I've never met an outright racist. Usually the ones who are racist say their comments with a hinge of wondering how the normal world will react.

So I'm in the AF, but I'm deployed as a civilian, and these three are also civilians.

Back to the racist. I was talking to two of our cleaners who, by the way are freaking awesome, but also they are Arabic of course, and Muslim. Both guys are about 22-23, fun-loving, playing soccer kinds of kids.

Anyway, so I'm in the hallway chatting with them while they're cleaning and this one guy tells me he met one of my colleagues over at another base that I'm associated with. He said he couldn't tell if she was married or not, to which I replied she wasn't but she wanted to get married badly but hadn't met the right person (and she's not Mormon lol). To this he responded with (paraphrased of course):

"Oh well it doesn't matter if they've found the right one, but there are several things a person should consider before they get married. They have to have Christ-centered lives, the should be of the same race, religion, culture, and socio-economic status. I mean can you imagine one of these guys (pointing to our janitors), marrying one of our girls back home. That would be horrible!"

To which I responded:

"I've known plenty of inter-faith, cross-cultural, mixed-race marriages, and some where people are of different socio-economic status, and (shock) some where the woman makes more than her husband. I think a successful marriage is based more on how the person defines themselves and who they're comfortable with, combined with good communication skills and a lot of common sense." Then referring to his comment about the cleaners marrying one of "our girls" I continued by giving him a what if situation, "you know there are thousands of americans who have converted to Islam, are you saying that you don't think the girls who convert should marry one of these guys?"

To which he responded

"Oh no, she still has racial purity to think of."

Seriously. WTF. How does he not understand that almost every human being alive on this planet is the product (somewhere down the line) of two people who married outside of the confines of race, religion, creed, culture, even socio-economic status. Hell, my grandmother was 100% of German descent (even though she was 4th generation American) when she married my non-German grandfather and she had caught hell for it from her parents.

So I've gotten off on a tangent, but how can people make such ignorant comments like that? Do they seriously not know how ignorant they sound?

The other two Mormons, btw, are cool as shit. They don't wear their religion on their sleeve, nor do they push it on others.

When a group of people think they are "God's chosen people" it goes to their heads. Add in teachings that dark skin is cursed and intermixing with gentile seed is forbidden.

Then ask yourselves why was this taught? To keep the church membership tight knit and controllable. When two members get marred it reduces the probability of leaving the church because someone decided to go out into the world by themselves and think for themselves.

Also, Mormon males are raised to view Mormon women as special reserved goddess material. Basically, they are the rewards for serving a mission and towing the church line. You are then worthy to marry and have sex with one of these special goddess women. So the thought of an infidel like a muslim being involved with sacred Mormon goddess stock is horrifying.

In other words, there is a pecking order and some people are more worthy for rewards than others. The dark skinned people were basically too good for Satan but not good enough to be born into the church. Multigenerational born in church stock outrank new members and especially new members of color or gentiles.

He wasn't speaking to me like I was a Mormon, in fact I don't think he knows I'm exmo, although I don't try to hide it.

Anyway, by "our girls," he was speaking more in the context of our "american" girls, which is why I started to realize this guy is an idiot. Either when he pictures American girls he thinks of all of them as white, or he thinks of Americans as this pure thing in and of itself which is completely ridiculous.

It's obvious what he had in mind when he said, "our girls," lol! It sounds like he's led a very sheltered existence. Being deployed into a different culture, and with diverse coworkers might be the best thing in the world for him. If nothing else it will give him a certain comfort level with people who are different from him.

I think Jenlyn's question has more to do with why mormons can't see through their own stupidity.

It was this same racist, sexist and homophobic bullshit that caused me to question and eventually leave the cult while still in my teens (early 1970s). I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer by any stretch, so if I could figure it out, anyone should be able to figure it out.

Explanations for mormon stupidity do not excuse mormon stupidity.

Timothy

Those who oppose "mixing of the races" don't know it's too late -- by hundreds of thousands of years.

But it shows what colossal egos we humans can have. Not only can we imagine we're the center of the univers and the purpose for all creation, but also that we are the perfect, original, untainted model of humans -- and everyone else is a corruption of that. Yeah, sure.

You can find stupity and racism in all cultures. Seems that most religions want to marry and breed in their own culture. How many wars and killings have been carried out in the name of religion?

It is everywhere. This news story from April showed that 46 percent of a group of voters in Mississippi want interracial marriage banned.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/08/46-percent-of-mississippi-republicans-want-interracial-marriage/

The LDS teach their young men with the Aaronic Priesthood manual to marry within their own race. We are in the 21st century aren't we? It is hard to tell sometimes.

From the article you linked to:

"It was only 45 years ago that Mississippi legalized interracial marriage, and this poll indicates it continues to be a controversial subject."

