Black Presidents, Female Prime Ministers

[pErvinalia]

Does anyone here hang out at ratskep? There's a member there who's name I'm temporarily drawing a blank on at the moment, who posts largely incomprehensible pseudo-intellectual wibble.

Mr Samsa?

No, Samsa is very clear and articulate. It's Cito de Pense.

[Brian Peacock]

Serious question - How do you explain these things in societies that are argued to be still racist and or mysogynistic?

Not everyone is racist and or mysogynistic.

Yet they support a racist and mysogynistic society.

A society is made up of individuals, not all of whom are racist and/or mysogynistic, and those who are racist and/or mysogynistic are not racist and/or mysogynistic all the time. For my part, society seems less racist and mysogynistic than it was 20 years ago, and in 20 years time I reckon it will be less so than today. It's called progress. Those of us who think this is a good thing are called progressives - those who don't think this is good will be processed into soylant for the rest of us.

[Brian Peacock]

Does anyone here hang out at ratskep? There's a member there who's name I'm temporarily drawing a blank on at the moment, who posts largely incomprehensible pseudo-intellectual wibble.

Mr Samsa?

No, Samsa is very clear and articulate. It's Cito de Pense.

You would say that. You can't help it. Samsa groomed you like one of Pavlov's cats.

[pErvinalia]

Serious question - How do you explain these things in societies that are argued to be still racist and or mysogynistic?

They become honorary same-race/males. I've seen that process repeatedly at work.

Two truck drivers, for example:

Norman was an Indian-Malaysian with accent and skin tone to match. He did his job as well as (actually better than) the average of his colleagues, so he was "just like us", that is not an Indian-Malaysian. The unconscious underlying reasoning was that Indian-Malaysians are so inferior. None could possibly do what Norm did, so he was not really an Indian-Malaysian bloke.

Jan was a woman with tits and lips to match. She did what the average of us male truck drivers did with equal, if not better competence. Jan became a non-woman via the same thought process described above.

The above rationalisations enabled the racists and sexists that made up the majority of the around thirty drivers in the Sydney depot to remain as racist and sexist as before. It took care of the worrying possibility that if one non-Caucasian and one non-male could be as good - or better than - Caucasian males, maybe all of them could. Thin end of the wedge avoided. So I kept hearing comments over the two-way radio about this "slant-eye" and that "woman driver" for as long as I subcontracted for that particular express freight transport company.

Yeah, ive seen this behaviour from a racist and mysogynistic former mate of mine. It really was a case of some of his best mates were Asian.

[Rum]

It would seem then that one's working environment is a factor. Children's Services and Education, my field, took to PC early on. At least half the managers were female and at a senior level - during my last stint, the Director, who was my line manager, was female. The issue of gender never came into it, though I have to say the fact that she had a painting done by an old friend of hers of a large red high heel shoe on her office wall always struck me as pointed. I can honestly say I never came across incidents of discrimination based on gender in the last 15 to 20 years of my working life. What people might have thought privately is another matter of course.

Race is another matter too. The proportion of people from ethnic minorities in this neck of the woods is way below the national average, but even in the West Midlands, where I worked previously they were under-represented.

[Brian Peacock]

And the disabled are disproportionately underrepresented too. Still, I think the graph is moving in the right direction.

[pErvinalia]

Serious question - How do you explain these things in societies that are argued to be still racist and or mysogynistic?

Not everyone is racist and or mysogynistic.

Yet they support a racist and mysogynistic society.

A society is made up of individuals, not all of whom are racist and/or mysogynistic, and those who are racist and/or mysogynistic are not racist and/or mysogynistic all the time. For my part, society seems less racist and mysogynistic than it was 20 years ago, and in 20 years time I reckon it will be less so than today. It's called progress. Those of us who think this is a good thing are called progressives - those who don't think this is good will be processed into soylant for the rest of us.

Being less racist than 20 years ago doesn't mean people aren't being racist any more.

[Brian Peacock]

They'll come round.

[Hermit]

They'll come round.

Nah. They'll die out.

[Rum]

They'll come round.

Nah. They'll die out.

When I was a kid I regularly heard the words 'nigger'. 'darky', 'nig nog', 'wog', 'cripple'..well you name it. They were all there. My mother, bless her, when we were in HK labelled the local Chinese as a race as 'lazy' and good for nothing to a man. If they were successful they were 'cunning'. Antisemitism was everywhere and open.

To say things have not improved is flying in the face of reality. They have also 'changed' as well as improved and the thought police are now involved of course. No bad thing necessarily.

[Hermit]

They'll come round.

Nah. They'll die out.

When I was a kid I regularly heard the words 'nigger'. 'darky', 'nig nog', 'wog', 'cripple'..well you name it. They were all there. My mother, bless her, when we were in HK labelled the local Chinese as a race as 'lazy' and good for nothing to a man. If they were successful they were 'cunning'. Antisemitism was everywhere and open.

To say things have not improved is flying in the face of reality. They have also 'changed' as well as improved and the thought police are now involved of course. No bad thing necessarily.

Where have I said "things have not improved"?

People are extremely resistant to changing their minds. They do sometimes, but social change is not so much effected by that than by an older generation being replaced by one that has been brought up with a different mindset to begin life with. Rinse. Repeat. That, in a nutshell is what my previous post was getting at.

[Rum]

They'll come round.

Nah. They'll die out.

When I was a kid I regularly heard the words 'nigger'. 'darky', 'nig nog', 'wog', 'cripple'..well you name it. They were all there. My mother, bless her, when we were in HK labelled the local Chinese as a race as 'lazy' and good for nothing to a man. If they were successful they were 'cunning'. Antisemitism was everywhere and open.

To say things have not improved is flying in the face of reality. They have also 'changed' as well as improved and the thought police are now involved of course. No bad thing necessarily.

Where have I said "things have not improved"?

People are extremely resistant to changing their minds. They do sometimes, but social change is not so much effected by that than by an older generation being replaced by one that has been brought up with a different mindset to begin life with. Rinse. Repeat. That, in a nutshell is what my previous post was getting at.

I wasn't responding directly to you. I was generalising.

[pErvinalia]

Who were u generalising to? I doubt many people would hold the view that things haven't improved.

[Rum]

OK I was wrong. Happy?

One for you too.

[Hermit]

They'll come round.

Nah. They'll die out.

When I was a kid I regularly heard the words 'nigger'. 'darky', 'nig nog', 'wog', 'cripple'..well you name it. They were all there. My mother, bless her, when we were in HK labelled the local Chinese as a race as 'lazy' and good for nothing to a man. If they were successful they were 'cunning'. Antisemitism was everywhere and open.

To say things have not improved is flying in the face of reality. They have also 'changed' as well as improved and the thought police are now involved of course. No bad thing necessarily.

Where have I said "things have not improved"?

People are extremely resistant to changing their minds. They do sometimes, but social change is not so much effected by that than by an older generation being replaced by one that has been brought up with a different mindset to begin life with. Rinse. Repeat. That, in a nutshell is what my previous post was getting at.

I wasn't responding directly to you. I was generalising.

That explains why you found it necessary to quote my post.