I am not too impressed with you last effort, Deuc. May I offer you advice upon your writing style?

With only 350 words allowed per post, it is unprofitable to respond directly to quotes from your opponent’s submission. Firstly, you must briefly repeat what your opponent has said that you take exception to, and then just as briefly give a reasoned response. But there is always just too much to respond to. So you are left with simply writing sneery one liners to some of your opponents quotes. That is not really debating, and if I was not aware of what you are trying to do, I could reasonably accuse you of stifling debate.

The rest of your post was not well written. Half of it simply repeated that racism is just awful. I already know that you think that racism is just awful. The rest was composed of a series of statements which were so disconnected in their train of thought, that I could not discern a logical argument that I could attack. Sure, I could attack the single statements themselves, but my own response to your post would come out just as incomprehensible to our audience as yours was. What I, and others, require from you, is a logical argument which others can follow and which can display cause and effect, or cause to consequence.

My advice is to either attack your opponent’s argument as a whole, or if that is too difficult, give a brief response to each of your opponent’s paragraphs without directly quoting from them.

OK, I have now wasted one of my posts for this 24 hour period by giving you this friendly advice, and I hope you understand that I am advising you in good faith. But I am sorry, I can not respond to any more of your posts unless you do a much better job of communicating your thoughts. This subject is just too important to me to waste my time going through your posts, sentence by sentence, trying to figure out what point you are trying to express.

"So human beings form mutually supporting groups, and they tend to be a bit nasty towards any rival group, especially one that they regard as menacing their group."

Yes racism is a complex idea, and redneck makes it as simplistic as this most recent quote. What he ignores are the systems of power vested in the concept of 'race'.

Terms such as 'gook', 'abo' and 'nigger' are not the side products of some natural competition over resources. They are cultural tools for the dehumanisation of people from given ethnic groups. They symbolically turn people and cultures into dead bodies and faceless threats. Is it ironic that there is no such term which allows someone from a minority group to similarly take away the dignity of those who self-identify as 'white'? I've heard 'white c*nt', 'skip' and 'cracker' on a handful of occasions but this does not even chart in the same range of symbolic violence. The closest would be sexist terms such as 'c*nt' or 'bitch'.

The idea of a discreet set of 'races' has an etymology that can be found in European colonialism. And I say this historically. Look at when 'race' first came into use and you will find European science, e.g. the fields of phrenology and social Darwinism, as applied to 'lesser races'. For an Australian cultural history perspective, I'd invite you to read Richard White's Inventing Australia - one of those 'unobjective' academic historians that Windshcuttle liberally misquotes.

As I see it, the concept of 'race' is basically the means by which naturally occuring difference has been scientifically corrupted. All 'racism' is thus prejudice stemming from embedded cultural presumptions created by colonial domination. So, by constructing 'racism' as a wider category of 'prejudice', redneck allows this more insidious form of hate to sneak in through the back door.

Good idea, Hutlen. It seems to me that some of the more extreme correspondents here confuse the more or less universal tendency among humans towards ethnocentrism, with the antagonistic ideologies that constitute racism.

Ethnocentrism is the tendency for people to view the world (including other people) through the lens of their culture, to the extent that their cultural perspective is, to them, the commonsense and natural way to look at the world. Our eponymous redneck is quite correct to assert that this tendency of human groups to categorise people as being 'Us' or 'Other' has been with us throughout the totality of human evolution.

Where s/he errs is in equating ethnocentrism with racism. Racism occurs when cultural ideologies about 'Other' peoples and their cultures arrange them in hierarchical categories, invariably with the subject's group at the top. Racist ideologies attribute innate and usually negative attributes to people from other 'races' - however these are defined. Most anthropologists now agree that there is far more genetic variation within than between so-called 'races', but that doesn't prevent racists from acting as if 'races' in humans have some kind of biological/scientific validity. 'Races' are cultural categories.

So - it is perhaps ethnocentric to mistrust the justice system in Indonesia, while it is racist to do so because Asians are innately corrupt and their system is primitive compared to ours.

Just for you redneck, I haven't included a single quote in this post, but I will restate some things so that you know what I'm talking about. Because that's the point of quoting you see? To provide a point of reference so that others understand the context. It is especially useful when not covering all issues or when targeting specific parts of arguments, as I tend to do. Rest assured, my posts contain as much detail as I deem necessary, and you might notice that the number of sentences used depends on the significance of the issue. Some issues require multiple paragraphs, examples & analogies, some can be dispatched with a single sentence and sometimes I may make an obscure or tangential point.

My last post was admittedly full of disconnected statements, as I had no desire to take over other's arguments and wanted only to rebut your more general statements and to raise new issues while waiting for your response to my previous post. But now it seems you can't respond, apparently because you can't see the structure in my post. If anyone else is having problems I would like to know. Let's see if we can sort out your comprehension difficulties:

You made three points:
-Racism is a product of group loyalty, and if I think racism is wrong I cannot then prefer any group ever.
-Racism has positive uses.
-Groups need loyalty.

My post started with demonstrating the fallacy of the first point and then considering whether an alternative argument could be made that shows the consequent. What you somehow misunderstood as me repeatedly denouncing racism was actually me giving reasons why racism is different from normal group loyalty, thereby making any alternative argument impossible.

Afterwards I gave reasons why I disagreed with your major premise, ie. racism==loyalty, and then I made a crack about Mother Teresa. Next I disputed your example used to support Point #2. And finally, having no problem with the substance of #3, I demonstrated why I find it inapplicable even if you are correct. Hope this helps.

Anybody have any idea how we can explain New Zealand's history given the controversy raging over this subject?

garra, another great post.

Reading through most of the recent posts I'm somewhat astounded at how polite most are from all sides of the discussion, especially considering how divisive and sensitive an issue this is. I've certainly seen a lot of other threads which get and stay much nastier. Makes for much more educational reading all round for me.

R0bert