Are Americans infatuated with race?

Great Debates
1

Excuse me if this topic has been debated endlessly…

I find that America seems to hold more value on a person’s race or ethnicity in society than any other country in the world. Even countries with highly polarized ethnic population often stereotype each other but usually that’s because of some longstanding animosity other than race. Isn’t it strange then that the supposed world’s most industrialized and wealthiest nation still has these issues?

Maybe it’s because i’m an asian-american male but i’ve seen examples of this lingering on race issues just about everywhere in the U.S. As a person of color I still can’t go to places with a majority white population in the United States without gawking, staring, or at worse racist comments. This is the year 2002 and it still occurs within American society. Does anyone else see anything terribly wrong with this. As a nation I don’t think America has progressed as much as we claim. The racism and lingering divisions in society are still there but more covert nowadays. The PC age has made expressing racist vitriol out in the public as taboo. However, racism has manifested itself in other ways. Instead of outright denigration there’s an undercurrent of segregation in American society.

Ever notice how people of “color” in a lunchroom often separate themselves naturally? Black people will sit with black people, hispanics with hispanics, asians with asians, and of course whites with whites. Of course in some cases this isn’t always true but i’ve seen it more often than not. Is America heading for an eventual balkanization along ethnic/social lines?

I know I raised some issues but not much specific content but I thought this would be a good entry topic to get a debate rolling.

2

Are Americans infatuated with race?

I think Americans are infatuated with SUVs.

3

I think many Americans don’t make a big deal about race or ethnicity. But all it takes is a significant minority of racist jerks…

How can you tell that the gawking and staring have anything to do with race, as opposed to, say, because you’re wearing a goofy-looking hat or something?

I’m a white guy, and I don’t think about race or racism all that often; it isn’t anything that affects my everyday life. If I were going just by personal experience I wouldn’t think racism was all that big a problem in America today. And yet, every so often I hear or read of an experience that a person of another race has had with being discriminated against or hassled or persecuted, and I am forced to conclude that racism is still a much bigger problem than I’m normally aware of.

Racism doesn’t make sense. Why should I care what color your skin is? But I guess if I had a lot of hostility and anger and stupidity floating around inside me and I were looking for someone to vent it on, someone’s race might make as good an idiotic excuse as any.

4

Racism makes perfect sense, politically.

This can be seen clearly with the current controversy over statements by Trent Lott. The question that the white ruling class in the south has had to confront is, How do we get people to vote against their own interests? The republican agenda has been a disaster for white working class families in the south. I mean, Mississipi is basically Third World. So, how do you get poor whites to vote against their own interests? One way is to appeal to racism. Trent Lott reaches out to the poor, white racists to get the working class vote. As long as the republicans can get the white vote, they can hang onto power.

Lott’s racism is only new to the mainstream mass media, but it certainly has not been hidden to the voters of Mississipi. People understand that he is a racist. A great effort is made to keep the racist embers burning, so that when the white working class goes to the polls, they will vote republican.

Racism is a great tool of the ruling class. You see, it is so much better to have the working classes fighting amongst each other, than uniting for their own interests.

5

I haven 't traveled a lot or spent much time in other places besides the US, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

It sure does seem like we’re infactuated with race. The SDMB is proof of this. The current situation in the Republican party is proof of this.

Why are we obsessed with it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because racist policies helped to build this country, and many people still remember a time when racism was taught in classroom curricula and codified into law. Is it necessarily a bad thing, to think about race so much? I don’t think so, although I can see how it could be bad. It certaintly can make for interesting discussion.

6

I don’t really see the rampant racism that other people seem to in America. I won’t deny it’s existance, but I think the greater metropolitan areas are pretty well over taking note of your ethnicity. I can tell you in all honesty that if I saw you walking down the street you would be a guy walking down the street. Not an Asian walking down the street. So maybe we’re sex obsessed! :eek:

What never did make much sense to me were the other little towns within a larger city. I’m from Phoenix and we don’t really have these, but I’ve been to Manhattan and to Los Angeles and I’ve seen things like “Koreatown” and “Little Italy” and I think it’s a little weird, but I don’t really know enough about it to form a solid opinion one way or the other.

7

Those enclaves are formed not around race, but culture. When immigrants came to this country, many times people from the same country, city, or even village would move into the same neighborhoods. Sometimes they were forced to live in specific areas (ghettos), but most times, immigrants purposefully sought people like themselves as neighbors. There’s safety and comfort in numbers, as they say. The end result was the formation of districts with specific cultural inclinations. Personally, I think they are wonderful and add cultural diversity to big cities.

8

Really? More than Rwanda? More than Israel? More than India? More than Bosnia? More than Iraq?

9

Um…technically, the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda are the same race. Same with Indians and Pakistanis. And Bosnians. And Iraqis. And Israel has no problem with Arab Jews.

You seem to be confusing race, ethnicity and religion.

10

Um…I think your average Hutu or a Tutsi would disagree with you. You may not be able to visually differentiate the two, but they can. And really, that’s all that you need to foster racism, right?

