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Is racism morally wrong?

I don't treat my family better than other people because we are genetically related. I try to treat them better beause they have done good by me in the past.
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This leads to an infinite regress -- what motivation would they have to do good to you in the first place? How did the whole thing start? SOMEBODY was originally doing good to SOMEBODY because they were genetically related.
 
Skeptic said:
In the theoretical case which you presented, no. Because we have more duties to our countrymen than we have to people in general.
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and what if the Arab is a citizen of Sweden?

and since when to we have more duties to save the life of a fellow citizen then the citizen of another country?

where did you hear this? Rush Limbaugh? Adolf Eichmann?
 
Skeptic said:
This leads to an infinite regress -- what motivation would they have to do good to you in the first place? How did the whole thing start? SOMEBODY was originally doing good to SOMEBODY because they were genetically related.
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Maybe, maybe not. One philosophy is that parents have a responsibility to take care of the kids they produced, and do good for them. Other relatives do good for the same kids because they're (voluntarily) friends with the parents. Then, when the kids grow up, they do good for their parents and other relatives out of feelings of reciprocity.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
If one of them was a child or a woman would that change who you would save?
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I think it would. Most of us (men in any case) have strong instincts to save a child or a woman before a grown man. Probably because we perceive them, children especially, as more vulnerable and innocent. If it was an Arab child and a adult male Swede, I would save the child even if I were a Swede.
 
parky76 said:
and since when to we have more duties to save the life of a fellow citizen then the citizen of another country?
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If you have two to save, but can only save one, save one. Any Monday Morning Quarterback who barks at why you didn't save the other is invited to take a long walk off of a short pier.

Is your motive important, in the least? You are saving a life here.

parky, you see Halle Barry and Dick Cheney both drowning, and you have to pick one to save first. If you go first for the hottie, I don't blame you at all. Saving hotties is a great idea. If you go first for the old man, I don't blame you at all. Saving an old man is a great idea.

You are out there saving lives.

FFS, these hypotheticals are so filled with BS.

DR
 
This shows how our morality is based on, shall we say, concentric circles. We take care of our children and parents before other relatives, relatives before acquaintances, acquaintances before strangers, strangers of our own nationality before those of other nationalities, human beings before nature in general, etc.

Of course these circles are general, not absolute: it is OK to give up an afternoon with one's child to do some significant good for society at large. They might change: if a relative did you a serious wrong, he might forfeit any claim to be considered before strangers. They sometimes conflict and give no easy answers: do we save two strangers or one relative? They depend on the type of help: it is OK to help one's relatives to a certain degree, but cronyism is wrong. And so on.

So there is no easy formula to consider all possibilities, and there are cases of genuine conflict.
 
The_Animus said:
Lately in discussing issues of right and wrong I keep coming back to the opinion that there is no such thing as right and wrong as far as morality. What is is and what isn't isn't. Right and wrong are labels made up by people to justify whatever actions/beliefs they prefer.

So if I were to say I hate black people there is nothing morally right or wrong about that. If it were true that I hate black people, then the statement is factually right. If I said I hate black people because they cast evil curses upon the innocent then I would be ignorant and factually wrong.
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This.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Swim over and ask them where they come from before you decide who to save.
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.
A couple of EMTs on coffee break in New York when asked to assist a lady in premature labor told the requestor to dial 911, and then left the shop.
That's real world.
 
Roboramma said:
Why? What is it about your origins that you think justifies your pride in them?
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Yup!
I wonder about that also.
I can take pride in my work as an aeronautical engineer, a long-time and reasonably unscarred motorcycle rider, but my color??
Didn't have anything to do with that.
I just got it from my parents.
And I got my religion from them too.
THAT, I had control over.
Went from white Catholic to white atheist.
Can't change the white.
 
Darat said:
(Personally I am wondering how you could even know that someone was a Swede or an Arab in such circumstances but hey it's just a silly hypothetical.)
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Yeah, the usual toss-up involves Hillary.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Swim over and ask them where they come from before you decide who to save.
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.
I recall that when an airliner hit the 14th Street bridge in Washington DC, one of the rescuers drowned while saving several people.
No one mentioned observing his interviewing the persons he saved.
 
Megalodon said:
"The other day the most peculiar thing happened to me. I was crossing a bridge, and when I was exactly in the middle, two middle aged men of different colours started drowning in each end. One was electric blue and the other fucsia. I've uploaded the video on youtube. Poor guys."
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Too many jump cuts, and not steady enough.
Next time, use a tripod, and pan smoooooothly from one person to the other.
And ditch the music.
Emphasizing the pleas and shouts from the victims adds so much to the video.
 
AvalonXQ said:
In my experience, open white racists would expect and have no issue with white saving white and black saving black; they expect that to be the natural order of things.
In contrast, in my experience, it's black racists that would see it as natural for a black man to save the black man but racist for a white man to save the white man.
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So what? One's an outright racist, the others a racist hypocrite. I can't think of any case in which I would find it acceptable for a black guy to say that he'd want to save the black man rather than the white one. I wouldn't want to be his friend.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
So what? One's an outright racist, the others a racist hypocrite. I can't think of any case in which I would find it acceptable for a black guy to say that he'd want to save the black man rather than the white one. I wouldn't want to be his friend.
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Total agreement.
 
Megalodon said:
I'm terribly sorry, but I can't parse this sentence, specially as a reply to the post you quoted, or in light of my previous contributions to this thread.
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I wasn't criticising you, just following up your post with a 'Right on! And what if this person was half-white, half-black? Would they split themselves in half?'.
 
Roboramma said:
I wouldn't say that your viewpoint is immoral, I just can't understand it. You care more about certain people, because of their ancestry or their skin colour or something, but you don't really have any reason for it. I can understand that its an emotional reaction, it's just not one I share, and thus one I find hard to understand.
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I value Swedes more than Norwegians, Arabs, the Chinese or any other people for that matter. I don't feel that Swedes are better than the Norwegians but i feel that they are more important or at least more important to me.
 
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