UFOs are fake, so y'all better straighten up!

[Mr. Premise]

How do you know "we all do?"

I am sure neil suffers from prejudices towards other races, we all do

 

[Mr. Premise]

Since you aren't American, you may not know that it is common here to call people "Irish-American," "Italian-American," "Anglo-American," etc. This puts African-Americans on the same footing as other groups if you use that term rather than "Black."

Remember, "Black" is the opposite of "White." So if a white person thinks "White" is normal, then that makes blacks abnormal. If white connotes "honest" or "fair-dealing" that makes blacks dishonest. For example, there was a phrase white people who immigrated from the South used when I grew up in the Midwest when someone did something nice or honest: "That's mighty White of you."

African American is one of the worst coins IMO, what does that mean?

 

[Z...]

Ok maybe I shouldn't have opened this can of worms,

yes it is inconsistent but I have to say the only African people I am exposed to on regular bases have very dark, literally black skin coming from subsaharan africa,

Yes there are different shades of dark skin
but the original stock is essentially black, as ebony and that was my point

same goes for white people, I have seen some (mostly northern) people who are literally white as milk, not even ivory but milk.

I didn't know about italo-american etc.

As for my remark that we all suffer from this program, It is my understanding that this program is deeply engraved by default in every human being,
the notion of the other race
If poodle and greyhound had intellect do you think they could understand each other on all levels ? I think not. But I might be wrong.

 

[Z...]

"That's mighty White of you."

You should have respond

But what if you are white trash? :)


I always found that expression hilarious

 

[Neil]

What do you think would have happened if you had decided to not even post at the beginning of this thread? None of this would have come about. You would have merrily gone along dreaming that you were awake while your predator gleefully fed you dreams and lies to keep you slumbering on and on.

Well, lurking certainly got me into a mess when it came to being able to critically think. Which was my orignal intention when I made the first post. UFOs are fake, baloney; don't even consider it. Only a crazy superstitious person would consider it. And I went "oooh words of wisdom" and then "something isn't quite right about all of this" Then, as the thread went on I discovered that my "thought center" was being put to sleep and behind all of were delusions of self-importance and nasty draconian programs.

And this is why the predator in us makes us squirm when we get ready to push that send button, or tries to deceive us into thinking that we are only making it worse for the others by contributing (isn't that so upright and understanding of us)

Yeah, there was certainly some squirming at times. I'm sure that was mostly why I said that, that does sound like my line of thinking at the time. I feel so much more energized by having seen this, though I know I'm only just getting started. The world feels somehow different; somehow more alive after this experience.

There is no usefulness in thinking that 'since the group is trying to help me I do not want to hurt the group and so will be quiet' - that is the predator thinking. Try to identify when it is acting up and what it is trying to do.

Agreed.

Personally, my skin appears to be more peachy colored than white. As a matter of fact, I've never seen skin that is white. The African people I have seen have skin color ranging from a very deep brown to tan - the darkest skin color I've seen are some pictures of people in Africa, but even they don't have black skin

Light-skinned and dark-skinned would probably be more accurate. No one is either white or black. Europeans are light-skinned, Africans are dark-skinned, and Asians are kind of in the middle. As anart and beau already mentioned, it shouldn't even matter unless skin color has some type of real physical importance to what is being described.

Well, I came here seeking answers about one thing and learned the truth about something else entirely. So far, this has been one of the most important discussions in my life. There certainly has been a lot of drama, but perhaps drama isn't always such a bad thing.

 

[Neil]

Ok maybe I shouldn't have opened this can of worms,

Well, taking Shane's comment about everything I said should've been said because it reveals the predator's mind in context, maybe it is natural since the underlying theme of this thread the whole time has been programs and the way we hide them from our(my)self(ves). Are these inconsistencies due to your programming running?

Everyone seems to be really good at sniffing out programs around here. Do you want to step under the scanner

 

[Beau]

Remember, "Black" is the opposite of "White." So if a white person thinks "White" is normal, then that makes blacks abnormal. If white connotes "honest" or "fair-dealing" that makes blacks dishonest.

This is a lot like what Gladwell talks about in one chapter of Blink. IAT refers to the Implicit Association Test. Here's a snippet:

It turns out that more than 80 percent of all those who have ever taken the test end up having pro-white associations, meaning that it takes them measurably longer to complete answers when they are required to put good words into the “Black” category than when they are required to link bad things with black people. I didn’t do quite so badly. On the Race IAT, I was rated as having a “moderate automatic preference for whites.” But then again, I’m half black. (My mother is Jamaican.)

