Because it seems important to you to hear, yes, anything dealing with race is, by one definition, racist.

....but....

Just like discrimination, that's not necessarily bad.
Discrimination just means noticing a difference just like racism can mean making any distinction by race. Most definitions include prejudice and superiority as parts of racism, but not all. Discrimination by itself is not bad, it's discriminating against someone (especially based on racial assumptions) that's considered wrong.

Racism-the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race.

That characteristic could be nothing more than pigmentation levels, a physical characteristic with no other connotations or prejudices attached....it's still technically racism. E.g.. it's racist and discriminatory to state that Americans of African descent are at risk for sickle cell anemia, but not malicious or prejudicial.

People who claim to be 100% non-racist are liars, blind and deaf, or 100% brain dead. Reasonable people admit they see race, even those who don't discriminate against others based on race.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Those professions you mentioned require extensive knowledge of multiple disciplines and an ability to interact with other professionals, not a singular ability to preform one singular act. The criteria are varied and there is no one way to determine future performance based on any single test of abilities. Edit : Temperment, perceived social standing, manners, vocabulary, intelligence, education across the board, etc all matter in those professions, but not in basketball.

Yep, agreed, just pointing out that sports are not immune.

Those people are deluded. We don't live in a vacuum. People consider race, if only subconsciously, pretending we don't is just dishonest, and more often than not just an excuse to discriminate against others, if only by ignoring the extra obstacles they overcome to be equal.

MY policy would examine a person's entire situation, financial, local, familial, social, educational, employment, extra curricular activities, etc. and take it all into account when determining what kind of hard working student to admit. If admissions tests included all those and more in their decision, not just a single biased test result, race could be excluded unless diversity is required. Because diversity is required, both morally and legally, it would be good to start there and examine the results, then maybe race/gender could still be ignored, maybe not. We don't do that, so we can't know, but we do know the tests we use like SAT tests are biased and don't measure achievement, only specific wrote knowledge, which is a piss poor measure of a student's potential.

I think I understand your position, I do think it's important to not swing the pendulum of injustice harder in the other direction and instead work to stop it in the middle, I just disagree with your theories, your methodology, and I think you ignore many major factors and the desired/required result in order to stand immovable in your position.

Your stance says it. Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group ignores "all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating...."

Short sighted tribal reasoning was electing a lying cheeto with anger issues because it wore red.

Yes, but that score must, to be honest and have any value, include a measurement of the obstacles overcome to achieve that score. Taking financial, societal, opportunistic, familial, etc obstacles they've overcome doesn't seem to bother you, race is one more obstacle for many, one that's rightly taken into account when measuring a student's efforts required to achieve their current status, especially proper when diversity is part of the desired outcome of the computation.

Include a numerical modifier that takes overcoming those multiple obstructions into account and skin color might eventually be reasonably removed, but not before.

Lower scoring candidates should be chosen over higher scoring candidates based on other factors. Race is, right now, the best way to generalize those factors when trying to create a diverse student body, something we've determined is a benefit to all students. Of course, it would be better to examine all facets of performance on an individual basis, but schools don't seem to do that anymore, it's a Herculean task. Again, fund them better and they tend to do better.

@newtboy said;
"You wish to ignore all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating...."

No I don't. I never said that, you're the one that said anyone objecting to affirmative action is like that. At least I presume that's what you meant by: "short sighted, purely tribal reasoning"

I question the process for applications for jobs, grants, university/college or other places. If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates.

My view: Sort the candidates by qualification score and take the top ones.

Tell me if I understand your view right or not.
I understand your view as: Some times or to some extent, higher scoring candidates should be disregarded for other lower scoring candidates based upon race.

Please correct me if I misunderstand that.

Also, anywhere else that race is similarly systematically used to discriminate against people should of course be equally corrected. Again, I'm not American, are there other parallel examples of law and process that check for your race and replace you with lower scoring people because of it? You accused me of only looking at "the kind that harms white guys", but the reality is I only know of this example of law and regulation written specifically addressing race as something that must be used to raise/lower the scoring of candidates. Are there other direct examples?

Try reading again. You have it totally backwards.

When was I insulting or dismissive? Because it was unforseen that educated people would elect a bombastic insulting sexist popularist con man who was obviously lying to them simply because he wore a red hat and tie? Those are facts, not opinion. Many of them are saying how much they regret it now.

I offered solutions you appeared to agree with, like funding lower education so everyone has a decent, if not equal, opportunity to get an education.
Using race as ONE criteria amongst many for admission is not ideal, as I said, but until a better system for identifying and addressing financial and societal issues that stymie opportunities for people often based on their pigmentation is created, it's the best we've got.

What we don't have is what you imply is the problem.....rich white men with 1570 SAT scores (old school SAT, I don't know how it's scored now) and 3.9 gpas are not being turned away from Yale to make room for indigent African American women with 990 SATs and 2.7 gpas...but the Latina woman with 1550 and 3.6 gpa earned while raising 2 siblings and holding a full time job, yeah, she gets the slot, and that's proper. One skewed test that benefits one privileged group is hardly a decent measure of their work ethic or intelligence....often it's only an indication they hired the right student to take the SAT for them. There were at least 3 hired test takers out of 30 students taking the PSAT when I took it, we talked afterwards.

