# If America got rid of all racism . . . how much would really change? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 14, 2004, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204 "2004-03-14T06:22:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2004, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/41 "2004-03-23T03:18:52Z")
> [@astro](#): > > The only way that American black families are going to become fully class enfranchised is to become like other families. Whether one thinks this is a scouring and dis-respecting of the uniqueness and strength of extant female centered back family structures is irrelevant. Until the black family can somehow (and I have no idea how this is to be accomplished) re-empower the black man, none of this is going to happen. This will have to come from within and probably over a very long period of time, external, well meaning, social engineering attempts to do this are likely to have a poor record of success. So you’re saying that if America got rid of racism, it wouldn’t help the blacks significantly? And nothing else government or society could do would help either? > [@astro](#): > > The man is this way, because his father was this way etc. etc., up and down the generations. Fathers train sons by behavior and example. If the example is dysfunctional or absent, the training will be dysfunctional. Slavery broke the back of black families over many generations. Matriarchal centered families wasn’t “a choice”, it was the only choice for survival. But why can’t black boys use their **mothers** as role models? Is the psychological gender barrier just too hard to cross? ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2004, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/42 "2004-03-23T05:11:39Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I don’t think racism is a problem at all. It’s sheer classism. People don’t look down on people because they are black, they look down on them because black people as a percentage are more likely to be uneducated and poor(not stupid and lazy). > [@](#): > > In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are “remarkably common” in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker. … > > Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback. This would suggest either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower productivity. > > The 50 percent gap in callback rates is statistically very significant, Bertrand and Mullainathan note in Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873). It indicates that a white name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience. [http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html) ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/43 "2004-03-24T06:07:34Z")
I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that all of the OP’s questions would disappear if rascim were to be universally cured. Blacks would finally enjoy freedom from being a seperate, monolithic community based on what’s literally the most superficial thing of all - skin color. Questions about black crime and black poverty wouldn’t even make sense; we’d soley be talking about American crime and American poverty. Racial categories would be destroyed along with racism in your hypothetical, as they’d have no reason to exist without it. Therefore, nobody would be able look down upon blacks because of negative statistics; they’d never be compiled, so black people would get the same clean slate whites get (and I’m just humoring you **mswas**. I’m not really dumb enough believe that you and the people you defend actual walk around repeating statistics about blacks in your heads so that you can prudently avoid them. You’re just a run-of-the-mill racist who conjures a bland, text-book excuse post-event to hide your intellectual laziness and cowardice and convince yourself that you’re being “rational”. Racism is for brain-dead morons who need arbitrary shortcuts because the idea that each person is different is too overwhelming for their weak minds). “Blacks” won’t have low test scores, many American students would; and it wouldn’t be a “black” problem, it’d either be a national problem or the repsonsibity of the low-scorer’s parents. So in a way, all black problems would disappear; they’d just be normal problems, without unnecessary racial slant. Not all blacks would benifit, but I’d certainly be having a better time - and that’s the important thing. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/44 "2004-03-25T01:52:11Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that all of the OP’s questions would disappear if rascim were to be universally cured. Blacks would finally enjoy freedom from being a seperate, monolithic community based on what’s literally the most superficial thing of all - skin color. Questions about black crime and black poverty wouldn’t even make sense; we’d soley be talking about American crime and American poverty. Racial categories would be destroyed along with racism in your hypothetical, as they’d have no reason to exist without it. Therefore, nobody would be able look down upon blacks because of negative statistics; they’d never be compiled, so black people would get the same clean slate whites get (and I’m just humoring you **mswas**. I’m not really dumb enough believe that you and the people you defend actual walk around repeating statistics about blacks in your heads so that you can prudently avoid them. You’re just a run-of-the-mill racist who conjures a bland, text-book excuse post-event to hide your intellectual laziness and cowardice and convince yourself that you’re being “rational”. Racism is for brain-dead morons who need arbitrary shortcuts because the idea that each person is