his page contains archived discussions or racial stereotypes, when they come up in relation to various news items. These are potentially contentious issues, with "racism" (by which people usually mean "bigotry") a huge flaw and source of trouble in our world today. I'm not a bigot, but I am honest enough to observe racial differences and stereotypes in society and in the world, and I enjoy discussing such touchy issues, when the opportunity arises. I try to be delicate and non-offensive, while also remaining honest and insightful, so unless you try really hard to take offense at something on this page, you probably won't be offended.

More recent items are added on top.

Just so you know in advance, the following could probably be taken as very racist or bigoted or classist or stereotyping. It's definitely stereotyping, but in a jovial sort of way, and if you open your mind to the PoV I'm writing it from and don't take it too seriously, you'll probably enjoy it.

Especially when it's about people who look like you.

That being said, don't Indian-looking people make the best desperate refugees?  I don't mean they have to be from India (and as the caption of the photo says, she probably isn't) which is why I say "Indian-looking".  If there is a term for that look, I don't know it. What I mean is a word like "Asian" or "White" or "Black" or "Hispanic" that refers to an appearance and ethnicity, rather than nationality.  I'd say she looks Indian, or looks like someone from India, but I'm thinking there must be a word for what I mean.

Anyway, she looks so good for a refugee, and she looks like a refugee.  Indian-looking men don't look any better or worse than other nationalities, in terms of their refugee-ism, but their women look great.  What I mean is they sort of embody the "refugee" look.  Pretty, but sort of disheveled with the long straight black hair, and wisps and strands of it going in every direction. I mean the girl is cute, but not in a childish way; you can envision her dressed up and going to a nice prep school in NYC. But at the same time she looks perfectly at home squatting in the dirty in some refugee camp, with a giant poisonous snake her tiny-fingered grasp.

She looks perfectly legit as a refugee, but you can imagine her not being one, which is essentially what makes the look work. If she were hopelessly ugly or downtrodden, she'd look beaten, and despairing, and it would be sad.  The perfect refugee look is like this.  Somewhat messy, with a weird accessory, but still essentially human. Not beaten down to a bestial level.  And if she were blonde, it wouldn't fit.  Same if she were black or had short hair, or curly hair.  Refugees and war driven peasants should look like this.

And of course I'm not saying that she deserves to be like this, or that any people anywhere on earth should suffer homelessness and desperation and misery. But if they're going to, they might as well look the part, eh?

The Indian girl wouldn't look good starving.  Hungry yeah, but not famine-stricken. White people don't look good starving to death either.  They're always living somewhere cold, so when they starve they're doing it under 5 layers of ratty flannel and wool, and it's winter, and they just look miserable, rather than despairing of life and listless.  You can't see the emaciated bodies properly though that much clothing anyway.  Concentration camp footage from WW2 doesn't count, since it was too cruel, not just a drought or famine causing it.  And anyway, as I said, white people don't look good starving.  The skin is too light and you get all the bumps and bones poking through, and shadows on the ribs and such, and there never seem to be picturesquely-swollen children, nor flies and constant sunlight.

What white people look best at is being evil individuals of authority. Scowling judges, repressive cruel priests, sociopathic generals, and especially evil soldiers.

Nazis or Russians (back when they had an army) were awesomely-intimidating in their black uniforms or scary Soviet camouflage and always marching about 20 abreast, in very tight formation, with their stone-cold/hard, expressionless Aryan faces.  AK-47's held at a perfect angle, murder in their eyes.  By extension, a big muscular white guy is the best looking torturer.  He should have on an ugly ribbed wife-beater, ideally with some stains, like he's sloppy and lost discipline down in the dungeons all day.  Plus it's always hot down there, below the boilers or something for the fortress. And when you look up at him from the chair you are tied in, not only is there no mercy in his eyes, but there is a mania, a positive glee that he's going to get to hurt you.  Yes, white people look best at being cruel.

Just having the uniforms and guns doesn't do it either.  In movies or news footage you'll see the "army" of some wretched little third world country in Africa or Central America, and it's just laughable.  Like a dozen skinny guys in khaki t-shirts, dragging their rifles along in the dirt, or all piled into the back of some beat up pick up truck that's weaving down some dirt road, dodging chickens and pigs while fat matronly women shout at them with utter disregard for their firepower.  They usually have funny hats of some sort, baggy camouflage pants, and it's just like any random twelve guys who couldn't find real work. Sure, they can murder defenseless villagers who are holding up a new Shell oil refinery, but you know that any Rambo type action movie star can rout the lot with just a hunting knife and some black greasepaint on his face.

The Asian armed forces are sort of a mixed bag. The Chinese have tons of troops, and they march in nice formation and look emotionless and damn near clone-like with their similar features.  But they usually appear to be about 5 feet tall, and you sort of inherently know they'll be crippled by bureaucracy, and when the time comes for action there will just be a lot of shouting and confusion.  Now Asian soldiers in ragged uniforms out in a jungle are scary.  Vietnam war movies have taught us that much.  But huge bunches of them marching in formation don't have much of an aura.

