Should racism be classified as a mental disorder?

Ayuh,.... With Obo, Jackson, 'n Rangel at the top of the list of Crazies,...

 

Early in the 20th Century, the Jewish elite of the psychiatric community attempted to make "anti-semitism" a mental disorder.

 

It may make people eligible for disability compensation if they can prove their mental illness is debilitating enough to hinder their employment opportunities.
I mean face it ... Look at all the people who already collect SSDI "Crazy Checks".

I think it is clear enough to accept that the Scarlet Letter brandished about with the support of Political Correctness ... Has effectively been changed from a "A" to a "R".

 

And that's exactly the kind of society that certain people would love to have. Blacks commit so much crime, they are such a dysfunctional group of people in our society, yet the problem is on us if we choose to live in non-black neighborhoods.

 

Should dumb threads about imagined racism be classified as a mental disorder?

 

I dont think it is really a mental disorder, and there are different degrees of racist behaviour and thinking. but i think that people with overt irrational hate for individuals based on their appearance/skin colour/race are "maniacs". im not familiar with definitions of pyschiatric illnesses, but i think that at least a good deal of racists who are very hateful for other races have some sociophatic behaviour. i dont think psychophathhic though. but im not very familiar with the definitions yet racists are very strange to me and i think something is wrong with them.

 

You still haven;t come anywhere near demonstrating where your objective morality comes from. You are just trying to obfuscate. If people need a moral compass then who is going to provide it?

Let me ask you....Do you eat meat?

 

No, it should not. We would end up with too many blacks in mental hospitals, as in general blacks are the most racist people of all. Many simply hate "creepy ass crackers".

 

I had not thought of that, but you are right. It occurs to me that many Chinese I know have been subjected to some pretty (*)(*)(*)(*)ty treatment but rarely if ever play the 'poor me" card. Asians from the island nations are often suspicious of other races, but the race card thinking is missing.

I agree the culture is founded on family/ancestry and earnest living.

The growing divide between Canada and US cultures is in that very aspect. The 'poor me" race card, so favored by our indigenous people, is pretty much ignored here. They keep playing it and we keep ignoring them, it is, actually a perfectly Canadian solution.

It's just like abortion. You guys go nuts when the word is mentioned, we just go to the beach.

 

In answer to the thread--------ask Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton!!!!!

 

Thats actually not as racist as IAwesome takes it.

Creepy ass crackers leaves room to like non-creepy crackers. Thats not far enough for him with his statement that "us black people dont trust ANY whites", to paraphrase..

 

Wow!! Another candidate for my "ignore" list; thanks for stepping-up.

 

Racism as far as I can tell is a learned behavior, either passed along from one generation to the next or the result of our own experiences or cultural and social associations. To classify it as a mental disorder would imply that it is pathological in origin and thus somewhat beyond the restraint of the "afflicted" racist. It's not to say that racism is not a symptom/expression of a mental disorder. It may be the effect, but it's not the cause.

 

Yes, I eat meat. Nature and/or God designed me to be an Omnivore and I don't feel that some sense of morality prohibits me from eating meat. I do object to excessive cruelty in raising and killing animals for meat because this is a human activity quite different from hunting and the choice of how it is carried out is up to people and society. As for people who disagree with me on the issue, I don't see how their choice will seriously hurt them or their family or society, so why should that be a problem?

Let me reply with a classic in history. Is it moral to buy, sell and use other humans as slaves? For much of history the answer in most cultures was "Yes", so why should we object today if some society still wants to continue this practice (even if they captured a cruise ship full of Americans and enslaved them)? They have history on their side and who are we to object to another society's way of doing things?

 

I guessed you would be a meat eater. I think its abhorrent that you kill for your pleasure, I also find it absurd that you beleive in God so the idea that there is any form of objective morality and YOU have it is just risable.

As far as your çlassic in history'I see what YOU do to animals is every bit as bad, indeed worse.

Now where is your universal morality?

 

How does your anti-Meat argument fit in with your previous argument, SAB. And how does your side-stepping my question advance your point of view. It appears to me your logic on morality is a lot weaker than mine, especially when it is examined.

