The Glade 4.0

I wouldn't advise wearing a skirt when you do this.

RD: Lets not also forget that it was our parents generation that the changed those laws. Steeped in it...is a tad too strong I would say.

That's true in the sense of "cultural generations" (late Baby Boomers > Gen X > Gen Y > whatever we're calling people born in the last couple of years), but in terms of ordinary familial generations (average of roughly 25 years in the US), we're only one step removed from folks born in the Civil Rights era. It's only been 46 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed, so like I said, for many of us in our mid-20s or early-30s today, our parents and/or their contemporaries were raised in the racial tumult of the 1960s.

The point is, it's easy and convenient to think of the "real" racism from that era as ancient history, but it's really not. Basically, anyone over the age of 45 today (i.e. a huge chunk of the country) was raised either during or in the immediate aftermath of the complete racial upheaval of the Civil Rights era.

I once had a co-worker down in Dallas comment on an Indian man in a business suit who was wearing a turban by saying, "there's a raghead terrorist." When I didn't immediately laugh, he quickly backpeddled trying to play it off. I honestly didn't really get to know him well enough to know if that was ignorance or hatred, but it was pretty obvious it wasn't based on a socio-economic basis.

Good thing it wasn't a racist statement then, or this anecdote could have disproven Khross.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

I don't see that 46 years is all that short of a time for significant cultural change to have occured. 46 years before the Civil Rights Act was 1918; the end of WWI. I would say that extremely significant social changes occured in those 46 years.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I would say the problem with this statement is that yes there are cultural changes but individuals do not change all that much. People who lived before the Civil Rights movement probably were not swayed by the arguments and at best superficially subscribe to the equal rights ethos.

Aizle:

It's not racist actually. It's both xenophobic and full of prejudice, but it's not it's not racist. The separating factor isn't even race; as evidenced by the fact that the separation of Indian from Pakistani from Afghani from Sufi Malay from Palestinian from Hindi from ... well, you get the point, isn't being made.

I'll remember that the next time someone whines here about being the target of racism because they are a white Christian male. Obviously it's not racism unless they refine it down to Irish, Greek, Norwegian, English, etc.

That might have been true for people who were already well into adulthood at the time, but most people still alive who experienced the civil rights movement were still younger adults at the oldest, and have been exposed to the idea of a functional society with racial equality for 46 years now. Not only that, but plenty of them were sympathetic in the first place or it never would have happened.

My father and mother, for example, would have been 17 in 1964, but are/will be 63 this year. Even older people at church, such as the lady in Sunday SChool who is 84 would only have been 38 at the time.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I'll remember that the next time someone whines here about being the target of racism because they are a white Christian male. Obviously it's not racism unless they refine it down to Irish, Greek, Norwegian, English, etc.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Its funny you say that Aizle, because on numerous occasions Khross has made exactly that point, though usually in a condemnation of minority groups that strive to narrow their cultural definition as a sense of identity while completing ignoring the similiar definitions of others and just labeling everyone "white".

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

His response had nothing to do with race and everything to do with nationalism.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Aizle:

His response had nothing to do with race and everything to do with nationalism. As for a definition of racism, both of those entries are meaningless, mostly because any human conception of "race" is meaningless. Indeed, at some level, the first entry is categorically false when confronted with genetic evidence and evolutionary adaptations. Indeed, I would argue that the whatever gains came from the Civil Rights Era in the United States are largely offset by the negatives of its hasty generalizations the sublimation of certain flawed precepts into the larger cultural memory.

Most people's beliefs and values are static after childhood. It is how you are raised in your household typically, not society as a whole that shapes you.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

You seriously don't think that's a racist comment? What makes you say that?

Most people's beliefs change far more gradually after childhood, but very few are truly "static", especially in the face of major, obvious societal changes.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

because he felt that white people (Texans maybe?) were superior.

They certainly believe themselves to be so, one of the largest delusional States in the country.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.