Chris Rock on Racism

Off Topic
21

[quote]Professor X wrote:
redsol1 wrote:
Professor X wrote:
None of what was written had anything to do with attire. If that was the issue, skin color wouldn’t even be mentioned. It has everything to do with racism if you stop hiring blacks born in America because of “collective actions” (like you wrote). You can play hop-scotch around it for days and it won’t change what was wriotten earlier. I am very interested now in what your definition of “racism” is because it doesn’t seem to coincide with Webster’s.

My definition of racism: Hating or discriminating against someone based on their country of origin or color of their skin.

So, this is different from our discriminating African how?

The origional statement was that the buisness man filtered (Or descriminated) based on the ACTIONS (perceived or real) of a group of people. The common denominator of this group of people was there race, race was not the deciding criteria of the filter. I never said that the buisness mans decisions were right, i said that they weren’t racism.

Bullshit. No man could possibly know my actions based on my skin color or the place of my birth. That means his attempt to weed out any American blacks is nothing but a term we use by the sobriquet “racism”.

Now, given your statement “It has everything to do with racism if you stop hiring blacks born in America because of “collective actions” (like you wrote).”, I believe I need to reconsider my origional ideas on this topic. I still hold the belief that because a black (Or hispanic, asian, white) person is discriminated against does not automatical mean it’s racism.

If they are being discriminated against BECAUSE they are a certain color born in a certain area, it is very much RACISM. I am wondering what education you received personally that is allowing you to gloss right over glowing radiant racism as if it isn’t there. I find this truly amazing that you can be blind to blatant displays of it. What a surprise, I must add, as I never would have expected such ridiculous perception existed in this country

[/sarcasm][/quote]

Either I’m an Idiot because i’m not articulating my position correctly, or I’m an Idiot because my position isn’t correct. Either way, i’m starting to feal like an Idiot.

Like I said, I’d like to reconsider my position on our African Buisnessman.

La’
Redsol1

22

This reminds me of a radio show I heard in Spain a few years ago. The owner of a factory was talking about the people he hired, and he mentioned that he had many immigrant workers, but he didn’t hire Argentinians or Peruvians (I think those were the nationalities, but it’s not relevant for the point of the story).

When asked why, he said that he had hired them in the past, but they were lazy, late, and full of excuses; that they cost him more money than they produced, so he stopped hiring them.

Immediately, he was called a racist and the phone lines went crazy with people calling in to complain.

Here’s the point: This man had a business, not a charity to run; if after hiring people from all over Latin America for many years he found that the worst workers were consistently from Argentina and Peru, it’s only logical that he should exclude people from these countries from his application pool.

This doesn’t mean that all Argentinians or Peruvians are bad workers, but after so many bad experiences, why would this man keep hiring them? His time was better spent interviewing applicants that had a higher probablity of being good workers.

Another example from Spain: In the jobs section of the newspapers you could often find companies looking for engineers, architects, etc. that would say in their ads “graduates of University X need not apply”. Why did they do this? Because they knew the programs that university ran, and they new the type of graduates it produced, and they thought they did not meet the company’s requirements. Nobody deemed that racism.

23

Would a better word be “culturism”? Not hiring people of certain cultures based on their actions not their respective colour.

24

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Bullshit. No man could possibly know my actions based on my skin color or the place of my birth.[/quote]

Bullshit! We all know you have a gunrack in the back of your pickup and go out and shoot people who flash their high beams at you! Damn black Texans!

25

[quote]redsol1 wrote:
Now, given your statement “It has everything to do with racism if you stop hiring blacks born in America because of “collective actions” (like you wrote).”, I believe I need to reconsider my origional ideas on this topic. I still hold the belief that because a black (Or hispanic, asian, white) person is discriminated against does not automatical mean it’s racism.

Allow me some time to rethink my positions.

La’
Redsol1
[/quote]

If race is the deciding, descriminating factor, then it’s racism. Just as if age is the decided descriminating factor, it’s ageism.

Your businessman friend doesn’t refuse to hire Americans, he refuses to hire black and hispanic americans… which is racism (albeit somewhat selective because he might hire a black african).

By his logic he’d be better-off hiring a white man with who didn’t even finish highschool, rather than hire a black or hispanic man who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School.

Like Chris Rock said… “Black people are more racist than white people, because we hate Black people too”. It sounds funny… but sadly it’s also true.

26

[quote]PGA200X wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Bullshit. No man could possibly know my actions based on my skin color or the place of my birth.