So let's take a closer look. How does you strong opinion on meat-eating somehow negate the idea of a bedrock morality (notice that I never said anything approaching the idea that there is one universal morality all people can agree upon)? What is it about meat-eating that makes it an obvious moral no-no that any thinking person should recognize with a bit of thought?

If you can't come up with an answer, SAB, you are basically saying that there is no morality unless it is a strongly held opinion of your own. I'm not sure if that ranks as self-delusion or an extremely egotistical view of the world masquerading as extreme tolerance. Oh yeah, try and answer the slavery question.

 

Racism can be based on mental illness, but I wouldn't say that classifying political or social views themselves as mental illness is accurate.

For example, we have a lot of the "Jews run everything" crowd here, and while many of them really are insane, their insanity applies more specifically to their paranoia.

Anti-semitism isn't a mental illness, but the irrational fear of Jews is. Phobias are a mental illness.

 

You sure do bring up Jews alot.

Why the interest?

 

I'm not certain I would want you to define the term

 

If we did that then the majority of liberals would be declared legally insane.

 

What logic? You have repetatedly failed to advance any logic at all, indeed you see logical discussion as 'games'

I didn't say it did. Indeed the fact that it doesn't is pretty strong evidence to me that there is no bedrock morality.

I am saying there is no objective morality whatsoever so you second comment is irrelevant. However I do hold that any so called morality that is unquestioned and not derived from first [principals is worthless at its very core.
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As for Slavery I have to ask a question first. If someone is convicted of a serious crime and is sent to jail and made to work whilst in Jail is that slavery?

Other than that naturally I think Slavery is immoral.Whether of humans or animals.

 

Believe it or not SAB, most of the planet and even most of the developed world don't accept the "morality" that an animal is equivalent to a human. As for any morality being worthless at its very core, there are a couple of strong arguments against that (one practical and one theoretical).

The practical one is that where actual experience has found truly bad effects come from not practicing a particular morality (my child sexual abuse argument, for instance) any debate about whether this is an objective morality is besides the point. A society freely allowing such behavior is making itself a damaged society, and why would anyone want that - to pursue some philosophical point about freedom and morality?

The theoretical argument is one that the practice of slavery clearly points out. Three thousand years ago most peoples practiced a form of slavery and actually thought it humane, as the slaves would otherwise be killed in the course of raids and wars. The fact that some raids and wars were fought to capture slaves was somehow ignored.

Two thousand years ago most peoples practiced a form of slavery and the more civilized inclined toward multiple generations of slaves and crueler treatment of them (read up on the Romans and latifunda or mining). It was the primitives who tended to free slaves after some years or normally not overly abuse them (although having sex with slave women seems to be a constant "right" in a society allowing slavery).

A thousand years ago many societies had watered down their slavery. Christians now had serfdom (the terms of which varied so only a certain percentage of serfs could truly be described as living in slavery) and Muslims felt it poor form to hold a fellow Muslim in slavery (a good reason to convert) and China had curtailed such behavior. Crucification of slaves had given way to whipping them to death among Europeans.

Six hundred years ago Europeans decided that to exploit territories in the New World they needed slave labor and started imported mainly West Africans to do so. The wastage rate was high (in other words, their transport and treatment was brutal). To justify this behavior, various theories gradually were created about the natural inferiority of the Negro and how they were either only fit to be slaves or we were doing them a good turn by exposing them to Christianity and Christian civilization. In Russia, serfs continued to become LESS free. This process continued until 1825, when 85% of the Russian people were effectively slaves to 10% of the Russian people.

So there is strong evidence to suggest that the road towards deciding slavery was wrong was hardly linear or consistent. In some ways the advance of some civilizations actually introduced forms of slavery that were more deplorable than the original more primitive version. Why then does almost no nation practice slavery today?

My argument would be that the nations with power realized that slavery was wrong by having enough people making the mental leap of putting themselves in the chains of a slave. The British Anti-Slavery movement was tiny and formed mostly of religious oddballs (Quakers, for instance), but they were able to make such a strong case for ending slavery that in 20 years many pubs actually had a print of the now infamous "spoons transport" drawing in a frame on the wall of the pub (a strong political statement).

