Please stop reading reddit for your own good

Conservative black, sorry. You failed the guessing game and proved my point that skin color correlates with opinion about as poorly as maths ability does (i.e. not meaningfully).

MLK preached judging by Character instead of Color, which is referred to as color blindness.

Also, the moderates of his era were moderate relative to the political landscape of their era. This is not a universal indictment, but a very culturally situated and contextually dependent statement, unlike the universal and timeless principle of color blindness.

I read jrm4’s comment a little differently… It’s not that one’s skincolor correlates to opinion, but that it necessarily informs it. It’s pretty evident that people of similar skin tone and experiences may differ in opinion (just look at any family). Because of this, my takeaway wasn’t that it was the only thing that informed one’s opinion, but skin, as one of our society’s integral method for categorizing people, is intractable from the opinion forming process, particularly around matters concerning race.

Skin color is a very passive trait. You can choose to make it as important or unimportant as you want. People who overemphasize skin color tend to be bad people. As such, I advise you to just not pay any attention to skin color, because as soon as you try to involve race or skin color in your judgment, you by definition become racist (no matter how well intentioned you think you are). The only way to not be racist is to leave race out of the equation and judge based on universal principles, thereby treating everyone equally (and we can debate which principles are universal).

Because of that, calling your opinion a black opinion is literally an invitation to your conversation partner to become racist in their judgment, since you are trying to get your conversation partner to focus on your race when they are considering your opinion. The only right way of treating that additional and unnecessary information is to ignore it, but if it can only rightly be ignored, then it shouldn't be shared in the first place since it is an impediment to constructive dialogue.

Skin color is as important as the paint job on your car: for some people it means the world, for some people it's just a paint job. It's liberating to not care about race, you should try it.

This is, without question, the most naive thing I have ever read on this entire site.

People will and do treat you differently because of your skin color. And how people treat you affects you, whether you think so or not. Either you live in a hole and never come out, or you haven't yet fully comprehended what's going on around you.

It's NOT simple. It's not "getting called names all the time" or anything like that. It takes time to fully get.

I'm not denying that some bad people will treat you differently for your skin color. What I am saying is that how you respond to it is far more important than how people treat you (for most situations in our modern society, though some situations can be insurmountably overwhelming). Rather than me being naive, it is you being too black and white in your thinking when reading my comment (by making a false dilemma).

I've experienced neo-nazi racism against my person because of my skin color (and I mean literal self-identified neo-nazis, not merely a label given through the slanderous designation of some intolerant leftist). Despite those experiences, because I chose not to succumb to a mentality of victimhood those people's hateful attitude and behavior did not have the harmful effect on me it could have had.

However, if you believe that racism is as pervasive as the air we breathe, and the country is systemically racist, and white people suffer from implicit bias (and mysteriously it's only white people, kinda racist huh?) then I have to disagree. Racism exists, but the vast majority of people are good people. These days, the real racists (besides the tiny minority of actual white supremacists) are the so called 'anti-racists'. Their anti-white rhetoric to me is as appalling as the anti-black rhetoric of white supremacists. They forget the golden rule, don't do to others what you don't want done to you.

Color-Blindness is not the same thing as Judging the Content of Character.

Of course, we all deserve to be judged based on the content of our character and not on superficial markers like skin, gender, etc, etc, etc.

However, broadly and statistically speaking, people from different economic and racial groups tend to have differing experiences, largely because of systems and not really because of any individual experience.

This is the core thesis of Critical Theory (and it’s subset Critical Race Theory): in the court of law, one must consider all of the details and context of a person, as they necessarily have an impact on an individual’s experiences.

The moment you make race a factor in your judgment, by you have become racist by definition. The only right way to treat people is without regards to race / color, but by judging them according to universal principles.

The fundamental flaw of CRT is that it denies color-blindness. It doesn't matter that CRT claims to have good intentions for making race a factor in your judgment, it is still racist. The (progressive) eugenicists of yesteryear had good intentions too, but were horribly evil. Somehow progressives keep falling for the same trap and history keeps repeating itself. It's like racism is baked into their DNA. In every era they attempt to judge based on race and justify it with their ostensibly good intentions. It was racist then and it's racist now, but somehow the current iteration of left wing racism is just as socially acceptable and fashionable as every previous iteration.

Also I have a problem with the view that systems are the main reason for individual experiences. Two factors make up your life: your environment and your decisions. Your decisions are the most important part. No matter how good your environment, you can ruin your life by your decisions. No matter how bad your environment you can improve your life with your decisions. Constantly externalizing blame is a surefire way to short circuit the learning process that leads to self improvement. Having said that, I do agree that systems should be improved and tweaked, but it should be done carefully, because it's far easier to damage a reasonably effective complex system than to improve it.

