Grrl Power #1265 – Getting to know you…
Yes, I wrote the little “accents in dialog” bit under the previous page knowing full well what this page contained. I think the important thing to infer from this page is that lens flare guy recruited the other three, and they’ve never met without full kit on, so they don’t know who each other is. (Also it should give you some hint about the identity of Lens Flare there – even if some of you have already guessed it.) In my mind, that’s not a bad way to run a group of criminals… at least ones where they’re going to be wearing full face masks. Of course, that flies in the face of rule number one of the Evil Overlord’s List. Now, if you don’t have a base of operations and there’s nothing for the good guys to infiltrate, or clonk a guard on the head and don their outfit while escaping from the detention center, the full face concealing mask is less of a concern.
I’ve never understood “linguism” for lack of a better term. Like, making fun of people for their accent. If someone has a pronounced accent, it almost always means they speak more languages than the person taking the piss, especially here in America. Actually, I take it back, I understand linguism, I just don’t understand people thinking it’s some kind of grand slam on the person who speaks more languages than them. Besides, accent based humor can be really funny when done right.
The fact that racism is seemingly inherent to organized crime, be it gangs (street or prison) or gangsters always makes for a humorous moment for me when I see multicultural street gangs in TV shows. Like, if you take those same actors and put them in business suits, they’d all look at place smiling over some product shot in a stock photo. There’s the white guy, the black or asian woman, the asian or black guy, and a “brown.” Is he hispanic? Is he Indian? Is he one of the other kinds of brown that could be mistaken for one of the more well known kinds of brown? Doesn’t matter. All the boxes have been checked and the product is now inoffensively milquetoast.
Not that there’s anything wrong with diversity, of course. I’m not mocking inclusivity here, just the thought process that leads to things like street gangs that look like stock photo casting calls. This excludes heist movies. Of course they’re going to have a diverse cast. Handsome main guy, black guy with connections to the underground, sex pot, tiny flexible girl that can go through air vents and do the laser beam dance, the sketchy, skinny white guy who is the world’s best safecracker, burly black woman who is a top-tier mechanic, asian guy who in a shocking twist doesn’t know martial arts, but is instead a pharmaceutical wiz, and, uh… probably an old… let’s say, Italian guy. These days you might also see a stout pacific islander. I’d joke that there’s no such thing as a svelte Pacific Islander. The Rock isn’t the only one. I mean, Hawaii is a Pacific Island, and, you know. Hula girls.
But anyway, in the real world, criminals are weirdly racially insular, and don’t have to deal with things like hiring quotas. I wonder if you could fine a street gang for failing to meet diversity standards. I mean, no. The answer is definitely no, for multiple reasons. But… Hmm.
The new one is almost ready, but I’m back down at my parents helping out with my mom, and I just can’t work on boobie art when I’m here. I’ll get it up as soon as I can and hopefully you guys will enjoy it. I’ll try and figure out a way to get these done faster in the future.
The new vote incentive is up!
Every so often I get the urge to try and draw Maxima all properly shiny, and this… isn’t my favorite attempt if I’m honest. I’ve been sitting on this for a little while doing little tweaks, and decided to finally publish it cause I’m already behind on these. The next one will (almost definitely) resume the trend of including a little mini comic to extend the scene a bit.
As usual, Patreon has some outfit variations as well as sans flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I am really excited to finally be getting more backstory on this “no one” character. They have been in such a random assortment of pages so far.
Criminal groups like Mafia, triads, etc, tend to grow out neighbourhoods, small towns and other low-income geographical areas.
So in countries that aren’t very multicultural, like China or most African nations, and countries where you mostly have racially homogenous neighbourhoods, like the US, you will mainly get homogenous criminal groups.
Yet in countries with that tend to have multicultural low-income neighbourhoods, like in the UK and Europe, you often get multicultural criminal groups.
Mafia actually started out of a need for villages to be protected from bandits and the government doing *** all about it
Same with the Yakusa
Another thing that Worm did right.
If memory serves me right, at the start of the novel, you had the Asian crime gang, the Black crime gang, the White-Sup crime gang, and a bunch of smaller groups that were just slightly more diverse.
Yeah, there were the Azn Bad Boys (ABB) that were all Asian – and IIRC were largely made up from conquered gangs that were even more insular (the ABB were a mix of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc; the precursor gangs were generally all of one national origin, but Lung forced them to work together; there were also some non-Asian gangs that were taken over, but the ABB basically just took their resources and kicked out their non-Asian members). Empire Eighty-Eight (“88” being code for “HH,” in turn standing for a particular Nazi phrase*) were white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and sorta brainwashed their members to boot (Purity left them to become a vigilante, leaning more toward the Rogue or outright Hero side rather than the Villain side, but her indoctrination held, as she tended to go after minority criminals and gangs rather than white ones). I actually don’t recall there being a black criminal gang that was a major player – you may be thinking of the Merchants**, whose leader, Skidmark, was black, but his second-in-command/girlfriend, Squealer, was white, Mush and Trainwreck were lightskinned Case 53’s (people heavily mutated when they gained their powers such that their original race was often difficult to distinguish), Scrub was white, and Whirlygig’s race was never stated to my knowledge. No idea of the racial diversity of their non-powered subordinates, but I’d imagine they were fairly diverse. The Undersiders were similarly largely led by a black man (Grue), although they were technically all equal (Grue was more just the public-facing leader), at least until they basically allowed Skitter to largely take over. Skitter, Tattletale, Regent, and Bitch were all white IIRC; of the later members, Imp was black (Grue’s little sister), Foil was white, and Parian was Middle-Eastern.
*I know Germany has a lot of censorship laws around Nazi symbolism, and I’m not sure if that extends to phrases like the above, but I’d rather not risk Germans reading the comment section inadvertently breaking the law reading my comment, hence not actually writing out the phrase.
**One reason you may be thinking they were an all-black gang, assuming that’s the one you were referring to, was how much disdain Kaiser (leader of E88) showed them. A big part of that was undoubtedly racism, but I think it was largely the fact their gang was… well, pretty much human trash. Note Kaiser seemed to actually show some respect for Grue and the Undersiders (IIRC he snubs the Merchants at a meeting but is willing to talk to the Undersiders, referencing the latter having demonstrated competence), although given Grue’s full-body costume, he may not have actually known Grue was black.
Germany’s censorship doesn’t apply to descriptive use. For example, it’s perfectly ok to have swastikas in media portraying the actual Nazis. It’s perfectly ok to describe a neonazi gang as using “Heil Hitler”.
“The N-Word”-style avoidance of something in a purely descriptive setting is not a thing in Germany.
Ah, good to know. I remember reading another webcomic years ago where at one point it was showing the reincarnations of a particular individual, many of which were pretty awful people. One was Torquemada (the Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal of the Holy Office), one was implied to be Hitler. But rather than showing Hitler or a swastika, the author opted to draw the infamous smokestacks; in his commentary he noted he went with that so his German viewers wouldn’t be accidentally breaking the law reading the update. More recently, there’s Wolfenstein: The New Order and its sequel Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, where in the German releases the Nazi symbols were replaced with different ones, and in the latter Hitler was renamed and his moustache removed. However, looking it up now, I see that the relevant code/law that was the cause of the self-censoring of that webcomic and those games appears to have been repealed in 2018.
“Germany’s censorship doesn’t apply to descriptive use.”
It doesnt? Didnt they censor the swastikas and nazi stuff in Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein 2?
I’m reminded of a Mafia-owned pizza place they had been using to launder money until they realized it was more lucrative to just run the pizza place.
Never underestimate the lucrativeness of pizza in New York. Or Chicago I guess. But mainly New York.
Organized crime is not just racially insular, they’re often familial. When you’re breaking the law, it’s rather hard to trust someone.
So often they fall back on how well you know someone. Often if you know a person’s family, then you know the person well.
And if that person does betray you, well, you know the person’s family…
The heist film is also rather more diverse in most cases than most heists in real life. But that’s Hollywood.
Face-concealing armor is a problem.
On the one hand, you do want to identify guards.
On the other hand, actual armor protects your parts in order of how important they are to you continuing to live and function. And for humans, the head is extremely important. The first piece of armor people get, even when they’re wielding a spear, is almost always something for the head, followed by something for the center chest.
Modern day is a little odd historically, because the prevalence of firearms means that the chest is more likely to be targeted than the head. So chest armor is chosen before head. It’s also easier to wear and conceal. “Brigandine” armor (metal plates fastened on the inside of a leather cost, may have been the origin of “studded leather” from the look of the fasteners) was armor that didn’t look obvious from a distance, and was called that for its association with “brigands”, i.e. highwaymen.
The bit about brigandine and brigands isn’t quite right. Brigand originally meant something more akin to “foot-soldier,” hence brigandine for their armor; I assume the fact bandits/highwaymen were often out-of-work soldiers is how brigand came to refer to such as well. Oddly, while brigandine seems like it would be great for concealing, as far as we can tell the rivets/studs were considered fashionable (and were sometimes decorated) and thus were typically left exposed. Which, honestly, I kinda get that – brigandine armor looks really flipping awesome.
As for criminals and racism, the sad truth is that racism seems to be the human default, but civil society teaches us to not be racist (and, to be clear, this is a good thing). Criminals largely operate outside of civil society, so them not conforming to the general “don’t be racist” mentality follows – they also aren’t following the “don’t break the law” mentality. There are undoubtedly exceptions, of course. There’s also the fact that many criminal organizations originate in places that are fairly racially homogenous.
