No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

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eumaas
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by eumaas »

101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 8:55pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 8:51pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 8:49pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 8:46pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 8:42pm


Yep a dislike or distrust of anyone different to yourself has been happening for 40,000 years. Still happens to this day in the remotest most cut off parts of the world. Try going for a walk around the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Race based slavery dates back thousands of years.
you can keep asserting stuff without bothering to crack open a book, but it doesn't mean the idea you formulated in your head has anything to do with historical truth.
am I wrong then?
Yes. Race-based slavery is a historically recent phenomenon. The point about xenophobia is fine, obviously various social groups have fought each other throughout history, but color racism and race-based slavery are modern concepts.
Ancient Greece?
Nope. They didn't like people who didn't speak Greek, but then again they didn't like people from other city-states either until Alexander united them under Hellenism, a process which also involved Hellenizing foreigners—this is why the New Testament is in Greek rather than Aramaic or Hebrew. But these Hellenized people were accepted as Greek—in fact, Hellenized Jews were so desperate to assimilate that they practiced a brutal surgery called an epispasm to restore their foreskins so that they could attend the gymnasium, where all attendees were nude. They certainly enslaved plenty of other Greeks as well as foreigners. No concept of race, and slavery had no basis in race.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
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I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?

eumaas
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by eumaas »

101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:09pm
Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?
First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
— Clashy

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:21pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:09pm
Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?
First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
and Adolf Hitler wasn't Aryan.

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by eumaas »

101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:39pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:21pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:09pm
Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?
First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
and Adolf Hitler wasn't Aryan.
Aryan was a linguistic term that got turned into a racial one based on a view of how the Indo-European language family spread, a view that is no longer current among scholars.

What are you trying to say with that non sequitur?
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
— Clashy

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:42pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:39pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:21pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:09pm
Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?
First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
and Adolf Hitler wasn't Aryan.
Aryan was a linguistic term that got turned into a racial one based on a view of how the Indo-European language family spread, a view that is no longer current among scholars.

What are you trying to say with that non sequitur?
That there are always anomalies and for any number of reasons.
Yes Aryan is a very old theory.

eumaas
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by eumaas »

101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:45pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:42pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:39pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:21pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:09pm
Are you guys seriously telling me that Romans, Greeks, Egyptians didn’t discriminate based on ethnicity?
First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
and Adolf Hitler wasn't Aryan.
Aryan was a linguistic term that got turned into a racial one based on a view of how the Indo-European language family spread, a view that is no longer current among scholars.

What are you trying to say with that non sequitur?
That there are always anomalies and for any number of reasons.
Yes Aryan is a very old theory.
The racial theory dates back to the 19th century, which is not very old. The self-appellation by Indo-Iranians is indeed very old, but not a theory.

Are you trying to say that the examples I gave were exceptional? I gave you famous ones because I thought they would be more familiar to you. But Romanization happened all the time. This is not some minor historical curiosity. It is a defining feature of the Roman Republic and Empire. They assimilated peoples all the time. Likewise for the ancient Egyptians, who accepted and assimilated immigrants. None of this is at all controversial.

Hellenism is all about assimilation, and was a defining period in cultures from Europe to India (see the Greco-Buddhist civilization which existed in what is now called Afghanistan for example). I gave you the example of the epispasm, but you can look throughout the Near East for examples of Hellenism. I don't see that as somehow anomalous when it is a major, defining feature.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
— Clashy

101Walterton
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:58pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:45pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:42pm
101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:39pm
eumaas wrote:
29 May 2018, 9:21pm

First, you're equivocating between race and ethnicity. Not the same thing. That moves the goalposts. As I have acknowledged, various groups throughout history have definitely had animosity towards foreigners. However, to my second point, yes, those societies did practice assimilation, so even that animosity had its limits. We have plenty of records. For Egypt why not pick a famous example: Cleopatra, who was Greek by descent, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, yet accepted as Egyptian and worshipped as divine. For the Romans, the Severan Emperors even had Punic ancestry, i.e. from Carthage, what was once Rome's most notable enemy.

A modern person, steeped in racism, would consider all black Africans to be the same race, despite not sharing the same language, culture, religion, and polity. On the other hand it wouldn't occur to an ancient person to group them all together. It would be a tough sell to convince an ancient Roman that the Latins, Greeks, Germans, and Thracians were all one people, i.e. white, yet that is what race means.
and Adolf Hitler wasn't Aryan.
Aryan was a linguistic term that got turned into a racial one based on a view of how the Indo-European language family spread, a view that is no longer current among scholars.

