Beagle-zebub
Member
Regardless of what side of the moral issue you are on, I think pretty much everyone would have to agree that the issue of racism is exceptionally difficult to resolve, given the nature of the terms involved.
Possibly the biggest problem is that, unless overt, it is difficult to determine with a high-degree of certainty that any given action is racist and to what degree. It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism; confirming this, though, is more difficult, since storms of that magnitude, against cities that vulnerable, within states that dysfunctional only happen very rarely, meaning that a cleanly comparable disaster afflicting a whiter city would be very unlikely to happen without considerable time elapsing during the control disaster and its experimental counterpart, during which time society might or might not change. The obvious alternative is to make rougher comparisons, but the level of roughness at which comparisons are still acceptable is up to every individual to make subjectively, and this choice may be influenced by the individual's possible racism.
The particularly offensive nature of racism encourages its use a weapon. If you have unrestricted hatred for a person, and they're not the same race as you are, what better way to attack somone than with a racial epithet? It replaces their individuality with an undesirable stereotype, makes an immutable part of their being into something bad, and impresses upon them that entire segments of the population hate them. To a lesser degree, the idea that certain races are less protected by the law gives a sadist disproportionate reason to victimize them--that might sound ridiculous, but supposedly the rates of rape victimization on Indian reservations by outsiders is astronomical (heard a story about this on NPR); whether or not the lack of legal protection is due to racism, or to the legal nightmare created by the issue of federalism, it's fairly certain that rapists are more likely to rape Indian women because of the perception that they are less likely to get punished for doing so.
Additionally, an accusation of racism is not falsifiable. We've all heard "some of my best friends are ________!" We have probably heard it more as a joke than in earnest, since it's so laughable...and that's probably the most reasonable attempt at falsification.
So, everyone is pretty much screwed.
Possibly the biggest problem is that, unless overt, it is difficult to determine with a high-degree of certainty that any given action is racist and to what degree. It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism; confirming this, though, is more difficult, since storms of that magnitude, against cities that vulnerable, within states that dysfunctional only happen very rarely, meaning that a cleanly comparable disaster afflicting a whiter city would be very unlikely to happen without considerable time elapsing during the control disaster and its experimental counterpart, during which time society might or might not change. The obvious alternative is to make rougher comparisons, but the level of roughness at which comparisons are still acceptable is up to every individual to make subjectively, and this choice may be influenced by the individual's possible racism.
The particularly offensive nature of racism encourages its use a weapon. If you have unrestricted hatred for a person, and they're not the same race as you are, what better way to attack somone than with a racial epithet? It replaces their individuality with an undesirable stereotype, makes an immutable part of their being into something bad, and impresses upon them that entire segments of the population hate them. To a lesser degree, the idea that certain races are less protected by the law gives a sadist disproportionate reason to victimize them--that might sound ridiculous, but supposedly the rates of rape victimization on Indian reservations by outsiders is astronomical (heard a story about this on NPR); whether or not the lack of legal protection is due to racism, or to the legal nightmare created by the issue of federalism, it's fairly certain that rapists are more likely to rape Indian women because of the perception that they are less likely to get punished for doing so.
Additionally, an accusation of racism is not falsifiable. We've all heard "some of my best friends are ________!" We have probably heard it more as a joke than in earnest, since it's so laughable...and that's probably the most reasonable attempt at falsification.
So, everyone is pretty much screwed.