Strangelove wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:43 pm
I don't think there are even a fraction of the number of extreme racists you seem to think there are Per.
Going to ignore the strawman thingy and just reply anyway.
I think extreme racists are very few. Perhaps around the same level as sociopaths? I donnu, some 2% maybe or something. Just spit balling here.
I do however think there is a
lot of everyday racism, that often goes unnoticed by us crackers.
I recently saw a presentation at work about racial discrimination in the workplace, It is kind of hard to get statistics on that, as we don't register race or skin colour in Sweden, but we do keep records on place of birth, so the people behind this study had compared statistics for people born in Sweden by two Swedish born parents to that of people born in Sweden with at least one parent born in Africa. It is by no means perfect, because there could be the odd Swedish born parent that has dark skin, but those would be very few, and likewise, there are white people in Africa, albeit most Africans tend to be dark skinned. Nevertheless, this methodology should be able to find a group of mostly dark skinned people born and raised in Sweden, and thus not being immigrants, and then compare them to their lighter skinned counterparts. They also did not compare the groups as a whole, but grouped by level of education. What really stood out was that among those with at least three years of college, Swedes with Swedish born parents earn 150% of what those with at least one African parent do. That's a huge difference.
In comparisson the gender based income difference when other factors have been removed is just 11%.
And this in a country where hardly anyone self identifies as a racist*.
Now, there are biological reasons for racism. Up till around 10,000 years ago, all humans around the world lived as hunter gatherers, in smallish bands of perhaps 30 people, usually these bands were part of a bigger group of perhaps 120-150 individuals. These were the people you could trust. All other people were a threat. Among skeletons from the paleolithic era, roughly 10-15% died violent deaths at the hands of other humans. Kennewick man had a spearpoint embedded in his thighbone. Ötzi, the ice man from the Alps had an arrow puncturing his lung, and a skull fracture that could be from falling after being hit by the arrow, or possibly a blow to the head by whoever first shot him. And it didn't get much better when early civilisations started to arise. Read Exodus. Moses was basically worse than ISIS. Pretty much every town they reached, they killed all the men and enslaved all the women. Or killed the women too. Guess it differed on in which mood God was that particular day. But it's gruesome.
Either way, the point I'm trying to make is that for most of the time people have existed, other people have been a serious threat to their life. Thus whenever we see a person, our unconscious part of the brain, or more specifically, the amygdala (which has to do with fear and disgust), tries to determin whether this person is one of "us" or one of "them". In tests where people are presented with pictures of different faces while the brain of the test subject is monitored, the amygdala tends to light up when the face shown has racial features that differ from the test subject. Now, Dr Steven Pinker points out that originally many felt that damn, racism is hard wired into us, but he dismisses that notion. First of all, the amygdala is a tiny portion of our brain. Even though it flares up at the sight of different racial traits, that's a millisecond response. Then the frontal lobes take over and apply logic and experience to the situation, ofetn saying "damn it, Amygdala, we're better than that!". Also, the amygdala is easy to trick. It doesn't really concern itself with race, just with determining if this is one of "us" or one of "them". If you add baseball caps featuring sports team logos to all the faces in the test, the amygdala will immediately disregard race and instead react to how you feel about that particular team.
Anyway, in the absence of baseball caps, the gut reaction to many will still be that people who look different make them nervous and uncomfortable. What constitutes different will vary though. If you grew up in a multicultural area, skin colour may not bother you at all. Instead it could be preppy clothes that sends your amygdala into spin. Or a Calgary Flames jersey. Or a hijab or a kippah. Whatever.
But this ancient trait explains why there is still in this day and age a lot of unconscious or semi-conscious racial discrimination going on.
My dog is racist. He hates German shepherds, but is very partial to poodles and bichons.
(note lefties see an extreme racist behind every bush)
Well as I have never been a leftie, I wouldn't know. And Sweden is very sparsely populated, so I don't even expect to find people behind every bush. Yet, I'd like to point out that from what I understand neither of the Bush presidents were racist. They certainly had other flaws, but afaik, racism wasn't one of them.
I challenged you on your statement:
"Sure, off the record some of (leaders of the Leave campaign) admit they couldn’t have pulled it off if it weren’t for the racist vote"
You have yet to prove that statement is true...
I think I did.... As I said, this was only admitted off the record, so you will not find any signed affidavits. I thought the article and the Cummings quote were clear enough. But maybe you didn't hear the dog whistles? Coming to think of it though, I guess that's the whole point with them....
Anyway, here's another quote from that same article, showing that they knew very well what they were doing, and that they attempted to get the racist vote out:
Leave.EU advertisements were ‘deliberately sent to supporters of the British National Party and Britain First’,
(same article as before)
*
albeit nearly 20% vote for the Sweden Democrats, which imesho is an intrinsicly racist party, originally founded by nazis