Bullshit! We all know you have a gunrack in the back of your pickup and go out and shoot people who flash their high beams at you! Damn black Texans![/quote]

That’s only on weekends thus not relevant to daily actions.

27

[quote]Bri Hildebrandt wrote:
Would a better word be “culturism”? Not hiring people of certain cultures based on their actions not their respective colour.[/quote]

How can you know my “culture” based on my skin color???

How can you judge an applicant for a job based on their skin color?

I know it happens because itS happened to me.

But if a person does it. “I i dont hire (x) because they are …” That is racisim.

It means a potentially qualified and worthy individual cant get certain jobs, get into certain schools, move into certain neighborhoods based on your perception of them.

It harms generations of people. It’s not bigotry, or “just” discrimination. Its RACISM.

28

[quote]Miserere wrote:
This reminds me of a radio show I heard in Spain a few years ago. The owner of a factory was talking about the people he hired, and he mentioned that he had many immigrant workers, but he didn’t hire Argentinians or Peruvians (I think those were the nationalities, but it’s not relevant for the point of the story).

When asked why, he said that he had hired them in the past, but they were lazy, late, and full of excuses; that they cost him more money than they produced, so he stopped hiring them.

Immediately, he was called a racist and the phone lines went crazy with people calling in to complain.

Here’s the point: This man had a business, not a charity to run; if after hiring people from all over Latin America for many years he found that the worst workers were consistently from Argentina and Peru, it’s only logical that he should exclude people from these countries from his application pool.

This doesn’t mean that all Argentinians or Peruvians are bad workers, but after so many bad experiences, why would this man keep hiring them? His time was better spent interviewing a applicants that had a higher probablity of being good workers.

Another example from Spain: In the jobs section of the newspapers you could often find companies looking for engineers, architects, etc. that would say in their ads “graduates of University X” need not apply. Why did they do this? Because they new the programs that university ran, and they new the type of graduates it produced, and they thought they did not meet the company’s requirements. Nobody deemed that racism.
[/quote]

Well in the U.S. there are laws against that for one thing.

Also if this factory owner was looking for an accountant and the very best qualified applicant was Argentinian (let’s say he went to Yales on a scholarship) how stupid is it to say: “I won’t hire you just because you’re Argentinian”?

It’s impossible that every Peruvian or Argentinian that this guy hired was lazy (unless he only hired a few and based his experience on that)… either he wasn’t screening them well or he just didn’t like them and used that as an excuse.

You can apply that logic to much more than race:

For example:

You refuse to hire bodybuilder types because, you hired or two in the past, and they spent most of the day on the T-Nation website, sneaking DB-Curls, with a DB hidden under their desk, when no one was looking and they scared other workers by engaging in impromptu pose-downs at the water cooler.

29

I think Redsol’s point is this:

The man is willing to hire black people, just not “americanized” black people (whatever that means). Therefore his position is not racist even though he is discriminating. Since it is more of a cultural bias than a color one, the term ethnocentric would probably be more applicable than racist.

30

[quote]jjoseph_x wrote:
For example:

You refuse to hire bodybuilder types because, you hired or two in the past, and they spent most of the day on the T-Nation website, sneaking DB-Curls, with a DB hidden under their desk, when no one was looking and they scared other workers by engaging in impromptu pose-downs at the water cooler.[/quote]

Thank you, that’s exactly why I would never hire bodybuilders if I ran a business.

31

Hiring or not hiring based on skin colour is illegal for private compainies, for public employees it’s ok. In Canada both the provincial and federal goverments regulary post jobs that are only open to “vis mins”(visible minorities). If you are caucasian don’t even apply. It’s PC bullshit like this that keeps racism alive and well. They claim they want balance, yet in one of those postions I looked at, over 90% of the staff are women.

Apparently it’s not ok to post adds based on gender, just ethnicity. This is hardly reflective of society. Soon it’ll be x% caucasian,y% asian,z%black, and so on. It’s bullshit, nothing to do with skills. It must be very empowering to get a job that one know’s was landed due to skin colour.

In the end not hiring based on colour is wrong, hiring based on colour is ok, what crap. Let’s put everybody in nice little catagories and keep them seperate. I always though being Canadian or American or any nationality was good enough, I was wrong. Guess I should declare myself Scottish Canadian so I have a group to belong to.

32

[quote]pbody03 wrote:
I always though being Canadian or American or any nationality was good enough, I was wrong. Guess I should declare myself Scottish Canadian so I have a group to belong to.[/quote]

Make sure you wear a kilt to make yourself vis min.

