cerebralicious:

mia-culpa:

cerebralicious:

No. It’s that we have here the proud anti-racist, who has successfully figured that out, who is nonetheless resorting to the oh-it’s-not-so-bad-just-nationalism excuse, and then brings out the classic “but they’re aliens - actually different” argument, which is essentially word-for-word isomorphic to an argument someone could have delivered not all that long ago about how Africans are actually different, and that’s not the same thing as systematically devaluing other Europeans. No, not at all. “Now let’s sit around and congratulate ourselves on the enlightened realization that the Irish are people. Boy! Fetch the drinks, and hurry up about it!”

People can’t generalize for shit. Did we really have to do the whole “other races are people” and “women are people” and “gays are people”, etc., etc., as separate individual issues? Are we going to have to do “intelligent machines are people” and “uplifted animals are people” and “transhumans are people” and “aliens are people” separately again in the future?

Can we really only get over racism by becoming a bunch of pathetic human chauvinists because we can’t stand not having an out-group to shit upon?

Well, evidently, yes, yes, and probably. Or so it would seem.

You do realize, that by defending the idea of aliens and sentient robots more than actual human beings who exist, you’re part of the problem I was referring to when it came to comparing people to aliens. I’m so glad that ALIENS and ROBOTS deserve more of your time than human beings.

If that’s what I was doing, it might be a problem. Since what I’m actually doing is assigning each and every bigotry equal condemnation, who or whatsoever it may be against, so far as I can tell, my problem is that I fail to condemn only the fashionable bigotries and leave the rest alone. Well, I can live with that.

I’m going, in fact, to assert that we have to defend the rights - and dignity - of each and every person, all alike. Unless they apply to everyone, they mean nothing.

 “but they’re aliens - actually different” argument, which is essentially word-for-word isomorphic to an argument someone could have delivered not all that long ago about how Africans are actually different, and that’s not the same thing as systematically devaluingother Europeans.

Way to miss the point. By stating this argument, you’re saying that being African is the same thing as having a prehensile tail and only breathing nitrogen. Can’t really see anything wrong with that? Really? Because that’s my issue more than anything. These so-called metaphors are really offensive, because they set up an anaology where the “racism” is about actually different people in hugely different ways. The analogy isn’t “we think we’re different but we’re really not” — it’s “we’re vastly different on a biological scale”. It’s specism, not racism, when it comes to Aliens or Robots and saying otherwise is an offense to real world racism.

Actually, any example of speciesism is automatically an example of racism; obviously, anyone who is of a different species is obviously also not of your race.

But, y’know what? I’m missing your point because your point is entirely off-base. I’m not saying the differences are the same; I’m saying that the reasoning behind the -ism is the same.

What’s the essence of bigotry, and of all the -isms you care to name? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s drawing an arbitrary line in between two groups of people, with your arbitrarily defined group on one side, and deciding that whatever quality you grouped Your People on entitles you to be jerks to all the as-of-now not-people outside the line.

That’s what the racist guy in my example did, when he drew his arbitrary line saying “only white Europeans are people, and equal peers, and deserving of rights and respect”. And it’s also exactly what YOU are doing, except your line is drawn at “humanoid oxygen-breathers with 23 chromosome pairs”.

And it’s wrong when you draw the line to say “blacks aren’t people”, and when you do it to say “women aren’t people”, and when you do it to say “gays aren’t people”, and, indeed, in exactly the same way and by exactly the same principle, it’s wrong when you do it to say “aliens aren’t people”.

It’s got nothing to do with race or sex or sexuality or species or anything else like that; those are just convenient places where we choose to draw the line to exclude someone about whom we’ve decided it would be more convenient if we didn’t have to deal with them as a person of equal stature and rights to our own.

The differences thing? Irrelevant. Because, y’know, we’re not all the same. People of different races and genders and sexualities and cultures are all different from people of mine, because they’ve all lived different lives. (People who’re the same as me on all those points are also different, for that same reason, albeit less so on statistical average.) It doesn’t matter; and indeed, it’s a damn good thing, because how boring our lives would be if we were all squished into some tedious narrow pink-beige mush of so-similar humanity. Someone doesn’t have to be the same as me for me to empathize with them, nor for me to respect them and their rights as a fellow member of the Class of Persons.