SAB, you seem to be making the mental jump of putting yourself in the position of animals. This is not a mental jump most people are willing to make, as it is much harder to truly empasize with a non-sentient non-human than it is to empasize with one. I would argue that to make a morality subjective, a good majority of people have to make those mental leaps. Thus, if you imagined yourself in the position of being an 8 year old child being forced to have sex with an adult, you would see the morality of disapproving such behavior.

 

It seems we're in agreement here. Everything in my experience points to racism as a learned behavior.

On the one hand, in lay terms it's easy and comforting to label racists as 'mentally ill', 'sicko', 'deranged'...that's fine for the sake of pseud-psychiatrists like myself. But if we look at the potential consequences, it gets a lot more complicated.

Say for example that science and society got together and determined that racism is in and of its self officially, medically and legally a mental disorder. Would the racist now be eligible for disability benefits? Would he also then have a legal defense in hate crime trials?

 

I am well aware that most people don;t believe that to be true...and so what? Are you claiming that morality is defined by what most people think? Most people don;t beleive in your Jesus some of god thing either

And the problem with this is you are begging the question. You have decided a priori that child abuse is a bad thing without saying why. You claim that society is damaged without saying why. Practically there are many good reasons not to eat meat. Personally I think society is damaged by eating meat. Its a personal opinion wheras you seem to think your YOUR personal morality is some sort of universal one.

Yes, thank you, You don;t need to lecture me on History. I have degrees in both History and Philosophy

see my comment before

If you are going to be so arrogant as to lecture me then at least get it right 'whipping to death' of serfs is a russian thing called Knouting it is certainly not a factor in the rest of Europe

500 years

That is not any sort of fact at all. The theories didn;t come about until the 19th century when slavery was all but abolished. get you facts in order before you presume to lecture me

There is strong evidence to suggest that people have come to believe that slavery is wrong primarily because we are constantly expanding the boundaries and taking in people who were previously though of us'' óut'''. In this case I am more advanced than you because I include non humans in my in group whilst you are still stuck at level of being proud of yourselof because you think all human should have rights

They didn;t 'realise'that salvery was wrong because there is no objective measure of right and wrong. They came to believe it.

I happen to agree with them. I just take it to its logical conclusion.

I empathis with anything that feels pain

yes because most people are stupid and/or selfish

makes no sense at all. Are you claiming that because people are stupid and lazy then morality shouldn't be extended to animals?

I already do. I am against all forced sex.

You still haven't come anywhere near to explaining where your morality is derived from.

For me its simple. Suffering is bad so don't cause it. I dont need to play around justifying why its OK to make other beings suffer.

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I am well aware that most people don;t believe that to be true...and so what? Are you claiming that morality is defined by what most people think? Most people don;t beleive in your Jesus some of god thing either

And the problem with this is you are begging the question. You have decided a priori that child abuse is a bad thing without saying why. You claim that society is damaged without saying why. Practically there are many good reasons not to eat meat. Personally I think society is damaged by eating meat. Its a personal opinion wheras you seem to think your YOUR personal morality is some sort of universal one.

Yes, thank you, You don;t need to lecture me on History. I have degrees in both History and Philosophy

see my comment before

If you are going to be so arrogant as to lecture me then at least get it right 'whipping to death' of serfs is a russian thing called Knouting it is certainly not a factor in the rest of Europe

500 years

That is not any sort of fact at all. The theories didn;t come about until the 19th century when slavery was all but abolished. get you facts in order before you presume to lecture me

There is strong evidence to suggest that people have come to believe that slavery is wrong primarily because we are constantly expanding the boundaries and taking in people who were previously though of us'' óut'''. In this case I am more advanced than you because I include non humans in my in group whilst you are still stuck at level of being proud of yourselof because you think all human should have rights

They didn;t 'realise'that salvery was wrong because there is no objective measure of right and wrong. They came to believe it.

I happen to agree with them. I just take it to its logical conclusion.

I empathis with anything that feels pain

yes because most people are stupid and/or selfish

makes no sense at all. Are you claiming that because people are stupid and lazy then morality shouldn't be extended to animals?

I already do. I am against all forced sex.

You still haven't come anywhere near to explaining where your morality is derived from.

For me its simple. Suffering is bad so don't cause it. I dont need to play around justifying why its OK to make other beings suffer.

 

Ironic post is ironic.