33

[quote]pbody03 wrote:
Hiring or nor hiring based on skin colour is illegal for private compainies, for public employees it’s ok. In Canada both the provincial and federal goverments regulary post jobs that are only open to “vis mins”(visible minorities). If you are caucasian don’t even apply. It’s PC bullshit like this that keeps racism alive and well. They cliam they want balance, yet in one of those postions I looked at, over 90% of the staff are women.

Apparently it’s not ok to post adds based on gender, just ethnicity. This is hardly reflective of society. Soon it’ll be x% caucasian,y% asian,z%black, and so on. It’s bullshit, nothing to do with skills. It must be very empowering to get a job that one know’s was landed due to skin colour.

In the end not hiring based on colour is wrong, hiring based on colour is ok, what crap. Let’s put everybody in nice little catagories and keep them seperate. I always though being Canadian or American or any nationality was good enough, I was wrong. Guess I should declare myself Scottish Canadian so I have a group to belong to. [/quote]

Tell me about it. Reverse racism and being a white male in Ontario. :slight_smile:

34

[quote]Miserere wrote:
pbody03 wrote:
I always though being Canadian or American or any nationality was good enough, I was wrong. Guess I should declare myself Scottish Canadian so I have a group to belong to.

Make sure you wear a kilt to make yourself vis min.[/quote]

Aye laddie, will do. Speaking of which here’s an entirely un-PC joke. Why do Scotsmen wear kilts? Because sheep can hear zippers for miles.

35

[quote]Bri Hildebrandt wrote:
pbody03 wrote:
Hiring or nor hiring based on skin colour is illegal for private compainies, for public employees it’s ok. In Canada both the provincial and federal goverments regulary post jobs that are only open to “vis mins”(visible minorities). If you are caucasian don’t even apply. It’s PC bullshit like this that keeps racism alive and well. They cliam they want balance, yet in one of those postions I looked at, over 90% of the staff are women.

Apparently it’s not ok to post adds based on gender, just ethnicity. This is hardly reflective of society. Soon it’ll be x% caucasian,y% asian,z%black, and so on. It’s bullshit, nothing to do with skills. It must be very empowering to get a job that one know’s was landed due to skin colour.

In the end not hiring based on colour is wrong, hiring based on colour is ok, what crap. Let’s put everybody in nice little catagories and keep them seperate. I always though being Canadian or American or any nationality was good enough, I was wrong. Guess I should declare myself Scottish Canadian so I have a group to belong to.

Tell me about it. Reverse racism and being a white male in Ontario. :)[/quote]

It’s funny considering that job I was talking about. In that office there were about 5 white males out of close to 100 employees, that makes me the vis min, how screwed is that. Just to prove how stupid this shit is, I was gonna apply based on that because “technically” I am for that posting. I understand what they are trying to achieve, but the end doesn’t justify the means and we all know what can happen with “good intentions”.

In Toronto the public transit has ads showing how many languages service is avaialbe in, which is great. However when I called for some info in the last provincial election some guys answers in french, wtf? There are “statistics” listing the # of people with regards to mother tounge, English being the most common, for now anyaway, then Mandarin, Italian, Portugues and Hindi. I think, I don’t recall exactly.

I look forward to seeing the public service hire workers based on those statistics, because it’s only fair if they truly want to follow these type of guidelines. Of course this mean relocation for public employees won’t be possible becuase they’re isn’t much call for Mandarin on the east coast for instance. So by rights almost all the workers in public service there should be white to reflect the local population, which isn’t the case. It’s a huge ugly can-o-worms.

36

[quote]Leafblighter wrote:
I think Redsol’s point is this:

The man is willing to hire black people, just not “americanized” black people (whatever that means). Therefore his position is not racist even though he is discriminating. Since it is more of a cultural bias than a color one, the term ethnocentric would probably be more applicable than racist.[/quote]

If it was a cultural bias, he wouldn’t be hiring AMERICANS. What is with people trying to downplay racism?

“Oh, I just don’t like ‘those’ black people…but the ones from Beverly Hills are OK…and so is everyone else on the planet…just not ‘those’ black people”

If the color is part of the bias, it is a racial issue. You can smack it up, flip it and rub it down any which way you choose but it won’t change what it is.

Maybe if we spice it up with other pretty adjectives we can pretend that it isn’t racist anymore.

37

I think one of the biggest issues in this country is the distinction between profiling and racism.