Since race is socially constructed, there is no “technically” when it comes to delineating races. IMHO, this makes obsession over ethnicity and obsession over race one in the same.

11

I don’t think we’re so much “obsessed” with race as we are sensitive to it.

It brings to mind a book I read called It’s the Little Things: Everyday Interactions that Get Under the Skin of White and Black Americans. I may have flubbed the title a bit . . . It’s been a while since I read it.

In the book, the author, a black woman, speaks about incidents where whites acted in ways she considered racist, where the whites didn’t intend to be offensive, or probably even realise that they were. One example was during New York mayor Guliani’s undercover sting on cab drivers. Blacks had complained that they weren’t being picked up by cabs, whereas whites had no trouble. Officers posed as civilians, and reported any cabs that refused them service.

The book’s author hailed a cab and gave her home address, which happened to be across from a police precinct. The cab driver chuckled and sarcastically repeated it. “Oh, I guess black people don’t live on the upper west side! We all live in Harlem, huh?” the author snapped.

In this situation, the cab driver probably just thought she was an undercover cop who wasn’t doing too good of a job in hiding it, considering her address was across the street from the precinct, and didn’t intend to imply that a black woman wouldn’t live in that neighborhood. The author (to me at least) seemed to jump to the conclusion that his comment was racially motivated.

Sometimes it may be that because minorities have experienced racism in the past that they read more into comments and situations than was intended. For example, waitress may be rude to all of her customers, but a black customer may feel that she is just singling them out for their race.

It’s sometimes hard to figure out where someone is coming from. Things can be easily misinterpereted. Sometimes, it may be better to give people the benefit of the doubt. This is not to say that there aren’t ugly, nasty, racist people out there, because we all know that there are, and chances are, we’ve met some of them.

Only fifty years ago in this country black men could be lynched for whitstling at a white woman. On the scale of human history it’s only a moment of time since then. We’ve made great strides in that time considering that the generation that saw these things is still with us, but there’s still a long way to go.

12

I disagree, monstro. I can tell the difference between a Vietnamese person and a Korean person, but that doesn’t make them different races…they’re both still of the Asian race.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Latinos are one ethnic group but are composed of different races.

While there are overlaps and nebulous areas, ethnicity and race are not the same thing.

13

**

You realize that there are australoids and other asian aborigines living in SE asia that look black? Your insular definition of “asian” as a race does not really fit because even Vietnamese and Korean people have large variances. I always disagreed with dividing up racial characteristics into just 3 simple groups since there’s so many inbetweens and crossovers.

14

Rwanda, ethnic differences there are sparked from age old tribal rivalries not so much “race” related

Israel, there are many many pan-arab citizens in israel or jews with “arab” blood. It’s not a race issue as much as a territorial/religion issue.

India, once again Pakistanis and indians are of similar racial “heritage” it’s not race related.

Bosnia, more religion based than anything else

Iraq, more tribal based with Kurds being oppressed but once again it’s not so much race.
In the U.S. you can be judged just by being asian, black, etc… from the onset. The grouping and stereotypes seem to be much broader and sweeping in the U.S. Some of it is more insidious with the taint of white supremacist ideals in this society. Anyone not “white” is thought of as backwards or non progressive to American society or “foreign” and not American at all.

15

Who said anything about 3 simple groups?

16

That’s the commonly held classification whenever race is discussed.

17

What? Whites, blacks and yeller folk? Come now, even extremely broadly speaking I can think of other racial groups. Arabs, Native Americans, South Asian, Polynesian, etc., etc., etc.

And like I said, race and ethnicity often overlap. But often they don’t. For instance, Irish and German are considered to be in the same racial group, but different ethnic groups.

18

I have cousins who look white but their birth certificates identify them as black. In Brazil, there are people who are considered white but put them in America and they are black. In Atlanta, GA, I’m black but in Johannesburg, South Africa, I’m coloured. What race do I “technically” belong to? What about my cousins? Or “white” Brazilians?

Hitler didn’t see the Jewish Germans as a separate ethnic group. He saw them as a distinct race. So was he obsessed with ethnicity or was he obsessed with race? Does it really matter? I don’t think it does. This is my point.

Btw, I know there’s a difference between ethnicity and race. But I disagree with your dismisal of The Ryan’s post. The US has it’s share of racial strife, but we aren’t the only ones with issues.

19

Actually, it doesn’t even matter because on re-reading the The Ryan’s post, the quote he was responding to mentions “race or ethnicity.” So, The Ryan was correct no matter what definition we decide to use.

My bad.

20

I think the U.S. is the most obsessed with race and the significance (or really non significance) that it entails. It’s imbedded in politics, society, and class. Name one other country that has had as serious an issue with race? Maybe South Africa ,Australia, and Nazi Germany but that’s in the past. No current country can polarize itself as much as the U.S. can over just race alone. The race issue in American transcends mere white and black it involves everyone that doesn’t fit into a specific ideal.