I think you should read her book or at least read the interview, just so you can understand Wilkerson’s position. I was skeptical too, but she convinced me that racism has emotional baggage that caste system doesn’t have.
I’ll look into it, but I don’t see anything in her “pillars of caste” that aren’t also true for racism in general. But thanks, I will check it out.
Just to be clear, for my own education.
Are you saying that “Black” and “White” when referring in general to groups of people, to you, means something other than “people who are black” or “people who are white”?
Let me just say it like this: You might not be having the argument you are having with folks in this thread if they were to read Wilkerson’s interview or read her book. It’s not intended to educate the already educated. It’s for folks who have a certain “just so” story in their mind about what racism is.
I have no idea what you mean by “people who are black” and “people who are white”, so I can’t answer. I can only speculate - by “people who are black”, do you mean people who have a lot of melanin? Because that is not in any way the same as Black. Do you mean something else?
And by “people who are white”, do you mean people who have very little melanin? Because, again, that’s not the same as White.
By Black, I mean people who embrace a dominant relatively-recent ancestral origin in Sub-saharan Africa and the African diaspora, with cultural and ethnic ties to that origin (even if that is not the dominant part of their genetic heritage), but specifically excluding Khoisan and certain other minority groups.
And by White, I mean the European equivalent, petering out somewhere in Asia Minor.
But … I take it you’re not “done” with me yet, then?
I am done now, the “last word” game is very juvenile.
It was worth one last question just to clear up exactly how you defined “Black” and “White” when it comes to people. I don’t buy for one second that you were in any way confused about my usage of the terms.
You, on the other hand, don’t think it has anything to do with skin colour. I’m not sure your definition actually helps honest debate and I see other capitalisations in your posts, who knows what other creative wonders lie there?
And flouncing isn’t ?
Did I say I was confused? I’m not confused about how people like you view race. I just don’t play that game.
You don’t see how using the actual social racial groups in question, rather than some Victorian colour-chart caricature, helps debate?
i am sooo sorry. i was unaware capitalization confuses you. i will avoid it in replying to you in future. if you prefer.
Two general points since it looks like the OP has stopped responding to me:
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The capitalization of White and Black when referring to the social constructs of races is not new or unique. Even the NY Times finally switched over.
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The reason this idea of removing the label as fix is that it most people, including myself up to recently, think the racism proceeds from racial ideas to racists policies and actions. It doesn’t work that way. First come the policies, then the ideas that justify them. Modern races were created to justify the African slave trade. Most of the racist ideas in the U.S. trace back to justification for maintaining a slave based economy and then white privilege over free Blacks. The power needs to shift, then the ideas will shift.
I think I caught part of the interview, and it is an interesting and new way of looking at things. I don’t remember how she distinguished it from the concept of institutional racism (which already does remove some of the baggage from the term by not by itself labeling any specific person as racist), but I guess that it would free up comparisons and contrasts between other caste systems in history.
I feel black people can be racists. But I think it’s not as serious a problem as white people being racist.
Just consider the numbers. Assume you have a society where 100,000,000 are white and 10,000,000 are black. Assume everyone is racist towards the other race. And everyone is equally racist and performs one racist act against a person of the other race each day.
Now run the numbers. 100,000,000 white people are racist to 10,000,000 black people and 10,000,000 black people are racist to 100,000,000 white people. This means on average each black person is subjected to ten racist acts per day and each white person is subjected to one racist act every ten days.
So even though every person in this society is equally racist as an individual, the black people are experiencing a hundred times the amount of racism that the white people are. And this is if we only consider individual acts of racism.
It is my experience that racist black people tend to be more anti-black than anti-white. Black folks who are in a position to do the most harm with their prejudice tend to be like this.
I just took one of the Harvard implicit bias tests. My responses suggest a strong automatic preference for white people. Consciously, I think of myself as a non-racist who gets along well with everyone, with a fondness for black folks. But apparently I am lying to myself.
It’s not a surprising result considering I’ve been brought up in a racist society. Sure, as a black person born in the 20th century, I have also been programmed to have a distrust of white folks. I have clear memories of all the times my mother sat me down and lectured me on the importance of being leery of white folks and white folk ways. But even with that programming, my subconscious mind is an Uncle Ruckus, loving them white folks more than those darkies.
