Inter-Race as well as Intra-Race Racism

In My Humble Opinion
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I’m not sure where this thread goes. I’d like to start a dialogue and it could be heated, or could remain Pit-Free in terms of tone. It’s not a GQ and isn’t really a debate so I put it here. Mods, use your judgement and shift it if need be, please.

In this very heated but educational thread on Michael Richards, there is a lot of discussion regarding racism, and what it is, how one lives with it inside of their head, recognizing it and so on. Go and read. I feel it is the perfect Doper thread, because it started as a rant and has become something truly informative. It is making me think, and from others are posting, making a lot of us think. Excellent.

My last post in there brought up something that I didn’t want to use as a hijack, so here we are. To condense some of the thesis ( theses? thesises? thesis is plural of thesis? ) from that thread, here goes: Some of us feel that racism is a part of everyone and there is something of a sliding scale, based on the idea that we build up an immune system response and how we feel about who we are and our place in the world, and how we feel about the rest of the world predicates to a degree how we react in a situation where racist thoughts may arise in our minds.

Okay. That’s the preamble. A lot of the thread focused on white/black racism. Clearly this is a part of the Human Condition, but I want to talk about racism amongst other races, back and forth. Here’s why. My wife and I are white, the kids are Asian. ( Adpoted from South Korea ). My second cousins are both half-black, half-white. My white brother in law is married to a Korean gal. Our closest friends in town are Latina lesbians. And so on. I’m not trying to buff the halo here, just set the stage.

Apparently both of my kids have very real and negative racist feelings about blacks. We live in a pretty lilywhite town, where there are a few blacks, fewer mexican families and a very very tiny smattering of Asians. In a graduating class of close to 500, there have been years when my son was the only Asian in his grade. And so on.

Between the heightened awareness of who they are racially and the family structure and family dynamic they have grown up in, I’m pained that either of them would express such racism. As the other thread proposed, and I do believe, it is inside of all of us in one way or another. It is what we do with these feelings that determines if we are presenting ourselves as somewhat racist sometimes or A Racist.

I’ve read about racism between the classes in India. Certainly some Asian cultures are looked down upon by others- Koreans have been besmirched by the Japanese for centuries. Spike Lee dove in hard and fast with skin tone/darkness racism within the black community in " School Daze".

Am I way out of line to think that because my kids are already different, that they should be more enlightened and less racist? Is it not reasonable to hope that kids who have likely suffered a shitload of racist remarks, threats, etc. in school would be much more tolerant and accepting of everyone?

Or is it more the case that they feel the need to put someone down because they are put down themselves, and they are empowering themselves mentally by feeling superior? (this concept frankly sickens me, but I realize it may well be the truth)

Is it an ultimate irony? Does it turn out that racism is color-blind?

Cartooniverse

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Just wondering how old are the kids we’re talking about here?

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Gosh. Good question. My son is 16 and a half, my daughter turns 15 in about two weeks.

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  1. The plural of thesis is theses.

  2. Racism is apparently quite a complex issue, judging by this article on the Wikipedia.

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From what I’ve seen, people usually don’t think that way. Which is why, you’ll often see a kid who’s been bullied have no problem turning around and doing the same thing to someone else.

Could be, or it could just be a lack of positive black role models. Probably both. Lots of people have negative feelings about different groups even though they personally haven’t experienced racism. People like to have seperate lines between “us” and “them.” Your kids most likely see whites as being part of “us” even though they’re Asian. Plus, if most of what you know about blacks comes from watching the city news, it’s almost a given that you won’t like them. I was afraid of the inner city (sort of still am at some level) for a long time as a kid, partly because of this.

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It is reasonable to expect, but sadly reality often plays out more ironically.

I never got the whole idea that bullies are just victims of self-esteem. I think some bullies (I don’t know if this is an apt way to describe your children, but I’m going to use the term anyway) are all “put down”. I think some of them feel okey-dokey yet still feel the need to belittle someone.