> The moment you make race a factor in your judgment, by you have become racist by definition.

This is not true. I just googled "racist" and it says "prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.".

Simply considering race doesn't automatically make it prejudiced or antagonistic.

And of course, there's also the concept of "structural racism", which is what CRT aims to help us dismantle.

If you look up the definition of racism you find:

"Discrimination or prejudice based on race." - from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

Since discrimination based on race is racism, once you make race a factor in your judgment (even if it's one factor out of many) then you are discriminating based on race and therefore racist.

It doesn't matter if you are trying to help a specific race or hurt another race, privilege or oppression, they are two sides of the same racist coin. You may think you can justify your racism by appealing to historical racism, but it doesn't change the fact that you are being racist.

I happen to think that all racism is evil, I don't care about your intentions or which group it's directed at. After all, even Hitler claimed to have good intentions. There has yet to arise a racist that doesn't believe that he is doing something good. That's why I think trying to excuse some forms of racism while condemning others is arbitrary and hypocritical. Ends don't justify means. If you actually want to help people, find a way to do it that is not racist.

Edit: forgot to respond to CRT / structural racism

If by structural racism you mean anything other than laws/policies that are overtly racist or intentionally designed to target certain races despite having no overt racist language, then I agree that that is a problem. If you however conclude from a disparity in outcome that racial discrimination must be the cause of the disparity, then I think you are committing a logical fallacy (affirming the consequent).

The fallacious argument is:

(1) If there is structural racism then you will see disparity in outcome for different races. (2) there is disparity in outcome for different races (3) therefore there is structural racism

There can be any number of reasons to explain a disparity in outcomes across races. The existence of the disparity is not enough to prove racism. What I find is that the accusation of racism is made too easily, because there is political currency in victimhood. It's sad because tilting at windmills obstructs the actual progress that can be made at solving real problems, because we are distracted with thought-policing our white neighbors.

Obviously yes for most people, since vegans are a tiny minority. Bit of a high horse you're on there.

I think most people who are in this predicament consciously choose not to think about it in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance. Destroying your philosophical model of reality and remaking it is not exactly a pleasant process. Something you find out when you go vegetarian or vegan is that if that gets brought up, which usually happens in the context of rejecting an offer of food or being questioned about why your plate only has crackers at a potluck, many meat eaters will suddenly feel the need to explain why they think it is ok to eat meat. Perhaps that's just preemptive and a result of encountering more militant vegetarians in the past, but I think it is more likely to be a result of being reminded of their cognitive dissonance. Who are they trying to convince? I didn't ask for an explanation of their dietary choices and don't feel any particular need to explain mine.

They're being jerks, but why is an interesting question.

I don't think it's a cognitive dissonance thing, at least where I've seen that picture. I think it's an us/them thing. Specifically, the kind where one group gets the idea that another is out to get them. (That "militant vegetarian" you mention is someone I have heard about my whole life yet never met.) If they don't have a lot of vegetarian friends, you may be their first chance to have a conversation about it, and that's probably the only one they rehearsed.

It may not be as crystallized as other areas, yet, but I think this is also one more field for cultural proxy wars, as we all get drafted into us/them camps. Again, at the individual level, you might notice the person doing the attacking always thinks they're defending. Complicated big picture stuff at play.

> encountering more militant vegetarians in the past, but I think it is more likely to be a result of being reminded of their cognitive dissonance.

Don't project onto people you clearly don't understand. Creating mental models of people you disagree with that involves making them stupid or living in dissonance does a disservice to yourself (by making you ignorant), to them (by you spreading your ignorance), and to wider political debates in general (it's very difficult to come to an understanding when people are incapable of understanding the other side).

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stating a rational fact about someone's cognitive dissonance "makes them stupid" or "spreads your ignorance"?

I carry that cognitive dissonance (I know animals feel; I believe they have souls; and yet I continue to eat meat); the difference is that I (through tons of introspection) have made peace with my (very few) dissonances and therefore, calling me out on it (as someone did further up the comment chain here) will result simply in me acknowledging their observation (without any emotional/anger element).

I bet the number of vegetarians would go up quite a bit if people had to slaughter animals themselves if they wanted meat. Our society is pretty good at hiding the dirty work from people.

Looking at my grandparents' generation, who had to do just that, I wouldn't count on it.

My parents both grew up on farms where they slaughtered their own animals. They ate meat maybe once a week or less. So at a minimum meat consumption would go down.

I suspect the reason why they ate meat rarely was because it was expensive (even when it's your animal, it still has a cost), not because they were squeamish about it.

Not to detract from your point but Nature itself is brutal. There's no mercy kill when a predator catch a prey.

