Does labeling people by race promote racism?

Great Debates
1

Our penchant for racial labeling, even when well-intentioned, is in and of itself a bias. This might be a new concept for many people to grasp, because for years America’s race-based diversity programs have relied upon labeling.

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We lump people into racial categories as though all the people in a certain race group are the same and, thus, different from those in another group—creating an us vs. them mentality. My global upbringing has taught me differently: Across all our differences, we connect on human commonalities that transcend race and skin color.

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Describing a person by their race or origin is not an issue. I can be described as an “Asian and originally from South Korea who went to school in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is married with two grown children, etc.” However, when I am defined and put into a bucket labeled Asian American or minority, my individuality is erased.

I personally see much validity in Ms. Peers’ comments. I relate to people on an individual level. And in my short life, so far, most (not all) people that I meet, interact with, etc. are good people. Not perfect people, but good people, with good intentions. I have enormous faith in mankind, even though we are not perfect. I have had the privilege to travel around the world and meet people of all different ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, educational backgrounds, etc., and my observations hold true. And the one thing that is common everywhere I’ve been, is children. Children all around the world when at play, giggle, laugh, smile. They truly don’t see color or differences.

But it is human nature as we get older to categorize people by their differences, and I highly doubt that behavior can ever be stopped. Yes, we can shame or prosecute those that exhibit racism, but do we continue to do harm by doing societal labeling?

I understand and support the Black Lives Matter movement. And I also understand the frustration by those that on first reaction say that all lives matter. From a PR perspective one of the best things the BLM movement did was begin the campaign that says, “For all lives to matter, black lives have to matter”.

I have always felt that racism takes generations to change, as it is (IMHO) a learned behavior. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime, but maybe my children or my grandchildren will live in a world where all people are respected for who they are as individuals.

Martin Luther King Jr. may have put it best when he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

2

There are a couple of problems with not using such labeling:

  1. The categories of people exist, regardless of whether we dare speak their label-name out loud or not. There are black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, white people, etc. You just can’t avoid labeling something when the existence is so clear - any more than refusing to say “male/female” or “man/woman” erases gender differences. It’s there whether we name it or not.

  2. If you don’t label something, you can’t point out how they are disadvantaged. If we refuse to acknowledge that “black” is a thing, then Black Lives Matter goes out the window.

3

If we’re going to arbitrarily pick skin color to divide us up (because apparently dividing people up into groups is important), then why don’t we lobby the world to switch to eye color as a means of differentiating people?

4

Yes, labeling promotes racism. It is racism. There are no such things as human races. Even if you think that ‘race’ is some kind of social construct, like the Easter Bunny, those socially constructed ‘races’ line up exactly with the definitions of people who believe in ‘races’.

Despite the numerous tortured definitions that have been created, racism is the belief that human beings can be divided up into races and all racism emanates from that practice.

5

The big problem with this argument is that it completely ignores the fact that people have extremely different life experiences and outlooks based on the way they’re perceived by society. It leads to white people saying “As long as you’re doing nothing wrong, there’s no need to fear the police.” It completely ignores the different treatment, fears, and outcomes that have happened and continue to happen. It’s ignoring reality, and leads to dismissal of minority viewpoints.

Racism isn’t the same as recognizing the reality of humans predilection towards grouping people and the realities that result. Saying “I don’t see color” is the equivalent of saying “I don’t recognize that others may have different experiences than me.”

6

I agree with you that categories exist and people may want to label them. However, the labels used in the USA are created by White people and they are neither consistent nor representative. If you want to go by continent, then label Whites as European American just like you’d label Asian Americans.

Sometimes the word Caucasian is used to describe whites but Caucasian includes people from India among others. So Indians are not allowed to call themselves Caucasians.

And the word Ethnic has become “code word” for non - white. Italian food is not ethnic but Thai food is.

If you want to keep labels, then the Census should have a diverse committee of all nationalities and then pick labels that are meaningful and representative.

