RACISM vs Other Bullying

[The Bot]

Although I believe racism is serious and unfair, I disagree with the fact that it is placed higher on importance than other bullying.

I feel that bullying one person for there personality is often worse than racism, because there are millions of people of every race, and therefore other bullying can be much more personal and unique, often making it more personal.

Another point is that victims of racism have many people who have been through the same thing to confide in, whereas personal, unique bullying points mean fewer people to provide advice.

Please don't hate me; as I have said before I disagree with racism, and I am not racist.

It would be nice to get some opinions.

[Harbinger]

I agree with your opinion, though for a different reason.
Treating someone differently because of race = racism (my definition).
No matter whether one intends to do harm or good by it, treating someone differently because of their race inherently calls attention to it, and places a value on it. Imo, this is inherently harmful, and will do nothing to end racism.
Race is an attribute, not a value. There's a great quote somewhere to that effect, which my brief Internet search was unable to find. I'll look for it later, or maybe someone else has access to it.

[The Bot]

So what's your reason for agreement? Or was I just being obtuse and missing it?

[WriterDan]

I don't agree at all.  Bullying/mocking someone because they have a screwy personality is something that everyone does.  People will grow out of their oddities and can change themselves for the better by realizing they're getting picked on for something that they're doing.  Being racist is bullying/mocking someone for something that they inherently are and therefore cannot alter.  In my opinion this is much worse as it is something that cannot be changed and is therefore just cruel.  People should be judged for WHO they are.  Not WHAT they are.

[Skar]

Excellent point Dan.

It exposes a couple of questions.  Lets say that at the same moment in time, you have one guy bullying someone for their race and another guy bullying someone else for their geekitude.  Which of the two victims is more harmed?

Over time, from the perspective of a whole society, racism is more harmful because, as you pointed out, you have a whole segment of the population in permanent social pain. You can't grow out of your race.

So, should a society try to root out racism but leave other bullying alone as something that will solve itself with time? Do you make it a crime to target someone for bullying because of their race?  How do you prove that the bullying was because of race and not some other reason?

Do you make it a crime to bully someone at all and not bother trying to winkle motive out of the bully's brain?  How is this different from treating the two forms of bullying equally?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think that you can ever come to a certain conclusion that one is inherently more damaging. The person bullied for race may be able to take it in stride, thinking that he's not to blame for anything wrong with him and the bully is just an idiot anyway. The person bullied for "geekitude" may be damaged, taking his geekiness as an inherant part of himself.

I don't think you can leave bullying alone. In any form. It is an extremely destructive and horrible behavior that children and adolescents especially (though not exclusively) get into. I was a social outcast as a teenager, and I've seen what was done to me and my friends because of cliques. I've seen cases of physical abuse, some of it with permanent effects, inflicted on people for a wide variety of "causes."
One case that always comes to mind is the poor nerd in New England who was finally abused so much that his parents got the bully suspended. This meant the bully could no longer play football for the school and lost his chance for that scholarship. How does the school react? They further victimize the nerd for ruining the bully's life. This is a terrible behavior, obviously an extreme case, but still illustrative. Bullying, in our schools especially, should not be tolerated regardless of its root cause.

[Skar]

Huh.  I hadn't thought about the whole, "I'm a (insert anything here) nerd and so it's my fault that I'm being bullied" possibility.  Yeah, that could be much more damaging than racial bullying which can easily be seen as perpetrated by idiots.

Being a social outcast in my teens, as well as rather short, made me the target of quite a few bullies growing up as well. Nasty business that, leads to a lot of fights.  It's made me just a little touchy in my adulthood.  I don't have to take that shirt anymore so I'm not going to, whether the bully is movie star cool or the size of a pro-football player.  Unfortunately, I'm often unsure of where the line is.  Am I being bullied or is this guy just an oblivious prick?  I tend to err on the side of aggression, though I'm getting better.  I also tend to look for opportunities to back up the victims 'cause hey, bullies are the enemy and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Right?

So, enough with the vomitting of TMI.  Taking a step back...

How could a school administrator, teacher, or church leader rationally judge and then later defend his position, that "unacceptable"  bullying is taking place?  Is the line between bullying that should be stopped  and vanilla kid-play quantifiable?