US forces don't look like much of anything.  They tend to have way too much equipment on, and bulging backpacks, belts, canteens on their hips, huge helmets, flak jackets, etc.  You hardly see any humanity beneath all of that, and the racial mixture ruins any real intimidation, since it makes them see human with all the different-sized white and black and brown and yellow faces.  There may even be women! You know they've got the best gear and training and can fight, but you don't fear instant death as you do with the formerly-Commie hordes.

I'm undecided on what sort of people make the best murderous rabble.  White Europeans have a long history of that sort of thing, all the way back into the "march on the mad scientist's castle" days, and you can see them with torches and makeshift weapons.  But they don't seem intimidating, or unified in their redrum rage. Too many dirty faces and you know they'll break and run if things turn against them.

The stories of the black murdering mobs in Africa in recent years are scary, where a mob of guys hopped up on some sort of frog secretion will come running out of the jungle and chop up an entire village of some different ethnic group (who look identical to the white people back in civilization, watching on the evening news) with machetes in amazingly-inhuman fashion.  But they look so small and poorly-armed when you see pictures, and you know that one guy with a machine gun could kill their entire force, and if you got one of them alone and disarmed the machete would fall to the floor as Mr. Former Butcher started to blubber and beg for mercy in his comical jibber jabber language.

No, I think the best murderous mobs are white, and American.  The pictures of them back in the lynching days are never less than frightening, and those movies from the time of Integration, where there are all these bull-necked cops with crew cuts and vicious German Shepards attacking skinny black teenagers really make them look the part.  Natural, for the gutless mob murdering mentality, and then they slip so neatly into white sheets for a cross burning or a lynching.  Yes, mob violence is best personified by white rednecks.  The weather should be hot so everyone is sweating a bit, and all the men have on white shirts with collars, and black pants and dress shoes.  You do not wear sandals and shorts to a lynching. Even if you're the victim.

The best religious fanatics are hard to determine also. Most every race has distinguished itself over the centuries by doing some astonishingly murderously horrible things for their religion, usually in terms of punishing people who believe in a slightly different interpretation of the invisible man in the sky.  Whites had the Inquisition and continue on to the modern day snake handlers in the US South.  Asians are pretty mellow about such things for the most part, but their expressionless and similar faces are very good at looking cult-like and brainwashed. Hispanics are prone to absurd levels of devotion, seeing and praying to the face of Jesus or Mary's silhouette in virtually anything, and buying the absolute ugliest religious products on earth.  Arabs are a strong contender as well, with the sexist modern twisting of Heaven to contain dozens of virgin women for men who die in suicide bombings.  The blood-letting with swords stuff is very creepy also. But I think the title has to go to Blacks, mostly the tropical island ones with their hella creepy voodoo ceremonies and fetishism and animal worship.  No one beats them for the best shrines, with mummified animal claws and eyes in jars trumping cheap statues of a guy nailed to a big plus sign, and zombies are worth several bonus points as well.  It's true that the suicidal Arabs probably win for devout insanity, but they don't have much visual style or flair, and the voodoo guys have that to spare.

So to recap, the best looking miserable homeless refugees are Indians.  The best looking starving children are African Blacks.  The scariest looking army troops are Eastern European. It's all in the blank faces and close ranks and Aryan demeanor. And the best torturers and murderous rabble are sweaty white people.  I'm sorry that I couldn't work in Hispanics for the archetype "look" for anything, and I also left out Native Americans, and only mentioned Asians in terms of their lackluster troops, and I'm sure there are dozens of other distinctive ethnic looks who will be angrily-demanding a place in this pantheon, so I'll consider an update at a later date.

I should probably look around the net and find archetypal images for all of the above examples, to go with the cobra-handling Indian girl, but it's late (early) and I can't be arsed.  Maybe if I article this, someday.

February 5, 2003

After yesterday's update I was really expecting some flames.  Not that I thought I deserved them, but people are so ready, willing, and able to misunderstand anything they read that I didn't see how I could possibly not get someone crying "racism!" No one did.  Given how many readers seem to be coming over from my D2 site stuff, and how often I get utterly idiotic mails about my d2 column stuff, it's odd.  I guess here there's no game tie in, and too many words.  Which is just as well.

I did get one mail from a woman who asked me not to quote her.  She said she started to get horrified by my comments about the starving African children, but as she got further down she saw my point, and that I was equally cruel and unfair to various other races.  And she didn't exactly approve of it, but at least found it interesting to read.

I think that's a valid goal.  You might not love what I write at times, but where else are you going to read such stuff?  I've never seen a sight where someone discusses all the weird sorts of things that come into my mind, and I seem to be able to do them with some degree of fairness and objectivity, while still making it interesting for me.  And by extension you.  With any luck.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.