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On Mon, 03 May 2010 17:03:24 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 03 May 2010 16:22:04 -0400, Warp wrote:
>
>> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:40:52 -0400, Warp wrote:
>> >
>> >> > I consider myself to be the exact opposite of a racist in the
>> >> > sense that
>> >> > I *couldn't care less* about "race" or skin color or anything.
>> >
>> >> When you say "race matters", look out, you're making a distinction
>> >> based on race, whether you want to admit it or not.
>> >
>> > On the contrary: I'm *not* making any distinction based on race. To
>> > me
>> > it doesn't matter what race somebody might represent.
>
>> Um, you are, if you say "90% of illegal immigrants are of Hispanic
>> origin, so we should stop people of Hispanic origin in order to ensure
>> they're here legally". That's the textbook definition of racial
>> profiling.
>
> You didn't understand me. I do not distinguish race as being any more
> or less relevant than any other feature.
So are you changing your view? Otherwise I don't understand the
statement you made earlier about "if 90% of illegal immigrants are of
Mexican descent, then you should check them more frequently" (not an
exact quote, but you did make a statement to that effect). You are in
that statement making race *specifically* the *sole* reason for stopping
someone to ask for proof of citizenship.
> If hair color can be used for some statistic, then so be it. If race
> can
> be used for some statistic, then fine. I don't care. To me it's all the
> same. I don't make any special distinction.
Similarly, you couldn't say "people with black hair should be stopped to
see if they're illegal immigrants" because the fact that they have black
hair has no bearing on whether or not they're illegal immigrants or not.
Let's be clear here: The odds of catching someone as an illegal
immigrant are statistically low by profiling based on race, hair colour,
eye colour, or any other physical trait. It's not like 75/100 of people
of Hispanic descent in Arizona are illegal immigrants.
The law is very similar to laws enacted in WWII regarding internment of
people of Japanese descent here in the US. Or laws concerning the
identification of slaves in early US history that were based on skin
colour (because in general, if you were black, you were a slave).
> Or in other words, I'm not hypersensitive about talking about race, as
> so many other people seem to be. To me it's just as incosequential as a
> subject as hair or eye color.
>
> If the distinguishing feature of some statistic happens to be race,
> and
> you really want to call it "racial profiling", then I suppose I can't
> stop you. It's just that the term "racial profiling" is always used in a
> very negative sense, like it was a thousand times more outrageous than
> making a statistic based eg. on gender or age groups. To me it's all the
> same. I don't make any special distinction between them.
>
> I wish everybody else was like that too. I wish the world was a place
> where you can talk about human races, make statistics about them and
> whatever, freely and without any kind of worry, because it's just as
> inconsequential as gender, age or shoe size.
>
> But no. If you start talking about races, making statistics and
> profiles,
> you are immediately labeled as racist. Sheesh.
That's because making a decision about someone's guilt or innocence based
solely on the colour of their skin is a racist decision. Period, end of
story. What about that don't you understand?
Jim
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