Godstud wrote:@Julian658 It's not simply about superiority of one group or another, but a denigration of another group. That, in itself, implies superiority. Kapeesh?
The simple definition is insufficient.
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
Not everyone would agree with the definition you present. Some think racism = power + privilege. It follows from this definition that those who have power and privilege are the only ones who can be racist. Hence white people are racist and black people are not, regardless of any other factor. It is also seen to be structural, and hence the very existence of ‘whiteness’ is a colonial relic and thus inherently racial supremacist in form. This is the hard left, or cultural Marxist if you like, position typically expressed in the phrase “ only white people can be racist”.
Of course not everyone agrees with such an obviously ideologically twisted definition.
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/40097There’s some late night reading for you.
What do I think? The focus on racism is reductionist. This holds for sexism and other types of prejudice also. The hard left cultural Marxists themselves would have to agree with me here, at least on this first principle. They use the idea of intersectionality, which then follows on to their usual commie nonsense. For me, the idea is that racism, sexism, etc are all a sub set of prejudice. The long standing liberal idea is that an individual’s success in life ought be due to their own efforts and that prejudice represents an unacceptable limit on what an individual can achieve. Liberalism is meritocratic. Prejudice is an impediment to meritocracy. Therefore the lack individual ought be protected from it.
This line of thinking is what justified the start of the civil rights era, during Truman’s time. Cultural Marxist intersectionality just subverts the liberal project for their own diabolical commie agenda.
Anyway, after that brief digression, I wanted to take the opportunity to steer @maz in the right direction.
I mentioned UK stats.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52219070The BBC article then goes on to look at reasons.
London has most of the cases and also has a higher proportion of minorities.
Over crowded households (by modern standards)
Also a range of other reasons:
"These include BME populations coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, having [public-facing] occupations, different cultural beliefs and behaviours or being at high risk in view of their increased risk of certain diseases such as diabetes and heart disease."
Let’s look at the public facing job suggestion, given this is offered as an explanation in the US also.
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/06/charles-m-blow-social/The NHS is used as an example.
Whites make up about 80% of the national population. Most first responders here seem to be white. Nurses reflect the national proportions. Only doctors are over represented by minorities (should there be affirmative action here in favour of white peoples, haha). Are there so many doctors in the UK that they account for the national disparity in cases between ethnic groups?
Obviously this is nonsense.
I suggest a significant reason for the higher stats for Asians (Pakistanis) is that most are very religious and the virus spread though the mosques before the UK government shut them down. Note Pakistan still hasn’t shut down mosques. So it would be a combination of conservative community plus lack of urgency from the government until it was too late.
What of blacks?
https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/london-crime-capital-sees-shocking-18059419Urban crime seems to be continuing in London. The drug trade won’t have stopped. Minority youths are heavily involved in gangs which do a lot of drug dealing. Could it be the case that the virus has spread though underworld channels? This would show up in higher cases amongst blacks.
So let’s break it down. What basic reasons are there?
Higher infection rate.
Higher complication rate.
Higher death rate.
https://www.okayplayer.com/news/are-black-people-immune-to-coronavirus.htmlToward the bottom of the article on that link there is a tweet that shows it is all three. Blacks have a very high infection rate, high complication rate and high death rate compared to the average.
This data doesn’t give us a breakdown of ethic group and comorbidities but it seems reasonable to accept the average of unhealthy people is higher in black communities. One would expect poverty and discrimination to be factors in America, but the same result can be seen in the UK with its public health care and high proportion of Asian doctors (they wouldn’t discriminate against blacks because only white people can be racist, right?). So maybe it is the poor health of blacks that lies behind higher complication rates and thus higher death rates.
If this is not so, we will have to look at genetic factors. I have no information about this however.
But what of higher infection rates? I think the public facing job theory has been debunked. But if it were so, we would expect to see higher infection rates amount poor whites in the same circumstances. Given that doesn’t seem to show up in the stats we looked at, that can’t be the reason.
Note the article explains the myth that was going around about blacks being immune.
A story that should’ve ended there ultimately became the source for fake news, as two websites, in particular, changed Daryl’s story and spread harmful misinformation in the process. First, there was the African Daily Mail, who published the story “The black African student escaped coronavirus” on February 13. (It has since been deleted.) The report included the claim that “Chinese doctors have confirmed that he remained alive because he has black skin, the antibodies of a black are 3 times strong, powerful, and resistant as that of a white.” After that, came a report from CityScrollz, who published the story “Chinese Doctors Confirmed African Blood Genetic Composition Resist Coronavirus After Student Cured” on February 14. (It has since been deleted.) The story includes false reporting throughout, including the notion that Chinese doctors said Daryl “stayed alive because of his blood genetic composition which is mainly found in the genetic composition of sub-Saharan Africans.” The report also includes the same claim of Black skin having stronger antibodies than white skin that appeared in the Daily Mail‘s report.
Then came another misleading report from The Zambian Observer, who published the story “Chinese Doctor Says African Skin Resists Coronavirus” on February 16. The Observer report copies CityScrollz’s report word for word, with the only change being its headline. The report is still available to read on the website.
Both stories have since been proven to be false. On February 15, the global news agency AFP spoke with Professor Amadou Alpha Sall — director of the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, a biomedical research center that is currently overseeing suspected cases of the coronavirus in Africa — to fact check if Black people are more resistant to the coronavirus.
According to @Godstud ‘s definition of racism, that is rather racist. It would be ironic if genetics turned out to be the reason blacks are more effected by this disease.
It seems, like religious conservatives from S Korea, USA, Iran, and Pakistani British, blacks have been caught unprepared due to their own hubris. The US government’s slow response, like the UK government, would also add to this community’s complacency. In fact Western governments generally were too slow in waking up to the danger, possibly thinking it is an Asian problem and doesn’t affect them. So it seems black Americans were suffering from the same hubris as most Western white people and had to learn the hard way what pandemic means. Furthermore, unhealthy lifestyles and heavy involvement in underworld activities, in which authorities would struggle to police isolation, are better explanations than the racist discrimination rhetoric used by AOC and other minority advocates.
So Maz, the case you should be arguing is that minorities appear to be largely responsible for their situation but the tardy response of governments is also a factor. Minority advocates are exploiting the situation for their own gain in wealth and influence. As we all know, good causes attracts con artists like shit attracts flies.
Hopes that helps.