Gonna disagree here. Racism isn’t default. Put two or more young kids of different race together and they won’t immediately shun each other.
Now conflict? That’s pretty damn close to default, and people will do anything in their power to blame the conflict on the easiest thing they can rather than the real problem and/or learn from the conflict.
Starts humming “you have to be carefully taught” from “South Pacific”
Yeah, Racism isn’t a default. It’s often culturally motivated, but it’s not part of the Human Genome.
Actually, tribalism is genetic – most primates operate this way. The easiest form of tribalism is based on people that look the same as you, that is, racism. If you think that there’s no way it can be correct, just look at sports teams. The fans are tribes. “Us against them!”. Members of any tribes treat their tribe better than ‘other’ tribes, and look suspiciously at the other tribes. Think of ‘cop bars’. How about bars that are primarily used by people that work in the legal field? Goth clubs. (No, not golf, goth) What has to be taught is to actually understand the behaviour and not let it be the primary driving factor for your life.
Yeah, this is more what I was referring to, but I phrased it poorly. Very young children don’t have a problem with individuals of other races because they haven’t established their “tribe” yet; one raised in a multiracial household may never exhibit racism unless taught to do so. Similarly, the rest of their upbringing will have a major impact – someone who never really encountered a member of another race while growing up is likely to be much more cautious upon meeting such, and someone who’s encounters with members of a certain race were overwhelmingly negative is very likely to automatically distrust members of said race (that is, you’re more likely to see those of that race as Other). Meanwhile, someone who grows up with largely positive encounters with members of multiple other races is in a good position to avoid personal racism (that is, you’re less likely to see those not of your own race as Other). But throughout human history, more racially-insular upbringings have been more common, which is why I said racism seems to be a human default.
This is the kind of thing I have tried to point out here many times.
“Racism”, historically, was a really easy (and until quite recently on the historical scale, pretty darn accurate) shortcut for “culture-ism” (or just plain tribalism, which is even easier but less useful).
Modern racism is still a decently accurate shortcut for “culture-ism” (for at least the smaller racial groups in any given country), much more so than any of us (very much including myself) would like, though much less so than in the vast majority of history.
Modern racism is also dumbed down a LOT. Historically, “racism” applied from, for example, the English to the Scots and the Irish. Today, that seems… very strange.
Well, at least in the western world.
In Africa, Asia, and bit chunks of Eastern Europe, they still use racism much more like it was used historically. The Han (the dominant people group in China) are probably the most openly and unrepentantly racism people group on the planet (the government of mainland China certainly is), and they include anyone not Han in that list (like Koreans, Thai, Hmong, etc).
African tribes in many areas are still quite racist against each other, despite being far more similar than most groups Europeans are to each other.
In most of those cases, the culture is also noticeably different, so at least there are SOME reasons that could underpin the racism, but in practice, the racism lives on its own. Among other things, it’s easier than thinking about the culture stuff.
Young kids of different races will immediately shun each other.
Young kids in general will immediately shun each other unrelated to whether or not they’re of different races.
Young kids are super selfish and pretty mean to each other.
Respecting other humans has to be taught.
That first one is completely wrong. “young kids” barely recognize themselves in a mirror. By the time they even know what “Race” is, they’re going to school, where they’re taught how to be bigots by their teachers and other children with bigoted parents.
that is pretty much not true, racism has its origins in tribalism which is pretty much human nature, we form “tribes” and shun people who arent part of our tribe and the easiest tribe for form is those that are different from us be from their skin color or their hair color (there used to be a lot of racism against redheads), we are just in general distrustful of those that not from “our tribe”
this is not exclusive to racism btw everything can form a tribe, when you see people discussing which one is the best console or the best sport’s team of if chocolate is better than vanilla yeah all of those are tribes
Yeah, but a tribe doesn’t have to be made up of people of the same skin colour or even nationality, so Elfguy is correct: kids have to be taught racism, which is not the same thing as tribalism (which actually starts with the family as they are typically the first ‘group’ you belong to, either biological or adoptive)
And the biggest evidence of how racism has to be taught is Europe.
Ask an American what race a bunch of different Europeans are, and they’ll mostly say “white.”
Ask a European, and you’ll get all sorts of *interesting* insults about each different group.
It’s not a summary it’s a full fledged thing.
The second point tells, what I meant with the first point.
I do agree that young kids have basically no concept of “race”.
My point is that they also have close to no concept of “others worthy of respectful treatment”.
A young kid will be just as likely to steal the ball of a white kid or a black kid with all the force available to them. In both cases it’s “pretty likely”.
A earthquake isn’t racist either in that it doesn’t kill based on race, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t kill.
Kids don’t shun based on race, but doesn’t mean they don’t shun.
“they’re going to school, where they’re taught how to be bigots by their teachers and other children with bigoted parents.”
That was certainly my experience with my children. They came home asking why the “dark skinned kids” treated them so differently (and very largely, though they didn’t say it, “so badly”).
They didn’t even have the verbiage for it, but yeah, they were being taught racism by the other children, who learned it from their parents.
Incorrect, children do not know about racism or anything with exception to what the adult (parents)teaches them and overheard.
My own daughter when she was 3 years old she took to a gaggle of multi ethnic children they just played together kept going till one the parents showed his racist side by calling my daughter a bleeping g**k because he was angry at something and took out on a 3 year old.
My wife is Japanese, I am white guy with a few disabilities. Believe you/me, I spoke to him about what he said, he was shocked that he even unconsciously knowing that he even said it to begin with.
The other parents we know each other for 23 year. So it’s not born into children,its taught to them
Can confirm.
As a Navy brat, my earliest memories were of my playmates on Guam.
We were all 3 & 4 years old, running riot all over housing, and not giving a thought to our differences in appearance or speech. Hell, we had our own polyglot, snagging bits of each other’s languages.
It was common for our parents to show up at our houses, dragging us by the arm and saying, “Say what you said to me!” They wanted to be sure we weren’t talking shit or being foul mouthed at them. X’D
It wasn’t until we came back to the states that I learned about racism, classism, and other bigotry.
You must be great fun at parties.
Nothing I love better than a complete and utter sociopath trying to explain why being a complete and utter sociopath is “natural.”
Yes it would make sense that a foot soldier (hence likely not rich, or at least doesn’t have land), would often be out of work when a treaty is signed.
Levies tended not be to used away from home, so these would often have been mercenaries.
So they’re a long walk from home (and possibly not welcome there, or would not have become a mercenary in the first place). Not particularly good at farming, and the farmers around where they were mustered out would likely already have all the hands they needed and then some.
What’s left? Well, you have skill with weapons, weapons and armor of some sort. As well, you have experience with violence and threatening same already (pretty much all armies “foraged”, which isn’t hunting and berry-picking, it’s taking stored food from peasants in the areas you’re passing through).
Unsurprising that “brigand” change meaning from “foot soldier” to “robber”.
Brigand a french word is from the italian brigante -who goes in a group – and Italian city states employed mercenary armies ..
Yes it had the same meaning as the french “routier” in 100 years war – mercenaries becoming highwaymen -.
For criminal organization the are based on co-optation of a member introduces a new member who comes from his circle of acquaintances…
I always thought Brigand was a bastardization of ‘Bag-End’ from where the original thief set out to steal from a Dragon
Yes, having a head-covering of some kind is a good thing, but full-facial covering is more of a specialized protection
Racism depends on local cultural norms. People tend to group with “like” people, but that isn’t always by race; for example, if the culture holds wealth distinction as far more important, you get non-racial groupings.
“People tend to group with “like” people”
Historically, with so little travel, the local people would all be largely the same “race”, whether they started that way or not. People who looked different were, very largely, not “their” people.
From that perspective, historical racism (which was much more finely-tuned than the modern, western “white/black/brown/yellow” oversimplicity) makes a lot of sense – it’s a shortcut for culture and was generally QUITE accurate until the last few centuries.
“doesn’t look like us” = “isn’t part of our culture” = “can’t be trusted to follow our cultural norms”
Entirely reasonable and normal in the ancient (and even less-ancient) world. Even today, where individual counter examples abound, it’s still true often enough for the lazy to use it as a shortcut.
And although little children may not have any inbuilt prejudices about people of any specific different appearance, they are often *very* cautious about people they are unfamiliar with.
I’ve got a not-quite-3 year old grandson. He’s extremely cautious about anyone – adult or child – he doesn’t know well. My wife (asian) and I (white) spend a lot of time with him and he loves us both. His paternal grandmother (hispanic) does too, and he doesn’t have any issues with her. He only sees his paternal grandfather (hispanic) occasionally, and he’s much less trusting with him- not because of “race”, but because he’s less familiar.
But kids learn fast – if they spend time playing with kids of any other race they’re generally fine. Unless those around them work to reinforce and demonize that initial uncertainty.
I’m noticing a trend of characters of characters doing things, asking if it was racist, and then following it up with something racially insensitive.
its a way of getting comfortable and finding the boundaries. multiculturalism is absolutely not a normal state for humanity. this does not mean its its not a good thing.
Multiculturalism isn’t normal because it results in conflict. If the cultures are too diametrically opposed, then you either get destruction or separation.
But without it, a culture tends to become stagnant and oppressive. Acceptance of new and different ideas is necessary for development and freedom.
given that tribalism also results in conflicts. I fail to see how multiculturalism is inherently bad as you are implying. also, very few cultures are truly diametrically opposed. unless its in someone’s financial/power interests to say so.