This same thing would be true if said about Utah. It was about 45 years ago that interracial marriage became legal in Utah and it's still a controversial topic there.

I agree. It is not really so far in the past as might be thought but it is stunning to me that the Aaronic priesthood manual still teaches it while the LDS are trying to distance themselves from their history.

I was a little startled with the AF deployment mentioned by jenlyn. I found military communities to be much less racist than other communities. Children would come home with "new friends" who moved into base housing. They played together, went to school together, spent nights at each other's houses and the parents barbecued together on weekends. Even after the children grew up they keep in contact with their friends. At least that was some of what I saw.

If racial mixing were so natural and taken for granted you wonder why they keep having to push it on people with propaganda and why people continue to question it even today.

Hey, AF chic! Army girl here. Feel your pain, feel your pain.

This story is just like my mormon friend's response when I told him I had a black cousin. He asked what my relatives thought and said about my black uncle marrying into the family.

My friend's family is white trash. He just doesn't know it. It's not exactly a privilege to marry into his family. But you'd never know that from his false sense of who his family is. People aren't exactly clammering to marry LDS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2011 12:05PM by newcomer.

Dark skinned hominids walked out of Africa along the Mediterranean coastline to cool northern climates and god made them white and delightsome but the hominids who stayed in Africa were cursed by god to retain their dark skin ?

Did I leave anything out ?

> 100% of German descent (even though she was 4th
> generation American) when she married my
> non-German grandfather and she had caught hell for
> it from her parents.

I don't mean this in a bad way, but there is no secret racial purity code amongst "Germans". My mother's side is "100% German" (actually Württembergers, some Hessians, Prussians, Swiss, Austrians, etc.), and part of my dad's side as well, and they married Americans. This was your family's custom, not a "German" thing.

Racists are ignorant, and I agree there is no such thing as "purity". People used to stay more within the confines of religion, and socio-economic status, but all of us have ancestors who married outside the cultural norms. Even Hitler had to define who was a Jew or Aryan, because how many people exist without any Jewish or black or Slavic, etc. DNA? Racists are insane.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2011 02:23PM by atheist&happy:-).

What I meant by that, and should have said is that my grandmothers family saw themselves as pure German and were proud of the fact that they had managed to not have any "non-German" blood 3 generations into immigrating to America. That doesn't mean they were 100% German, nor do I think I'm special because of that, or any of my other heritages, I meant of it more as a point that there is no such thing as racial purity.

like Germans are beer-drinking, white supremacists, Russians are bad commies, etc. I wanted to clarify that there is no such stereotype. Our family is proud of our German heritage, because of the traditions, language, culture, etc., but for our grandparents it is just who they were, and I find all my heritage just as interesting. They make me who I am, and I do not feel I gained anything negative from them. I never heard any of the Germans preach to only marry within their group, and after the first generation most did not. I do not think they were aware of Hitler's ideas, because they were in the U.S. at the time, and in Russia when a lot of that thinking gained a foothold in German-speaking areas.

Most Germans assimilate in the U.S. unless they have strong ties to a religious community, and live near a lot of Germans. In doing research I find people segregating along religious lines, and not ethnic or nationalities unless they live in border areas where religions, and nationalities clash.

Human beings throughout history have apparently not wanted to mix with others that are not exactly like themselves, and except for some isolated tribes in Africa, for instance, everyone has been all mixed up with the races, nationalities, heritages centuries ago.

I saw a show on TV awhile back (Tyra I think), showing how black mothers try to lighten the skin of their children with creams so they are not so dark.
The idea of skin color is always going to be part of how the culture's see one another.

Ya, human beings are often racist. It's just how a lot of people think, I guess. The only way to break down those barriers, it appears, is to get to know people on an individual basis.

It's not racism all the time, it's just normal to want to breed within your group or tribe or whatnot. This whole "individualism" kick is a modern anomaly. Throughout history, the individual and the tribe were not easily severed. Two people are not just two isolated individuals, they bring their entire history and culture with them to the table ... in-laws and cousins and traditions and all that.

Mixing of widely divergent cultures, ethnicities and so forth always creates havoc in that respect. There's a reason why the vast majority of people in the world still marry within caste and cultural lines. Even in the face of the most unrelenting "anti-racist" propaganda and everything short of forced intermixing, people still maintain their ancient traditions.

It's not "inbreeding" if your group is sufficiently large. When there are millions of individuals within a given group inbreeding is not the issue. We're not talking about tiny groups like the FLDS here with only several thousand breeding individuals.

