I was talking with someone yesterday who said that people should have a sense of self-respect by default. Those who refuse to do so are problems of society, so should be forced to endure rugged individualism since their impressions of duress don’t count.
This struck me as racist as if only confident people are expected to reproduce, so therefore, offspring should naturally have the personality of their ancestors. Children who aren’t forthcoming due to natural randomness become neglected by their own parents, their peers, and others in society. In turn, their development of self-respect becomes trampled, and it leads to a situation where they can never deal with society because they’re constantly under pressure.
Furthermore, in a multicultural society, different people will have different levels of emotion which lead to different levels of self-respect by default. Those who believe people should have an innate sense of self-respect are basically fascists who believe in natural selection. They said that those who are helpful by default are floormats who others in society are entitled to use. This includes when people are floormats because society intimidates them into being helpful or being outcast for being unappreciative of society.
You’ve successfully used one of the infinite ways of argueing the issue of rascism into nothing but a simple moral issue, the bases of which can’t really be defined, but we can try making the bases be universal happyness or as you say right to raise offspring, but no moral goal or bases can be agreed upon anyway. All other moral issues can be reduced in such a way as well.
Now I follow certain guidelines regarding not thinking or speaking in terms of racism, and it helps me get by, but that’s all it is, and I feel like such a sap for actually caring before. After all, everytime an individual “oppressor” gets down on their luck, they feel oppressed, everytime an individual “oppressee” starts doing well they oppress.
I’m talking about common socializing here. My point was it’s racist to expect people to be confident by default as if children should automatically bear the confidence of their ancestors.
It’s also racist to expect all races to have automatic statures of confidence as if weaker statures don’t deserve to be respected because they don’t present themselves confidently enough.
So, what you’re suggesting is that some races appear less self-confidant than others, so their chances of attracting a sexual partner are lower? But surely other members of the same race will judge them by the usual cultural standards of that race.
On a more general note, describing self-confidence issues as racist issues rather devalues the term racist, I would have thought.
I just assumed that’s what you meant, but did I say something so out of line with your reasoning, by implying you meant that. I guess I don’t entirely know what you’re saying. But, I also assumed that you were showing how there’s an artificial distinction between different races. One can ignore that distinction and only speak in terms of the individuals right to happyness or you can go the other way are make the distinctions further, after all it’s all artifcial anyway. The distinctions can go so far as to say that people related to you are of a different race, and therefore if you don’t like something about them such as there level of confidence then you are racist.
I believe the term racist should be devaluated being that what we all want is happyness for each individual, and there are numerous kinds of bigotry going on that have nothing to do with racism, but get superceded by racism. Let’s just worry about individuals. If an extremely miserable individual makes a racest remark who cares? They are as miserable as anyone in the so-called underprivelged race they are insulting and there are many in any race, so matter how underpriveligded in general, that are doing very well, often at the expence of the so-called miserable racist. So where does the issues of right and wrong come into the issues of racism?
To keep things basic, let’s say you have an ethnically homogeneous society.
That society expects reproduced children to be confident since confident people reproduce.
That’s racist because it ignores natural randomness. Just because parents are confident doesn’t mean children will be confident. In turn, unconfident children will be neglected when starting to socialize, and this negligence will continue perpetually since unconfident children will get less and less confident from negligence.
People are synthetically defined. Just because parents feel confident doesn’t mean children will feel confident. They only pass down half of their own material to their offspring, and the combinations which compose parents will not necessarily exist in their own children.
I agree with you that underconfident people get a bad deal, but I don’t think I want to get into a discussion on evolution and genetics, if for no other reason than I’m relatively ignorant of it.
It’s only racist if self-confidence is influenced by both genetic and cultural causes. If confidence is genetic only, then it’s not racist. If confidence is cultural only, then it’s not racist. But I do get your point.
Maybe you want to ask: “Are Reproduction Expectations Behaviorist?” Then I would say, yes, they are. Self confidence is a core aspect of sexual reproduction. If you do not feel confident with yourself, as a woman, then you won’t be inclined to carry a child to term. You’d have an abortion. If you do not feel confident with yourself, as a man, then you probably have low testosterone and are very much impotent. Your sperm cells don’t impregnate.
In fact, natural selection favors over-confidence. Over-confident people tend to have more children. This is obvious in r-type Natural Selection Theory. Over-confident women tend to not have abortions. Over-confident men have potent sex with lots of different women. Confidence itself is pathological, an essence of the brain and self-identity.