Multiculturalism is normal. It has been normal for as long as anything that can be described as culture has existed. You cannot have one without the other. Even animals have even been shown to understand that other groups they share territory will have different behaviours and share ideas.
That’s because Dave is from the US, and the people most obsessed about that kind of thing do exactly that on the regular.
At least, that has been my person lived experience.
Speaking of Linguism, I always enjoy listening to the dialects of different nationalities. Just yesterday I had a nice conversation with a Swiss person in a chocolate shop… in an area you would expect to hear German, not Swiss, as the dialect.
German and Swiss aren’t dialects, they’re languages. An example of dialects would be American English compared to British English.
“The dialects that comprise Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland. ”
tell that to the swiss, who will switch to the version of german you learned in school, in order to chat.
Ah, my mistake. Duh, Swiss isn’t a language.
The Swiss have four official languages. The only one actually unique to Switzerland is called Romansh. The others are French, German and Italian.
There’s only two things I absolutely hate and despise.
Intolerance of other cultures … and the Dutch!
Darn speciests and humanophobes.
I missed it Friday when this came up, but any racism discussion of this sort should be accompanied by Avenue Q: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM.
And any discussion of racial diversity in gangs requires the obligatory Rubber Bandits… https://youtu.be/RaaZsBxWeiQ?si=Q-5bbeJzv6f13TxH
Any discussion of racism in the modern, western world requires the obligatory We Actually Agree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg
Well…I watched it. Can’t agree.
I love comedy but racist humor is a hateful turn-off to me.
I’ve always considered the song to be one skewering racism in a light hearted way.
Yeah, the point of that song slash skit is pointing out how everyone is a little bit racist, but most cases it’s more of stereotyping or cookie-cutting: if you see two or more people who look and dress similar is kinda natural to assume they are connected somehow
It’s how you treat them that counts
As for the song where she blames the kids’ swearing on the fact they listen to rap isn’t being racist: claiming only black kids can be rappers or be interested in rap is (Eminem and Vanilla Ice ring any bells?)
Let’s be honest. Assuming he’s white because he’s an apologist is also racist.
Yes.
This should have been the first comment.
In a realistic setting she would have identified him as “American” instead of “white”.
Nope, not racist to infer someone’s race from their accent. If you heard a Russian or German accent, you’d guess white. You wouldn’t call that racist. Asian accent is going to guess an Asian. :p
If I heard a German accent, I’d guess German. Russian…a little harder, given how many countries used to be under Moscow’s thumb back in the USSR days.
“white” isn’t a race/nationality, and isn’t really even a culture. Plus, there’s the whole migration thing happening over time. There’s zero guarantee that a German accent is coming out of the mouth of a white skinned person.
As for the Asian comment…it’s a lot easier to tell a Turkish accent from a Hindu accent, and either from any of the SE Asian accents (multiple Chinese ones, Korean, Japanese, then there’s Pacific Islanders of various types, Tagalog, Thai, etc). “Asian” accents covers a wildly broad range and include quite a few languages that are structurally very different from the Indo-European languages. Makes things tricky.
Yes, but you could possibly guess which part of Asia from the accent, so he wouldn’t have been racist. This doesn’t mean he couldn’t be wrong. Hell, British accent doesn’t mean one has to be white, but the likelihood would be there.
Best guess, when cops ask you to describe the masked criminal who spoke to you, “They spoke with an accent.” “Do you know the accent?” “What?! You want me to assume race over an accent?” :p No, you say “Sounded Asian, thinking Chinese.”
The cop wasn’t asking for race but nationality when asking what the accent was (and the witness was the one who brought it up in the first place)
Unless that’s what you meant
Are Russians still considered white?
Well, the word caucasian does tend to mean something else in Russian compared to the rest of the world. Mainly because the word originated in the Caucasus mountain range area.
“Русский” means Ethnic Russian. Caucasian Eastern Slavic people. :) Literally from the Caucasus mountain range in southern Russia. :)
(North Caucasus is Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia, etc, and Southern Caucasus is Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia)
I’m german.
I make fun of people with (strong) german accent on a regular basis.
No, most don’t speak more languages than me – probably 2 for most, rarely 3 for some.
The number of languages isn’t the point.
I think Dave was a little unclear here. I don’t think Dave was talking about speaking a language with a strong regional accent, like speaking English with one of the many Boston accents, or speaking German with a Rhinish accent, but rather speaking with a foreign accent, like speaking English with a Spanish accent or speaking German with an Italian accent, indicating that the spoken language is not the speaker’s primary language.
From a storytelling perspective this page and probably the last page probably didn’t need to happen. I think the jokes in this comic that try a bit too hard to lampshade racism/sexism etc. are weaker than some of the other jokes that leverage off the interpersonal interactions between people. When the story focuses too hard on people’s gender or race it kind of ignores their humanity and makes it just about one particular characteristic and I feel a bit alienated by that.
I don’t think these pages are about the jokes so much as the joking around is a tool used to teach us a little about the characters. We have a somewhat diverse set of people who do not know each other, and are figuring out a little about each other “on the job”. They are clearly vigilantes who consider themselves to be doing the right thing and are moral enough to be concerned about the way they are doing it.
Well…I watched it. Can’t agree.
I love comedy but racist humor is a hateful turn-off to me.
What about Humor ABOUT Racism?
What are you thoughts, for example, of “Blazing Saddles” and “The Producers?”
Just waiting for the movie mashup of Blazing Saddles and The Princess Bride
Hmm, is it just me, or does Quad-Flare not have the same arm-covering as the other three?
Specifically, no elbow join. Can definitely see it on Gunsmith and Big Guy in the first panel and kinda see it on the girl also in the first panel
Is the lack of elbow also a hint to their identity?
Hmmm… I think you’re right. You can also see the gunman’s and Asian lady’s elbow pads on the previous page, and Glowy Eyes lacks them there as well (big dude’s elbows are obscured by the humans in that page). Might have tentacle arms or something.
The designs on the faces look cool, but can’t quite make out Gunsmith’s design (no, the colour doesn’t need to be changed)
A few folks need to read “A History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter.
Well as an Asian girl who enjoys race humour, I now have a perfect new reaction pic to post amongst friends so thanks Dave ✌️
Er sorry Random Sausage, I’m new to posting, didn’t realize I was posting as a reply and there appears to be no delete button. Pls ignore D:
So this guy murders a bunch of guys to take their money, and then worries about if that might be racist?? So he is like: “I am ok with killing people for money, but not being racist to them?”. That seems a bit stupid…
Actually, no, that seems very stupid! (but funny in a stupid way)
Nah. That seems exactly in line with the hypocrisy of deitards. Deliberately or not.
It’s the same as certain country’s ideas on censorship: you can have extremely graphic violence (and not just over-the-top humour-type violence) and let kids watch it, but showing a naked female breast (not including the nipple) and it’s XXX rated and you need permission from three different religions to see it at any age
In this case, murderizing someone for their money is fine, but if they are a different race (or religion) is very very bad
Just because someone speaks more languages doesn’t mean they’re somehow linguistically superior. A shocking number of people are unable to reach “level 5” fluency in their own first or only language. Being level 2 or 3 in several languages is less impressive than level 4 in two or level 5 in one, and is frankly really annoying for the people you try to talk to. I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten fed up trying to explain something to someone because, for example, they think two synonyms mean the same thing, and after I give them a detailed explanation that synonyms don’t mean the same thing, they mean similar things, and here’s the difference between the ones we’re discussing, they say “Oh, sorry, I’m French” or whatever. Which doesn’t explain anything because synonyms work like that in virtually every language, so the only reason you wouldn’t know that about your second language is if you also didn’t know it about your first because you’re not actually fluent in your first language.
Other examples include: people who misuse words, people with poor reading comprehension, and anyone who says “you know what I meant!” when you finally puzzle out what they meant and correct them.
What the fuck is “level 5” fluency?
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/levels-of-fluency-resume
And yes, it can be very relevant.
anything talking about language that says “Your accent is either nonexistent or barely recognizable.” raises severe questions about how seriously to take any of their other claims.
What’s no accent for English?
Received Pronunciation from the BBC?
And do they consider American, English, Scots and Australian seperate mutually intelligable languages, or different dialects of the same language for their “one true accent” definition?
The difficulty with this is that like most things, it’s not a bright line.
“English” has a number of accents e.g., BBC Received Pronunciations vs. the northern accent used in Trainspotting.
“American” does as well, e.g. Brooklynese vs. rural Georgia.
Scottish and Australian? I think they’re also a family of accents, but I’m not as familiar. There’s the story that Mel Gibson had to be dubbed in Mad Max for American release. Certainly, his lines were a lot easier to understand than e.g. the bikers’ in that movie.
Accent to dialect to new language is the usual tendency for linguistic drift. This is counteracted either by education or mass media.
My father’s second language was Italian, his first language Nonas(sp?) was spoken basically only around the Val di Non area in Italy. I’ve heard it, it is not intelligible if you only know Italian. If you know both Italian and German, you might be able to puzzle your way through a slow conversation.
Today it’s only spoken by people over about the age of 70 or so. That you could only speak Italian in class in school basically killed it.
no accent for English means that wherever you are, your accent matches that particular city’s base accent. (New York, Brooklyn, etc.)
So your fluency in English drops when you move city?
How does that make sense?
“What’s no accent for English?”
A certain area of Iowa.
Not kidding – when doing surveys, those are the people English speakers from all over the world identify as flat English with no accent (the other portion of Iowa has a very strong accent – kinda funny).
Why that particular area? NO IDEA.