Racism tends to have a hiearchical structure. In your kid’s minds, it may be highly unfair to make fun of Asians, since it’s obvious, based on the images we get here in the States, that Asians are just as good as whites. But Americans are faced with examples of “black” inferiority on a daily basis. Watch the news for five minutes and you’ll be popped in the face with them. Your kids may think it’s reasonable to discriminate against an obviously inferior group, not knowing that their group is perceived the same way by others (like some Japanese).

No one really thinks all minorities are the same. That goes for not only folks in the majority but also the minorities themselves. In Miami, some of the most racist people I’ve met have been Cuban, who often like to put themselves at the top of the “Latino” hierarchy (some have told me it’s because they, at least the ones who left Cuba after the revolution, are of purer Spanish stock than other groups). Being a minority does not make one more enlightened and free from racism, that’s for damn sure.

The fact that black people aren’t really in their world (beyond their cousins…and they may see them as “different”) may be another reason. It’s easy to villify a group you’ve never interacted with. Growing up, I attended integrated schools and whenever I would run into peers from all-black schools, I would hear racist statements, targeting blacks “like me” and those “white folk” I called my friends. Maybe if they had had more white faces (and not just the teacher’s) in their classrooms, they would have been so narrow-minded.

What can you do? I have no idea. But I’m glad you’ve already talked to them about this. That alone makes you a terrific father.

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Well put. Outside of athletics and entertainment, what representations do these kids see of Black people? I would wager that they’re pretty much absent. After Bernard Shaw and Ed Bradley passed away, you won’t see a Black face regularly reading the news, for example. (Though there is this amazingly brilliant scientist who’s on NOVA on PBS now.) Athletics and entertainment are hardly producing stellar examples of mature, respectable behavior (though, again, the bad behavior gets our attention, not the good stuff). I can see kids who are sheltered watching Flavor Flav or Li’l Jon and seeing those guys as buffoons.

The news sucks too. Here in Boston I regularly see people of color as victims and as criminals. I rarely see them as heroes, even though I know of examples of community activists who are worthy of human interest stories and profiles. Furthermore, if you watched TV, you’d assume that all Blacks and immigrants are dirt poor, though again, I know that’s not the case.

I also think developmentally, teenagers are just beginning to note what really happens in the world. We all hear the Horatio Alger story, and we believe that if we work hard we will be successful. Guess what? To an extent this is true. However, we don’t truly understand how intergenerational transfer - of privilege, education, and money - as well as low self-esteem, a lack of education, and poverty - works to make this easier and harder for folks. I know it wasn’t until we got to US History and I had a really good teacher who constantly told us that King and Chavez were marching only a few years before we were born - and those issues they were marching over had yet to be rectified - that I started to get it. And I’m a well-read Black person. I absorbed the negative societal messages about Black people as well, even though my parents are hardworking people who value education.

I also think your kids, Cartooniverse, are in the awkward position of having to assimilate to the majority cultural milieu lest they be ostracized. They likely know, deep down, that they’re different. But the more they adopt the qualities and values of Whites, they might feel the less likely it is that they will be treated differently. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Janet Helms, and William Cross have written about racial identity formation for Blacks - I’m not aware of theorists who do this work on Asian youth, though Stacy Lee and Vivian Louie writes about Asian youth in predominantly White school settings. I imagine your kids are in the early stages of racial identity formation.

It’s probable and likely that something will happen - being called a name, realizing they are the only Asian kids in their classes, or some other potentially traumatic event - that will disrupt this schema. I’d suggest this usually happens during the college years. Your own efforts to make them aware of diversity will have an impact as well, because they’ll start seeing the disconnect between the stereotypes they hear of other groups and the reality of their friends and relatives who don’t fit those stereotypes.

One of my profs once said, “The only lesson learned from discrimination is how to discriminate.” People like to act as if there’s some nobility in suffering through racism and rising above it. I suppose there is, but the reality is that most people (IMO) just get more bitter and more racist. This probably happened to a much lesser extent because of the combined effects of viewing Blacks as less than human (and some Blacks believing this to some degree), the role of Christianity (suffering in the current life to be rewarded in the afterlife), and the idea of White superiority (not simply through violence but through the idea of the benevolent, paternal Great White Father). Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution delves into this to a significant degree. This was a wickedly brilliant strategy of keeping a racial hierarchy in place.