[Harbinger]

Bot, my reason for agreeing is that, imo, treating race-based bullying differently than other forms of bullying is itself racist. "He hit me because my skin is green and his is orange" is, to me, neither better nor worse than "He hit me because I wear glasses and he doesn't" or any other reason that one person comes up with for bullying another.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

You could argue all day about which is more damaging, being bullied because of a race or personality quirk and get nowhere, especially since many people on these forums were bullied as kids, which makes it a personal issue.

The more important thing to consider is the mentality of the bully in either case.  Somebody who is racist will tend to have certain traits psychologically, and bullies the same.  Which set of traits are going to d0 more damage to society as a whole?  When you find the answer to that, you find out which is more destructive.  Not that ruining a single person's life isn't significant, but it's not as significant as being destructive towards society as a whole.

With that in mind, racism shows an inherent lack of understanding, an oblivious ignorance, to the issue of race.  The people who think one race is better or worse than another clearly don't understand the largely agreed upon notation that all races are created and should be treated with equality, despite their different features.  This person is also more likely to misunderstand other important items, including both major differences (e.g. religion, culture and language, physical attributes, socio-economic status, sexuality, etc.) as well as minor differences (the way one dresses, interests and hobbies, personality traits, etc).

I would venture to guess the average bully does not do so out of a complete state of ignorance, but in order to fulfill other innate and grown desires, such as the desire for dominance. 

This means that racism is likely to lead to other types of bullying and social turmoil, but bullying is not nearly as likely to lead to racism, etc.  By that logic, it is more important to teach children to be racially accepting rather than to be accepting of everybody all the time.

As far as making it illegal to speak outwardly racist thoughts, the idea is both unconstitutional and poorly thought out.  First of all, freedom of speech should allow a person to say what he or she wants to say, regardless of offense.  Offending somebody on purpose doesn't infringe on any rights more than offending somebody on accident, and making it illegal to offend somebody on accident is ridiculous.  Because it isn't keeping other people from fulfilling their rights, it should not be made into law, although social mores should, of course, be geared towards not saying offensive things.

Secondly, making it illegal to speak outwardly on racism doesn't remove racism, it just hides it.  If you have a system in which people can outwardly say racist comments (again, according to the principle of freedom of speech), those people who are racist are known; they stand out.  If you have a system in which they may not speak their thoughts, not only is it more likely to lead to an explosion of some sort (it's the principle of bottling emotions, especially hard emotions of anger, hate, etc., causes them to build and break away), leading to more physical abuse based on race (which DOES infringe on peoples' rights), but it will also make it much more difficult to track down the criminals who engage in these violent actions.

Finally, saying racism is a larger problem than some other social problem isn't itself racist because it doesn't target a specific race in any way.  If you were to say racism against a specific race is a larger problem than some other social problem, at that point it would be racist.  But saying the problem of racism is a large problem that should be given effort to solve doesn't treat any race better or worse, making it not racist in either a positive or negative nature.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Gorgon, I could easily counter the racism pre-eminence argument by pointing out that if you train people to not bully at all they wouldn't bully even for racist reasons. It seems that by teaching general tolerance would accomplish more good than focusing on a single type of it.

And, as you point out, physical bullying is plainly something we can pass laws about, whereas we can't say that you can't feel superior to someone based on skin color. Thus it seems that, no matter which is worse, it's the actual bullying that we can act on, so the which is worse argument becomes moot.

As for how to enforce it, I don't have a complete set of enforceable concepts -- in the past I have focused on preventing bullying by showing the kids I've worked with (mostly through church) how damaging it is and how they don't want to be responsible for that. There are some activities that can definitely be regulated: punching, kicking, biting, pinching, shoving, etc. Coersion on basis of physical or emotional blackmail.
Other types can't be so easily regulated: "You can't play with us because you're not our friend." I'm not sure how you can counter that. However, in schools, at least, hate speach on any basis can be barred.

I fear the problem because one of demonstrating intentionality. If you can demonstrate that a child was acting against another on the basis of hurting the victim emotionally or physically, than you can punish the activity. I believe, however, that prevention is much more likely to be effective than punishment.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

I agree, and didn't mean to imply otherwise, that teaching general tolerance is the route to take.  But my understanding of the discussion was if, hypothetically, you were to chose racism or other bullying, which should be focused on.

Also, you can't counter so easily like you said you could, because teaching a child not to bully based on race is much easier to do.  And, like you said, focusing on the things we can actually act on is the best route.

Racism is a learned concept--hating somebody on a basis of race has been proven to be a case of taught behavior.  So focusing on not having children taught racism, while difficult, is easier than the alternative. 