The neutral American accent, preferred as the basis for most movies and TV shoes, is Midwestern, particularly in Iowa/Nebraska area, maybe South Dakota. The closer you speak to that, the more ‘universal’ you are, as in you can be understood effortlessly anywhere else, and your word choices are less divergent than other places (pop vs cola vs coke, for instance).
It’s one more than level 4 fluency.
C2? The FSI (US government standard) scale runs 0-5, which frankly seems more logical than the A1 to C2 EU scheme.
There’s an organized crime group nearby called the UN gang that operates in the Abbotsford, BC area. They get that name because they are racially inclusive, having Asians, South Asians and Caucasians in their group.
alright that is a clever name
In Panel 3, Dabbler would definitely have snuck in a “Cunning Linguist” joke, so we know she’s not disguised here.
No, she’s too smart to think that’s clever.
Or she’s smart enough to have already made that joke and thought up at least 5 new versions and 2 better ones
Casual racism, the fun kind! after unaliving a lot of people!
… i’m actually racist… i wasnt before, i was taught to be one… molded by it, i wasnt a racist until i became a man!
/s
Fully form fitting armour, such as is shown here, is not likely to suffer from ‘disguised hero’ syndrome. Unless you come up with the identical twin for one of the people, it’s not going to fit properly, and that includes the head gear. If it’s high tech enough, it could also have a biometric lock.
I refer you to Star Wars
“Star Wars” armour was clearly not fitted. It was ‘one size fits many’, and the helmets would have been made to be adjusted. (like motorcycle helmets)
I’m reminded of one of the Discworld books, where Commander Sam Vimes had to leave the city and put Captain Carrot in charge… and then Carrot had to leave and put Sergeant Fred Colon in charge. And this was a problem because Colon was a huge racist. Granted, so is Sam Vimes – but Vimes always has the back of his guards, regardless of their species. Also, Vimes doesn’t much care for humans either.
Whereas Colon is a bit of a coward, and a bit too specific about his bigotry… pretty soon the entire City Watch has gone on strike. And the crime rate has dropped DRAMATICALLY, because the crooks are terrified of what will happen when Vimes gets back…
Vimes hated everyone equally, so wasn’t racist (which is typically putting one race above others, or more accurately putting other races below another)
I’m happy to see we’re getting back to the main plot of the strip, while I do enjoy the wacky high-jinks of Sydney, Max, and Dabbler, it is a super hero comic and there’s hasn’t really been much of that this year. Looks like we have a vigilante group here, although the weird not-human guy is concerning. It makes me wonder if going to be a super-fight in the future or just a long hunt that ends with new members of arc-swat. With Sydney either embarrassing herself or the rest of the team ;)
Main… plot? I think you are confused. This is a comic about wacky high-jinks that happens to super heroes, which is not quite the same thing as a super hero comic.
More importantly, it’s more what they do when they are not doing super-heroing, as seen with the whole “Parf does a whoopsie” and “Maxi being Harper” arcs
Actually, studies show more trust and sense of community among groups that are NOT racially/sexually/etc diverse. Sooo, if someone was going to trust someone enough to commit crimes with them, then it would be hugely more likely that their intersectionality traits would match. Probably same voting preferences as well.
Who do you trust? In most societies trust extends along family lines (my cousin can get it for you wholesale…).
Societal trust is a lot harder.
“Societal trust is a lot harder.”
And in the US, we are actively killing it.
Low-trust societies pay a lot of “stupid tax”. :-(
And would you say that is a consequence of people being less trustworthy, or people sewing distrust?
Trust enables a group to perform more efficiently, but trusting untrustworthy people means that they take advantage of you. Distrusting trustworthy people imposes a “tax”. Accurately identifying how trustworthy other people are enables you to make better choices. Telling other people to trust, even when they should not, makes the system more efficient, but now the people who are taken advantage of pay the cost, rather than society as a whole. Should we sacrifice individuals for the sake of group efficiency?
“And would you say that is a consequence of people being less trustworthy, or people sewing distrust?”
Yes, but the former in significant part as a consequence of the latter. Untrustworthy people are always around. What’s different is that society is not punishing them for their breaches of trust.
Your second section… no, we should not. Thus, we are moving towards a low-trust society. :-(
Our judgement as to the trustworthiness of others is likely to be in error, as our judgement in all things is. Knowing that, in which direction should we err?
I think we should both try to increase trustworthiness, and improve our assessment of it by seeking to establish proof of trustworthiness, rather than rely on blind faith.
“Our judgement as to the trustworthiness of others is likely to be in error, as our judgement in all things is. Knowing that, in which direction should we err?”
Oh, we’re not even GETTING to that part. We aren’t punishing people for proven, public, we-have-it-on-film-from-37-angles breaches of trust.
Historically, the default level of trust was “none”. You’re not part of “us” (for a pretty dang small definition of “us”, usually along the lines of “clan” or smaller), no trust for you.
Getting to some level of “we get more benefits out of trusting the public on a lot of things than the cost of the few who screw us with it” was the work of generations.
We are actively and energetically throwing it away. You won’t have to worry much about how good our “judgement” of others’ trustworthiness is – we will just default to zero for anyone we don’t know personally (and a decent chunk of those we do). No “judgement”, no “judgement errors”.
(Of course, the problem really isn’t one of judgement, anyway – the fault lies in those who LIE and abuse others’ trust. They conceal the information needed to make that judgement. Reliable punishment for that abuse of trust is the only means I know of to prevent any significant portion of that problem, short of just not trusting the vast majority of people…)
But, since I like to debate with you (because you debate in good faith! much appreciation!), I will address your question more explicitly:
“in which direction should we err?”
Should? Difficult question… but mostly irrelevant. We WILL err on the side that doesn’t get us immediately screwed – that is, we will not trust.
Long term, that’s not great, but to get to long term, you have to get through short term, and short-term, trust is resulting in WAY too much getting screwed.
Despite recognizing the value of trust, I think it’s good that we’re moving away from blindly trusting others. The consequences for misjudging trustworthiness are only getting greater, and I am hopeful that we’ll instead seek rigorous proof of trustworthiness, rather than relying on superficial mannerisms that are easily manipulated. I think the people most skilled at seeming trustworthy are most likely to be the least worthy of trust — conmen have more incentive to cultivate those skills than honest people.
Beyond judging whether or not to trust individual people, I was asking what level of trust we should default to. Our judgement in trust strategy is just as likely to be in error as our judgement in trustworthiness. And I think we agree that, whether we “should” or not, the strategy we will pick as a whole will be one of reduced trust. But I think this is wise in an era of rampant falsehood, deception, and the increasing ability to rapidly fabricate what in past eras we would consider “proof”: photos, video, audio. We cannot trust hardly anything we see or hear. We need a new, more secure model for trust, and to reassess what’s really important.
I believe that if philosophy and morality don’t keep pace with technology, it will destroy us. We can’t keep kicking the big questions down the road forever. If we can’t figure out a way to coexist before we gain enough power to cause our own extinction, we will use it to that end.
“I think the people most skilled at seeming trustworthy are most likely to be the least worthy of trust — conmen have more incentive to cultivate those skills than honest people.”
Absolutely! Bonus: the vast majority of politicians are conmen. :-(
“But I think this is wise in an era of rampant falsehood, deception, and the increasing ability to rapidly fabricate”
And other quotes. My response to that would be what I posted above:
“Getting to some level of “we get more benefits out of trusting the public on a lot of things than the cost of the few who screw us with it” was the work of generations.”
The incentives for conmen is as old as time. We had a few moments (on the historical scale) where hand-to-fake proof was fairly easy to come by (video being only the most obvious), but we achieved a “high-trust society” BEFORE that.
And we did so getting the costs of getting screwed LOWER than the benefits of being high-trust, largely at the *individual* (or at least corporate) level, not just society as a whole!
We did that by punishing putting significant effort into punishing the people who abused our trust.
Oh, sure, we never got 100%. Honestly, probably not more than 50%. But it was enough!
We aren’t doing that. The costs of trust-violation have gotten VERY VERY low in many areas, so more people do it. (Most ridiculous example: California decriminalizing theft as long as it’s below $1000 dollars per day.)
I disagree with you on what’s good, but we’re getting what you think is is a good idea. It makes me sad.
I think I agree that we’re allowing far too many people to get away with harming others. But I also think that’s true of crimes by the rich, not just the poor.
Technology increases our reach. It increases the damage that bad actors can do. And no amount of punishment after the fact is going to prevent all crime, and there’s a tipping point at which a single actor can cause incredible damage, and if they’re not stopped before they act, then there will be no recovery. We need to find a way to prevent crime, not simply punish people for it.
“But I also think that’s true of crimes by the rich, not just the poor.”
The difference is that either a) by “the rich”, you are including “the powerful” (always significant overlap, though even more so historically), and that’s really a different problem, as they have the power to just say, “What ya gonna do bout it?”, or b) the rich have a better chance of hiding the crime from the public (for several reasons), but when the crimes come out, they seldom escape at least some level of punishment (even the Bidens are finally getting at least a little punishment… briefly, before the pardon, but that goes back to part a, above).
“We need to find a way to prevent crime, not simply punish people for it.”
The reason “punishment” largely works is because it prevents people from benefiting from their crime. If the punishment is certain enough, the only people who will do the crime is those who believe they benefit anyway.
Example: revenge killings. If one is emotionally damaged enough, having vengeance is worth your own life, so there is no punishment that would prevent you. See also “murder suicide”.