Case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpQmJ7UUNFQ >> Warning, this is not for the faint of heart. <<

I've worked in a slaughterhouse, doing the night shift cleaning up the mess before a new day begins, I know what's it's like. Overcrowded boxes full of chicken shitting themselves, getting hanged by their legs on a factory line before getting their throat sliced by a fast spinning blade. Not a pretty sight for sure and a sad way to go.

It's very unfortunate how the mass consumption of meat creates terrible living conditions for the various animals we breed for that purpose. But if we measure the scale of suffering, I think we're doing a bit better than nature.

And yes, by going vegan you do not contribute to that, I get it. I have huge amount of respect for people that live by their moral standards and stick to it. Yet this doesn't mean that the wilderness is some Disney fantasy and yes, for all intent and purpose, most animals out there in the wild are bound to have a gruesome end.

I'm not implying that we're doing animals a favour by sending them to a slaughterhouse, simply that this is the natural order of things. If you feel strongly about that and choose to not consume meat and such, great. As for me, despite what I've seen, there's nothing wrong with eating meat. The only thing I wish is a more humane breeding, and I'm happy to pay more for that.

I'm aware that it's slightly hypocritical because would there be an alien specie doing the same to us, I'd probably would have a different perspective on that. As it stands, I enjoy being an apex predator. May it last forever.

There's nothing natural about factory farms, you can pretend that they are no different to a lion eating a gazelle, but they are. We eat way more meat than we naturally should. Ever seen a fat lion dying from heart disease? And what about responsibility that comes with the power humans have over other animals. Lions are just being Lions, they don't understand what death really means, it's just a meal. They also are carnivores, humans are not. They also don't have grocery stores.

What if someone else is doing the killing and I'm doing the eating? Not being facetious, I struggle with this and I don't fully buy into the "guilt by association" angle. If I stopped eating meat today, animals would still be killed at exactly the same scale as before. So what would have I accomplished besides depriving myself of nutrients? If we could all do it together I'd be on board. Maybe we can start with "meat credits" or some other kind of demand reduction? That really helped curb climate change....

I think portion control would be a more effective approach. A little meat goes a long way. I think you'll get further convincing the public with a moderation message than a black and while moral argument.

If you stopped eating meat and replaced it with a balanced vegan diet you wouldn't be depriving yourself of anything other than heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. You'd be the winner. Also, you'd be doing your part in reducing the demand for all those animals to be raised and slaughtered. If everyone had the opinion of "well what's the point unless everyone does it" no good change would ever happen.

But it is pointless unless everyone does it, at least until a large percentage of the population does it. You're ignoring opportunity cost, this isn't like recycling where I have nothing to lose by doing it. Until we reach critical mass, the early adopters would have essentially "subsidized" everyone else.

A few ounces of meat/fish a day aren't going to cause any of those diseases and are packed with nutrients that a vegan diet has a very hard time providing at a similar cost, especially in poor countries. The Gates foundation isn't betting on chicken on a whim. I still think moderation is the way to go. If everyone cut their intake by 50% we'd have a healthier population, animal slaughter would be cut in half, and we wouldn't have to reinvent meat.

Apart from B12, what nutrients are in meat that I cannot get from a vegan diet? Why is it acceptable to be slaughtering hundreds of millions instead of billions of animals a year, if we don't need to? And we don't have to reinvent meat; most vegans don't eat fake meat products. We could move away from the concept of eating meat all together.

Creatine, Carnosine, D3, DHA, Heme-iron, Taurine. But it's not just about the nutrients, it's about the supply and the cost. Most people don't have access to the balanced assortment of grains, vegetables, and legumes you seem to enjoy. Without meat and dairy they would risk malnourishment.

We probably could move away from meat, if everyone was well off (and took supplements). But that's not the case. And I never said 100s of millions were acceptable, merely that a 50% portion reduction is a LOT better than nothing, and probably a lot more than a morality strategy will achieve.

Creatine is not an essential nutrient and is produced naturally in the human body from amino acids glycine and arginine which i can get from legumes amongst many sources. Carnosine comes from amino acids, which i can get all 9 of from legumes and whole grains. D3 from mushrooms. DHA my body converts from ALA, which i get from nuts amongst many other sources. Heme-iron I don't specifically need, I just need Iron, which i get from whole grains, legumes, nuts etc. Taurine comes from amino acids, see Carnosine.

I do agree that there are a lot of people eating too much meat, but the diseases you mention are all caused by overeating in general, and are just as easy to get on a vegan diet.

No. I said a balanced vegan diet. Even over eating whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds and legumes whilst not eating foods that have cholesterol (meat, eggs, dairy - literally any animal products) plus the evidence of red meat and processed meat causing cancer, means I do have much less chance of having any of those diseases I mentioned.

I oscillate between reason and impulse. We are creatures of habit and the environment in which we act is full of nudges toward omnivorous decisions.