(Just as a question, Cartooniverse, if you feel comfortable saying so, could you tell us what you kids have said or done that you label as racist?)

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Just to clarify, Bernard Shaw retired - he’s still alive. Ed passed away a few weeks back.

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Well, thank you. I don’t feel very terrific about this, but I know that reading well-thought out responses like yours will give me some guidance, and more to think about. That’s why I did this !

There are some blacks in the school-darned more than Asians, but as is the case with most schools where people of color are in the serious minority, there is some polarization that comes from within.

Nobody forces the black kids to sit at three tables every day out of a cafeteria of, say, 30 tables. It just happens. There’s a piognant and spot-on old Doonesbury where Michael, still in college, goes to sit at one of the “black tables”. It is his attempt to reach out, and while his houesmates look on, we see him sitting there, saying, " Hey, that ole Martin Luther King, Jr. was a heck of a guy, huh? " The other people in the frame are looking mighty unhappy at his glad-handing gesture.

That is the core issue, at least to me. How is it that I have to get my kids to re-examine their views without encouraging such empty glad-handing gestures? The world is full of them, they always LEAP out at me as just tacky and awkward.

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere in threads, but my kids actually do talk trash to their Asian friends, and talk trash to their White and Hispanic friends as well. Of course, their friends sometimes talk it first. Apparently the trash-talk is acceptable all around in their circles- but I do think that this acceptance of trash talk amongst their peers has tainted how they view strangers.

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It might be much simpler than that. They may simply hang out with kids who happen to express a lot of racist views (or the school may be sufficiently segregated that everyone there expresses racist views), and your kids are simply repeating what they hear from their cohort.

As you have painfully become aware, being the object of racism does not innoculate one from catching racism, oneself. And since there are so few Asians in the school, it would appear that your kids have been pretty much accepted as “white,” otherwise neither would have any friends. (Which is not to say they have never been subjected to abuse, only that they seem to have found at least some people who accept them.)

How do they react to or interact with your bi-racial cousins? If they ignore the racial issues, completely, their racism might be a school-centered issue that will not necessarily carry over into their adult lives. If they “make allowances” because “some of their best friends are black” or if they actually express negative reservations about your cousins, then I would thnk you have a more serious problem.

I’ve got no great answers for how to fix the problem. Many years ago my son went through a “blacks are bad” phase when he was around five. I asked who was telling him that (to see whether the day care was infected with that kind of language) and he claimed that he just knew it, himself. It turned out that he was reacting to a kid in his day-care who had worse psych problems than he had who happened to be black. Without jumping his case, I pointed out that she was only one kid and that there were a couple of other black kids there with whom he got along (including her sister), so why did he thnk her race was an issue? Within a few months it seems to have worked itself out. However, I do not think that my solution for a five-year-old would necessarily work for teens.

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One point with racism that I’ve noticed, at least with high schools- it seems that racism only seems to occur when there’s a majority/minority situation, not when it’s a population/exception situation. My high school was mostly white, a small percentage of Latino kids, and a very few black and Asian kids (maybe eight in a school of 1300). You could see some racism inherent in the way the white kids and the Latino kids interacted, but the black and Asian kids never seemed to face quite the same level of racism. I always figured that it’s a lot harder to generalize a group of people when you only know three people in that group. Has anyone else seen that kind of thing before?

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hippy-hollow, didn’t mean to duck your question before. My daughter has expressed distaste at how various black folks look. Both kids have made passing comments, not huge tirades ( though to me they are of equal impact ) about a newspaper story they might read involving black folks and crime, and so on. It’s not overt since they know it’s intolerable to me, but it is important to me to work on this somehow with them.

They have only spent time with those cousins a handful of times in their lives, and when they did, they enjoyed the time with them a lot, it seemed to me. We haven’t seen those cousins in a few years ( they’re in Florida, we’re in NY ) and so I suspect that the emergence of these feelings or ideas might make for a very different vibe the next time. Then again, as has been pointed out, familiarity can erase those stereotypes and feelings sometimes in ways that dealing with a group of strangers cannot.

I find it unacceptable in either situation. tombdebb, it sounds like you tailored the response perfectly to fit the age of your child at the time.