So what does this mean? Does this mean I’m a racist, a self-hating black person? Not exactly. What it means is that our attitudes toward things like race or gender operate on two levels. First of all, we have our conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we use to direct our behavior deliberately. The apartheid policies of South Africa or the laws in the American South that made it difficult for African Americans to vote are manifestations of conscious discrimination, and when we talk about racism or the fight for civil rights, this is the kind of discrimination that we usually refer to. But the IAT measures something else. It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level—the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we’ve even had time to think. We don’t deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes. And as I wrote about in the first chapter, we may not even be aware of them. The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve met, the lessons we’ve learned, the books we’ve read, the movies we’ve seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion. That’s what is coming out in the IAT.

The disturbing thing about the test is that it shows that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values. As it turns out, for example, of the fifty thousand African Americans who have taken the Race IAT so far, about half of them, like me, have stronger associations with whites than with blacks. How could we not? We live in North America, where we are surrounded every day by cultural messages linking white with good. “You don’t choose to make positive associations with the dominant group,” says Mahzarin Banaji, who teaches psychology at Harvard University and is one of the leaders in IAT research. “But you are required to. All around you, that group is being paired with good things. You open the newspaper and you turn on the television, and you can’t escape it.”

The IAT is more than just an abstract measure of attitudes. It’s also a powerful predictor of how we act in certain kinds of spontaneous situations. If you have a strongly pro-white pattern of associations, for example, there is evidence that that will affect the way you behave in the presence of a black person. It’s not going to affect what you’ll choose to say or feel or do. In all likelihood, you won’t be aware that you’re behaving any differently than you would around a white person. But chances are you’ll lean forward a little less, turn away slightly from him or her, close your body a bit, be a bit less expressive, maintain less eye contact, stand a little farther away, smile a lot less, hesitate and stumble over your words a bit more, laugh at jokes a bit less. Does that matter? Of course it does. Suppose the conversation is a job interview. And suppose the applicant is a black man. He’s going to pick up on that uncertainty and distance, and that may well make him a little less certain of himself, a little less confident, and a little less friendly. And what will you think then? You may well get a gut feeling that the applicant doesn’t really have what it takes, or maybe that he is a bit standoffish, or maybe that he doesn’t really want the job. What this unconscious first impression will do, in other words, is throw the
interview hopelessly off course.

 

[anart]

As for my remark that we all suffer from this program, It is my understanding that this program is deeply engraved by default in every human being, the notion of the other race.

It absolutely is a program, but I do not think it is a 'default' program - no one is born with it. I'm not sure how much time you've spent around very young children, but it's my experience that they simply do not 'see' color - their friend is their friend, their teacher, their teacher, their parent, their parent. I know a 'white' couple who have adopted three african-amercian children over a period of several years, all as infants or younger than 2 and this couple has explained many times how it's not until the children are exposed to 'color filters' at school that these things even come up.

Of course, this couple I know could be wrong, but at this point in time what they have said, and from what I have observered, it certainly seems to be true.

Also, if someone is very used to focusing on physical characteristics of others first and foremost (through programming) then, of course, they would assume it is a default program. I'm not necessarily saying that is the case here, but it's something to consider.

 

[brainwave]

It absolutely is a program, but I do not think it is 'default' program . - no one is born with it. I'm not sure how much time you've spent around very young children, but it's my experience that they simply do not 'see' color - their friend is their friend, their teacher, their teacher, their parent, their parent. I know a 'white' couple who have adopted three african-amercian children over a period of several years, all as infants or younger than 2 and this couple has explained many times how it's not until the children are exposed to 'color filters' at school that these things even come up.