different is too overwhelming for their weak minds). “Blacks” won’t have low test scores, many American students would; and it wouldn’t be a “black” problem, it’d either be a national problem or the repsonsibity of the low-scorer’s parents. So in a way, all black problems would disappear; they’d just be normal problems, without unnecessary racial slant. Not all blacks would benifit, but I’d certainly be having a better time - and that’s the important thing. Mswas’s hypothesis that the primary source of antipathy toward black Americans is rooted more in the context of economic class than skin color, may be wide open to significant discussion and debate, but your hysterical characterization of him as a not-so-crypto “brain dead” racist for daring to look as the issue as a class based vs a skin color issue, is a lot more indicactive of “intellectual laziness” than his argument is, however flawed you may consider it to be. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/45 "2004-03-25T03:14:45Z")
> [@BoardMother](#): > > Undefined statements of agreement or disagreement are irrelevant. Irrelevant to what? I was saying there is no point in debating the merits of what I consider to be a silly assertion you have made until the relevancy of that assertion to the topic at hand is demonstrated. > [@](#): > > _Acts of racism are independant of race and country and they are also independant of which group constitutes the majority. This is comparable to the situation in the USA._ ## What I am trying to determine is why you felt the need to make a comparison in the first place. No one brought up Zimbabwe but you. What was your purpose in making the remark? ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/46 "2004-03-25T05:14:56Z")
> [@](#): > > _astro_ > Mswas’s hypothesis that the primary source of antipathy toward black Americans is rooted more in the context of economic class than skin color, may be wide open to significant discussion and debate, but your hysterical characterization of him as a not-so-crypto “brain dead” racist for daring to look as the issue as a class based vs a skin color issue, is a lot more indicactive of “intellectual laziness” than his argument is, however flawed you may consider it to be. It may be “open for debate” for you, but I’ve already decided that I disagree with all of those transparent and moronic semantics. If you assume somebody belongs to an undesirable class because of their race\*, how is that not racist? Most people I know dislike whites because too many of them, probably due to societal privileges, are arrogant and oblivious. It’s not about not liking them because they’re white, it’s an attitude thing. They dislike arrogant, clueless black people too, so it’s not necessarily a race thing. There, does turning the situation around make the idiocy more obvious? And before I pressed submit, I just realized that you all may have mistakenly thought that blacks belong to one class. That’s the only way the “class not racism” argument would work. I guess I should point out that that’s wrong, blacks span all classes. For example, Oprah is black, and she would be considered upper class (or higher than that maybe, I don’t know all the class titles). Meanwhile, my black mother would be considered middle-class. The idle men I pass on the way to school are lower class, while the homeless men are the underclass. ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/47 "2004-03-25T14:35:04Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Mswas’s hypothesis that the primary source of antipathy toward black Americans is rooted more in the context of economic class than skin color, may be wide open to significant discussion and debate, but your hysterical characterization of him as a not-so-crypto “brain dead” racist for daring to look as the issue as a class based vs a skin color issue, is a lot more indicactive of “intellectual laziness” than his argument is, however flawed you may consider it to be. The roots are based on a system that one group of people are inferior, sub-human because of their skin color. That notion is the cornerstone of race classification. To argue that it, the source of antipathy, is rooted in economic class cleary points out a lack of knowledge of the history and why people act and think the way that they do. When you believe in the propaganda promoted by racists either actively or passively and shape your attitudes and notions around that propaganda, your thinking is racist. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/48 "2004-03-25T21:37:26Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > The roots are based on a system that one group of people are inferior, sub-human because of their skin color. That notion is the cornerstone of race classification. To argue that it, the source of antipathy, is rooted in economic class cleary points out a lack of knowledge of the history and why people act and think the way that they do. > > When you believe in the propaganda promoted by racists either actively or passively and shape your attitudes and notions around that propaganda, your thinking is racist. In reading both Pizzabrat’s and your characterizations of mswas’s post I’m thinking this must be one of the most obvious examples of how people intellectually de-construct someone’s statements in order to arrive at a foregone conclusion. Mswas was making a fairly simplistic, Soc 101 freshmen argument that it’s not primarily skin color _in and of itself_ that people make discriminatory judgments on, but rather the underclass behaviors that people disproportionately associate with black people. This basic chicken and egging analysis of the issue is a useful intellectual exercise, and through good faith argument will (IMO) yield the conclusion that insofar as it’s extraordinarily difficult for most people to tease these elements apart in real world experience, that an Ur level reactive “racism” based mainly on skin color _does_ indeed exist as a reality for many otherwise middle class (and even liberal in many cases) well meaning non-black people. Having said this, it is not particularly useful debate wise to start slinging personal aspersions around of “you’re a racist, and/or your thinking is racist if you don’t believe there’s pure, color based racism”. It’s a lazy and disingenuous way to debate. Mswas’s argument may be incorrect or incomplete in its considerations, but that doesn’t make mswas a “racist”, unless the point being attempted is that we’re all racists in some form or fashion if we’d only open out eyes, and if that’s the case the term “racist” ceases to be rhetorically useful. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/49 "2004-03-25T22:04:38Z")
> [@](#): > > ## mswas’s hypothesis that the primary source of antipathy toward black Americans is rooted more in the context of economic class than skin color, may be wide open to significant discussion and debate, but your hysterical characterization of him as a not-so-crypto “brain dead” racist for daring to look as the issue as a class based vs a skin color issue, is a lot more indicactive of “intellectual laziness” than his argument is, however flawed you may consider it to be. > > Having said this, it is not particularly useful debate wise to start slinging personal aspersions around of “you’re a racist, and/or your thinking is racist if you don’t believe there’s pure, color based racism”. It’s a lazy and disingenuous way to debate. Mswas’s argument may be incorrect or incomplete in its considerations, but that doesn’t make mswas a “racist”, unless the point being attempted is that we’re all racists in some form or fashion if we’d only open out eyes, and if that’s the case the term “racist” ceases to be rhetorically useful. **Astro** , what you’re referring to was a parenthetical aside to **mswas** based on the semi-coherent things he’s said here and in the first of [BBrainGlutton’s\*\* trilogy. Why are you harping on it like it was my main argrument? Just forget the label and address the other issue; that the whole “it’s classism not racism” argument doesn’t make sense. Nobody would ever say they hate people soley because of something superficial like skin color; they always have rational reasons attached. The end result is still that blacks are discriminated against because of their race, there’s just an extra step in the syllogism (I hate the poor and undeducated; blacks are poor and undeducated; I hate blacks. WHAT THE HELL IS THE DIFFERENCE!??!). Also, I said he was a “run-of-the-mill racist”. Isn’t “run-of-the-mill” the exact opposite of a hysterical characterization? ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204/50 "2004-03-26T22:11:51Z")
> [@astro](#): > > In reading both Pizzabrat’s and your characterizations of mswas’s post I’m thinking this must be one of the most obvious examples of how people intellectually de-construct someone’s statements in order to arrive at a foregone conclusion. My attempt is to de-construct the notions presented here that are put forth without looking at what happened in the past. To analyze this issue and not looking at the past is like being clueless as to why a man has one leg because everyone you know has two. > [@](#): > > Mswas was making a fairly simplistic, Soc 101 freshmen argument that it’s not primarily skin color _in and of itself_ that people make discriminatory judgments on, but rather the underclass behaviors that people disproportionately associate with black people. This basic chicken and egging analysis of the issue is a useful intellectual exercise, and through good faith argument will (IMO) yield the conclusion that insofar as it’s extraordinarily difficult for most people to tease these elements apart in real world experience, that an Ur level reactive “racism” based mainly on skin color _does_ indeed exist as a reality for many otherwise middle class (and even liberal in many cases) well meaning non-black people. Is this site is supposed to be about fighting ignorance or fighting to stay ignorant? 😃 Fairly simplistic? I read that as clueless. I would go as far to say that your own analysis is short sighted. Why? Your analysis is rooted in the notion that this soceity began the day that you were concious that there was a society. Most of the information and the analysis that you have on the issue comes from sources that are also short sighted. If that wasn’t true, believe me, you’d be looking at this in an entirely different way. > [@](#): > > Having said this, it is not particularly useful debate wise to start slinging personal aspersions around of “you’re a racist, and/or your thinking is racist if you don’t believe there’s pure, color based racism”. It’s a lazy and disingenuous way to debate. Mswas’s argument may be incorrect or incomplete in its considerations, but that doesn’t make mswas a “racist”, unless the point being attempted is that we’re all racists in some form or fashion if we’d only open out eyes, and if that’s the case the term “racist” ceases to be rhetorically useful. I said it before, if your notion of things is shaped by a racist agenda, then your thinking is in fact racist. Ignorance of the law is no defense! 😃 If I held certain notions about Jews or Homosexuals, I would be quickly labled anti-semetic or homophobic even if, according to your definition, I was incorrect or my argument incomplete. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-america-got-rid-of-all-racism-how-much-would-really-change/234204.md?page=2)