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White people tend to be some of the least racist around and yet they’re the most sensitive about it. Almost every ethnic group will, as a whole, be FAR more racist than white folk.

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I giggle at this claim.

If one wished to assert that whites tend to be no more racist than other groups and have simply had more power in this country to impose their racism on others, I will agree with that statement. There are plenty of folks of all hues who believe that their group is the bestest ever.

However, I cannot recall any groups of whites with whom I have associated who have not had some significant number of racists among them. It is not often the sort of mouth-foaming “they’re dirt” racism or the silly “we need to ‘preserve’ the white race” racism of the worst of us, usually, instead, ranging from a simple, “They’re not LIKE us” to a more disparaging “What do you expect of THEM?”, but it is every bit as common among whites as any other group.

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Sigh…

Okay, you said “almost every ethnic group…” So, which one(s) isn’t (aren’t) more racist than white folks?

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First of all, Cartoniverse, thanks for sharing this. I don’t know how difficult it was for you to post this since you’re posting about your children’s behavior, and not your own. However, since, for many people, a child’s behavior is a reflection of what that child learns from his/her parents/proxy parental units, I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t have paused and wondered what your kids’ attitudes say about you and your wife.

There have been so many thoughtful, well-considered, and intelligent responses here–any or all of which could be correct (save for that other Doper that I won’t mention)–that I almost feel ashamed (and woefully inadequate) to add my two cents, but for what it’s worth, here goes…

I believe it was James Baldwin who said something to the effect of children not being good at doing what we *tell * them, but being very good at doing what we *show * them.

This comes to my mind WRT to a couple of things about your post that stand out for me.

First, you mention that you live in a lily-white town. I’m not interested at the moment in just why you live in a lily-white town (though I think it’s an interesting question), but it seems to me that this isn’t an environment that would regularly expose your children to a variety of ethnicities, at least not to a wide variety, and not in large numbers.

The other thing is that, though you have relatives of other ethnicities, there’s not much contact. I know–the bi-racial (black/white) cousins live in Florida, and it is, as far as I can tell, no one’s fault that you don’t get to see them often. Nonetheless, not being exposed on a regular basis to these relatives can’t be helping your children in terms of getting to know people who are “different” from them. Mind you, I don’t necessarily believe that exposure to these cousins would prevent the formation of hierarchical racist tendencies,* but I’m guessing that every little bit helps.

*I know two young ladies who are, like me, Jews of color (their mother is white and Jewish, and their father (who is deceased) was African-American. Well, their mother’s family, who wasn’t happy with her being with a black guy from the get-go, have treated these young laides like crap. From what these ladies tell me, it’s pretty clear that these people are anti-black. Bless their hearts, though, because these ladies haven’t cussed anybody out yet (out of not wanting to make things more difficult for their mother), but it stings for them to be the recipients of racism by their own blood.

I honestly don’t know what’s going on with your kids, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some of the ole Asians-as-the-model-minority dialectic at work here. I wouldn’t be surprised if your children were getting signals from white society (and their white peers who are, of course, part of white society)–both outrightly and subliminally–that, sure, they may not be white, but at least they’re not black, either. And because they’re at a time in their lives where fitting in seems to be Most Important Thing in the World (which I don’t think even most people twice, thrice, and beyond your children’s ages ever grow out of), well, I don’t know that I’m surprised that they might view blacks as inferior. (There’s a Doper–col_10022–who is Asian, and he’s talked about clients of his employer who’ve made anti-black, and anti-Latino remarks in his presence and who have apparently felt fine doing so because he’s Asian.)

As to what you do about this, at this stage of the game? I’m not sure, but I certainly have my ideas. You’ve indicated that they’re aware that racism’s not cool with you, and that’s good. I wonder, though, just how explicit your conversations about this topic have been with them. I mean, **tomndebb ** is right–I certainly think that they’re at the age now where you don’t have to sugarcoat things for them and where they can begin to, if not not completely process, then at least hear about, the more complex realities of racist thinking.