Some of those are VERY VERY VERY hard to prevent, but others are less so. The easiest example I can think of is “mass shootings”. The “benefit” the perpetrator gets is generally some form of perceived/expected notoriety, which is amplified by the behaviour of the press. (See “copycat” crimes and how and when they spike.)
The best way I know of to prevent these kinds of crimes is to lower the expected notoriety. (No, it’s not remotely gun control, for multiple well-documented reasons, from “country gun ownership rates do not correlate to mass killing rates” to “the worst mass killing in US history (second now, behind the Vegas one) was a bombing at a rural school with homemade explosives in the 1920s” (additional example: Oklahoma City). )
Other crimes that are difficult (or insufficient) to prevent with punishment would be similar – target the perceived benefit to the perpetrator. That is really the only thing I know of that would do it (well, short of “stupendously tyrannical police state”, but that would have other, MUCH WORSE problems.)
But I would love to hear your suggestions for how to actually prevent crimes that are not sufficiently prevented by thorough and dependable punishment. Seriously – I love good ideas on hard topics, so if you have any, fire away!
I question whether punishment is very cost-effective. The deterrence comes primarily from the threat of punishment, rather than the punishment itself, though people may evaluate the risk of receiving punishment based on their observations of other people being punished. But, as stated elsewhere, I don’t think people actually pay much attention to whether things happen or not. Maintaining a police force is expensive. It would be way cheaper, and about as effective, if we were able to make people believe one existed without actually paying for one.
I also question whether anybody really trusts the police. The left doesn’t trust them to use appropriate force, and the right doesn’t trust them to respond quickly enough. They’re only effective for responding to particular kinds of incidents, and when they’re not actually responding to a public nuisance, tend to become one themselves.
The other issue with punishment is that it doesn’t actually remove the motivation for the crime in the first place. It imposes a cost, and reduces the chance of reward, but the desire remains unmet. The poor and hungry are still just as poor and hungry. There’s just an additional obstacle to getting their needs met, and while it may stop them from succeeding, it’s not going to make them stop trying. If you’re going to die anyway, might as well die on a full stomach.
In the cases in which punishment would actually be cost effective, such as on the wealthy and powerful, we don’t inflict enough punishment to make an impact, and don’t inflict it often enough, because, as you say, the wealthy and powerful are good at using their power to evade punishment. And we absolutely need to put a stop to that. The rightful purpose of government is to keep powerful bad actors in check, because individuals cannot do that themselves.
The most difficult crimes to deter and stop, and also, I think, the most important, are those in which the criminal has no motivation other than to harm others. That’s the mass killings at present, but in the future it’s where global extinction risks are eventually going to come in. And I don’t know if there’s a viable option for that risk that doesn’t resemble “stupendously tyrannical police state”. If we want freedom, but also want to dodge the inevitable extinction event, we’re going to have to find one.
“I also question whether anybody really trusts the police.”
Our modern policing is actually pretty amazingly good on the historical scale.
That doesn’t mean all the complaints about them are without merit (though many are at least highly exaggerated), of course. The police can (and do) literally get away with murder… as long as their target isn’t well-connected or of a “protected” class. (Nobody cares when they flat-out murder a poor/unconnected white guy, for instance – check out Daniel Shaver, if you have the stomach for a real-life snuff film, among other horrible examples. The officer who murder Shaver received no punishment at all.).
But in practice, even with their flaws, the only thing worse than the police is… no police. Check out what has happened to the murder rate in big cities where the police withdrew in response to the George Floyd riots.
In the longer term, this results in vigilantism and mob action, both of which have flaws worse than modern policing… but still much better than nothing.
“The poor and hungry are still just as poor and hungry.”
That is not remotely the primary motivation for crime in western countries. It is not a common secondary or even tertiary motivation for crime in western countries. Among so many other extremely obvious proofs of this is that “food” is not a significant target of theft.
Yes, people who are starving (or worse, watching their children starve) will indeed not take any of that into account. That is not remotely what we are talking about. This is a painfully obvious red herring, far beneath your usual standards of argumentation around here, in my experience.
“The other issue with punishment is that it doesn’t actually remove the motivation for the crime in the first place.”
I think you are failing to take into account the crimes we have very largely suppressed successfully… until very recently, for some of them, which makes them very good examples. The motivation for theft is “I want stuff without working for it”, so when you are reasonably likely to go to jail and have your stolen stuff taken away, the option of “commit theft” to meet the desire is a bad choice. (Yes, SOME will still make that choice, always. Some people make very bad and self-destructive decisions, for a variety of reasons.)
See what’s happening in large cities now where shoplifting is de facto decriminalized – the problem is getting ***MUCH*** worse.
Yes, deterrence is expensive. Your point about the police being expensive is true, but your suggestion about just getting people to believe there are police being cheaper is false… or at least, no one has found a way to *actually accomplish* that that is cheaper than just plain having the police.
Your last two paragraphs are largely quite good, and I agree that “we need to put a stop to that”… suggestions on means to do so?
I will say that I think you are at least mostly incorrect on the motivation for mass shooters. Just “hurting people” is a lesser point, at least for many. Some level of (expected) post-death notoriety seems to be a common motivator, and their own death as a means to escape horrible depression/mental illness of various types is also very common (that is, dying is part of their motivation, not just an acceptable side effect). See also “suicide by cop” as a less-destructive version.
As such, I think the risk for “mass extinction event” is actually far lower than mass killings of any kind, as most of those would be eliminated by “lack of people to be notorious among”.
Only “most”, though, so still not nearly as low as I would like, of course….. :-/ Largely, we have avoided it thus far by the simple difficulty, but with advances in cheap genetic splicing capabilities, some kind of horrible bio-weapon made and released by some long wacko is getting frighteningly possible (ever see “Army of the 7 Monkeys”? Combine the enviro-cult “human beings need to be eliminated” messaging with a reasonably-competent, overly-dedicated crazy person, and you get that guy. Scary).
I did not mean to imply that poverty or hunger was the dominant motivation for crime in the modern world; it was simply an example of the type of motivation that punishment is ineffective against. It was deliberately blunt, because I usually find that nuance and subtlety go over people’s heads. I’m glad to see both that you agree, and that you’re interested in more complex arguments. Because the rich steal too, and it’s obviously not because they lack the resources to acquire what they want legitimately.
I don’t think “I want stuff without working for it” is entirely an accurate description of people’s motivation for theft. Stealing is itself “work”, in that it entails effort and risk. I think instead that it’s either “I want this thing now, but don’t have the money right now”, or “I want this thing, and don’t want to cooperate with society to get it”. In a word: entitlement.
For perhaps you and I, stealing is an act of weakness, an admission of a weak bargaining position. “You don’t have valuable skills that society wants to reward? You don’t already have a surplus of resources to trade? Pathetic.” But someone willing to steal, or commit other crimes? They either embrace the same set of values, and are acting out of shame, trying to acquire resources to acquire that status that they think is beyond their grasp, or they believe that they do deserve those things, and that it’s society that has wrongly judged them as worthless.
Or they see stealing as the act of a predator, an act of strength, and bargaining itself as a position of weakness, akin to begging. This is embodied in phrases like “working for the man”, or “living off the grid”. These people see honesty and cooperation as submission, and believe they deserve more, and will just take it from others, proving their dominance. This explains crimes by the rich and the poor both. To the criminal mind, taking advantage of others is winning, and cooperating with them is losing.
I failed to adequately explain my point about illusory enforcement. We already operate under less than complete police presence. The risk of being punished is not absolute. How much of the deterrence factor comes from the belief that the police will respond in time, that they’ll catch you? How much police presence is actually necessary to create that deterrence? It’s going to vary by criminal, and their individual risk assessment, but presumably is higher than “none”, but still lower than “a police officer on every street corner”. We have officers patrol, not on the expectation that they will happen upon crime, but as a way of creating cheap deterrence. But there are other methods of amplifying or creating that deterrence, such as neighborhood watch programs. Creating the expectation that crimes will be seen and punished, that the community will fight back and take care of their own, increases the perceived risk of crime, makes the criminal feel weaker, rather than a strong predator.
I don’t think those committing acts of mass violence expect to improve their own position. As you say, they often expect to die, and are just lashing out and trying to escape a horrible situation. Or they’re trying to make a difference in the world, right some horrible wrong. They feel weak, and want to accomplish something, even if it’s just demonstrating just how weak they are. Society doesn’t value them, at least not as much as they think they should be, so they reject society. They can’t kill it, but they can wound it, and take satisfaction in it.
As for a mass extinction event, my point is that eventually it will only take one person, so there is no value of “low” that’s low enough if it’s non-zero. As you say, we’ve avoided it thus far due to the difficulty of causing it, but technology will eventually make that trivial.
Ultimately, I think the state of the world today is due to the loss of the virtues of community and truth, and the rise of the virtue of power. Civics needs to be a much bigger part of education. The rightful role of government needs to be central to our system of laws. We need the government to be powerful where it is right, but completely powerless where it should not tread. We need to find a way to defeat the runaway growth of power, to prevent power from being used to gain more power. I think this will require a much more deliberate structure of government, one in law is explicitly justified, rather than taken for granted. We need to ensure that laws are falsifiable — the purpose of a law should be spelled out in the law, and the law should be self-terminating if it does not accomplish the specific goals it lays out. Otherwise, law simply becomes a tool to gain power.
