Skepdick wrote: ↑Sun Feb 06, 2022 9:57 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:49 pm
Nope, they are not. Sorry.
Just because you can't see it it doesn't mean it's not true.
I can see what you're trying to say. It's just wrong.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:49 pm
In Woke-talk, "system" does not refer to your internal "system.
The internal/external distinction is just muddying the water.
Not at all. It's as basic as the nature-nurture distinction, or the instinctive-environmental distinction.
Social norms affect your behaviour.
Brain wiring affects your behaviour.
Your expectations "affect" your behavior. What you had for dinner also "affects" your behaviour. The gravitational field of the globe "affects" your behaviour. So those two claims tell us nothing: "affects" is far too vague.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:49 pm
" What you are is, according to them, nothing other than a product of your "situatedness" in society -- your racial, gender, cultural, etc. "situation." What they mean by "system" is the institutional and societal arrangements and the political apparatus around you...that's where they think the "racism" is. It's "institutionalized," meaning fixed by the social arrangments around us.
Yes! And that is precisely what I am pointing out to you. "The system" is that which influences your behaviour.
"Influences" is vague. You've said essentially nothing there. I also "influence" your behaviour, just by writing this: so you're not going to go on to say I "determine" it, are you?
SJW's believe that the institutional environment not only "affects" or "influences" your behaviour; nobody questions that. Rather, they think it
determines it. What's more, they think that the collective social "environment" also determines your moral status. You are as "bad" or "good" as your alleged identity group is.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:49 pm
That might be true: but the SJW's don't want to tell the story that way. The way you're telling it, individuals are ultimately responsible for racism. They could be located, blamed and stopped. And SJW's at all costs, do not want that to happen. They want the "racism" they talk about to be perpetual, unlocatable, "out there," and not preventable by pillorying one individual. They want it "systemic," not "personal."
You seem to be confusing the cause with the mitigation.
No, they are. I'm describing what
they think, not what I think. And they won't "mitigate" you for being white: you're guilty just for having a pale skin. You're complicit in what they call "whiteness," according to them, and you benefit from "white privilege," which makes you evil, even if you had the same personal views as MLK yourself.
Non-racist person + ( enforcing racist laws OR practicing racist social norms) = racist behavior.
They won't even give you
that much credit. They'll say that even being a police officer makes you "complicit in racism." But as a matter of fact, your claim is simply not true.
A person can enforce a law as an officer of the law, even if he has no personal stake in the matter at all. He might even not approve of the law. In fact, that's the sort of detachment we demand of a good justice officer...to enforce whatever the people have decided is the law, not to go off based on his own opinions or inclinations.
They absolutely have a justification for calling me a racist - I have original sin.
If you say you're a racist, then who I am to argue with you? I don't claim to know more about you than you do. Perhaps I spoke on your behalf too soon...but if so, you should do something about that.
But as for original sin, I think you misunderstand the concept. Original sin refers to the
propensity for sin, which is innate. But a propensity is not the same as the deed. A person is a sinner two ways: because of what he desires to do, and because of what he does with that desire. Both are sin.
There probably isn't anything better empirically established on Earth than the human propensity to sin. If your particular sin is racism, then that's only because you were already inclined to sin, as all are. If it had not been racism, it would have been lying, abusiveness or theft: your nature would have found some expression. However, it's not guaranteed to involve racism in all cases.