The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[casper]

Originally Posted by LakeLocker

And this is an argument a child would make or a very clever sociopath.


When you rob a place the odds you give the cashier etc PTSD is considerable.

Dealing drugs increases the number of people addicted.

If and that would be an if these criminal were perfectly ordinary people in day to day life.

The number of these people engaging in sexual assaults, rapes, child abuse etc is also very considerable.

I don't disagree. However it is still an argument many criminals would make. I would expect most thefts expect to have no human interaction.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by theman23

Any comments on the Wendy Mesley and Jessica Mulroney incidents?

Both seem like over reactions to me.

Mulroney was an over reaction for sure. But when you say something dumb after seeing it kill a lot of other careers, I dunno, that's a special level of tone deaf.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by casper

We have a racism problem and if you definition of success is no racism at all we will never accomplish that goal. We will hopefully make significant in roads to solving the problem. In the same was as murder is a problem, and despite how hard we try we will never eliminate murder. The best we can hope for is to bring it to as a level as possible.

I agree we will never get to zero. However in a society where we are generally progressing to more equality and less racism, it is unfortunate to see things trending in the opposite manner.

It's just another symptom of the "us vs. them" we are seeing in politics more and more.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

The thought police are certainly doubling down at present, which is in itself a crime of opportunity.

I have read more about the Wendy Mesley story. Her apology is up on Twitter for all to see and clarifies the story a bit. Nobody seems to dispute her version of events.

It is simplistic to view it just as a case of using the "n-word". The CBC made a vague public announcement about it to start, not being clear about what she said or the context. A lot of people understood from the CBC's statement that Wendy Mesley used it against someone and/or on air.

She says she was quoting somebody else, off-air, around coworkers, and did not direct it at anybody. I wonder if the CBC statement could be considered libel.

This makes me wonder what kind of toxic work environment they have at the CBC, where people are eager to tattletale on each other and the company publicizes its own internal problems. This is problematic for a workplace regardless of one's thoughts on whether or not quoting The Word should be considered acceptable (I personally would not say it, even quoting). People screw up sometimes, particularly when working long hours in a stressful environment, and coworkers can be understanding or they can make matters worse. When no harm was meant, professionals should be able to have a discussion and privately come to an understanding that doesn't involve the media.

I remember reading a book in elementary school that contained The Word and we had an explicit conversation about it beforehand. We had black and other students in the class. The teacher made a point about intent, and the value of learning history even if we do not approve of it today. Some parents wanted the book banned (can't even remember what it was) but we read it anyway. This was a lesson taught to 11 year olds in the 90's but it's too much for most adults on Twitter in 2020. Some of this is probably inherent to the medium, which does not encourage nuance, reflection, or charity.

[JHikka]

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/to-show-good...nds-up-handcuffed-and-bleeding-1.4980700

'To show good faith': Montreal man invites police into his home and ends up handcuffed and bleeding


The video is from late April, and Chatel-Elie says the incident left him bleeding in the back of a cruiser for an hour before the officers called an ambulance.

But it all started, he says, with a mysterious report of a loud party at the apartment where he was alone with his girlfriend — a report so strange that he invited the officers inside to see the reality for themselves.

Now, he says, the whole episode is reminding him that interacting with officers from the Service de police de la ville de Montreal (SPVM) makes him feel “in danger,” even when he’s cooperating.

[MolsonExport]

All human genomes are 99.5 percent identical, and although it’s true that the remaining 0.5 percent can vary in ways that correlate with geographical ancestry, these correlations do not strictly map to racial categories. If you hand a scientist your genome, she might be able to tell you something about the geographical distribution of your ancestors, but she cannot tell you what race you are. There’s simply nothing in the genome that’s an unambiguous marker of race.

Professional gadflies like Sam Harris fan the flames by presenting race science as forbidden knowledge that a politically correct left is trying to suppress. These are all disturbing turns, but what’s more surprising is the way race biology has creeped further into the mainstream: In 2018, prominent geneticist David Reich wrote an op-ed for the New York Times calling for a renewed look at this troubling line of scientific inquiry. In medicine, drugs are sometimes labeled for—and marketed to—different racial and ethnic groups. More broadly, the popular misconception that DNA ancestry tests prove “race” or “ethnicity” has also only helped reinforce the assumption of innate biological differences between what are, in fact, socially defined categories.

