Can We Talk About Race?

[lovecraft68]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKAFup7q8Sk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXf9DoQ8wxU

 

[ElectricBlue]

And it's another example of Bullshit. Natural talent, that is also, to a degree, bullshit. While some people are more athletic than others, no one is born with the ability to put the ball through the hoop, nothing but net. Throw a football down field with pinpoint accuracy, or hit a baseball without hard work and dedication.

It helps to have some kind of natural ability in terms of physical or mental ability though. David Beckham strikes me as not the brightest bloke on the planet, but he sure as fuck can almost instantly figure out force, vectors and wind direction, and place the ball in the back of the net. Sure, it's been refined by hours of training, but I think you'd be silly to deny that some kids are naturally better at sports than others, just as others are musically gifted, or others are predominantly visual thinkers while others are verbal. People's brains are wired differently, and bodies are too.

My son, for example is naturally left handed, plays drums right handed, catches a ball with his left, throws with his right, can kick a ball equally well with both feet. Which made him handy in the mid-field in soccer, whereas the team's striker was a genius at ball play, but only from one position on the ground and could only kick with his right foot. Which made it easy for the other team to shut him down - if he hadn't scored in the first ten minutes, he never would. Not many ten year olds have had the ten thousand hours, but you sure can spot talent.

 

[XerXesXu]

Penis size is a fascinating subject. From what I've read, the evidence is all over the map, and it's difficult to know what to believe because of the questionable nature of the methodology with which the information has been gathered. Many studies are based on self-reporting, and that's obviously dubious. It's easy to imagine why it would be difficult for a researcher to do a valid study of the subject that involved a) a large enough sample size, b) reliably random and objective methods of gathering subjects, and c) reliable methods of measurement. I've seen some studies that suggest that there IS a difference based on race, and I've seen some that contradict that idea. I don't know what to believe.

Here's some food for thought, though: why does it matter so much? What if someone were to establish, once and for all, that on average men of Race A had slightly longer penises than men of Race B? What would that mean? Supposedly it would nevertheless be true that variance WITHIN racial groups would be more significant than variance BETWEEN racial groups, meaning, therefore, that the data would not support making assumptions about individuals (and their penises) based on their race. If we keep trying to move toward a world where we don't judge people by their skin color, then averages of this kind, even if true, may not matter. We're not there yet, of course.

Condoms. That's why it matters. Manufacturers need to make the correct size for their market. Here you have to buy imported, the domestic product invariably slide off.

 

[MillieDynamite]

In this respect, you are wrong. Natural talent is not bullshit.

I run. I have a lot of experience running.

Some people are born with a superior potential to be great runners. They have superior natural aerobic capacity, superior endurance, superior running economy. They have bodies that are designed in a way to be superior runners -- thin frames, narrow hips, long skinny calves. Success at running is, to a great degree, a product of the genes you are born with rather than the hard work you put in. There is no question whatsoever that this is true. Anyone who spends a lot of time running and participating in races knows that this is true.

Some people are born with superior artistic talent -- the ability to look at something and reproduce it on a canvas. There is no question whatsoever that this is true.

Some people pick up the ability to learn musical instruments faster than others.

Some people are born more intelligent than others. They do math problems faster than others. Not because of hard work, or supportive parents. Because they're born that way.

Natural talent is a real thing. Whether or not mean differences in natural talent correlate with different racial groups is a different matter.

I know what your are saying and it is true. However, if you run against a person who has natural talent and has been training for months for a race, and you flippantly run in the race, odds are you lose. There may well be people whose minds work faster than others. They may have some internal math ability (by the way, music is math based on and 8 number system) but a trained mind can compensate for a lot.

I don't believe one race has a monopoly on brains. Asian cultures have children in school far more hours than western cultures. Hence, their math skills test higher than western children at the same ages.

In order to combat racism, we need to find more in common than that which is different. This what I am saying. And comments by professional sports commentators about natural ability vs intellect aren't attempts to draw people together.

 

[XerXesXu]

This is an interesting formulation of the test for story acceptability. I'm going to apply it to the story idea I'm working on.

