Theocrass

FMA is one of my favorite anime/manga, but, too, I do like it when people critique it and ask the difficult questions.

I've always had issues with Ed's "moral superiority", but the same could be said about most shounen protags.


The stuff between Miles and Scar was new though. Interesting.

Well when their personality is violent and criminal in nature, change can be a good thing.

Ok so what I am getting from this is that treating people equally is racist

I can't literally win in this society.

E: Oh yeah and that genocide is better than pacifism but that one is obvious I guess.

Right because races have their own differences so to treat them all the same would be unfair.

Originally Posted by Totenkopf

Well when their personality is violent and criminal in nature, change can be a good thing.

lol, get fucked shithead

Originally Posted by Laith

Ok so what I am getting from this is that treating people equally is racist

I can't literally win in this society.

E: Oh yeah and that genocide is better than pacifism but that one is obvious I guess.

You could try actually engaging what was written.

But then it's discrimination and it's racist.

Believe me. It has happened. I repeat, I can't win at socialization.

Originally Posted by Laith

But then it's discrimination and it's racist.

Believe me. It has happened. I repeat, I can't win at socialization.

Okay, explain to me your major malfunction.

Articulate your issue.

Let's exemplify with something easy and normal.

You know how you hold the door for people when you are entering and they are close right? I mean common decency and education right? So why do I have to get shit for doing so when I do it to everyone (according to that article)? Why do i have to get shit for doing so when it's only, say, women (which may be an entire coincidence)? Should I just be all like screw you, hold the door your damn self?

And that's a small thing, yes I know. But you start by the small things and you go up. Then it's how you talk (Use certain say, pronouns with someone, shit you are now in trouble because how do you assume and blah blah blah. Or you use neutral stuff and how dare you blah blah blah blah.), how you act with peeps, how the hell you even see/don't see them.

Basically you are given two messages and good luck figuring out when you have to act one way, and when to act the other way.

Socializing is a hard and unwinnable game, I tell you.

Originally Posted by Theocrass

lol, get fucked shithead

Ok, i guess Scar was justified in murdering Winry's parents then. He was an innocent brown person who was just expressing his right to freedom by murdering the Evil White Oppressor.

yeah ok, shit for brains.

Btw not going to write a lengthy paragraph on this so early in the morning, but pointing out that Ed, Al and Hohenheim are part of a minority as well, and while they may be white enough for most amestrians not to notice, they do have different traits than amestrians. Like their golden eyes and unique shade of hair, which the anime takes care of to always color in the same specific way for all people of their race in Hohenheims flashback and stuff.

Yeah that's true, of course.

Originally Posted by Totenkopf

Ok, i guess Scar was justified in murdering Winry's parents then. He was an innocent brown person who was just expressing his right to freedom by murdering the Evil White Oppressor.

yeah ok, shit for brains.

it's not like the article addresses this and says it's not okay or anything

but yeah, keep being a dishonest little twit

Originally Posted by Laith

Let's exemplify with something easy and normal.

You know how you hold the door for people when you are entering and they are close right? I mean common decency and education right? So why do I have to get shit for doing so when I do it to everyone (according to that article)? Why do i have to get shit for doing so when it's only, say, women (which may be an entire coincidence)? Should I just be all like screw you, hold the door your damn self?

And that's a small thing, yes I know. But you start by the small things and you go up. Then it's how you talk (Use certain say, pronouns with someone, shit you are now in trouble because how do you assume and blah blah blah. Or you use neutral stuff and how dare you blah blah blah blah.), how you act with peeps, how the hell you even see/don't see them.

Basically you are given two messages and good luck figuring out when you have to act one way, and when to act the other way.

Socializing is a hard and unwinnable game, I tell you.

Yo, if some people choose to take issue with you holding open the door for them, that's their damage. That experience is anecdotal, ultimately, and shouldn't really affect your view of women as a whole. Like, I can just as easily point out that I hold open the door for people all the time and never get shit for it.

And man, the rest of your post ... human interaction is complex. That's pretty much to be expected.

Originally Posted by Break

Btw not going to write a lengthy paragraph on this so early in the morning, but pointing out that Ed, Al and Hohenheim are part of a minority as well, and while they may be white enough for most amestrians not to notice, they do have different traits than amestrians. Like their golden eyes and unique shade of hair, which the anime takes care of to always color in the same specific way for all people of their race in Hohenheims flashback and stuff.

That's about as meaningful as saying that being Irish American in the modern day makes you as much of a non-white minority as Africans, Asians, or Latinos. Basically, their technical minority status fails to meaningfully impact their lives in Amestris, nor is it even remarked upon or noticed by pretty much any other characters in the series.

Originally Posted by Theocrass

it's not like the article addresses this and says it's not okay or anything

but yeah, keep being a dishonest little twit

Theo, stop feeding the troll.

In my case, dealing with race is a real issue. I have my preconceptions, and it can be really hard to just toss them aside even though I know I should. I have to battle with myself, and it sucks.

Originally Posted by The Geek

Theo, stop feeding the troll.

In my case, dealing with race is a real issue. I have my preconceptions, and it can be really hard to just toss them aside even though I know I should. I have to battle with myself, and it sucks.

