When you look at the Middle East, you see people willing to strap on suicide vests or behead people. For religious or ethnic reasons, the hate is really deep. Same thing with the Rwandan genocide back in the 1990s. Sri Lanka, Cyprus, etc. Lots of places.
But it hasn’t really happened in the US. Despite the fact that black people were brought here as slaves and treated like absolute shit for a few hundred years (with issues obviously continuing today), African-Americans are pretty damn nice to the people who have been assholes to them. If there’s violence, it’s usually been white people lynching and destroying black neighborhoods (Tulsa, etc.). Yes, there have been some black riots, usually after something pretty big goes down. But for the most part, black people don’t aim a lot of violence and don’t seem to resent white people all that much.
I’m curious what cultural differences exist between the US and places with bad ethnic and religious strife. Thanks for your thoughts! (FWIW, I’m a white guy.)
Well like a lot of things I think it depends where you are and who you are engaging with in society. Honestly I would say a lot more black people today harbor ill will towards white people than vice versa. I believe if you look at crime statistics black people victimize white people more than the other way around, granted I don’t think hatred has much to do with most crime. I’ve encountered many black people who have professed to hating white people, I live in the South though so maybe that has something to do with it. When I was in the Army I heard a lot of black soldiers make negative, racist, or otherwise hateful remarks about white people openly and frankly. I don’t think most white people give that much thought to racial matters on a daily basis, if you were a poor black guy working a dead-end service job, catering to a lot of white upperclass customers day in and day out I wouldn’t be surprised if you would have a growing resentment toward white people. But what are you expecting some en masse revolt against white people? I don’t think most black people want to blow themselves up to kill white people, most people just try and live their lives, violence in this country has been trending downward for quite some time and while hate crimes still occur from time to time it isn’t comparable at all to how it was a short while ago, the times they are a changin’.
Ethnic strife, like any other type of conflict, only results in open warfare when one or both sides think they can win. A race war would end badly for a minority group, so that’s one reason you don’t see it here. The other is that as imperfect as any system is, minority groups can seek redress for grievances here. The courts are a far better place to fight battles and have a hope of winning. You’ll notice that what the media calls “black leaders” aren’t militants. They are the kinds of guys who lead demonstrations and file lawsuits. That’s how ethnic strife is conducted in the West for the most part, and that’s a good thing.
I think one factor is that racism tends to be depersonalized in modern American society. A black American might resent the way he’s been treated by our predominantly white society in general but he doesn’t have any animosity towards the white people he knows. And this is reversed as well; a white person might hold racist beliefs about black people in general but not hold those beliefs about the black individuals he personally knows.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
-Paul Laurence Dunbar
The period that was closest to the type of ethnic strife you see overseas was probably the height of the first KKK, but even then a lot of white people fought for black rights. The feds passed legislation, the feds arrested KKK members, some states called up militias, white leaders denounced them, etc.
Blacks and whites share the same religion. Additionally, religion in America is weak tea in general. There’s a live and let live attitude, which puts a real damper on sectarianism. Even our fanatics are mostly keyboard warriors. They may talk big about “taking back the country” but they’re all hat, no cattle.
The U.S. is not a failed or failing state. There’s an ingrained sense of law and order. The Ferguson riots freaked everyone out but not much happened besides some burned down buildings and cars. In a lot of places that’s just another Tuesday.
Blacks and whites are nationalistic and consider themselves and each other Americans.
Blacks don’t feel shut out of the system. There have been improvements over time, so there’s no need to give up. Most of the race riots occur when they perceive there’s been a systemic failure, e.g. the Rodney king riots.
Worth pondering: believe it or not, riots, revolution and terrorism are NOT most common in times and places where oppression is worst. Nor do the leaders of riots, rebellions and terror movements typically come from the impoverished, oppressed classes.
You’d THINK the most brutalized and oppressed people would rise up, but they don’t. Riots, revolutions and terrorism come when oppression is just starting to lessen. ANd the leaders are often affluent, educated folks.
Nobody in Russia dared rebel against the tyrannical tsars Nicholas I or Alexander III, but terrorism abounded under the reign of the liberal tsar Alexander II, the man who freed the serfs. And the terrorist leaders were usually well-off students, NOT peasants.
So it is almost everywhere. Osama Bin Laden grew up in a wealthy family. The guys who pulled off the 9/11 attacks were educated middle class Arabs.
Even in America, you’ll notice the ghetto riots of the Sixties didn’t tend to happen in the SOUTH- they happeed in relatively liberal Northern cities like Detroit and Newark.
