this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

The reason I mention prison, is because when someone is convicted of racism, that's generally what happens. Depending on your country blackface can land you in prison.

I think that's quite pedantic, there are very few countries where racism alone will land you in legal troubles, let alone in jail.

Even if we examine the countries where it is punishable by prison time, I doubt the citizens of those countries would "accidentally" dress in black face, and I doubt you could provide me with one incident of someone ending up in jail for "accidental" racism.

Legal issues are Human Decency issues boiled down.

Unquestionably untrue. Legality has no historic basis in morality or ethics, it's simply a means to control/organize social hierarchy.

I think you do have to have intent or some awareness to be racist. Whether you recognize that as racism or not is a different matter.

Your argument is semantic in nature. What's the difference between being a racist and participating in racism? If you are against desegregation because it would negatively your property value, are you a racist? Well what would you typically call someone who is vehemently opposing desegregation?

Is it human decency to want to emulate what you like? I think it is. So I don't mind people wanting to change the color of their skin if that's what they want to do.

Because culture and ethnicity is not just about the color of your skin, It's a shared history of lived experiences. Even if you could genetically change the melanin content of your skin, you did not grow up being treated as a Black American, you did not experience the same institutional systemic racism as the minority group you are aping.

as much as I don't mind them wanting to change their gender, if that's what suits them, great.

Again, this is falsely conflating gender identity with ethnic identity. Women of different cultures have vastly different shared experiences than women of the same culture.

Since race is 100% a social construct much more so than Gender (the difference between the genes are stupidly small).

While race is a human construct, so is law, economics, and government. The implementation of these social constructs creates very real shared experiences that bond a community together in a unique way.

The ethnicity argument is largely one about cultural appropriation: You can't have my skin color because you weren't born with it, you're actually another color, you don't know what it means to be my skin color.

More like, you aren't a part of my culture because my culture is in large part a result of systemic abuse over the color of my skin, and you have never shared that experience.

(Just replace skin color with gender).

Again, gender is not a culture, it's part of of every culture.

You enjoy R&B, love black hair styles, love black skin tones, maybe you believe in your heart you were always black, go right ahead have at. I'm not going to judge you.

I think defining a culture down to pigmentation while ignoring the hundreds of years of systemic abuse is quite upsetting to most minority groups. It really sounds like youre supplementing your idea of your own ethnic identity onto others. Ethnicity tends to be less important to those whom are a part of the ruling ethnic majority, because you haven't experienced what it's like to be a minority. You don't understand what it's like when your ethnicity is how you are judged.