I’ve never, ever, heard anyone say that “white people invented racism” unless it was a conservative doing a strawperson of what liberals believe.

Oh, there’s some obscure professor at some school somewhere who is of the opinion that only white people can be racist. I only know this because our resident redneck read about it and uses him as a goalpost in any discussion about race. “That’s fucking stupid” doesn’t seem to put it to bed, mostly because reality is defined by the craziest person in the room.

Think of the craziest or least sensical position on race you can think of, and someone out there holds that opinion very dearly. It’s unfortunate, but true.

I heard a Native Canadian say that white people are naturally inclined to subdue other cultures and exploit them for wealth.

Well, people say wacky stuff that is nevertheless at least tenuously grounded in reality all the time. I’m more inclined to say that, in general, people of all cultural and racial backgrounds have an inclination (it’s certainly a combination of natural tendency and cultural conditioning) to subdue other cultures and exploit them for wealth, it’s just that European white folks are better at it than most others. It’s a difference of degree, not kind. And that’s not a value judgment of any kind. Not a good one, anyway. Someone had to be the first to invent the cultural and technological means required to attempt global domination, it just happened to be European whites.

As for the “pretty soon, people will start marrying their dogs” crap, I have a theory that most if not all conservatives secretly hate their spouses (if they have one), and this meme is just a clumsy attempt to project that hatred onto someone other than themselves.

Progressives are adept at speaking the language of peace and love and justice; but these words are just a smokescreen for their real agendas which are search and destroy.

Snort. I can still tell an “I know you are, but what am I” argument, even if they try to fancy it up with words they don’t actually understand.

Also, by this logic, Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush were the most progressive presidents in US history.

That’s a good point, and I would go further and say that a non-empathetic person would be ESPECIALLY biased toward those who seem most like them.

That is certainly a revealing way of putting the question, because in reality recognizing “homosexual unions” (the AFL-CIO of homosexuality!) will not “jettison” heterosexual marriage. Men will still be able to marry women, women will still be able to marry men. It tells us something about people like Ken Connor that they are unable to grasp this.

From another point of view, of course, the historical heterosexual model for marriage was jettisoned long before gay people began clamoring to get married. Women in the US and elsewhere whittled away at the model which made them basically the property of their husbands: they were allowed to own property, to testify in court, to serve on juries, to work for pay and to keep the money they earned doing so. One could say with as much justice that the historical model of medicine was masculine, because doctors were all male; and that this historical model was jettisoned when women managed to become doctors anyway. That didn’t mean that men stopped becoming doctors, or lawyers, or any number of other jobs and professions that had excluded women, though they did scream loud and long about having to give up their former exclusivity; which they also did as black men, and black women, gained entry to previously white male strongholds. One could also mention the vote, higher education, and any number of other spheres that were historically one thing but changed.

As I’ve argued before in various places, it’s really too late to invoke the slippery slope: heterosexuals have already allowed so many changes that we now have no choice, on Connor’s logic, but to allow even human-animal marriage. (C’mon, you all know that Gene Autry and Roy Rogers loved their horses more than any other human being.) Especially, conservatives have completely thrown out their opposition to divorce and remarriage, embracing such whoremongers as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh as their leaders and role models.

So what Connor is saying is that heterosexual marriage is defined by its excluding same-sex coupling. Myself, I don’t believe that same-sex marriages are going to be more than a statistical blip; it’s revealing that Connor seems not to think so, or chooses to talk as though he does. Most marriages will still be heterosexual; most parents will still be heterosexual. It’s also worth remembering that heterosexuals, including or especially women, voted with their feet against marriage through most of the 20th century. Heterosexuals can cohabit, copulate, reproduce, and rear offspring without benefit of clergy, and most homosexuals will surely do the same.

I’ll have to read the rest of Connor’s article; it sounds enlightening, though not in the way he intended it to be.

I wouldn’t be surprised of republicans used it as a strawman argument, however my point is that these kinds of crazy attitudes actually exist, and aren’t helpful. I don’t imagine it’s too widespread as republican’s might have you believe, but they are there.

*puts on flame resistant suit*

I’ve actually heard people suggest that all society’s problems are the result of white people and that racism was invented by white people, as if a whites never experienced anything like slavery and a white-free society would be a utopia. Most of this stuff is coming from progressives. If we are really progressive people, we have to get rid of these attitudes. The existence of a bunch of racist white guys does not equal white=racist, and doesn’t mean members of other ethnicity aren’t racist as well. When people react to these racists by equating whiteness with racism, people are hurting their credibility.

Many people have a hard time admitting that they said something racist or have a negative attitude toward another ethnicity. the best thing you can do is acknowledge and evaluate those wrongs and apologize when they happen. Apologizing for something you didn’t do is insane.

*slinks off*

I guess we stop apologizing for slavery when we decide it was really okay.

He didn’t write that though. You can think that past crimes are not okay, and even recognise their current (also not okay) effects, without going all “sins of the fathers”.

This has bothered me for a while, although the example I usually think of is Germans born long after 1945, rather than whether white people are forced to apologise for slavery. If they are, I hadn’t noticed.