The best resource I know for understanding how law grows out of control is the book “The Paradox of Self-Amendment” by Peter Suber. Specifically, it describes a game called “Nomic” which in essence underlies all systems of government, in much the way that a Turing machine is an abstract version of a computer. Nomic is fundamentally the problem we need to solve if we are to make a system of government that can protect us from catastrophe without enslaving us.
Thank you for the great discussion thus far.
Those first few paragraphs are very enjoyable. Not sure I agree with every bit of it, but at least the large majority seems very reasonable as at least contributors to the problem(s).
They still largely reduce to “remove the benefit they feel they get”, which for most crimes still reduces to “make sure they are in a worse position than before”, in terms of finances, freedom, or both.
“I failed to adequately explain my point about illusory enforcement.”
I think it’s more that you used incorrect verbiage. It’s not “illusory”. It’s real. That it is not 100% everywhere-all-the-time is implicit in humanity. Some level of bluff or maximization of the feeling that it is closer to complete coverage is not a bad idea, but in the long term, that will fail, and the failure will bring significant penalties. I would compare it to using a high-interest credit card. The longer you have the debt, the more you eventually pay. (Not a perfect analogy, of course.)
Concealed carry has shown that simply the credible and accurate chance that someone is armed reduces several categories of crime. The higher the likelihood, the lower the level of overall crime. Police apprehension of criminals is similar – 100% is desirable, but the costs to get there (many of them NOT in money!) are prohibitive… but getting it “high enough” still has a very significant deterrent factor.
NO amount of deterrence will stop all crime. “People make dumb, short-sighted, self-destructive decisions. Story at 11.”
Your last two paragraphs…. welcome to all of human history. None of this is remotely new. In fact, the only new thing is that we managed, for a couple of centuries, to push it back noticeably. I think some of the famous (and in some cases apocryphal) quotes from the US Founding Fathers capture what made that work – the people had significant agreement on bedrock principles of freedom, and the people were, to a significant extent, principled in their pursuit of those principles, both publicly and privately.
That situation is, historically speaking, very, very rare. Getting there is HARD. Staying there is even harder – whatever mechanisms you have used to achieve it will be attacked by people who want power, because those mechanisms prevent them from getting the power they want. That is where we are now.
Wish I had better ideas on what to do about it. Your ideas about self-terminating laws, for instance, are not bad… but what mechanism could actually enforce that? And how would we get that mechanism in place? The concepts aren’t hard, but the actual real-world application IS.
Thanks to you as well. It’s nice to actually discuss some of these ideas with someone who is capable, but also has a different perspective. I don’t think it’s important whether or not we agree, so much as that we’re willing to discuss the concepts without talking past each other.
I think it’s generally more effective and more efficient to provide means to resolve the motivation behind a behavior, rather than to obstruct it. If someone commits crimes because they have an oppositional attitude towards cooperation and society, and we punish them for it, I think they’ll either break and submit, or just become more defiant. I don’t consider either of those ideal outcomes, because they don’t produce a willing contributor to society. At best, you get someone who’s resigned to cooperation, but resents it the entire time, and will jump back to crime the moment they think they can get away with it, or they become a high-functioning sociopath, determined to rise to a position of dominance so that they can make the rules.
In general, I think people seek to make the minimum changes necessary to achieve their goals. If you punish a specific behavior, they’ll look for a loophole, a way to achieve the same outcome while dodging the punishment. Then you either play whack-a-mole, creating ever more complex and specific rules to discourage negative behavior, or you make broad, subjective rules, and people no longer are certain what behavior is acceptable and what will be punished, because now it’s up to an authority to decide after the fact whether a rule was violated. That leads to oppressive government and attracts corrupt people to positions of power, because they will be able to wield it to their own ends.
Rewarding desired behavior, and working to eliminate the obstacles people face in following the desired path, is far more efficient. It’s also equivalent to punishing a broad spectrum of undesired behavior, without the cost of individually punishing all those behaviors. Reward denied is, in many cases, equivalent to punishment applied, particularly if you adjust the neutral position. And this is essentially the mechanism that drives capitalism. People chase the dollar, and do whatever it takes to get it.
Punishment and law enforcement may always be necessary, and in some specific cases, more effective and efficient. But I think a combination of strategies would be better than one that focuses on behavior modification through force. I think education that focuses on why we have law, why trust and cooperation yield enormous efficiency gains, is going to be critical, rather than just assuming that it’s all obvious to people. Engaged, informed participation is going to be smoother than just forcing people to cooperate for their own good.
I think your point about concealed carry supports what I’m trying to express: that people modify their behavior based on their beliefs about the world, rather than facts. The idea that someone could be carrying has a deterrent factor, independent of the number of people actually carrying in a given situation. The idea that there could be police nearby is generally more important than the police actually being there. Crime prevented is better than crime interrupted, which is better than crime punished after the fact. Because making the victims whole can be expensive, if not impossible. Punishment mostly means that two people have been harmed instead of one, which isn’t a net gain for society.
The issue with making a better system of government work is that it ultimately depends on people agreeing to make it work. As long as humans are in charge of the enforcement mechanism, they can just decide not to follow the rules they agreed to. You could give laws self-termination clauses, but people no longer agree on a shared reality. No matter how plainly a law is spelled out, people will come up with novel interpretations that suit their purposes. Even if it’s reducible to logical propositions as plain as “1 + 1 = 2”, you’ll have people who argue about it. We need a shared legal foundation, a shared foundation of logic. Though, like with deterrence, the system doesn’t necessarily require 100% coverage. Different systems resist a certain percentage of bad actors more or less effectively. The United States government has a lot of resistance built in, but the corrupt have evolved far faster than our defenses, in part because people romanticize the founding fathers to an unrealistic degree, and we haven’t utilized the mechanisms they provided to keep our government relevant. Things may have to get worse before people are willing to make the changes necessary to make things better.
Flash from the past. There was that one gang in the 70s-80s that was on all the shows, and consisted of one white guy, one black guy, and a hispanic. No girls or wheelchairs though.
I’m not sure guessing race from speech patterns is entirely reliable. Imagine someone of English descent who grew up in some part of Asia and who never learnt English until later in life. They’d likely have the same issues with accent.
Not so much guessing the race as where they are from, accents are usually a better indicator than skin colour because of the whole migration-thing
For example one of the characters on the old show “Porridge”: looking at him you would assume he was from Africa, until he spoke and you find out he’s Scottish (with a very heavy tan :P )
Speaking of the inferred racism and pointing out one of them isn’t human,
If you realize someone masked isn’t human would you assume they are alien, demon, or non-human native?
Which on that same one would do you call them if they are from Earth? Kind of a tangent but does anyone else when watching shows with non-human intelligent beings from Earth find terms like “sub-terrestrial” or “Demi Human” to have a kind of racist/speciest tinge to them?
especially Demi Human, used to describe everything from elves, dwarves, centaurs, kobolds, etc… demi tends to mean partial or lesser version of something like a Demi God isn’t a full god, and less than a god. So calling multiple sapient species “Demi Humans” has this kind of (less than human) implication behind it. Its like someone saw “Sub Human” but didn’t want to come across as THAT speciest but still believed them “less than” so came up with a compromise but still pretty speciest term, Demi Human.
All they were inferring was that Quad-flare wasn’t human because of their statement in panel six, not what flavour of non-human they were
Just like Gunsmith was simply stating the female was of Asian descent, not where in Asia she was from
I am spring boarding, the question is if you were in their situation what would YOU assume the none human was? Alien, demon, or Earth based non human sapient?
and then I went down the rabbit hole of media with non-human sapient beings having a bit of a racist/speciest tinge to it with how they label them as a group.
Demi can also mean “partially,” and yes, it absolutely has a human supremacist vibe to it.
You very rarely get a half-orc who’s half orc and half dwarf.
Yeah, ‘half-‘ is nearly always implied to be human
It was kinda brought up in YAFGC with a half-elf and his half-satyr brother: only one had a human parent
Question.
Assume there is the offspring of a centaur and a minotaur, and they have the head of a horse but the body of a human.
And that child has a child with another centaur. And the offspring has the head of a horse and the body of a horse.
Is the child a centaur, a really badly-made minotaur, or just a horse at that point?
Whinum, a sapient horse.
His name is Ed.
sub-terrestial from subterranean meaning underground for an underground race, I’m not sure I’d call somebody it without them being clear on the actual meanings and the possible connotations of the word but it’s like rapeseed, the rape part comes from the Latin rāpa (or rapum) meaning turnip…
I think demi-human comes from D&D where Gygax did have some issues
I think Rhuen intended ‘sub-terrestrial’ to mean ‘not of Earth’ (i.e., extra-terrestrial) and lesser (sub-human), but the term is obviously confusing for that description. ‘Sub-terran’ might be a better option in this case.
I’ve always considered the use of ‘demi-human’ in D&D (etc.) race descriptions to mean half- or semi-human, with no implication of lesserness, just the idea of ‘similar to, but different’.
Whether Gygax thought the same… I have no idea.
Both, sort of, its from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the government was revealed to refer to vampires, demons, and all other supernatural beings as “sub-terrestrial” as in less than human and maybe also underground in some cases.
and while i am sure fantasy settings saying Demi Human is meant say like half human, like lamia is half snake and half human, harpy is half bird and half human, etc… it starts to feel less like that and more like a slur when they also include things like giants, gnomes, and elves which aren’t half human and half something else. Feeling more like lesser than human is implied. Especially when the settings make it clear humans are the dominant force…like seriously in Monster Musume they say the “demi humans” are part of a cultural exchange program but never make it clear where they are coming from, like Japan is a human country so is it another dimension or isolated places?