You were raised in a white majority society. The white majority is going to see itself as the standard for what’s good and portray itself that way. You received a lot of that acculturation even if it wasn’t directed at you.
Which better represents a person, their conscious self or their unconscious self?
I say that one’s conscious self better represents them, because it’s the result of their own choices. That is, it’s their character, instead of something they have no control over.
Bottom line, you’re not lying to yourself.
It’s the subconscious make that makes choices, though. The conscious mind tells “just so” stories that help a person sleep at night.
Like this one
“I was really rooting for the black job applicant, because I really want the workforce at my company to mirror the people it serves. But the black job applicant was… I don’t know. I just didn’t get a good vibe from him. Maybe he was nervous, but my gut says things wouldn’t work out with him. So I went with the white guy.”
I make choices all the time. But I have no awareness of them most of the time. That’s because my subconscious mind is doing all the mental work. The subconscious mind is what sends shivers up my spine when I see a stranger up ahead. If it only sends shivers up my spine when the stranger looks a certain way, then that means I’ll probably make a decision that’s biased against that “certain way.” But to sleep at night, I’ll tell myself I crossed to the other side of the street to avoid the broken glass on the sidewalk. Or I’ll just blame it on what “something in my gut” said to do.
This is what 99% of contemporary racists do. They think they are being fair and even-handed in their decision-making. They tell themselves they treat everyone equally. But their minds have been programmed to see people “unequally”. Since their mind has also been programmed to see prejudice as as a bad thing, their mind has a tendency to hide its prejudice from its owner. But they are still prejudiced. They will call the cops on the black people barbequing at the park and tell themselves they would do the same thing if it were white people. But they are lying to themselves.
So yes, I do think I lie to myself all the freakin’ time. I know I am a prejudiced, but I can only see it retrospectively, after I have had time to assess the facts dispassionately. But when I’m making decisions, I’m always at the whims of my subconscious. That bitch be cray. She don’t care about facts.
I’d argue with you, but if you’re right your unconscious mind has already made its choice. 
I live in a country that is 10:1 Black to White, and I can guarantee you that Black people still see more White racism than the reverse. People in this society are not equally racist, and I doubt it’s any different elsewhere.
Be very, very sceptical of such one-shot tests. Even the creators say
Tony Greenwald, a University of Washington researcher who co-created the test with Mahzarin Banaji at Harvard, conceded this point, telling me that the IAT is only “good for predicting individual behavior in the aggregate, and the correlations are small.”
Here’s the full Vox article on it, there are plenty of others out there that also cast doubt on its accuracy and ultimate utility. You shouldn’t take a single test as evidence of anything and even multiple tests may not tell you anything useful. Plus, even if there is any measurable bias there it doesn’t necessarily translate into actions that you take. So don’t take it too seriously.
As always, what matters is what you do, not what you think.
This is, of course, true. But monstro is IMO 100% right when she interrogates her subconscious reactions and biases.
Look, if you’re in Great Debates at all, you have a predilection for supporting your beliefs with arguments; and if you’ve any wisdom at all, you know that (most of) the people you’re arguing with are doing the same, they’re not just adopting a position they know is wrong for lulz. It’s possible to support a dumb position with persuasive arguments, in other words.
So when you do something that happens to harm or disadvantage someone else, it’s really easy to come up with a rational, moral justification for it. That doesn’t mean it’s justified or rational.
Knowing about cultural biases and stereotypes to which you’ve been exposed, and interrogating your actions and subconscious motivations when you are disadvantaging or harming someone, is a vital part of not acting as part of an institutionally racist, white supremacist structure.
Yes! Self awareness is a very necessary step. What’s not necessary is faulting yourself for your unconscious mind. If you could control it, it wouldn’t be unconscious. It’s the choices we make despite ourselves that show our character.
Just as there’s no shame in developing bruises after being punched, there’s no shame in developing unconscious biases after living in a racist society.
Yeah, and I think this is an important point. So much of the pushback I hear from conservatives around ideas like privilege and unconscious bias are shame-based: they seem to think that people want them to feel terrible about themselves.
Best as I can tell, not many people are asking for anyone to feel like shit. What’s mostly being asked for is for folks to pay close attention to behavior and to spend less time justifying and defending behaviors that harm other people, especially when that harm conforms to systems of historical white supremacy.
Knowing yourself might make you feel bad from time to time, but that’s not the goal: the goal is to do better.