Even a slightest reference to race is very risky sometimes. If there’s a hint of racial prejudice, people will try to rip the cover off it. People sometimes think you might not be aware of your own “programming”, even though you THINK you are aware.
Should we take that risk and say whatever we want, or should we be always very careful?
Don’t assume everyone has that experience if they talk about race. Not risky at all to me.
Time for risk assessment. Are you risking being knocked down and stomped? Keep your mouth shut. Could you be fired? Keep your mouth shut. Will politically correct folks get all over sensitive and call you names? Hey, you’re on this message board, so you’ve seen plenty of that … if you can handle the labels, speak up. If not, keep your mouth shut.
Those wounds (racial) won’t heal any time soon.
Agreed, it comes down to what “risk” you are facing exactly. Don’t risk saying something that people could take the wrong way if you could be putting yourself in serious danger over it. However, if it’s the more common situation where it’s just some uptight person is trying to project their own discomfort about other races on you or just likes to over-react and engage in Recreational Outrage, I don’t think it’s good to cater to that.
I’ve noticed that some white people are so paranoid about looking racist that they will make it a mission to take offense on behalf of other races in any race-related situation. For example, I remember a while back here there was a post on here by some white person fretting about if they should take a stand against someone’s joke about Asian drivers on facebook even though it sounded like the Facebook post was made as a way of teasing an Asian friend rather than genuine anti-Asian bigotry.
See, that’s the problem with white people. Unfortunately, sometimes their sense of humor is as lacking as their melanin is.*
*that was meant to be a joke obviously, but I bet if I hadn’t made this disclaimer someone would have gotten all upset over it.
Also, you guys can’t dance.
Why are those two extremes the only choices? It’s not always black and white.
In my old workplace, we had mandatory diversity sensitivity training. My group had twelve people, of whom one was black. He and I were pretty good buds.
Someone asked about our rights when away from the workplace. I raised my hand and said, “What you do at home isn’t governed by these rules. I’m nearly halfway through my manuscript of my next book, ‘The Negro: Threat of Menace?’”
The consultant teaching the course nearly had apoplexy, right on the spot. My bud laughed himself sick. It was one of my finest coups.
(And, yeah, I was chancing my arm. But I judged the situation correctly.)
I once asked “what is wrong with you people?”
Ruined my life it did.
Ha! So this actually happened to me a million years ago when I was in high school: A bunch of kids were acting like idiots, as high school kids often do, and I remarked “You people are useless.” Oh, I’m black, as was everyone else in the room, by the way. So someone responded, “You’re black too.” Uh, thanks for the reminder? Jeez, by “you people” I didn’t mean “you people.” I meant “you people” as in “y’all.” Fucking black people, I swear…
Me, too!
This coup makes me wish the police turned a fire hose on you, to see how you like that kind of treatment. Why would you think that’s funny? Did any of the training work?
iISWYDT
There’s a whitewashing joke in here somewhere.
Hey, some of my best friends are fucking black people.
This. Unless you’re quoting Gobineau, mentioning race isn’t going to offend most people.
Are you intelligent enough to understand there are only 2 choices? You mention it or you don’t mention it. What else can you do? You don’t have multiple choices.
Ho can you be so certain? There are risks for everyone.
Well there’s no need for name-calling 
, but I assumed we were talking about things that were more risky than just in the sense that everything in the world is risky. Obviously, as is the case for all topics, you have to consider the circumstances. I might joke with a friend about race but I wouldn’t with my boss, because duh.
I teach high school English, and the course is AP English Language, which is basically a class in rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. We pretty much have to talk about race because so much of the significant rhetoric of the last 200 years has been about race relations. Furthermore, an awareness of race relations often runs through any work of rhetoric from the last 200 years. In fact, I do a whole unit on “Race, Gender, and Class” at the start of the year because they need to start thinking in these terms.
My students are a very diverse lot: not just black and white and Hispanic, but very rich (maybe 10%) and very poor (65% on free/reduced lunch). I teach kids from all over Africa and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. I put a lot of work into projecting that I am a scientist talking about all this, and I think I am pretty successful. The important thing to make sure it’s not about bad guys and good guys and blame: it’s about social constructs that existed and some that still exist. It’s probably easier because the group is so diverse, and because they are so young. We aren’t talking about them, or me. We are talking about what “people” think/believe/expect.
I also teach Economics. I dare you to teach currency exchange without drawing little stick figures displaying various ethnic stereotypes. I am not sure it can be done. I mean, you could say the words, but they remember the little dude with the beret and the wineglass.
Because it is funny.
This thread brings to mind that study I read about a long time ago, indicating that many (most?) white people deliberately avoid socialization with black people because they are afraid of being perceived as racist. I’m pretty sure that counts as irony.
I took a year-long course on American Racism in grad school and before that course I was terrified of talking about race around racial and ethnic minorities. I really wanted to hang on to the idea that color-blindness was ideal. Well, I learned how to talk about race, in a class full of white people and minorities. I came to the conclusion that color-blindness isn’t and probably will never be a thing - and it shouldn’t necessarily be a thing, either. Sometimes in that class people would get pissed off at each other, but we always worked through it. I credit a lot of that to the wisdom and diplomacy of our professor.
So I’m not as afraid as I used to be. I think misunderstandings are bound to happen, and sometimes maybe I really will say something truly ignorant, but at some point you gotta get over that fear because ignoring it will not make the problem go away.
I was in Navy recruit training (bootcamp) in the summer of 1973. “Race Relations” classes were mandatory because there had been race riots aboard the carrier Kitty Hawk in October '72 and the powers that be decided that a class was just the trick. Everyone in the company hated those classes. We’d go in a relatively happy company and come out with half of the women in tears for one reason or another. The two most vivid memories I have are of the ditzy little redhead declaring: “I’m not prejudiced! I dated a black guy once!” and one of the black girls getting all wound up because flesh colored bandaids weren’t the color of her flesh. My 19-y/o self wasn’t sure how to deal with any of it, but I felt like the instructors were to blame - they did a really poor job of addressing the topic and they created a lot of bad feelings. I often wondered if the repeal of DADT led to similar “classes” dealing with uncloseted gays in the military…
Years later when my daughter was in kindergarten, she came home and told me she didn’t like a particular boy in her class who happened to be black. I braced myself and asked her why, and she explained that he was a “kissy-boy”. Apparently this kid liked to chase the girls and kiss them - well, what 5-year-old girl wouldn’t find that icky! I was also relieved that my kid wasn’t a little racist, but for a bit, I was really nervous.
Too bad “Don’t be a jerk” isn’t a universally accepted rule of thumb.