An educated, sophisticated woman who works in an office and self-identifies as a liberal-minded and non-racist person nevertheless fantasizes about sex with black men. Her fantasies indulge, to some degree, in cliches and stereotypes about black men -- extra masculine, big penises, etc. She fantasizes about her co-worker. By the end of the story, they have sex. The challenge for the story is to simultaneously indulge in the fantasy and deconstruct it. I want to turn readers on. I also don't want readers to think, Jeez, this author's a racist.

Why would I want to write such a story? I'm not a white woman with such fantasies. I'm not black. I am not, and never have been, an aspiring white male cuckold.

I'm interested in exploring the fantasy because I think it's psychologically true. My view of human psychology is that weirdness and erotica are intertwined. Our minds and desires go to forbidden places, places we don't understand, places we don't want them to go when we think rationally about them. And I think that's very interesting, and also erotic. I think people who deny this fact about human psychology and sexuality are kidding themselves.

I also think many people out there would find the story concept erotic, even if they might have a hard time explaining why, and even if they might be extremely uncomfortable trying to explain why if forced to do so. I like the idea of writing stories that take readers to places that are both arousing and uncomfortable. It's an interesting artistic challenge.

Back to your test: the difference between my story and the White Supremacist's version of the story is that in my story the white woman will feel guilt about her fantasies and the black man will not conform to the White Supremacist's view of what a black man is. But in the end, there will be a twist, and sex will happen, and it may be unsettling for some people.

Will you employ the BBC trope?

 

[MillieDynamite]

It helps to have some kind of natural ability in terms of physical or mental ability though. David Beckham strikes me as not the brightest bloke on the planet, but he sure as fuck can almost instantly figure out force, vectors and wind direction, and place the ball in the back of the net. Sure, it's been refined by hours of training, but I think you'd be silly to deny that some kids are naturally better at sports than others, just as others are musically gifted, or others are predominantly visual thinkers while others are verbal. People's brains are wired differently, and bodies are too.

My son, for example is naturally left handed, plays drums right handed, catches a ball with his left, throws with his right, can kick a ball equally well with both feet. Which made him handy in the mid-field in soccer, whereas the team's striker was a genius at ball play, but only from one position on the ground and could only kick with his right foot. Which made it easy for the other team to shut him down - if he hadn't scored in the first ten minutes, he never would. Not many ten year olds have had the ten thousand hours, but you sure can spot talent.

Your son may be ambidextrous, or to a degree ambidextrous. My father is, he can do everything with both hands except write. He can't write left handed (well he can but you can't read it very easily) because the teachers would stop him every time he did in the first three grades.

The ambidexterity runs back at least three generations before him. However, only my fathers father, and one brother, inherited it from their father.

 

[LAHomedog]

I haven't looked it up, but I believe there have been many studies that found black people generally had the largest penis size, followed by white people, indians then east asian.

Sorry, I have to call total BS on this one. I've seen all of those studies, and the most accurate ones are by condom manufactures. There are no generalities to penis size.

As I said at the top of the thread, all you have to do is spend enough time in a men's locker room and you learn that penis size has nothing to do with race, nationality, or even the size of the guy's body.

The largest cock I ever saw in my entire life was at a gym I use to go to and it was on a little, white guy. He couldn't have been more than 5'-2" and was hung like a fucking horse. He use to obnoxiously walk around the locker room, swinging that thing showing off.

I've been working out all of my life, until COVID and there are huge cocks, average cocks, small cocks of all size shape and color in a locker room

But all of this is off topic because I was asking the group about their thoughts of referencing the porn stereotype of BBC in a group sex story. It's still the question. I suppose the other question is what happens when you add IR into a spontaneous group sex scene. For me, the jury is still out on that one.

 

[SimonDoom]

And comments by professional sports commentators about natural ability vs intellect aren't attempts to draw people together.

Agreed. Sports commentators aren't an especially scientific bunch. Stereotypes and generalizations are their stock in trade.

 

[SimonDoom]

Will you employ the BBC trope?

That's a legit and interesting question. No, I don't think I will, although I hadn't got to the point in my story development to think about it much. I think I'll dodge it. The penis will be large enough to do what it's supposed to do successfully without being described mathematically or in contrast to white penises.