I haven’t been able to track down any use of demihuman before D&D
In D&D demihumans were the non-human races players could play (elves, dwarves, hobbits/halflings), I think that usage dates back to the original releases but I don’t own them so I can’t be sure
Harpies, Lamias etc have never been referred to as demihuman in D&D
My statement is not intended to indicate its chronological usage in media. Only its thematic and how it comes across as a result. In series where there are human hybrids the term “demi human” is slightly less offensive sounding, but can still be seen as such.
But in setting where it is referring to non-humans that are distinct from human such as dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc..it becomes across more as an insulting term to imply this non-humans are less than human.
Weird coincidence I can not include a real world example…
article I saw today, from a Harvard Professor talking about the UFO/UAP sightings. Now what they speculated isn’t anything new, plenty of fae lore and ancient hominids/silurian hypothesis types have brought this up before. But they pointed out the sheer number of craft seen, the tendency to be seen around the same areas, as possible evidence these are not from space but from Earth, maybe originating from space or another dimension, but liiving on or inside the Earth for an unknown amount of time…and bringing up that different cultures in the past seeing them may have said things like angels, demon, fairies, elves, etc…
but the point here is they came up with a term for the “non-human ntelligences” (how Grush and such said it).
and that term was “Crypto-Terrestrials”
so non-human intelligent life forms that hide themselves from humanity. Crypto-Terrestrials.
I am on the fence on that term, its basically just saying “the hidden people” but in a fancier way.
Aliens; college hipsters… same diff.
The only thing about this comic that is funny is how some people actually argue like this, completely sincerely and unironically, in real life.
Either the world has gotten more segregationist in the last two decades, or just plain old dumber. I am not entirely sure which.
At least in the US, one party is definitely going openly segregationist again (going back to their roots, I suppose). The verbiage to justify it has been flipped, but the end result is the same – segregated graduations, segregated living facilities, etc.
Right out in the open and proud of it, telling people that’s the right way to do it. They haven’t made much progress beyond the spaces they de facto own (education, largely), but they are working hard at it.
I thought we all agreed “separate but equal” was bad? But hey, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” was the rallying cry for that party at one point, so no surprise, I suppose.
This joke doesn’t work as well in text form, but…
“The most important thing to remember in linguistics is that a really bad French accent is zer onlee differonz between happiness and happiness.”
Zee most eemportent zing to remember in linguizticz iz that a really bad Franch accent eez zee only differonz between ‘appinezz and a peniz
Thank you for the translation.
I thought it was the difference between Hercule Poirot and Jaque Clouseau?
With Non-Humans joining the racism discussion here a reminder about how race works scientifically:
Humans have biologically only a single race. There is very little genetic diversity among humans. So while other species like dogs and presumably demons have many races which can be very different, races among humans are simply social constructs. But then again tribalism is not a uniquely human phenomenon.
Humans are a species. We have a lot of subspecies.
No you don’t.
you have ethnicities, can’t even go as far as to say breeds as there are reliable investigations even denoting behavioral differences like in dog breeds. You essentially only have environmental/bottle neck population based phenotypes.
a sub-species goes much further than that, dog is a sub-species of wolf for instance, distinct structural and behavioral differences, yet enough genetic similarity to cross breed, and the cross breeds display traits distinct to both yet clearly different from either as a result.
I don’t think there’s any extant subspecies of humans
The whole “species, subspecies” area is one of the more messy areas of biology
We’re homo-sapiens and we bred with homo neanderthalensi (and others) but they’ve generally classified as 2 different species, and that’s before you get to how messy things are in plants…
And don’t even get started on ring species.
Kinda random item I’m not sure if other’s have posted on occasion, but… the original superhero/roleplay game at the start of the series.(the one you get to when you click first page on this website) The one where the story narration says “Let me back up a few months.” after a few panels? Has that come to pass? I recall her space time dilation thing was hardly a paycheck in when it started, but at the same time the role play super hero game at the start was also hinted at when she called dabbler in the middle of the night after her first big brawl. Nothing says nerd headache like an item set to happen that is never clearly declared to pass when the narration catches up.
She hasn’t been promoted to Corporal yet, so no. It has not come to pass yet.
No it hasn’t, and it won’t until at least Sydney getting promoted
Nice to know that earth isn’t the only place that has marginalized gang problems.
I mean, glowing eyes isn’t wrong though. Just because something might SEEM racist, does not make dispensing justice, even anti-justice, to such scum sucking societal parasites, wrong in any way. Drug Dealers are the scum of the earth, always have been, always will be. They prey on the misery, depression, and fears of their victims/”customers”/junkies to make money off of something they know is just going to kill the person. I say, glowey eyes has it RIGHT, no one cares about their skin color or ethnicity… ALL drug dealers deserve only retribution and justice.
If one were to execute all murderers in the US right now (people who have actually committed murder, regardless of legal status), one would execute more black people (mostly men, of course) than any other racial group.
Not “more than statistically expected based on population”. Literally more.
Somehow, there’s a chunk of people that would scream RACISM! about that, even though it obviously isn’t, as you are rightly pointing out.
Of course, their victims were overwhelmingly black as well, but I still see that as murder and think it’s bad, since I’m not a racist. I think murderers should be dealt with to the maximum extent of the law (or more, if the law is insufficiently just), no matter the race of their victims.
But the “anti-racist” people seem to think that murder by black people is just fine (or at least, “not worth pursuing” or something) as long as the victims are also black. Not sure how to square that with “anti-racism”, since it pretty directly makes most murders of black people unimportant (or at least less important than most other murders).
Seems horrendously racist to me. Clearly, I am guilty of wrongthink and should turn myself in for “reeducation” or some such.
“Not “more than statistically expected based on population”. Literally more.”
OK, as I thought about it, that is probably not literally true, as many of the murderers kill each other (gang violence most commonly), so many of them would already be dead.
Conceptually, the point stands, I just don’t like being inaccurate.
As you say in the thread below this one, it depends on why someone kills someone. When a black person kills someone, a racist thinks “Well, they were black. What did you expect?” But other people might ask themselves if the person’s circumstances contributed, if they might do the same thing if they were in that person’s place. And they might determine that the proper response is different, that we should attempt to address those circumstances. That all killings are not identical, that individual killers might be more or less responsible, that their state of mind might be different, that we shouldn’t blame or punish people for things beyond their control. That the most effective response is to address a problem at the source, rather than at the symptom. If an environment produces murderers, then killing all the murderers isn’t going to solve the problem — more will just pop up. Solving a problem efficiently requires understanding why it’s occurring. If your causal theory is wrong, your solution most likely will be too.
“And they might determine that the proper response is different, that we should attempt to address those circumstances.”
Because they are racist a-holes. The proper response to murder is to remove the murderer from society (method varies, not the point).
One of the “circumstances” that is “contributing” is the lack of removal of murderers. They get away with it WAY too often. This produces all kinds of horrible second order effects, along with repeats of the first order effects.
Actually dealing with the murderers *would be* “addressing the circumstances”.
“That all killings are not identical”
Indeed, not all “killings” are identical! We are specifically talking about “murder”, which is much narrower, though of course still not at all “identical”.
“If your causal theory is wrong, your solution most likely will be too.”
Absolutely. And the “causal theory” that it’s somehow society’s fault, and that we should thus not actually police those communities well and remove the murderers, has produced HORROR after HORROR after HORROR.
What you are talking about is the *status quo*, and it ***STINKS***. Stop defending it.
So, what’s your theory as to why more black men are murderers than other racial groups? You think murderous tendencies are just luck of the dice, genetics, external causes, what? I’m having a hard time following your logic that the people who are saying it’s not because of race are the racist ones.
“I’m having a hard time following your logic that the people who are saying it’s not because of race are the racist ones.”
I don’t think it’s *because* of race.
But I don’t give people a PASS on account of their race, either. THAT is the racism I’m complaining about, and I think it’s a significant part of the problem.
When you don’t actually remove murderers and criminals from a society, *they cause more problems* – who knew?
“So, what’s your theory as to why more black men are murderers than other racial groups?”
Warning: incoming wall of text.
Oh, there are lots of *possible* contributors. Proving which ones actually matter would be very difficult, but vectors that are definitely possible within publicly admitted facts (as in, ones I don’t expect almost anyone to disagree with), not including the one I mentioned above:
1) fatherlessness
The black nuclear family has been very largely destroyed, and “help” from the government was a significant part of this. The incentives were very strongly against having a man in the house, for one REALLY obvious problem.
Stats on males growing up without a man in the house *across all races* strongly support this being one of the contributing factors.
(Yes, actually attempting to clean up the mess by removing problematic individuals might well make this worse in the short term – I have no idea how to square those two things up when the problem is already so bad.)
2) racial culture
A popular (and often explicitly racist) musical culture that glorifies shooting people, mistreating women, dealing drugs, and targeting cops with violence is definitely problematic, but determining if this is “cause”, “effect”, or “effect but now also cause for the next generation” is very difficult.
(Note: not targeting the music itself, merely noting that such being very popular strongly suggests things about the culture.)
3) inner city culture, for lack of a better term… “crime stat dilution by race”, maybe?
Making stats by race is easy. Dividing by other lines is hard, even if those other lines make better explanations.
Way oversimplified example: People on the “right” side of town have a murder rate of X, people on the “wrong” side of town have a murder rate of 10X, *regardless of race*, but the “right” side of town is 10% black and the “wrong” side of town 50% black.
This would make the race stats look bad, even though race is not a contributor (in this example).