People could have disabilities like diabetes or mental illness that are disadvantages. They don’t have to publicly announce them or look for others to acknowledge them.

Just because you don’t know about a person’s disabilities, the ADA doesn’t go out of the window.

I am not saying that black or brown is a disability, but how a person identifies is a personal matter with certain privacy associated with it. Labeling, especially by White folks, is clearly intended to box them in convenient categories and doesn’t help alleviate the disadvantages they face.

7

As far as I know of, nobody ever got enslaved because they had brown eyes. But millions have been enslaved in history because they had dark skin.

Skin color and other such things aren’t arbitrary; they’re the most immediately apparent feature of a person. You can see if someone is white or black from a hundred yards away; you can’t see someone’s eye pupils unless you’re right up close.

8

Being of mixed race I have my own personal spin on labeling people by race. I am fully half mexican and half white. Mom’s parents were born in Mexico and my dad’s parents are from Irish immigrants, so I have a “white” last name and for the most part look white.

My white co-workers and many of my newer friends do not know this and freely say racist remarks around me and I just listen and take notes. I have on occasion dropped the bomb on them and told them them I a mexican american after they make a racist comment that hits home. For instance, I was in high level company meeting one time with our Japanese management when one of my close coworkers made a derogatory remark about some “Pedro” down at our assembly plant not understanding why we required certain procedures. I told him him my grandpa was named named Pedro and that I was mexican. You could hear a pin drop and his face turned white. I then looked at my Japanse manager and told him “look how we made the white guy squirm” and we all laughed. He apologized and we moved on.

Still, I have had had more serious incidents where I told a guy at the bar that I was half mexican and he made a point to tag me with the nickname “mexico” after that. It was so other white people (his racist friends) would know that there was a person of mixed race present and to watch what they said in front of me. They claimed it wasn’t racist to do so, but me and my friends of other races saw it for what it was, a dog whistle code.

9

:laughing: If they are such an identifying feature, can you explain why Jesus, who was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew; is shown to be white and not brown in most American churches ? Why fair is used to mean just ? Why terms like Black money, black listed, etc. exist ?

Color maybe an identifying feature but that’s not how it is used the American society. It’s to box in people.

10

You’re sort of missing Velocity’s point though. Labeling can be used for good or ill- without labeling certain people as “black”, you can’t have “black lives matter” as a movement. You’d just have a lot more diffuse anger at the police treatment of some unlabeled people, as it would be harder to identify that cops treat a specific group of people differently without actually defining/labeling that group.

I disagree that Italian food is not “ethnic”. In my experience, “ethnic” food means the food of a specific ethnicity/nationality, not some sort of absurd code-word for “non-white”. The idea that Russian food is not ethnic, because Russians are white? Or German food? Or Dutch food? They’re ALL ethnic foods. So is “American food” and all its variants, for that matter. Am I not part of an ethnicity because I’m a white American and a Texan?

So yeah, labeling people as part of one race or another is something that does tend to slot them into a little box, mostly for statistical purposes. People are going to look at someone and decide what box they think they’re in regardless of whatever the “accepted” categories are.

Sure, because back in the first century AD, the Roman church deliberately syncretized Jesus with depictions of Apollo and Hermes, who were portrayed as fair and blue eyed. It’s been a thing for millenia, and is NOT some kind of American racist thing, which is about as ridiculously absurd of a thought as I’ve ever seen.

11

Let’s do a thought experiment. All people everywhere forget that there is such a category as race. We forget the history and laws that were in place to support white supremacy as if they never existed. From this day forward, all people are treated exactly the same. How would this world work?
As racists like Ben Shapiro disingenuously point out, today the laws no longer directly call for racial discrimination. They just have that effect. Many would continue to have that effect, we just wouldn’t be able to see it any more.
The huge wealth gap would not be erased. The underfunded schools would not change. The red lined neighborhoods would still be under served.
It would be like running the first half a race with some of the runners forced to carry 100lbs of chains, then taking the chains away and pretending they were never there. Then when they can’t compete, it is clearly their own fault.