See, I love people like you.

People who recognize race is an issue even when it's an issue that doesn't affect them.

Like, I'm glad you recognize it's a problem and it's something you actively fight against.

I can't tell you how many "liberal" "progressive" "enlightened" people want to whine about how a black person was mean to them once.

It's important to recognize minorities not strictly as "them brown folks" or "them yellow folks" but to actually look at the issue as being one of ethnic discrimination. Racism is an entirely modern concept that did not even exist before the late medieval era. Before then, discrimination was primarily ethno-cultural in nature, or, more or less, based on ethnocentrism; "we're better than them."

Modern racism is an extension of cultural discrimination that has existed since different independent groups of people have made contact with one another. Just because two people are white or black or Asian does not mean they are part of a white or black or Asian identity. This kind of thinking is extremely ignorant of the cultural differences and discrimination even between those groups. Just a century ago, there was no friendly unity between the Manchu and Han Chinese peoples, and still today Chinese and Japanese people discriminate against each other in their own countries due to their history - not to mention Indians, who have their own vast variety of cultures and languages but still rarely even receive a distinction in terms of racial analysis. An Ethiopian does not have the same cultural identity as a Wolof or a Xhosa; they are people who come from and for thousands of years have lived in separate corners of a vast continent, with colour being possibly the only thing they have in common.

Today, there is discrimination between Turks and Middle Eastern Arabs and Kurds, between Eastern European immigrants and the Western European majorities of the countries they move to. Brits may be famous for talking about how they want "all the Pakis to go home" but they say very similar things about the very white Bulgarians and Romanians who live in the same country.

Racism as the primary example of ethnocultural discrimination is in itself ignorant of the overall more vast discrimination that takes place every day between people who happen to be of the same arbitrarily assigned race or colour. Instead of focusing on "them brown folks" or "them yellow folks" and if we want to truly eradicate ethnocultural discrimination in all its forms - we do have to be colourblind, in a sense. We have do understand that it is in itself discriminatory to lump all people of one colour into one group under one identity, because within that group there is no single identity, save for perhaps within America, where (I imagine, though I could be wrong) is where most of these articles originate. It's important to understand, rather than seeing minorities more or less as people of colour, to see them as people of different cultures and to embrace those cultures and understand them. Just because someone is black and you are black as well, doesn't make you two the same. An African-American person shares the same number of similarities with a Somali as an Irish person shares with a Kurdish person.

There are sorts of different cultures within these very arbitrarily defined race and colour groups. It's important to fight against racism, but at the same time you can't fight racism by lumping people into colour groups. You have to look beyond that colour and understand the culture which that person is a part of. There is no broad group of white people, there is no broad group of black people, there is no broad group of Asian people, and there isn't really a broad group of Latino people, though I'll admit that they have a considerable amount of cultural homogeneity.

Appreciate people for their culture, not what colour their skin is.

Portraying an entirely pacifist solution as valid strikes me as very idealistic but not necessarily bad? Like, it draws itself through the whole manga. Like with Envy, lots of people would have just wanted Mustang to grill him right there. It's a harder, less immediately rewarding path, but in the end it's the only one that does not ensure systematic counter-aggression. Because in the end what Scar did was just giving people more reasons for thinking his people are some kind of savage race of murderers, since his way of fighting the system was too isolated to actually make a splash.

That said that article certainly has a lot of points I agree on. His reaction to Miles is just bizarre. Almost like this was a kids series...

As for the general matter the way the American left handles race is pretty damn concerning from the point of view of a European left-inclined person (lol microdiscrimination helps us fight actual discrimination that is a good idea we are very smart) so I'll just not comment on that matter. Interesting thing though:

Appreciate people for their culture, not what colour their skin is.

Did you know that in the jargon of the right wing party of Austria which has the most people that are either ex-NSDAP or closely related to high functionaries of it the term "culture" is being used to justify racist views now that using "race" is kind of not so en vogue anymore? People seriously thinking Turkish people are somehow incompatible with Austrian life because their culture can't mesh with ours. Great stuff. So while it would be incredibly retarded to say that culture does not affect an individual I'd be a lot more careful with having preconceptions about an individual based on their culture (not you in particular Five, you just brought the term in the discussion)

Originally Posted by Laith

Let's exemplify with something easy and normal.

You know how you hold the door for people when you are entering and they are close right? I mean common decency and education right? So why do I have to get shit for doing so when I do it to everyone (according to that article)? Why do i have to get shit for doing so when it's only, say, women (which may be an entire coincidence)? Should I just be all like screw you, hold the door your damn self?

And that's a small thing, yes I know. But you start by the small things and you go up. Then it's how you talk (Use certain say, pronouns with someone, shit you are now in trouble because how do you assume and blah blah blah. Or you use neutral stuff and how dare you blah blah blah blah.), how you act with peeps, how the hell you even see/don't see them.

Basically you are given two messages and good luck figuring out when you have to act one way, and when to act the other way.

Socializing is a hard and unwinnable game, I tell you.

Dude people never give me shit for holding open doors. And if you actually find somebody who gets mad at pronoun use you have probably reached some reality breaking nexus point where tumblr seeps into the real world as we know it.