4) genetics
This one is no fun to talk about, but actual stats make it dishonest to simply write off, even if even mentioning it will get me called names (no matter what my actual opinion on it).
There’s no nice, polite way to say this. Countries with higher black populations statistically have much worse violence problems.
Is it entirely a side effect of historical events (“colonialism”, for lack of a more inclusive term, but it’s larger than that)? Making this claim is just as easy as saying it’s all genetics (what race claims largely boil down to), and people like to do both without evidence based on what they WANT the answer to be.
Is it some kind of genetically-linked lack of impulse control? Not saying inherently – like sickle cell anemia is MUCH more common in certain (overwhelmingly black) genetic lines, it could be as simple as a much higher sensitivity to lead in the environment (which is one of the leading theories for the surge of violence all over the US across races with the use and then faze out of leaded gasoline), for just one at-least-medically-possible example. If this was a more recent phenomenon, it could be greater sensitivity to microplastics in the blood stream causing behavioural problems of some kind.
This is not meant as some kind of racial accusation, supremacism, or even a cop-out. If there is some link like that, there are steps we could take that might **ACTUALLY** help! Extra sensitivity to lead would be awfully nice, in terms of “things we could actually help with”, but I doubt it’s anything so simple, if this even applies, which I don’t know or make any claim about, other than being at least plausible.
Really, I only mention it because actual racists love to talk about it, since the actual stats don’t contradict them (both by country and by area of the US), even if those stats may well have other explanations. Actually proving anything here would be extremely difficult, and even it something could help in the longer term, the short-term result would be a great deal of crowing from horrible racists of various stripes… and even talking about without an opinion one way or the other in the interest of truth and learning actual facts about the world gets one branded a heretic (RACIST!) by our dominant religion in the US, so I’m not sure we could make any useful headway here, if it there was any kind of useful anything.
5) “self hate”
Got this one from a black man during a ***GREAT*** conversation on these kinds of issues (we did not remotely agree on everything, but we both listened, offered evidence, argued in good faith, and found several areas of common ground – from his own statements, I think he enjoyed it as much as I did).
The claim was that, since every people group on the planet has a significant preference for lighter skin (at least among their own people group and AT LEAST for women, though usually both), as judged by both beauty standards and political success (among other things), and blacks are the darkest-skinned of everyone, in this now-international world, blacks inherently view themselves as lesser, leading to all kinds of internal problems (self-esteem being the most obvious).
*If* there’s any truth here, I have ***NO IDEA*** where to even start to address it, as it seems to be deeply rooted in inherent human tendencies and requires merely the existence of lighter-skinned races, not any bad behaviour by them. I told the guy who suggested it to me as much, and he didn’t really have any helpful suggestions, either. I really hope his theory here is wrong, but it does seem disturbingly possible…
6) other “systemic” problems
With rigorous analysis, the only “systemic” problem I can find in our justice system that doesn’t have MUCH better explanations than racism is _sentencing_ for crimes (blacks get worse sentences for the same crime than whites, men get MUCH MUCH worse sentences than women for the same crimes), but even that could contribute to the “fatherlessness” point above, among other things.
Other suggestions are welcome, provided they have at least plausible mechanisms and aren’t already thoroughly debunked with hard evidence.
The ones I personally think are at least noticeable factors, with some level of surety? The one I listed at the top, of course, but also 1 and 3, for sure.
The others seem at least plausible, but I don’t know how we would get data on them, one way or the other. No matter how distasteful any of those might be, it would be helpful to KNOW, so that we could actually improve at least some things.
I think those are a lot of valid points, and that the truth is probably some combination of them, and maybe other factors as well. I think the biggest barrier to solving them, however, is the general preference for single-cause theories, and an unwillingness to actually research the problems. As you suggested, people on both sides have chosen their positions, and don’t want to find any evidence that contradicts them. One side believes that the cause is entirely genetic, while the other side refuses to consider that genetics might even be a factor. And, as you say, if there are genetic causes, we might actually be able to address them or correct for them! Being genetically susceptible to negative environmental factors, or genetically receptive to particular corrective strategies, would both be helpful information in optimizing the environment for better outcomes. But many people would prefer problems not to get solved so that they remain politically useful, because people don’t seem to pay attention to whether or not their preferred strategy produces results. People largely don’t care about results, they care about posturing and tribe.
I do think Black culture, childhood poverty, and broken families all make it difficult for Black people to succeed. There are plenty of dark-skinned people who weren’t raised in that environment, immigrants who come to America, work hard, and are very successful. And some of them still experience racism, but mostly shrug it off and succeed in spite of it.
I think “self hate”, or a preference for lighter skin, is going to have to be dealt with the same as any general preference for “beauty”: people shouldn’t base their value on any one metric, and need to value themselves for other reasons. I don’t think the trend of trying to dismantle beauty, to claim that everyone is beautiful, is reasonable. We need to take it off its pedestal, not render the concept meaningless through self-contradiction. In a world of billions of people, any one person is unlikely to be the best, or even above average, on any metric, let alone all of them. And we need to accept that, and recognize that people don’t have to be good at any particular thing to have value.
“But many people would prefer problems not to get solved so that they remain politically useful, because people don’t seem to pay attention to whether or not their preferred strategy produces results. People largely don’t care about results, they care about posturing and tribe.”
This is the single biggest problem. It’s also, as best I can tell, utterly unsolvable on any significant scale. It seems to be inherent to humanity, the default behaviour in all times and places, and stamping it out on even the individual level is a far larger effort than most people are willing to put in.
“people shouldn’t base their value on any one metric, and need to value themselves for other reasons.”
That whole paragraph: your insane optimism is a joy to witness. Not sarcasm.
It is nice to see your admission that the current “dismantle beauty” effort is unreasonable, and attempts to de-emphasize beauty are a very good idea.
But practically speaking, the stuff you are talking about is a very deep part of humanity, surfacing everywhere they are people in some form or fashion. Decreasing the hold it has on humanity, even on the relatively small scale of the US is a massive undertaking. I believe it could bear great fruit if successful, but the effort to achieve it would be large.
And really, how many such massive efforts can be engage in at once? Even if that answer were “many”, how many can actually be successful at once? Large societal changes have COST (not talking about money!), and the cost of multiple such as once is not additive, but multiplicative (there’s a case for exponential).
“Insane” seems fair, but I wouldn’t describe my position as “optimistic”. I’m laying out what I think would be necessary to avoid self-destruction, not what I think is likely.
I do not think humanity is likely to avoid self-destruction. As you say, the problems run deep. People will put off making any attempt at change until it’s too late for it to matter, because they’d prefer to avoid those costs if possible, or push them onto someone else if not.
Shorter reply than the massive book I just posted. I think that larger post is good, but maybe this will answer your question quicker.
From your post above: “When a black person kills someone, a racist thinks “Well, they were black. What did you expect?””
Some racists think that, sure.
Some OTHER racists think, “Well, he was black, so we shouldn’t punish him.” (or at least not as much)
In the US today, you’re missing most of the racists if you leave out that second part.
For bonus points, most crimes are by and against the same race, meaning that by excusing the attacker for being black, you are very, very likely refusing to give justice to the black victim (likely also in all the same circumstances, but now also victimized by crime).
Victims deserve justice. Their race and the race of their attacker is irrelevant.
If you can ALSO find out “root causes” and try to deal with them, so as to lessen the future incidence of such crimes, GREAT, but that’s for later. Dealing with the criminal is for NOW.
When someone comes into the hospital with a stab wound, first you *deal with the stab wound so they don’t die*. Talking about how they got the stab wound, things to do to minimize the risk of getting stabbed again, etc, are all great, but not if you don’t deal with the actual stab wound first! This is the same.
A crime has occurred. Deal with it! If you have the resources, attempting to address “root causes” after that would be a good thing to do.
addressing the underlying issues doesn’t mean that we should ignore the murders
“We just killed a bunch of Chinese dudes.”
Racism? Well, it depends. WHY did you kill them?
– You were minding your own business, and they attacked you. Not racist
– They were a criminal gang with a lot of money, you were looking to take out a criminal gang with lots of money, and they were the ones you happened to find. Not racist (maybe some other moral failings, though…)
– You wanted to kill a group of Chinese people. Racist.
– They were a criminal gang with a lot of money, you were looking to take out a criminal gang with lots of money, and AFTER BYPASSING OTHER CRIMINAL GANGS THAT WEREN’T THE RACE YOU WERE TARGETING, they were the ones you happened to find. Racist.
It’s not actually hard to determine this stuff. That the group was all one race has a significant chance of having a root in racism SOMEWHERE, but actually finding it is often difficult, and even if you find it, how in the world are you suddenly responsible for it? Examples of racism that would not be remotely your own fault in any way:
A) long past, like before you were born even and everyone who did it is dead
B) THEIR OWN, if they are excluding people from their group for racist reasons
C) another criminal group’s actions (the racist gang on the other side of town doesn’t take Chinese guys, so all the Chinese criminals banded together)
D) An outgrowth of the culture they moved here from (the Chinese government, for one relevant example, is explicitly racist and racial supremacist, and it doesn’t stick out all that much from the culture, especially attitudes towards blacks).
And those are just off-the-top-of-my-head easy possibilities, based on the real world (OK, C is a bit silly, at least in wording, but racial prison gangs are constantly reinforced by that kind of problem, among others).
CLIMATE CHANGE KILLED FROSTY THE SNOWMAN.
“I can excuse wanton slaughter, but I draw the line at racism.”