This is anectdotal but I am black and have spent my formative years in a neighborhood of racially mixed foreign nationals in a nation that is 80% black. This nation's motto is "out of many one people". So I grew up being taught to accept people as people without any particular racial reference. Little did I know that this was a strange thing. You see, I was aware that people looked different when growing up but not that it meant something inherent about their character. Us kids considered ourselves as the same nationality. If we had to describe a person to someone else, we would say something like: "you know, so and next door, the one with the copper colored hair, not the one with black curly hair, she did xyz". As I understood it then it was only for recognition purposes when necessary not for focusing on physical attributes, it was no different than saying "the one that always wear the red jumper". Though there were class issues, which we were taught by the adults around us, I had no awareness of race per se as a separate category until I moved to the USA. Then all hell broke loose. I realized quite painfully in fact, that I was at great risk precisely because I was not aware of racial codes. My classmates didn't quite know what to make of me because I looked one way but did not conform to whatever they thought people who looked like me are supposed to be like.

I learned pretty quickly to try conform enough so I could function without getting beat up by a bunch of kids every day (that happed my first few weeks in this country), and at the same time not lose myself completely. Even so, it still seems strange to me (though I understand the cultural programming involved) to say 'the black kids next door...' rather than simply saying the kids next door. For me, the fact that I had to learn about distinction by race informs my understanding that people are not born making distinctions by race. Initially not a default program, I however think that over time such thinking takes on the path of least resistance. With effort, I also think it can be surpassed by other learning. I could be wrong though.

BTW, I am not a big fan of current rap music, though there are some early hip-hop songs that I enjoy as much as any other genre of music that I listen to. In any case, and this may be due to my own preconceived notions after being taught that being sensitive to such things are necessary for blacks in America, the statement about black kids and rap automatically triggered a perception of the poster as an unconscious racist. I also know that it may not be the most objective way of looking at another which tells me about myself more than it tells me about the poster.

 

[kenlee]

As for my remark that we all suffer from this program, It is my understanding that this program is deeply engraved by default in every human being, the notion of the other race.

Basically our level of being is pretty much the same. We are asleep and we often run on default programs that have been “educated” into us by the group mind but that does not mean that any specific program applies to all.

For example a person can be in a room and everyone in the room can be identified with a particular program but this person may see this particular program as “something foreign” to themselves as soon as this thought pattern enters.their consciousness. This person may become aware of this program by the hypnotic influence this program has on the people around them and there may be people who are completely identified with the program within their proximity, but they might not be identified with it. The program may make them feel uncomfortable because it may be directed at them through the other people around them via hypnotic effect but that does not mean that they identify themselves with it. They may have other programs that they identify with specifically but this does not mean that this particular program is a default program for them. But as I said we are more or less in the same boat and we have our default programs but they are dependent on a persons particular experiences and “education.” Such programs (thanks to our so called “education”) act as a shell to reflect experiences and impressions off of us (as the moon reflects the sun) so that these impressions don’t enter us in a deeper way so they can be properly “digested” to feed our essence and understanding.

 

[Z...]

It seems conditioning plays significant part . I just remembered this part from the book Blink:

Part where they talk about IAT (Implicit Association Test). The subject was first asked to arrange different words like hurt, evil, glorious etc. under two columns which were marked as - EUROPEAN AMERICAN OR BAD
and AFRICAN AMERICAN OR GOOD

the subject reports:

And so on. Immediately, something strange happened to me. The task of putting the words and faces in the right
categories suddenly became more difficult. I found myself slowing down. I had to think. Sometimes I assigned
something to one category when I really meant to assign it to the other category. I was trying as hard as I could,
and in the back of my mind was a growing sense of mortification. Why was I having such trouble when I had to
put a word like “Glorious” or “Wonderful” into the “Good” category when “Good” was paired with “African
American” or when I had to put the word “Evil” into the “Bad” category when “Bad” was paired with
“European American”? Then came part two. This time the categories were reversed.
(i.e. EUROPEAN AMERICAN OR GOOD vs. AFRICAN AMERICAN OR BAD)
And so on. Now my mortification grew still further. Now I was having no trouble at all.
Evil? African American or Bad.
Hurt? African American or Bad.
Wonderful? European American or Good.
I took the test a second time, and then a third time, and then a fourth time, hoping that the awful feeling of
bias would go away. It made no difference. It turns out that more than 80 percent of all those who have ever taken the test end up having pro-white associations, meaning that it takes them measurably longer to
complete answers when they are required to put good words into the “Black” category than when they are
required to link bad things with black people. I didn’t do quite so badly. On the Race IAT, I was rated as having
a “moderate automatic preference for whites.” But then again, I’m half black. (My mother is Jamaican.)
So what does this mean? Does this mean I’m a racist, a self-hating black person? Not exactly. What it
means is that our attitudes toward things like race or gender operate on two levels. First of all, we have our
conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we use to direct our
behavior deliberately. The apartheid policies of South Africa or the laws in the American South that made it
difficult for African Americans to vote are manifestations of conscious discrimination, and when we talk about
racism or the fight for civil rights, this is the kind of discrimination that we usually refer to. But the IAT
measures something else. It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level—
the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we’ve even had time to think. We don’t
deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes. And as I wrote about in the first chapter, we may not even be
aware of them. The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the
experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve met, the lessons we’ve learned, the books we’ve read, the movies
we’ve seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion. That’s what is coming out in the IAT.
The disturbing thing about the test is that it shows that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly
incompatible with our stated conscious values. As it turns out, for example, of the fifty thousand African
Americans who have taken the Race IAT so far, about half of them, like me, have stronger associations with
whites than with blacks. How could we not? We live in North America, where we are surrounded every day by
cultural messages linking white with good. “You don’t choose to make positive associations with the dominant
group,” says Mahzarin Banaji, who teaches psychology at Harvard University and is one of the leaders in IAT
research. “But you are required to. All around you, that group is being paired with good things. You open the
newspaper and you turn on the television, and you can’t escape it.”
The IAT is more than just an abstract measure of attitudes. It’s also a powerful predictor of how we act in
certain kinds of spontaneous situations. If you have a strongly pro-white pattern of associations, for example,
there is evidence that that will affect the way you behave in the presence of a black person. It’s not going to
affect what you’ll choose to say or feel or do. In all likelihood, you won’t be aware that you’re behaving any
differently than you would around a white person. But chances are you’ll lean forward a little less, turn away
slightly from him or her, close your body a bit, be a bit less expressive, maintain less eye contact, stand a little
farther away, smile a lot less, hesitate and stumble over your words a bit more, laugh at jokes a bit less. Does
that matter? Of course it does. Suppose the conversation is a job interview. And suppose the applicant is a black
man. He’s going to pick up on that uncertainty and distance, and that may well make him a little less certain of
himself, a little less confident, and a little less friendly. And what will you think then? You may well get a gut
feeling that the applicant doesn’t really have what it takes, or maybe that he is a bit standoffish, or maybe that
he doesn’t really want the job. What this unconscious first impression will do, in other words, is throw the
interview hopelessly off course.

 

[Beau]

Deckard, you posted the same thing that I pasted in my message above.

 

[Z...]

lol
please delete it

no I am not crazy, I am just so busy and having many things on my mind, when I came here the other day in a hurry I just skimmed quickly through the thread registering only responses addressed to me, and then today afternoon I remembered I read something about it in the Blink and I found it, all the time didn't even see what you wrote

I suppose this should teach me a lesson

 

[anart]

I just skimmed quickly through the thread registering only responses addressed to me ...

I suppose this should teach me a lesson

Yep, did it work?

 

[mada85]

There's the black people next door who listen to their rap music every day; makes me want to shoot their stereo.

Maybe you don't realize it, but that was a fairly insensitive statement to make, not to mention disturbing. You talk about your roommates as though you are so much better than them, then you do the same to your neighbors, who happen to be black, in a way that again makes it sound like you think you are better than them. But how much better are you than Rocky or your hip-hop loving neighbors if you can't tolerate the people around you and realize that not everyone is going to be interested in what you are interested in? You need to learn some external consideration.

Forgive me being somewhat late with a comment on this thread.

I agree with most comments about the possible subconscious racism of the Neil's intial remark, although I certainly empathise with his sentiment - 'shooting their stereo' - I feel/think something similar when one of my neighbours plays loud music.

When I read the comment by beau, I was reminded of the way some Rajneeshee sannyasins used to behave in the early 1980s. That was, to use the idea of 'being in the present' and 'paying attention' as a means of scolding those who, in their judgement, failed to do so. The phrase most often used was, 'You've missed!', as in, you've missed the present.

This train of thought, triggered by beau's comments above, made me wonder if something similar isn't going on here.

At what point does 'external considering' become something more like 'you can do whatever you like; I'm externally considering and I'm not going to complain or protect myself, or ask you to consider me?

And how far should we allow 'external considering' to go before we act to stop any intrusive, threatening or annoying behaviour of others?