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By the Numbers

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 12 2017, @07:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the your-days-are-numbered...-Drei,-Zwei,-Eins dept.

jman writes:

Anu Garg at A Word A Day posted this story of an upcoming mayoral election in the small town of Völklingen, Germany (near the French border, south of Belgium), wherein one of the candidates gave a spectacularly bad answer to a question in a recent debate.

Representative Uwe Faust of the political party Die Partei jokingly asked, “According to the building code, paragraph 126, each owner is obliged to label his property with the number given by the municipality. I find it alarming that in Völklingen many house numbers are displayed in Arabic numerals. How would you like to take action against this creeping foreigner infiltration?”

To which Otfried Best, running with the far-right NPD party, fell for the joke, replying, "You just wait until I am mayor. I will change that. Then there will be normal numbers."

Mr. Best apparently does not know what Arabic numerals are.

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday September 12 2017, @12:00PM (7 children)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @12:00PM (#566694)

    against an inherently racist - and therefore stupid - idiot.

    Its amazing how racist the left is. That kind of language proves with over 99% likelihood the dude is white.

    Anyone racist, who is not white, under leftist doctrine is a "wise brave leader and community organizer" and similar adulation.

    The right is not so racist as to require different politically correct speech by race. I find it a fascinating long term trend that the left is eliminating gender based pronouns from GoodSpeak while adding race based language based on the skin color of the subject. Modern GoodSpeak would have MLK jr rolling in his grave, LOL ....

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:28PM (#566769)

    Muh feeeeelz! Poor white people are so oppressed now!! You never stood up against racism before, so why should anyone give a shit about your crybaby whining now? The number of true bigots on the liberal spectrum is way way way lower than on the right. So shut up and fix your own neighborhood, maybe move out of the glass house before you throw more stones.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 12 2017, @08:49PM (5 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @08:49PM (#566956)

    Racism is stupid. It's really a pair of mental shortcuts:
    1. "I don't know how this person will behave, but s/he kinda looks like me, so they must be alright." This is stupid, because that person may be a jerk, or a fool, or otherwise be a terrible person to be around.

    2. "I don't know how this person will behave, but s/he looks kinda like this other person who I've heard of, so they must be similar in some other ways I can't see." That's fundamentally an ignorant stance, especially when it's coupled by "and I don't want to know anybody who kinda looks like that", at which point you have stopped collecting information that would confirm or contradict your guesses that may or may not represent reality.

    The not-ignorant thing is to treat and judge each person individually. But that's harder than simply not saying the n-word or something.

    Also, as a leftist, if black people are treating all white people with hostility, that's not OK either. The reason someone like Malcolm X is a hero is that he overcame his racism and stopped hating the white man, not because he was racist in the first place.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:34PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:34PM (#567011)

      Malcolm X...overcame his racism and stopped hating the white man...

      Any citation?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:11AM

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:11AM (#567036)

        This wasn't an obscure thing, it was a critical moment in Malcolm X's life, and probably one of the reasons he was killed. Here's him writing from Mecca about his experience on the hajj which started him down that path:

        There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.

        America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white'--but the 'white' attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.

        You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

        During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)--while praying to the same God--with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.

        He goes on to suggest that if Americans embraced Islam as he experienced it, racism would be over in America.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 13 2017, @02:17AM (2 children)

      by VLM (445) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @02:17AM (#567054)

      "I don't know how this person will behave, but s/he looks kinda like this other person who I've heard of, so they must be similar in some other ways I can't see." That's fundamentally an ignorant stance

      Actual real world statistical data seems to disagree.

      Its a predictability and average odds improvement life hack. Kinda like there's no way to know "for certain" if you ride a bike, you won't get killed in an accident and sometimes people in helmets die anyway, but the numbers do indicate helmets are safer, like it or not.

      s/he kinda looks like me, so they must be alright

      The way it actually works is a proxy for culture. The odds of me in my race/culture getting a positive response from them in their race/culture is always higher if they equals us, never lower.

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:40PM (1 child)

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:40PM (#567216)

        The odds of me in my race/culture getting a positive response from them in their race/culture is always higher if they equals us, never lower.

        The "real world statistical data" you refer to doesn't match your assertions at all.

        Take the most extreme negative reaction available, where they try to kill you. Well, it turns out most murders are within what are our current racial classifications: White people are more likely to be killed by other white people, while black people are more likely to be killed by other black people.

        Speaking only for my own experience: I'm a white guy who has been attacked, robbed, and cheated several times in my life. Every single time, it was by a white guy. Meanwhile, I've never once been mistreated by a black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native person, and several times they've gone out of their way to help me out. And no, it's not because I don't interact with any non-white people.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:28PM

          by VLM (445) on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:28PM (#567772)

          Well, it turns out most murders are within what are our current racial classifications: White people are more likely to be killed by other white people, while black people are more likely to be killed by other black people.

          That has a lot to do with "birds of a feather flock together" as do your other anecdotes. From wikipedia the results are:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide [wikipedia.org]

          Inversely, the percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 was:
          0.01% of Black or African American population (4,379/38,929,319)
          0.0017% of White American and Hispanic American population (3,799/223,553,265)

          The odds of walking up and talking to a black murderer are about five times higher than white. Just kinda how it is.

          It goes both ways of course. The odds of a positive response are higher not just because the other guy is likely to be a nicer guy, but because if you're alike the odds of your behavior being compatible with the other guy are higher.