Profiling, in my opinion is ok. Profiling is using existing knowledge about a group of people (not neccessarily defined ethnically) to predict their actions and help you make a decision, or to narrow down the amount of people you have to make a decision about. I think this is a useful tool, so long as you are using the CORRECT information to make it. Statisticans do it all the time. Think about a insurance companies, they are the ultimate profiler. When you apply for a credit card or a credit line, they look at your job, in a addition to your salary. Two jobs may pay equal salaries, but statistically speaking, one may be a greater credit risk than another. Everybody here probably has car insurance, the insurance company doesn’t come out and interview you and see if you seem like a good guy or not, they just sift your vital information through a formula and spit out your price. Every year they adjust their forumula based on new statistical data.

Now, it gets tricky when race comes into play and the distinction needs to be made between correlation and causation. Picture a profile of a suspicious man who might pose a security risk at an airport, government building, etc. If you are like most people, you probably pictured a young Arabic man. That doesn’t mean that young Arabic men are usually terrorists, it means that terrorists are more likely to be young Arabic men. BIG DIFFERENCE! 20 years ago you probably would’ve pictured an older Russian man and 70 years ago you might have pictured a blonde-haired, blue-eyes German, not because of anything special in their ethnic makeup, but because terrorists were more likely to be someone from that ethnic makeup.

Anyways, parts of this may or may not be applicable to the discussion, just felt like ranting.

38

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Leafblighter wrote:
I think Redsol’s point is this:

The man is willing to hire black people, just not “americanized” black people (whatever that means). Therefore his position is not racist even though he is discriminating. Since it is more of a cultural bias than a color one, the term ethnocentric would probably be more applicable than racist.

If it was a cultural bias, he wouldn’t be hiring AMERICANS. What is with people trying to downplay racism?

“Oh, I just don’t like ‘those’ black people…but the ones from Beverly Hills are OK…and so is everyone else on the planet…just not ‘those’ black people”

If the color is part of the bias, it is a racial issue. You can smack it up, flip it and rub it down any which way you choose but it won’t change what it is.

Maybe if we spice it up with other pretty adjectives we can pretend that it isn’t racist anymore. [/quote]

Because you can dislike a subpopulation without disliking the main population as a whole. If I dislike an Arkansas hoosier who carries a shotgun wrapped in a confederate flag and screws his sister, that doesn’t make me racist against white people because I hate the subgroup of white people labeled ‘white trash.’

Likewise, this businessman (who is probably black as well considering he is an immigrant from Ghana, a West African country that is 98.5% black) can like one group of black people more than another group of black people without it having anything to do with them being black.

Sounds to me like he just has an issue with people abandoning their heritage.

39

[quote]Leafblighter wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Leafblighter wrote:
I think Redsol’s point is this:

The man is willing to hire black people, just not “americanized” black people (whatever that means). Therefore his position is not racist even though he is discriminating. Since it is more of a cultural bias than a color one, the term ethnocentric would probably be more applicable than racist.

If it was a cultural bias, he wouldn’t be hiring AMERICANS. What is with people trying to downplay racism?

“Oh, I just don’t like ‘those’ black people…but the ones from Beverly Hills are OK…and so is everyone else on the planet…just not ‘those’ black people”

If the color is part of the bias, it is a racial issue. You can smack it up, flip it and rub it down any which way you choose but it won’t change what it is.

Maybe if we spice it up with other pretty adjectives we can pretend that it isn’t racist anymore.

Because you can dislike a subpopulation without disliking the main population as a whole. If I dislike an Arkansas hoosier who carries a shotgun wrapped in a confederate flag and screws his sister, that doesn’t make me racist against white people because I hate the subgroup of white people labeled ‘white trash.’

Likewise, this businessman (who is probably black as well considering he is an immigrant from Ghana, a West African country that is 98.5% black) can like one group of black people more than another group of black people without it having anything to do with them being black.

Sounds to me like he just has an issue with people abandoning their heritage.
[/quote]

African Americans didn’t “abandon” their heritage. Why doesn’t he dislike white people who grew up in the same neighborhoods from the same culture? You might want to fix your perception.

40

For some reason I feel like this would be more of a problem with lower level jobs.

It just doesn’t seem like this kind of thing would happen with higher level jobs where ability/degrees from prestigious universities would be valued.

I see the “I’ll discriminate against American Blacks” type of deal happening mostly with jobs that accept people with minimal experience/resume.

Granted, there was that study that used “black names” and “white name” which is actually quite disturbing, but still…

Can you really see any law firm for example rejecting a guy who’s got a degree from e.g. Yale Law school just because he’s black?

That seems completely stupid nowadays.