What are you trying to say with that non sequitur?
That there are always anomalies and for any number of reasons.
Yes Aryan is a very old theory.
The racial theory dates back to the 19th century, which is not very old. The self-appellation by Indo-Iranians is indeed very old, but not a theory.

Are you trying to say that the examples I gave were exceptional? I gave you famous ones because I thought they would be more familiar to you. But Romanization happened all the time. This is not some minor historical curiosity. It is a defining feature of the Roman Republic and Empire. They assimilated peoples all the time. Likewise for the ancient Egyptians, who accepted and assimilated immigrants. None of this is at all controversial.

Hellenism is all about assimilation, and was a defining period in cultures from Europe to India (see the Greco-Buddhist civilization which existed in what is now called Afghanistan for example). I gave you the example of the epispasm, but you can look throughout the Near East for examples of Hellenism. I don't see that as somehow anomalous when it is a major, defining feature.
No what I am saying is that because there are examples of acceptance or 'non racist behaviour' doesn't mean the regime can't be racist. Likewise not everyone within a racist regime is necessarily racist.

eumaas
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by eumaas »

101Walterton wrote:
29 May 2018, 10:19pm
No what I am saying is that because there are examples of acceptance or 'non racist behaviour' doesn't mean the regime can't be racist. Likewise not everyone within a racist regime is necessarily racist.
What I am talking about are precisely societies not individuals. Large scale patterns of social behavior that are well-documented as the societies we're discussing were literate and kept records. I'm not putting forward some weird, minority view of history, but rather the accepted scholarship on the issue. For example, you will see negative comments on foreign nations in Egyptian texts, yet you don't see that kind of negativity expressed towards the groups that had assimilated, even if they came from those same foreign nations originally. Furthermore, the very concept of race was not present in antiquity. It is a modern concept. As I said earlier, the idea that all Europeans were a single people is foreign to the ancient Roman mind. However, the notion that Rome could extend its culture across the globe, making all peoples Roman, including populations that we would call non-white, was a notion that was accepted. Tensions within the Roman Republic and Empire had precisely to do with resistance to assimilation.

You seem to be asserting that 1. racism is universal and has always existed, 2. despite the lack of evidence of modern racism among these ancient peoples and furthermore a history of widespread assimilation practiced over a long duration (very long in the case of Egypt), these societies were racist. You have not given any argument or evidence to believe 2 other than to assert that this widespread behavior was anomalous.

If every time I encounter a cat, I call it a cat, is that anomalous? How does regular, routine behavior constitute an anomaly?

Your reassertion that racism has always existed everywhere is not an argument, and it seems to hinge upon a second assertion that regular, widespread behavior is somehow anomalous, which is precisely what regularity doesn't mean.

Again, this is a case where you have a preconceived notion of the ancient world, and you are insisting upon it contrary to the historical record.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
— Clashy

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by Marky Dread »

This is the key "the very concept of race was not present in antiquity".

Oh and Gene leave that cat alone. ;)
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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

Marky Dread wrote:
29 May 2018, 10:52pm
This is the key "the very concept of race was not present in antiquity".

Oh and Gene leave that cat alone. ;)
Unless he is curious he will be ok.

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by 101Walterton »

I was merely pointing out that people have always discriminated against other people and for any number of reasons (hence why I included ‘geography and iwi’ as examples unrelated to race) and always will.
Over and out.

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by Marky Dread »

Hey everybody Roseanne didn't mean it. It was all the fault of Ambien. Give me a break. :rolleyes:
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Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by Rat Patrol »

Marky Dread wrote:
30 May 2018, 4:07pm
Hey everybody Roseanne didn't mean it. It was all the fault of Ambien. Give me a break. :rolleyes:
Ambien's own response almost makes up for the stupidity of it all: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 654683002/

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Re: No, No, Don't Worry. Racism is Pretty Much Over.

Post by Marky Dread »

Rat Patrol wrote:
30 May 2018, 7:33pm
Marky Dread wrote:
30 May 2018, 4:07pm
Hey everybody Roseanne didn't mean it. It was all the fault of Ambien. Give me a break. :rolleyes:
Ambien's own response almost makes up for the stupidity of it all: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 654683002/
The EDL must take that by the bucketful.
Image

Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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