Warp wrote:
> andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> You seemed to support that law or at least didn't condemn it.
> 
>   I think that's the core issue in this whole thread.
> 
>   It was not my intention to support that law. What I was really objecting
> to was (what I perceive to be) the hypersensitivity many people have with
> anything which deals with "race". In other words, my question was whether
> people are objecting to the law purely because they have an automatic
> aversion to anything that makes a distinction between races, or whether
> there are *logical* reasons to oppose the law. (No need to answer that
> for the umpteenth time. I am explaining here, not asking.)
> 

Ah, I wondered what was carrying this thread out for so long.

Alright, the reason is that race is not a good distinction. It looks
like it, on the surface. Maybe 90% of illegals are Mexican, I don't know
the exact numbers. But I would be willing to guess that around 80 to 90%
of the legal population would be of Mexican decent as well. So, race is
not the determining factor. There is also, as pointed out elsewhere in a
recent branch, the fact that you can not look at a person and say 'ahh,
they are this race'. The most you can say is 'they show features of
decent from this race.'

In an area that is already as racially charged and biased. where there
are people with strong prejudices in positions of power, allowing
discrimination based on race is akin to handing them a law saying 'we
know you were right all along, run those folks out of town.

>   There are people (but not anybody here, as far as I can tell) who are
> *so* hypersensitive about "racism" and racial issues that they are
> promoting outright banning the entire concept of "race", and are saying
> that *anything at all* which makes any kind of distinction between "races"
> is extremely bad and should be banned. Naturally even any kind of honest
> police work which does anything at all that distinguishes between racial
> features, is also automatically bad, even if there is absolutely nothing
> in that police work that could be considered discriminatory or racist.
> 

My personal opinion is that race is becoming meaningless as people allow
it to. I admit that I can not look at a person and tell the race of
their grandparents. If I can not look at someone and tell, and I suspect
that the average police officer can not simply look at someone and know
their race, why should race be a basis for anything?

Discussing racial issues and racism is fine, to me. Allowing racism to
bleed over into how the government interacts with citizens, in manners
were race is of no use at all is bad.

If you want to suppose that race can be determined, then I propose a
government wide challenge. Any official, acting, sitting, whatever, who
needs to be able to identify a person as being one race or another,
should be able to identify, and categorize, from picture peoples of the
following decent: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai,
Vietnamese, Maori, Malaysian, Native Austrialian; Indian, Saudi, Iraqi,
Egyptian; Nigerian, South Afriacan, Brazilian, Mexican, American,
British . . . and so on. Any misses would show that the traits they are
making decisions based on are either not indicative of a certain race or
it would show they are incapable of applying race as a means of
separating the correct people for what ever it is the law allows them to
separate people for.

>   My personal opinion is that *if* in some contexts crime could be more
> efficiently stopped by making the distinction, then it would make sense
> to do so. Race shouldn't be something to be so hypersensitive about. It's
> just another human trait as anything else.
> 

For the reason above, it isn't. A white shop owner says he was robbed by
'some Mexican gangster kids. you know, like those kids talking funny on
the corner.' near a Cuban neighborhood. Should the police focus on
Mexicans, or Cuban, or gang members? Maybe with a bit better
description, eye color, hair, height, skin color, they can narrow it
down. Could make things worse, and say it is a Brazilian neighborhood.
1000 mile difference geographically, a different language that sounds
similar, some shared facial traits in general. Similar cooking, if you
pick and choose carefully.

The average person is just unequipped to distinguish races, even if they
themselves think that they are. Because of that, why should the law,
which is enforced by the average person, allow them to make distinctions
based on their perception of race?

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