...some black Americans have mostly European ancestry, some have mostly Asian ancestry, and some have mostly Native American ancestry. Any individual black American could have almost any genetic background—ancestry is not synonymous with race. What black Americans have in common is that America has created a deeply unequal world for black Americans to inhabit. Black Americans have, on average, less access to health care and less money to spend on health care. They have less access to healthy food. They are more likely to live in polluted areas. We know that these lived experiences correlate with worse health outcomes and shorter life spans.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0807076910?linkCode=gs2&tag=slate0d-20

[someone123]

I always found the 99.5% human genome overlap claim a bit strange. Humans and house cats are about 90% overlap, and tiny mutations can cause somebody to die or dramatically alter their physical appearance.

But to me this biological aspect is neither here nor there because it cannot produce the moral justification required to treat other people badly. I look at those numbers for other species and wonder why we've treated other living creatures so badly when many of them must have their own thoughts and feelings too.

Yet I also wouldn't claim that if we group people by apparent race we are guaranteed to find zero biologically-driven difference, or zero difference in some sub-area like cognition. It is clear that there are racial differences in humans; we see them physically, and it makes sense that humans would adapt to live in different environments (e.g. if you live in an area with more sunlight you tend to develop darker skin). It gets pseudo-sciencey when people make poorly-supported claims about why people from this or that region would be a certain way. And this is a difficult area to study because there are so many confounding factors.

It is actually pretty important to study genetic differences and their impact on medical outcomes and the efficacy of different treatments. But eventually I think treatments will be targeted to the individual.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

I always found the 99.5% human genome overlap claim a bit strange. Humans and house cats are about 90% overlap, and tiny mutations can cause somebody to die or dramatically alter their physical appearance.

Agree with this. I think from memory the genome overlap between a chihuahua/poodle and a wolf is in the same ballpark, and any observer can see these breeds will have reliable differences in their genetic-based abilities. So it's not a good argument (doesn't prove what it's intended to prove).

[Corndogger]

• Video Link

[Corndogger]

Something to think about.

Shekinah@supitsshekinah

My family is white and I’m not ashamed to say that I was adopted by a white family. Does that mean they are not my people because we have different skin colors? Does that mean I should care more about a random black person because we share the same skin color?

https://twitter.com/supitsshekinah/status/1271507187001462784

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Something to think about.

Shekinah@supitsshekinah

My family is white and I’m not ashamed to say that I was adopted by a white family. Does that mean they are not my people because we have different skin colors? Does that mean I should care more about a random black person because we share the same skin color?

https://twitter.com/supitsshekinah/status/1271507187001462784

Random strawman bullshit from Twitter?

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

I always found the 99.5% human genome overlap claim a bit strange. Humans and house cats are about 90% overlap, and tiny mutations can cause somebody to die or dramatically alter their physical appearance.

Humans-chimpanzees are 96% the same, I believe.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Random strawman bullshit from Twitter?

LOL! File away that strawman shit and address the point she made.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Humans-chimpanzees are 96% the same, I believe.

98.8% apparently and it's 98.4% with gorillas. I watch a lot of wildlife videos on YouTube and to me gorillas are much more human like than chimps unless we've done a great job of covering up our aggression.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

LOL! File away that strawman shit and address the point she made.

What point? Who has ever put forward the strawman that skin colour is all that should determine affinity and common interests?

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

What point? Who has ever put forward the strawman that skin colour is all that should determine affinity and common interests?

Put away the strawman shit. Seriously, you guys use that copout response every time you don't want to address a point. If you don't get the point just say so. And I'm not the one making the point--it's the black girl.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

What point? Who has ever put forward the strawman that skin colour is all that should determine affinity and common interests?

What Truenorth00 said. One person's anecdotal experience doesn't change the fact of racism against African-Americans as a group. No one's asking her to care "more" about people who share her skin colour, they're simply asking her to care about racism against people who have her skin colour.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

And I'm not the one making the point--it's the black girl.

I'm amazed that anyone can be this tone deaf and just ignorant.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Mulroney was an over reaction for sure. But when you say something dumb after seeing it kill a lot of other careers, I dunno, that's a special level of tone deaf.

For sure? I have not heard anyone speaking in their own name saying that it was an overreaction and that Mulroney did not deserve what she got.

Including Mulroney herself, actually.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by theman23

Any comments on the Wendy Mesley and Jessica Mulroney incidents?

Both seem like over reactions to me.

What is most striking is how over the top effusive the panic-infused apologies have been from the offenders.

Just shy of admitting to eating little babies for breakfast.