 

[FD_23]

Sorry, I have to call total BS on this one. I've seen all of those studies, and the most accurate ones are by condom manufactures. There are no generalities to penis size.

As I said at the top of the thread, all you have to do is spend enough time in a men's locker room and you learn that penis size has nothing to do with race, nationality, or even the size of the guy's body.

The largest cock I ever saw in my entire life was at a gym I use to go to and it was on a little, white guy. He couldn't have been more than 5'-2" and was hung like a fucking horse. He use to obnoxiously walk around the locker room, swinging that thing showing off.

I've been working out all of my life, until COVID and there are huge cocks, average cocks, small cocks of all size shape and color in a locker room

But all of this is off topic because I was asking the group about their thoughts of referencing the porn stereotype of BBC in a group sex story. It's still the question. I suppose the other question is what happens when you add IR into a spontaneous group sex scene. For me, the jury is still out on that one.

I've already debunk the myth further back

 

[MetalRabbit51]

I agree with Millie- race is an issue for those who choose to make it one. The black/white dynamic between characters in a story can be just like that between characters of any other race, or it can be kinky. Or racist, depending on the writer's intentions. I would say there's a built-in "kink" when you describe sexual encounters between black and white characters, or white and Asian, or any other racial mix. Is this racist? Depends on how the characters are portrayed. Many - fortunately not all- writers go for the easy tropes about BBC's and such. I personally find these types of cliches racist and offensive. And boring. Best to write about people of a particular ethnicity without going for the cliches. If the reader wishes to read into a black-white encounter their own fetishes or kinks, that's up to them. That said, there is a certain appeal that interracial encounters have. A certain flavor. This is not a put-down of anyone, it's just a seasoning that can be tastefully used. A kink if you will, not a whole lot different from any other. Redheads, for instance. I appreciate interracial erotic writing when it's not insulting or demeaning, just as another flavor, which can be quite stimulating.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I agree with Millie- race is an issue for those who choose to make it one. The black/white dynamic between characters in a story can be just like that between characters of any other race, or it can be kinky. Or racist, depending on the writer's intentions.

I have a friend here who's worked the BBC trope into one of her stories because a) It's what people want to read and b) She really wants to find one.

That's her kink and good luck to her.

 

[R. Richard]

Conversely, since World War Two the average height of Japanese people has increased because of the changes in their diet due to westernization.

Before WW II, the Japanese diet was based on white rice. The feudal Japanese culture was largely based on how much white rice could be grown and delivered. Even before WW II the white rice based diet began to have negative effects on the Japanese. AS the feudal culture began to break down, other than white rice became gradually more important.

 

[CyranoJ]

I would say there's a built-in "kink" when you describe sexual encounters between black and white characters, or white and Asian, or any other racial mix. Is this racist? Depends on how the characters are portrayed.

IMO there isn't a built-in kink just by having multiracial casts in an erotic story. The kink derives from specific tropes. To the extent that a story features black male characters who are not big-dicked "bulls" whose erotic value clearly stems from the taboo of white women sleeping with the next best thing -- as Bramble correctly puts it -- to livestock, it isn't really about the "interracial" kink. It's just an erotic story.

(I mean, of course, there are a certain bracket of people who just inherently can't cope with seeing different skin tones beside each other. Straightforward multiracial erotica wouldn't usually be their jam, though; they're exactly the kind of audience that needs those "interracial" tropes, they just can't conceptualize the relations involved any other way and often literally cannot see Black people as humans. During the RWA controversy that came pretty close to fatally damaging that institution, for example, we learned that there were white women romance writers who claimed that it had never occurred to them that Black couples could experience romance. Seriously. That's those interracial pr0n tropes talking, right there.)

A corollary of this is that while BBC "interracial" smut is always fundamentally exploiting a racist kink, the approach can indeed be more or less racist depending on specific choices. There's I/R kink content in which the Black men are basically portrayed as one step from being baboons, for example. There's content that just leans on hood stereotypes, bandanas and slang. There's content that goes beyond all of that or that pokes fun at the stereotypes themselves. They're all from different places on a spectrum.

 

[RetroFan]

On this subject, does anyone know if stories can be rejected on Literotica for having too strong racist content?