The alternative, of course, is teaching against in inborn behavior.  Humans, as a part of our genetic coding, have a capacity to bully and for violence.  I know that somebody is going to read this and tell me I'm wrong, and feel free to, but it can be more or less proven without me looking up studies with the three following points:

1) Everybody, at one point in time or another, has said something negative, or 'bullied,' somebody (this excludes, for those of you who believe in perfect saviors, any person who is one with God or has reached enlightenment, etc., for religious purposes).  Anybody who thinks he or she has not bullied somebody at some point should think long and hard about it.

2) Bullying is an issue in all cultures and has been for all of written history.  It does not matter if two cultures have never come in contact with each other, like smiling or frowning, bullying is universal.

3) Bullying makes evolutionary sense.  Anybody who doesn't believe in evolution should ignore this point and use the previous two points as my proving points, seeing how this thread isn't a debate on evolution and nobody wants to get into it.  For anybody who does believe in evolution, it makes sense along the following lines:  in nature, humans need to be able to work together, but they also compete for many things, most importantly mates.  By 'bullying' others, a person is showing his or her dominance.  This is why you hear the phrase, "Bullies have low self-esteem."  Bullying raises self-esteem by promoting dominance in cases it doesn't lower it through conscience.  There's a lot more to the evolutionary perspective of bullying, but that's a basic idea.

Of course, pretty much any behavior that is inborn does not need to be followed, and with mental stimulation, such as SE's strategy, can be rooted out.  It's just like any other inborn impulse, from sex to anger.  However, just because it can avoided through mental stimulation, doesn't mean it is easy, especially not in all people.  The strength of the impulse differs from person to person, and while this is no excuse to be a bully, it is a reason why, despite children are taught not to bully since they are in kindergarten or younger, many still grow to be full-time bullies, and many more grow to bully part-time.

Besides, if you put an end to all bullying through some method or another, you are right in the fact that it would stop people from bullying based on racism.  This doesn't mean it would stop racism.  Racism can come out in many more ways than strict bullying--inequalities that I, at least, wouldn't consider bullying, would still exist, such as a difference in pay between one race and another, or hiring people of one race and not of another.

Also, you're right--prevention is much more effective than punishment.  Punishment as a prevention is one way to do it, but punishment after an offense has happened needs to be more extreme to be equally as successful.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Why would teaching against bullying on racist lines be easier than teaching against bullying in general? I don't think that's remotely a given. Bullying is done by highlighting a difference in people. That difference doesn't need to be racially motivated. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think racism is simply an internal justification for bullying behavior. Teaching nonviolent toleration of any difference would seem to me to be just as easy.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

Teaching to not bully is easy.  Making sure the people you are teaching isn't.  Everybody on these forums has been taught since a young age not to bully, but everybody on these forums has bullied before.

Most the people on these forums are not, I am willing to bet, racist.  This means the teaching a person to be tolerant of race is easier than teaching somebody not to bully, or so the general population of this forum would show if it were used as an experimental population.  You should note that being tolerant of people and not bullying are different.  I can be tolerant of somebody, I can even like somebody, and still bully him or her.  Teaching tolerance is just the first step to stop bullying.

I never said the only bullying is racial bullying, as you implied when you said

That difference doesn't need to be racially motivated

.  I said that if we were to chose one to focus on, I think it would be more productive to focus on racial inequalities and ignorance rather than bullying in general.

Essentially, it's easier to build a house than it is to build a city.  Like you are saying, there are many different forms bullying comes in, and instead of attempting to stop every person from at any time giving into their natural impulses, it would be a better and more plausible first step to stop teaching people to hate on the basis of race.  Like I said, racism is a learned concept, bullying is part of our being.  OF COURSE not teaching somebody a behavior is easier than changing a pre-existing behavior.

And whether or not racism is a justification for bullying behavior, it has become a more serious problem than bullying in a general sense.  There are many effects of racism that aren't strictly bullying, and many that are impersonal, especially in the professional world.

I don't mean to say that being called names because you're fat or geeky is less harmful than bullying based on race, but I think it is more plausible to reduce racism than bullying, which means that taking a first step in the right direction is better than stumbling at the starting line.  Like I sad, I agree that teaching general tolerance is the best route to take.  IF we were to focus on one or the other, I'd like to think doing something is better than doing nothing.  It's just a hypothetical, since we can and should, in reality, focus on both.