And that is the best case outcome. In reality, you can’t ban all race based considerations, only the ones that try to level the playing field. Racists will still be racists, they will just try to hide a little more. Racist policy makers will craft policies designed to support white supremacy, that carefully don’t mention race, just like they do now, but there will be no way for non-racists to even talk about.
Remember the North Carolina voter law that was struck down because it would " target African-Americans* with almost *surgical precision". That law could not have been struck down if race could not be considered.

A color blind society is not really what we want. Maybe if all knowledge and perception of race groups were wiped from everyone’s minds, in a few hundreds of years everything will equal out. But that is a way to ensure the inequality that our history has created in a way the absolves white people, and the country as whole of all responsibility or guilt. It would serve to protect white privilege by pretending it never happened.

We want to get to a color/gender/ethnicity/religious/sexuality/etc. neutral society. That means changing the system in ways to correct historic and current injustice, which requires us to see and acknowledge those injustices.

12

The way I see it, people can label themselves, but should not label others.

13

On a really concrete level: schools report suspensions and other disciplinary actions by race. And the reason they do so is that African American kids often get suspended for shit other kids would get a warning for. I’ve seen this, and it’s backed up by the data. And those suspensions have enormous impact on the trajectory of a person’s life.

If we didn’t track it, people would still have their implicit biases, they would still suspend one set of kids all out of proportion to everyone else. African Americans would still know, from lived experience, that the system was stacked against them. But there’d be no accountability, no “proof”, and that lived experience would lead to nothing but frustration for those who lived it. How on earth would it be more just, less racist, to just let that situation fester unrecorded?

14

I prefer calling someone ‘dark skinned’ or “light skinned” rather than black & white but I don’t think taking away labels is the solution to racism. Intermarriage and enmeshment of races is what ends racism.

Right now in the United States two races (hispanic & white) are currently undergoing enmeshment and I find it exciting and fascinating. Young “white” people no longer think it is strange to have a pinata at a party or eat tacos every day. My sons (in their 20s) had no idea it wasn’t that way 50 years ago. Racism against hispanics was very prevalent where & when I grew up. Now, in the same area, no one even notices hispanic & white marriages anymore.

I’m looking forward to seeing the same thing happen in the USA with other races. I think we’ll get there in another 20 years or so.

15

When I tell people that the Klan chased my dad out of Texas for marrying a mexican woman people just don’t believe it possible. My mom wasn’t allowed to go to the white school or theaters and had to drink from the colored water fountains. She got stopped by a truck of rednecks for spanking her own “white” child in public. Texas has changed a lot since then, so I still believe that there is hope for the nation.

16

Iris. All pupils are pretty much the same color.

17

Because we live in the real world. People act towards other people on the basis of skin color in ways they do not act on the basis of eye color. It’s not arbitrary to acknowledge this.

If we started pretending that race didn’t exist, it wouldn’t stop racism. It would just allow racism the protection of being hidden.

18

I don’t know if this is humanly possible but it would be great if it were.

Then you treat the actual actions that were “racism”, you can still do that without labeling them.

What you can’t do if you get rid of labels, is have an us vs them.

I have been saying this for a long while, racism turned around is also racism.

What taking away the labels would do is promote individualism. Treat each person as an individual. If that person is discriminated against, take action against whomever did the discriminating.
If they rise or fall, they do so on their own merits. You can recognize that everyone is going to have different experiences and still not see groups.

19

Well said.

20

But the whole thing about racism is that they’re not being discriminated against as an individual. They’re being discriminated against as a member of a group.

The fact that that group is socially defined doesn’t make it not real.

If we’d never had any racism, then labeling people by race would indeed be racist; but if we’d never had any racism, it wouldn’t happen.

Because we have had and do have racism, pretending that social classification of people into races doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. It only lets people pretend it isn’t happening. It’s pretty hard to fix something when you keep pretending there’s nothing broken there.