/sci/ - Science & Math

I have a roommate who I get into a lot of political debates with. He's pretty moderate and usually reasonable, but sometimes he has conservative views on social issues, and we recently got into a debate about race.

I was trying to explain to him how white privilege and subconscious racism is harmful to the black community and how it permeates American society and results in inequalities with respect to healthcare, law enforcement, education, income, etc. I told him about how white identity and white culture is based on colonialism and oppression and that as a white person we all have innate biases and racist tendencies. It's not that we're full-blown hateful, racist, bigots but we all have an inherent tendency to take a white perspective on political issues, we often overlook or ignore the problems faced by the BIPOC community, and we're prone to outbursts of racial violence and discrimination (e.g. the recent incidents of police brutality in the media).

My roommate keeps saying that white privilege and subconscious bias don't exist because biologically speaking races don't actually exist. I know that biologically speaking race doesn't exist, but my friends argument is that therefore you can't say that white people have innate biases and dispositions towards oppression and racism. I know this is incorrect, but I don't know the proper terminology from a biological/psychological perspective for explaining innate racism in white people.

I tried to explain to him that it's not because you belong to the white race or white culture that you have these biases, but rather because you are a white person. It's not because of racial groups or racial identities, but because of your race as an individual. In other words, it's not because you belong to the white "race" that your have these dispositions towards racism and violence but rather because you are a white individual. How else can I explain this to him? And what is the proper psychological/biological terminology?

>>12323841
Wavelength of light is a settled science, but we're not simply speaking about wavelegths of light. That would be a discussion for electrodynamics or optics. What we're discussing is the effect of non-visible wavelengths of light on organic tissues, which is not at all a settled science. Like I said, I admit don't have much knowledge of this particular subject, but I am scientifically literate and I know enough about physics to know that what we are discussing is biophysics rather than electrodynamics or optics. Biophysics is a very immature science. Optics and electrodynamics are well established, but they have nothing to say about the health effect of light. The fact that you are unaware of this distinction makes me think you are not as informed as you would like to think.

Like I said, I wouldn't expect it to be seriously dangerous, otherwise we would know by now. Your point about a computer monitor does sound plausible enough. I understand that the visible light spectrum has much higher energy wavelengths than 5G, and both of them are non-ionizing, but I don't think that necessarily rules out all possibilities. For example, I know that properties of various proteins and crystals can change dramatically in response to different wavelengths of light, and there is a certain harmonic property to these changes. What I mean by that is that the changes are not necessarily a result of higher energy light radiation, but rather the periodic properties of the waves forms. For example, you could have a substance X and three distinct light sources A, B, C such that light source C is the most ionizing, but if the period of the waveform of B is a integer multiple of the waveform of A, you can actually have substances that are more responsive to A and B (undergo more of a change) rather than to C because the physical changes is protein folding/crystal structure/etc. are more so determined by the period of the waveform rather than energy level of the light itself.

>>12271510
>Woaaahh corporations are like totally awesome maaaannnn, especially now that they claim to support LGBT rights and BLM
>If you criticize corporations then you're a racist neonazi with schizophrenia

Yeah anon, anyone who disagrees with you is totally a schizophenic neonazi. And I'm sure you're completely mentally stable, because as we all know, the surest sign that someone is reasonable and psychologically healthy is that randomly flip out at stuff they see posted on the internet and instantly call anyone who disagrees with them a neonazi/slave owner/schizophrenic.

Take your meds anon. The world is not filled with genocidal nazis and slave owners. Racist white people do not secretly hold 'systemic power' over the global financial system, the police, the criminal legal system, and the mainstream media. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a "nazi". Not everything wrong in the world is because of "white privilege". Ironically, you actually sound crazy as shit when you go around labeling everyone who disagrees with you as 'schizophrenic' while simultaneously screaming at the top of your lungs about how the entire western world is actually an elaborate system controlled by a secret network of "white nationalists" who have covertly structured human civilization in manner designed to preserve "white privilege". Human civilization is not a elaborate system designed by "white nationalists" in order to maintain "systemic power" and "white privilege". Sometimes, life just sucks, and at some point, maybe you just need to admit that you're a loser, and maybe the problems you see in your life and your community were not orchestrated by a global network of "rich white men". Maybe you're just a loser.