirit of Vikings that has truly lead him to this discrimination against me today, then am I not also engaging in that delusion? People engaged in a mutual delusion that the events of 1830 affect their lives to the point that one feels they are a person from the 1830s and should therefore conduct the same discriminations, and the other also believes that it is because they truly are a character from 1830 why this person is acting in that manner, and 3rd parties observing these two people going at it also all agree it is because they are both people from the 1830s, all these people do not strike me as being best placed to judge the situation in an unbiased manner. I think we are talking mental help here, not financial help. Science fiction has a way to take an angle on irrational social ills because it can invent new species and strange situations. I seek to upset no-one so must back off here, I'd like to leave my comments with Star Trek's take on racism, and Spock's wonderful facial expressions at the end of this clip. I think Spock and I are thinking the same thing at that point.

Is that a serious, non rhetorical question? Well, my son has been bullied at school and when I found out I called the Police immediately. The school contacted us the next day and said we really didn't have to do that they'd liked to have handled it. Well they didn't because they already had the chance to get that right, and I didn't feel like giving them another to make the same mistake, whatever that was. He didn't need to ask me that question. If I was asked I'd say 'of course I do, and I'd do anything for you, would you like me to try to fix that, because what you experienced/were told was wrong and needs to be fixed?' I worry that we might actually be agreeing and not realising it. I have nothing at all critical to say about your position, other than the implied meaning that 'whites' will somehow selectively pay for the past and present sufferances of blacks. As long as you are not saying that then I am not sure there is actually a dispute. I think there should be some form of restitution but it would come from general taxation and it would be means-assessed. I can't see by what possible logic such a scheme could be argued and implemented otherwise. I might argue that I have a better view, precisely because I am a neutral outside observer and not overly influenced by a lifetime of social influences that I can't tease apart from logical thought. In regards 'seeing' the racism, oh, yes, oh boy. I have met Americans who are 'not even racist' such was their level of contempt for black people. You have a very deep racial problem, but the only way you are going to move on as a nation is to try to get things as straight as possible, as soon as possible, so you can move on to ignoring skin colour. Just talking about it is a form of discrimination. That's why I keep banging on about ensuring there is a 'neutral' legal path through the courts, for all injustices. The longer people keep making out that there are 'black injustices' ad 'white injustices' then the longer racism will flourish. If you boil that down to 'injustices' and fix those, racism will become extinct. It's like white boards and black boards. Just call them writing boards. Injustices for blacks, injustices for whites, injustices for women, injustices for men, injustices for Christians, injustices for Muslims .. they are injustices. What are the benefits versus risks of teasing them apart? Little benefit and lots of risk in perpetuating divisions. The risks outweigh the benefits. Make sure you have a pathway to remedy injustices, else you just perpetuate the discrimination if you single them out. Whiteboards, blackboards, it's only 'racist' because they are being discriminated apart for being different on the basis of colour. Madness. I've said my bit and honestly I don't believe we are actually in disagreement as much as it might appear, I came here to talk science and accidentally blundered into a thread I probably shouldn't have, so I think best to leave it to you to deduce. If you think Americans have a more neutral view of American problems so can solve them better, maybe ponder that a bit. Just a thought for you.

I don't think I would have said that, no. What I have said is that 'some' black people were treated unfairly. How were the free black people treated unfairly when they owned slaves? As I understand it, the census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned a total of 12,760 slaves. Is that in dispute? I don't think compensation is due to 'all' black people, no. I think society as a whole should seek to support those black AND white people (I don't like those colour terms, but I'm running with it) that have fallen into the categories of social misfortune discussed here, because there were maligned white groups too, and that might well be rooted in their ancestors' history as white slaves.

OK, good! And my proposition, my proposed resolution to deal with the discrimination, is to focus on that request first. If a Genie appeared and he granted you one wish you could make Gov do, would it be to fix some given injustice of the past, or to establish a process by which all injustices might be dealt with? So, if you are going to ask for something of Gov to do to fix these racial injustices of the past, then why not that, to establish the framework of judicial review?

Sorry, I don't think this is clear thinking. Please excuse me if I misunderstand but it appears that you want to seek a remedy for the discrimination of a 'group' that was unfairly stereotyped and not treated as individuals (with you so far) and to fix this you want to discriminate a 'group' by unfairly stereotyping them as the cause of the discrimination and not treating them as individuals (who may or may not have been the cause)? Have I got the jist of your point, or way off again, sorry if I am? I mean, I agree that there is restitutions to be offered to all people who have suffered social ills, 'particularly' including specific events of tragic racism. Why is the 'answer' incomplete by saying 'yep, and it is coming out of taxes already, and is already helping people in the lower social echelons'? You guys keep saying your legal system does not work in a way that can offer specific remedies. Yes, I understand that is not how it works in the USA. That's the problem! You seem to want politicians to invent one-off solutions to one-off events, rather than laying the framework so that any likewise events now AND in the future can be dealt with the same way.

Thanks, I have read it, but I am permitted to disagree with the conclusions, I presume? I disagree with this one too. If the laws were working correctly, the means to seek remedy would be to bring in to court questions about the legality of past 'differentials' and to establish what, if any, effect those have had. Lots of people have been blocked from building wealth and educational status that go unnoticed and no-one cares much, for example the white slaves of early America. OK, so they were called 'indentured workers' but they were slaves in any modern interpretation. As I said before, these 'past differentials' affect societies as a whole. It's called 'history'. It is an unrealistic dream to believe if society was fair then everyone would right now have and own the same wealth and property. Mathematically, any intercourse of financial transactions will lead to a 1/x distribution of wealth. We use, and do use, taxation to attempt to level that. Taxation and redistribution are already the means by which society seeks to 'generally' address past wrongs. Giving money away on the basis of skin colour might mean you end up giving it to the descendants of slave-owning free black people, which would be ironic. To address 'specific' wrongs of the past, it has to be done through the court system and by public inquiry and critical investigation. 100% agree. My point is that it seems it's he US legal system that is preventing that review from going ahead, as it can only go ahead in court if the outcome is to be trusted (as far as it is possible to trust it) not to be partisan and political. In UK we also have public inquiries which are chaired by independent people within a scope of an investigative brief.