I think it’s a combination of distance of time (slavery was 150 years ago,) the fact that many African-Americans interact with good, positive white people (as mentioned above,) and that there is much minority vs. minority racism as well.
There is also some realization that most of us whites were still dirt poor and basically “poverty slaves” in Europe until long after the Civil War. Blame/hate the government as a whole, blame/hate certain states like Georgia, blame/hate 12th generation rednecks - sure. But the entire white race as a whole? I would say very few do that. And its not like other races don’t have their share of loonies as well.
Just a random thought, but it seems that the overwhelming majority of school educators in America are white Caucasian (of course, whites are the majority in the USA anyway.) But I wonder if this K-12 interaction with white teachers and the influence of such white teachers affects the views of African-Americans who go through the K-12 system.
I don’t think black people put a great much thought into whites being poverty slaves in 1894. For that matter, let’s be honest; most black people don’t put much thought into their own ancestors being slaves in 1864. There’s a political awareness but it’s not a personal fact. It’s something you learn in school and had to write a test on.
People just generally are not inclined to hate their fellow man. Face to face, most people in most situations will be friendly and decent; it is the way human beings generally are. The outliers make the news. Where black Americans are different from, say, Palestinians is that they live in a system where they are not equally treated on average, but CAN get ahead. It is possible for a black person in the USA to live an excellent life and to be a successful part of the system. A black person can get an education, get a nice job, buy a nice house and spend his Sunday afternoon watching football with his buddies on his big screen TV. Maybe take the kids to Disneyland this year. Statistically it is likelier he will be worse off than a white person, but most black people are not, in fact, poor ghetto prisoners. The barriers are nebulous.
A black person in the USA has the dice loaded a bit against him, but he can still win. A Palestinian can’t even play the game; they’re prisoners of a political situation neither they nor their putative leaders can fix.
I suspect a little bit of the credit goes to Martin Luther King, and his preaching of nonviolence, love, and reconciliation alongside his demands for civil rights, social justice, and equality.
Blacks are only ever about 10-13% of the population in the US (well, since slavery ended) so they’re just never going to get to a good “uprising” or “overthrow” level. Radical Muslims, if they could manage to get all Muslims on board, really have a better chance of being completely in charge of the population (even though it’s realistically not going to happen).
Blacks can hate white people all day long but it’s not going to get them anywhere. Heck, white people hating black people didn’t really get white people anywhere did it?
I think “If you can’t beat them, join them” sounds a little defeatist but that’s kind of what happened no?
Few alive remember the really bad times. None remember the days of slavery, and the days when the KKK could run amok lynching as they wanted are also long gone.
Not to mention, by and large it has always been a minority of Whites who have treated Blacks badly. Sure in the Civil War period casual racism was the rule, but most Americans were against slavery. Only about 1% of all Americans or 5% of Southerners actually owned even one black slave.
Strap on a bomb vest and you are likely to kill mostly dudes who are on your side.
1 - As we put more and more years between the current day and slavery, between the current day and ‘separate but equal’, between the current day and the Civil Rights movement, we begin to lose the immediacy of the outrage. Something that happened to your parents or grandparents - to people you know - is far more immediate than something that happened to your great-great grandparents. My ancestors were conquered and enslaved by the Romans during the Roman Empire. I’ve learned not to hold that against modern day Italians.
2 - We, as Americans, have the ability to put issues out on the table and talk about them. Whether that parlance is shouting or negotiating, we get it out there and don’t let it fester. Very few political entities that are currently experiencing the fracturing of their population have provided their citizens such a safety valve. When you tamp things down, they are bound to fester, and to break out explosively when they finally find a weak point.
3 - The differences between Blacks and Whites in America are more one-dimensional than those in, say, the former Yugoslavia. By and large, the majority of both races in America are Christians or have become Christians and while, sadly, many of the cultural traditions of the American Blacks were lost, many were also incorporated into the overall American culture. We also have built solely American things together - jazz, the blues, to name just two. Blacks now have a stake in America. They identify themselves as Americans, not African nationals.
In Yugoslavia, the Communists forceably combined 3 or more very separate religions and cultures of people with incredibly different traditions. The Communists not only combined them politically, but they essentially eradicated everything that defined the identity of these people in the hopes that they would develop a national identity. These were cultures that despised each other and had done so for generations. Forcing them to combine politically only forced their nationality underground. They never assimilated with one another in the manner that American Blacks and Whites have done. Scratch the surface ever so gently and those nationalistic tendencies leapt to the forefront. The amount of pressure that built up between these groups during the Yugoslav years, caused the situation to burst into contention like an over-inflated balloon when you pop it.