It is the right (and people making the arguments you are) who are far more insulting and dismissive of non white people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against....to a level and consistency exponentially higher than the trifling discriminations whites suffer. That doesn't mean some whites don't suffer some deleterious effects, it means they come out way ahead in the discrimination game.

You wish to ignore all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating....but only the kind that harms white guys, forget the myriad of insurmountable racist mountains non whites climb daily, both institutional and societal, this speed bump for whites is unconscionable and must be removed immediately!

Come back and whine about institutional anti white bias when anti white racism permeates every facet of your life but not when your race doesn't give you a free leg up that one time. Maybe talk to your right wing friends about why funding education for others is good for you as step one towards eliminating programs like this that address inequities in opportunities, and giving the less fortunate extra opportunity to overcome their situation is good for all. After reasonable basic educational opportunities are available for all, schools will still take the student's home life, finances, and extra curricular activities into account....with luck that will be on an individual basis eventually, but that's not likely until education reforms occur that give everyone an opportunity to display their skills on a more level field..

@newtboy

Your being dishonest and unfair to people with stuff like this:
"predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher."
and
"people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys.

I saw an op-ed in the nytimes back when the supreme court nomination was hot and had hoped the author's opinion were a minority. Segments of this Daily Show clip and your own feedback make rethink that. The op-ed wanted to concisely show how dangerously right wing and extremist current Justice Roberts was. To do this, the author stated that the Justice own chilling rationale for one of his decisions should tell us everything we need to know about him: "To stop discrimination based upon race, we need to stop discriminating based upon race"

Being insulting and dismissive of people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against as your post appears to do just makes for more division still.

Surely the solution should rather be to fix the real problem of unequal opportunity in primary education?

Even given disagreement on this, surely the left(you?) can acknowledge that reasonable good minded people could disagree? Surely it's an over-reaction to call people racist for believing that choosing students based upon performance and not race is a good thing? One has to acknowledge that the counter example, of using race before merit as a selection criteria is in fact the very definition of racism?

More importantly to the Democratic party though, allow me to gift them moral justice and rightness on the issue. Even given that, practicality dictates that spending many years with a policies that choose certain people over more qualified others based upon race will create tensions. If you made that policy against say whites, or males, they might develop resentment. One might predict that they may even vote against those imposing that policy, arguably even willingly voting for a kind of racist orange haired loud mouth that they hope will end the policy discriminating against them based upon their race.

You might even argue it's starting to happen already...

To be clear, 99% of Americans don't have any problems with socialism as long as they belong to the group getting the handouts.

Case and point, $12 billion in farm welfare to ease the "temporary" (yet to be seen) pain Trump's trade war is causing farmers (so much for free market economics). You won't find any Republican farmers turning that money down just because they hate socialism, but those same people denounce welfare for the un and under employed, the hungry, and the homeless as harmful and unAmerican.

As to affirmative action, keep in mind the specific case mentioned was about reversing sexual discrimination too, not just race and class. How, exactly, they think public institutions can achieve the diversity of genders and races many are required by law to achieve without looking at gender or race is beyond me.

It bears noting, the people claiming to hate socialism (but who love our socialist programs like the military) invariably don't think giving the disenfranchised and those denied opportunity preferential treatment is OK....until that includes them.

Question from Canada. Affirmative action isn't something we would normally consider synonymous with civil rights. Is this different in the US across the board?

Up here we generally view laws around equality and civil rights as one issue, and restitution for past injustices as a related but separate issue. It is not simple accepted here that admission, acceptance and hiring practices must meet specific demographic benchmarks although it happens to a lesser and softer degree.

I guess I don't really understand the notion of discrimination based upon race as a solution to civil rights, even more so to here let leaning folks stating it as a matter of course that should be done.

He's clearly mad.... but he's not wrong.

Why WOULDN'T you want your most profound beliefs enshrined in law? Everyone wants that.

I believe that discrimination on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc is wrong and I want that in law. I believe women have a right to control their reproductive cycles and I want that in law.

His core concept isn't wrong, it's just the beliefs that he espouses are wrong. And yes, they're fucking WRONG. Not different, not a matter of personal belief, they're flat out wrong and should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Liberals need to stop tip-toeing around the right and stand up for what they believe in.

@Ickster
"That we're equating that with something like gay people being refused service because of who they are says a lot about how skewed our perception of balance is."

This is the fundamental point. I DON'T equate the two at all.

But as soon as we open this door, we have to deal with the permutations of it.

Let's say that for the sake of argument, gender identity and sexual orientation are now protected classes (legally, they're not, but let's assume they are).

Ok, you can't discriminate against someone for being LGBTQ. Great, that is obviously correct.

