Darqnyz

Darqnyz t1_j6emf7v wrote

You don't have to be good at it. You don't have to enjoy it. You don't even have to progress.

You have to want it. That's the bare minimum. If you are doing it because your crush is doing it, it's not gonna keep going. If you're doing it because your family insists on it, it's not gonna last.

You have to do it because you want to do it. Everything else that helps will reinforce you. But as long as that core is there, you will succeed eventually

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Darqnyz t1_iti1qol wrote

>A prescriptive statement is one where you're imposing a standard on others. A descriptive one is one where you're observing a difference.

Ok, so we have semantics dispute. That's fine.

I learned "prescriptive" through philosophy, where it's better understood to mean "how something ought to be". I wouldn't use "impose a standard" but it works.

Descriptive however, I would say is simply observing something that "is". We can argue all day whether a black person is good, bad, fast, slow etc, but descriptively black people are human. Not looking for difference, but what is observable.

I refer back to the academic definition of racism, because it's lost so much meaning (thanks lefties), that it is basically useless. When I talk about racism, I try to stick to the "race as a category of human" side of things, because moralizing around race is a huge waste of time.

So when I say "racism", I'm just referring to prescriptive/descriptive identifications of race. Not "i hate blacks" or "white supremacy". Just observing racial groups and how they interact

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Darqnyz t1_ithzr5s wrote

I'll just ask you directly, because I don't have all day:

Do you understand that saying "black people like to play basketball" is prescriptive and "more black people play basketball than other races" is "descriptive*?.

Do you understand that both of these statements are "racist" in the sense that they are making strong statements about race? As in the academic understanding of the term "racist"?

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Darqnyz t1_ithx18q wrote

You're literally describing the difference between descriptive/prescriptive racism.

Yes, observing differences between races is amoral. It has no bearing whether right or wrong. It's like saying "Black people are taller than Asian people". While "racist", it is a descriptive statement about black people that can be measured, and does not further imply anything inherent about race.

But you're taking things that have prescriptive implications, and pretending that you don't know about them, and then boiling them down to descriptive elements.

"Black people are lazy" is a prescriptive statement, because "lazy" is not a trait that uniquely/inherently Maps on to the race of the person being described.

When you made your explanation, you avoided restating the prescriptive statements being made about the "races" of the people being described. Which is fine, but that's why I said you're euphemizing them. Trying to sneak the "descriptive" label onto the statements, rather than actually assign it directly.

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