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story about a dysfunctional family where the main antagonist - a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, abusive and bigoted husband/father - goes on numerous racist and homophobic rants and he doesn't do politically correct.

I've written plenty of racist characters in my other stories, however this guy is a league up from them and written to be hated by readers. Is there a risk of my story being rejected if the racism component is deemed too much?

 

[JaxRhapsody]

This is about writing. I promise.

I am a senior-citizen, white American. Can we talk about race?

I always say that "I don't notice race." That of course is total bullshit. Everybody notices race. The same way we all notice hair color, if the person is wearing a beard or not, their attitude and style, their clothes, their manner. We notice everything about everyone.

To me, "I don't notice race," means it doesn't factor into my feelings about you as a human being. I like or dislike you for who you are as a human being.

Our best friends are black. My best friend was the lead tenor of a world famous band with multiple Top Ten hits who spent 20 years touring the world. He is black. I am white. We both know it, obviously. Who cares.

I have a very close friend who is the daughter of an icon who actually sat on the lap of Martin Luther King as he wrote the "I've Got A Dream" speech. That is a true story. Who cares. We have been friends for 45 years. And after my wife, is the woman who I am closest to.. No sex, ever. Friends only. Deep loving, supportive friends.

Let's get real. Like every other tweak in the world, race is a kink. Mine is red hair. We can say for this discussion, that is a race. Let's call redheads a race.

There are many others, but I am writing my "Summer Love" story and running across "Big Black Cock," and I find myself bucking against that personally and socially.

I'm an aging jock.. OK, I'm an older than dirt, aging jock, and have spent my life in locker rooms and know that race does not decided penis size.

But is it racist to cowtow to the BBC myth of pornography?

Every ounce of me says it is. Yet, if writing for the entire universe, who knows what will trigger a kink.

Any thoughts? I respect you all so much as writers and thinkers, I'd love to hear you chipped in on this one. It is delicate, but I believe important.

Thanks.

No it's not, and; shhhhh. If people can think Nessie is in that loch, they can think there's a Nessie in the pants of black men.

Also there have been studies on the average dick size based on race.

 

[TadOverdon]

In this respect, you are wrong. Natural talent is not bullshit.

She said that talent is to some degree bullshit. And to some degree it is, in the importance that people tend to over-ascribe to it.

People don't underestimate talent. They overestimate its importance.

Think about it, don't you run into it all the time with writing? "I wish I had the talent to do something like that." Start talking about discipline and practice and routine and their eyes glaze over. Work is just a monotonous detail.

A lot of people overstate the importance and likelihood of natural inclination and advantage for a variety of reasons. IMHO, most frequently to rationalize their own laziness in thinking, effort, or to make excuses for others.

Of course it exists, and in some cases it's obvious.

But as a scientist once joked. "Well, if we don't want to think about about it, we can just say it's genetic."


You know where racism is a real problem in porn? In hiring, according to performers. There's probably not another job in America where a worker seeking contract employment literally answers the question "Are you willing to work with someone of another race?"

If the anti-porn crusaders really wanted to shut some businesses down they'd pay some lawyers and PR people to go after that. Of course, being anti-racist is not nearly the money printing-press that Protecting Our Child From Satan is.

 

[ElectricBlue]

On this subject, does anyone know if stories can be rejected on Literotica for having too strong racist content?

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story about a dysfunctional family where the main antagonist - a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, abusive and bigoted husband/father - goes on numerous racist and homophobic rants and he doesn't do politically correct.

I've written plenty of racist characters in my other stories, however this guy is a league up from them and written to be hated by readers. Is there a risk of my story being rejected if the racism component is deemed too much?

Laurel's call. She could invoke "hate crime" as a justification for not hosting the content.

I'm going to ask - what's the erotic justification for the character and his racist everything-phobic characterisation? Some inherent plot purpose, or just a vehicle for you to spew vile? Not saying you do, Retro, but I always have to wonder why authors portray assholes on what's meant to be an erotica site, unless there's some story telling purpose behind it.

For me, it's the difference between telling stories with some inherent societal value, versus using Lit as a platform for something else. But then, I have this crazy notion of socially responsible erotica, where writers take some responsibility for what they write, and the effect it might have on readers.