But we're making the argument here that you CAN discriminate against someone based on their political affiliation. Would you be ok with someone refusing service to Obama? Hillary? Bernie? What about an employer in a Republican town who finds out their employee is a prominent local democrat?

I get the argument and honestly, I agree with most of what you've said. If any of Trump's cronies had shown up in my (completely imaginary) restaurant, I'd probably have turfed them out with a lot less civility than SHS was shown.

But I'm just not sure that the world following my example is a good idea....

Racism-prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
-the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

....I absolutely hate the bastardized definition you gave, because it's flatly wrong and just an excuse for horrid behavior.
Edit: the statement "I feel "racism against whites" is not only currently impossible, but the idea is inherently racist. " is inherently racist.
One, whites are hardly always dominant in every situation (I sure as hell wasn't when I lived in East Palo Alto for years) and two, actual dominance has little to do with racism, it's about what you think. For example, if blacks think they're automatically superior to others based on race, but not in status because they are oppressed, they are perfectly capable of vile, even murderous racism towards non blacks.

Clearly, racism paired with power is far more harmful, but the powerless can be just as racist.

NBC nightly news.

I've never had an issue like this either, but I also have never gone to a busy business, set up shop, tried to use the amenities, refused to make a purchase, and obstinately refused to leave. I have been forced to make my purchase before being allowed access to the rest room, doing the gotta pee dance the whole time. You can't ignore that I'm white....but it had nothing to do with that interaction.

Why buy something if you think your friend is buying? Because you sat down and they asked you to. I've not heard anyone claim that was the case, however, nor that they made that clear to the manager.

Could be they're friendlier at your local Starbucks, since I assume it's not run by Americans. ;-)

I think the 'grief' started when they asked for restroom access but refused to make a purchase. Many locations are strict on that rule to avoid becoming a public restroom that serves coffee. Then they refused to leave or make a purchase, and were likely nasty after being denied restroom access, but even if not they were undeniably defiant of the manager, who has every right to ask non customers to leave.
It might have a race component, but just as easily might not. Jumping to the conclusion that just because they're black it must be racial discrimination is bullshit imo, and leads to insanity like people outraged at racist faucets and soap opera tv court cases.

"saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people."
It absolutely is hateful to hermaphrodites, clearly saying they aren't human. Use the qualifier "usually" or "almost always".

"As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way"
No, you said that. I'm saying all the physical attributes of gender are changeable besides the brain, and many humans with male gonads have female brains, and vice versa. Today, gonads can be surgically changed, so where is gender? I argue it's in the brain, which today can't be changed.
Gender is different from sexuality, clearly, no?
Edit: I guess I do think gender is different from "sex", if sex is determined solely by your gonads.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
....as to who cares about gender....the bigoted bakers do. ;-)

We're talking perceived race, gender, sexuality, ethnic group, as identified by the discriminating individuals. They don't DNA scan or brain scan customers before serving (or denying) them, they react based on perception.

Skin color, that's totally changeable. Never heard of spray tans or bleach? Try watching Eddie Murphy's 'White like me'.

Odd you might argue against perception being the measure, since you seemed to argue that gays could be perceived as acceptably heterosexual by not acting on their uncontrollable urges and desires, bypassing the bigoted discrimination, essentially by lying.

Again it's about perceived ethnicity, not actual genetic heritage. Like you say, your actual heritage is unidentifiable by strangers, so less important to this discussion of public business discrimination.
If I want my wedding cake for me and Chris, and I wear my pink paisley silk shirt, leather chaps, choker, and heavy makeup to buy it that doesn't make me gay but the bigot baker would still deny me because he would assume I was.

Legal, yes. Culturally accepted, not so much, slavery always had cultural opposition by the non ruling class. Natural, WTF?! Show me an example of pure non human slavery (not harems, not parasites) and I'll discuss it.

Granted, I don't know exactly how they measured, but his gene expression is what they measured, not his pure DNA. This goes to my point, that environment determines how your DNA is expressed, so twin studies are flawed from the onset by thinking they begin identical, they don't. They don't even start with identical DNA, just close.

"Genes and the environment", but not pure gene study....at least not like people think. People think twins are carbon copies, so one can be a control to study effects of what they're studying. That's not quite right. Certainly they are useful in genetic studies, but not that way. From before birth, they diverge in how nearly identical DNA is expressed. They might be good for finding what genes/traits need closer scrutiny, but only with large samples.

Grounds for individuals to (privately) discriminate, perhaps, but not (public) businesses....at least not in America. Our national identity is a melting pot of cultures, intolerance for the different is antithetical to that idea.


Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.
Race, many people change their racial identity...Rachael Dolizal comes to mind....as does the term "passing".
Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into, sometimes unknowingly, daily.....again, Dolizal springs to mind.

So, I'll argue that all you mentioned for all intents and purposes are today often the result of free will and not beyond the control of every individual, but a full grasp of brain chemistry and design and well understood methods to change them are well beyond our current knowledge, so their behaviors and actions are, in part, out of their control and not the result of free will but of brain construction.....now what?