Because that’s what I share with the prehensile-tailed nitrogen-breather up above, and since this started in Mass Effect, with the fictional turians and salarians and asari and quarians and krogan and, for that matter, geth. We’re all fellow conscious, reasoning, volitional entities, and that’s the only line one can draw - because it’s coextensive with the broadest definition of “people” - without arbitrarily excluding someone from the set of “Real People”. And that’s bigotry.

And my point wasn’t that it’s good to put humans first above all else. My point was that Cerberus’ attitude isn’t the problem. The problem is their terrorist actions. Extremists are always bad, because they’re extremists not necessarily because of their ideology. Especially when you compare their ideology of wanting the human race to survive and thrive in this distance galaxy to systematic racism and oppression in the actual world.

On the contrary: Cerberus’s attitude is very much the problem, because while their ideology is of wanting the human race to survive and thrive, their attitude is of wanting the human race to survive and thrive, and if anyone else gets screwed over, or gets dead. along the way, well then, they’re fine with that. And if human safety means wiping someone else out, well, they’re fine with that too.

And if that attitude sounds familiar, that’s because you can swap “human” for “white” in their mission statement that you quoted above, and it sounds exactly like the mission statement of any number of groups that like to dish out some of that systematic racism and oppression in the actual world.

Same damn thing. Only difference is, they drew their people/not-people line in a different place.

People of all races are human. Making a story where you explore how humans would react to a really different type of alien from themselves (District 9 is a good example) is interesting on it’s own merits and I’m not saying there can’t be a thematic resonance within the story itself about real world issues, but making the direct comparison between another species and racism is akin to calling an entire race of people animals. It’s messed up to say the least.

Well, now, now we come to the roots of it, don’t we? Me, I have no problem with being compared, or analogized to, whether personally or as a race or other group, a hypothetical nitrogen-breathing alien, or an intelligent machine, or, ObMassEffect, a turian, quarian, or geth, because in my value-set, they’re people. Fellow members of the class of conscious, reasoning, volitional beings, who are all created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, etc., etc.

And I’m guessing from the degree of insult you’re seeing above, and this “akin to calling […] people animals” here, that you’ve got a bad case of the Humanity Uber Alles, in specialdom at least, and don’t see them as anything resembling real people.

And given that, frankly, I don’t see as how I’m the one with the decency problem.

This the last time I am reblogging this, because I’m already wanting to ask you uncomfortable questions that I try not to resort to in these conversations (you know, like personal attacks, even though you’ve called me a few names and I seriously cannot stop laughing every time chauvinism gets brought in, oh and thanks for being such a reliable source and deleting most of what I was saying so that people reading your blog won’t get the entire story), plus I think my dash has had this spammed enough, but basically, I don’t even think I need to respond to your points about fictional aliens being the same as people, because you seem to be of that set group of people that feel like we live in a post-racial society so that addressing racism in it’s specific internalized way (that affects different races in different ways at different times) is a bad thing, because it’s separates the races more. And. I. Just. Cannot. Deal. With. That. Conversation.

The fact of the matter is that you’re treating fiction as reality (also do you really treat those aliens with care and devotion? you never play the renegade options or shoot geth in the face? really? cos that’s the point of the game). Whereas I am talking about real people who are dealing with actual racism every damn day. If we discover aliens and/or they land, that’s a separate matter for discussion at a different time and I’m sure I’ll have opinions that differ from this conversation (I’m actually prone to be extremely sympathetic to aliens in the narrative and try and figure out their motives even if they’re not provided by the text). But we’re talking about real people being compared to fictional aliens. That comparison is saying that you’re from outer space if you’re not white. That is actually pushing the otherism to a whole different level and is constantly repeated in scifi narratives.

Let me just gif myself out. 

(via cerebralicious)