 

[RetroFan]

Laurel's call. She could invoke "hate crime" as a justification for not hosting the content.

I'm going to ask - what's the erotic justification for the character and his racist everything-phobic characterisation? Some inherent plot purpose, or just a vehicle for you to spew vile? Not saying you do, Retro, but I always have to wonder why authors portray assholes on what's meant to be an erotica site, unless there's some story telling purpose behind it.

For me, it's the difference between telling stories with some inherent societal value, versus using Lit as a platform for something else. But then, I have this crazy notion of socially responsible erotica, where writers take some responsibility for what they write, and the effect it might have on readers.

I might be an unusual writer on the site in that I enjoy writing about unlikeable and even hateful characters. That's not true of all of my stories - some are sweetness and light and nice as nice can be - but a lot of my stories are full of terrible people doing terrible things.

This Erotic Horror story I'm writing is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, very bizarre with shock humour and horror mixed together equally dark in tone, erotica not the main focus, hence the overbearing tyrant of a father with no redeeming qualities at all. One of his sons - a stupid and sadistic sociopath who is responsible for the chain of events in the story - isn't much better. It definitely won't be for everyone, but I'm enjoying writing it.

 

[Jake_Raazor]

We have limited control over what happens in real life, but we have total control in the worlds we create with our writing.

Good point.

 

[XerXesXu]

On this subject, does anyone know if stories can be rejected on Literotica for having too strong racist content?

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story about a dysfunctional family where the main antagonist - a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, abusive and bigoted husband/father - goes on numerous racist and homophobic rants and he doesn't do politically correct.

I've written plenty of racist characters in my other stories, however this guy is a league up from them and written to be hated by readers. Is there a risk of my story being rejected if the racism component is deemed too much?

I’ve had ‘White Supremacy’ red carded as a tag in a spoof on the ‘woke’.

Your character sounds a lot like Alf Garnett in Till Death Do Us Part, which was a piss-take of a racially, and other prejudiced, old git. This was in a period, in the UK, when social attitudes were evolving, becoming more aware of the offence that casually uttered, racist remarks could cause. There were several other TV series which, in part, made fun of racial prejudice. These anti-racist programmes are now condemned by social justice warriors for allowing such prejudices to be expressed, even to condemn them. I have no idea how woke Laurel is (nor how offensive your character).

 

[JaxRhapsody]

The big problem I see today is people think racism is only a thing when its a case of someone hating or fearing someone for being a different race.

But pandering and tokenism is also racism and its all I see and hear on the news, in Hollywood, here, and anywhere else the preachy "I'm not racist" crowd gathers to score woke points.

Malcolm X warned beware the white liberal, adding there are good and bad white men and you'll knows which they are very quickly, but the white liberal shakes your hand while holding the chains behind his back.

That's the true racism going on today, using a cause the way an evangelist preaches to his base, with no sincerity, no desire to fix anything, and all about using hate as a vehicle to hate but their hate is okay, of course.

And what happens when the insincere preachy hate filled self righteous beat a cause into the ground? People tune out...what happens when the ambulance chasers scream racism when there is none? Claim an entire country(that had a two term black president, current black VP) is racist? People tune out.

I saw the title of this thread and my first reaction was an eyeroll because I'm sick of hearing about it. I don't need to be told who is racist or what is racist. If you don't know by now, no one is going to change that.

Look at the metoo movement, legit cause ruined by preachy POS's like Meryl Streep screeching things have to change and all the ape culture...and oh, look, there she is on tape giving Polanski a standing O

Weinstein became the poster boy for metoo...yet Tarantino who admitted to knowing everything he was doing and not caring and letting it happen? Oh, they all love his movies, his rape enabling? That's cool.

Metoo believe survivors until the survivor is accusing a politician on your side of coin, or the football player on your fav team...

Listen to black voices! Until that black voice calls out BLM bullshit and woke white frauds and has the audacity to say not everyone is a racist, well that guy must be an uncle Tom., right?

Hypocrisy ruins a cause, better than ruins a cause, preachy 100% beating a dead horse ruins a cause.