If any human traces their ancestry back far enough they will find that their 'grandparents' (back far enough) were all black (of African descent).
I find it somewhat amusing that what so many racists think of as racial 'purity' is nothing more than a series of genetic mutations and that interracial unions are actually beneficial to our species as the people produced from such unions have the benefit of a wider gene pool which then goes on to benefit each consecutive generation.

The problems with small gene pools are apparent within such groups as the FLDS where genetic disorders/diseases are widespread.

Racial 'purity' is just another word for inbred.

"If any human traces their ancestry back far enough they will find that their 'grandparents' (back far enough) were all black (of African descent)."

That's not completely accurate. Early hominids have been found outside Africa and there is some suggestion that there may have been several locations around the world where human evolution got started. Also, the fact that some lines of evolution can be traced to hominids in Africa does not imply that they were originally "black" in the modern sense of the term. Our ancestors would have been barely recognizable to us today.

"The problems with small gene pools are apparent within such groups as the FLDS where genetic disorders/diseases are widespread."

Right, but the FLDS is an EXTREMELY tiny group from the genetic perspective ... just a few thousand individuals (if you take away the elderly and infants) of breeding age, at best. Larger groups and tribes do not exhibit the same problems. Nobody worries about "inbreeding" in places like Iceland, Norway, even Korea for instance -- small and very homogeneous populations but sufficiently large to avoid the problems of the FLDS. I don't even think the Amish have genetic problems (afaik), and they are a quite homogeneous group. 100,000 is probably a safe number for a group.

Other small homogeneous groups might include Jews, Druze, Mandeans and many Native American tribes. They do not exhibit unusual levels of genetic problems, afaik, and they tend to be pretty strict when it comes to maintaining the purity / identity of their people.

There are certain groups of Native Americans (tribes that have been geographically isolated) that can/do suffer from genetic problems because of their lack of genetic variation (diabetes).

Also, Iceland is being intensely studies because there is evidence of genetic disorders that have been linked to lack of biodiversity. (Also, Iceland is quite a bit more ethnically divers than most people realize.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

As far as the other examples you gave: They have all benefited from biodiversity as war/disease and intermixing with other populations has kept them (and those they have interbred with) relatively healthy. In the program 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' you can see how intercontinental migration has served biodiversity in humans, even in groups that have tried to stay 'pure', whereas groups that have been geographically isolated have, throughout history, been decimated by diseases that most of humanity had long ago, through biodiversity, become immune too.

My main point was why, given the lessons of history, any human group would CHOOSE biological uniformity (and think they are stronger for it) is baffling and ludicrous.

So, as far as those that are racist enough to espouse bio-exclusivity despite the overwhelming evidence that it hurts our species- my message to them is, go ahead and keep your stupid genes to yourself.


As far as all of our ancestors being of African descent: http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2001/nov/ancestor.htm

While I understand that you couldn't exactly label our oldest African relatives as 'human' (ie: homo sapiens), my premise still stands, which was: "If any human traces their ancestry back far enough they will find that their 'grandparents' (back far enough) were all black (of African descent)."

(my use of the term 'black' was not meant to describe any current black homo sapien, but to simply say that ALL of our ancient relatives were most likely dark skinned and that 'white' skin came later as a genetic mutation as humans/human ancestors moved to climates less exposed to solar radiation.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

I forgot to mention the most notable example, the Japanese, who are 100+ million strong, quite advanced, and remarkably homogeneous. Yeah I know about the Ainu, but they are few and tend, once again, to maintain their cultural integrity. At least I hope they do because I'd hate to see them disappear.

"but also they are Arabic of course, and Muslim."

Why not mention that everybody else is white? Why single out the Arabic folks when you mention ethnicities?

Just sayin'

So who were you talking with, Mormons or Muslims? Both? If you were talking to Mormons, how do the cleaners play in?

I work with internationals and most come from very homogeneous cultures; the young people can't imagine marrying outside their group. When I explain how mixed Americans are, and how we usually don't care, they're surprised. They tend to look at all white people and see us as having the same ancestry, so I like to introduce our administrator (French, Dutch, Italian ancestry) or even my spouse (French, American Indian, German, English). To them, we're just "white".

There are wars, new colonies & settlers, traders, regime changes, etc. that move people around all over the world. Although some islands would be fairly isolated.

Racial purity my ass. can't wait until the entire human race is the color of coffee with cream. That will be the end of that sh*t.

Of course I'll be dead by then, but sleeping the long sleep with a smile on my face.

Anagrammy

Too bad human beings will always find something to fight about, no matter how similar their physical appearances.
(EG: N. Koreans vs S. Koreans, former Yugoslavia, Rawanda, Cambodia)

"Can't wait until the entire human race is the color of coffee with cream. That will be the end of that sh*t." -- That would be the end of the wonderful rainbow of "diversity" too wouldn't it? (At least in regard of race.)

So is diversity good or bad?