Everyone is the same...yet the people who say that can't refer to a person without their color, gender or sexual identity...so I guess you don't see them the same? Also everyone needs to be 'educated" yet if someone says something 'bigoted" because they don't understand, does someone explain it to them? Nope, just name calling and hatred. Saw that happen to a long time member here on a thread a few months ago...no effort to have a 'conversation" just raw hatred from the "tolerant."

The pendulum effect is already swinging the other way as more and more people get fed up with racism-and everything else-being radicalized and politicized-and the end result? Nothing will be fixed, no one will learn and things most likely will get worse.

That is the truth, whether anyone here wants to admit that or not.

That's why I say woke people need to be a bit more sleepy. You can't browbeat your righteousness in to people. If the world was an office; these would be those cheerful morning people, just so happy and god damned excited for no reason, the rest of us are normal, cursing being awake at the ungodly hour of 6am.

...and for anybody else around them.

I had a Saudi Arabian colleague who happened to be in the USA on business at the time of 9/11. There were revenge attacks happening and it was obviously unsafe for a young Arabic man with a Saudi passport to be travelling alone in the USA, so we modified schedules to have him travelling with a white co-worker. None of us wanted his race to be an issue, but us saying "I don't see colour" would not have made him safe from those who do.

That "I don't see color" shit is annoying. Yeah you do, you just told me how you got two black friends and your sibling married a latino, for clout. I actually never thought about this before; I am tired of the speeches. "You seem cool and smart, I like your style, I don't have a problem with black people/African Americans, I grew up around them, and we hung out, I even went to a school that had black people in it, I never judge, ya know? I grew up hearing rap music, you like rap, right? I'm not racist, I just want you to know that you're cool with me, and like, I just don't get it, blah, blah, fucking blah..." And most of the time these people are sober. While smiling and nodding, I'm thinking; "the caucacity of this person." You trying to convince me, or yourself? If I want a long backstory or whatever, there's shonen anime I can watch.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Penis size is a fascinating subject. From what I've read, the evidence is all over the map, and it's difficult to know what to believe because of the questionable nature of the methodology with which the information has been gathered. Many studies are based on self-reporting, and that's obviously dubious. It's easy to imagine why it would be difficult for a researcher to do a valid study of the subject that involved a) a large enough sample size, b) reliably random and objective methods of gathering subjects, and c) reliable methods of measurement. I've seen some studies that suggest that there IS a difference based on race, and I've seen some that contradict that idea. I don't know what to believe.

Here's some food for thought, though: why does it matter so much? What if someone were to establish, once and for all, that on average men of Race A had slightly longer penises than men of Race B? What would that mean? Supposedly it would nevertheless be true that variance WITHIN racial groups would be more significant than variance BETWEEN racial groups, meaning, therefore, that the data would not support making assumptions about individuals (and their penises) based on their race. If we keep trying to move toward a world where we don't judge people by their skin color, then averages of this kind, even if true, may not matter. We're not there yet, of course.

These studies try to go on average size. Last one I saw said the biggest were(in no particular order by me); Africans, Irish, blacks, scottish, jaimacans, haitians, south american countries, and I think Russians and Greeks. But that's like saying black women got the biggest asses and white women got the biggest tits.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

https://www.history.com/news/napoleon-complex-short

Napoleon was 5'2" in French inches, but that's about 5'5" in Imperial inches, which would have been just slightly shorter than usual for his time. The perception of Napoleon as a very short man does indeed seem to have come from political cartoons of the time.

Odd because Abraham Lincoln was considered really tall, but he was apparantly like 5'7? Cars and some furniture is proof people were shorter back then. I rememeber this 1937(?) 2½ ton truck Thrifty used to use as a display at their commercial vehicle rental store... that cab was tiny- an old Ranger or S10 has a roomier cab.

 

[SimonDoom]

Odd because Abraham Lincoln was considered really tall, but he was apparantly like 5'7? Cars and some furniture is proof people were shorter back then. I rememeber this 1937(?) 2½ ton truck Thrifty used to use as a display at their commercial vehicle rental store... that cab was tiny- an old Ranger or S10 has a roomier cab.

Lincoln was six foot four. The tallest President of all time. People were shorter then than now so he really towered over people.