(When my brother and I were young–pre-teens, I believe–and Mama was looking for a way to prepare us for a racist society without freaking us out or making us hate all whites, she simply told us that, “Some white people will expect the worse from you just because you’re black, but that’s not how all white people think.” Mama is a child of the Jim Crow South, so I was, as I grew a bit older and began to experience racist behavior by whites, surprised that she could be so doggone magnanimous in her approach, bless her heart. Of course, her feelings about race are just as complex as anyone else’s, but she refused to teach her kids racism just because she herself was a victim of it. But I digress. Now, I imagine that if she’d had such a conversation with us when we were in our teens, she might’ve delved into some of the more complex specifics. Apparently, though, she didn’t feel the need to have that conversation at that time in our lives, becuase I don’t recall ever having it. She did, however, from the time we were very young, expose us to white people. One of her dearest friends from before my brother and I were born was a white woman, also a Southerner (but not from where we’re from), who actually had a bi-racial (white/black) son, and we associated with her enough so that her whiteness became, well, just as normalized, I think, as blackness was. Of course, most of our teachers were white, too, and there were still a few (but not many) whites left in our neighborhood when we were younger, so it’s not as if whiteness ever had a chance to become strange to us. Aww, hell, I just forgot why I was writing this very long paragraph. Oh, well, I guess it can serve as part of the expose-your-children-early-and-often part of my post.)

So, yeah (and *now * I’ve remembered why I was writing the previous paragraph), if you haven’t had more in-depth conversations with your kids about racism, you might want to begin doing that now. Now, I don’t have children, but I’m not a complete fool, so I realize that teens might not want to share their deepest feelings with their parents, especially when it comes to something that they know their parents strongly disapprove of. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe they just need for you to tell them how *you * feel about and handle the complexities of racism. I certainly don’t think it could hurt them as they try to figure out, in years to come, how to deal with their own feelings.

Other than speaking more openly with them (oh, and letting them know that it’s okay for them to speak with you about their feelings, even if what they might sometimes feel is taboo in your home), I don’t know what else you can reasonably do. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t try to force them to prove anything by developing more friendships with blacks. Encourage? Definitely. But force, as in “You’re going to make three black friends by the end of this report card period, or else”? Tempting, I know, but uh-uhh. Do reiterate, though, that there’s going to be a big problem with Daddy if you find that they’re discriminating in any way against blacks just because they’re black. And I do think that it’s appropriate for you to ask, for instance, “Johnny, why don’t you have any black friends come over to the house?” or “Suzie, why aren’t there any black girls who hang out with you and the others at the mall on Saturdays?”

Other than that, I have nothing.

And like **monstro ** said–::checking to make sure that it was, indeed, monstro, since I got her and **you with the face mixed up ** in another thread::–the fact that you’re even thinking about this the way that you are makes you a great dad!

My very best wishes, dude.

[sligh hijack]P.S.–Just out of curiosity, if you were graduated from high school in Philly, from where were you graduated? I’m Central, 247th class (1988).[/slight hijack]

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Li’l Pluck, thank you for that beautifully thought-out post. Your posts are a treat to read, you know. Before I address what you said, I need to get this out of the way.

Mmmmm. Central Girls. :slight_smile: Weren’t you across from Einstein Hospital on Broad St. ?

I was in the 'burbs. Class of '80. I’m old.

Now, to your words. This is hard to write out, but it is the honest answer and your questions ( and the questions of others in here ) deserve it.

First of all, I could not agree more that my kids may well be enjoying/suffering the Asian positive skew that is rampant. They’ve made remarks for years regarding how their Asianness ( word? new word !! ) is seen by others. This in the context of my wife’s brother being married to a Chinese gal and having had three AmerAsian kids. There are various races in the family, and the kids are well aware of how others view Asians. It is a source of humor to them, but also a more subtle source of pressure, methinks.

My wife, I am sad to say, is the source of the negative racial mindset to a great degree. Children learn what they live indeed. Her family is the same way, clearly she learned this at home. It is- as has been pointed out- the most insidious kind of racism since it is not an open, in-your-face thing. It’s the subtleties that hurt the most, isn’t it? I fight for a balance in the house, my kids are well aware of how I feel, how my family feels and what is right.

I live in this town and county because it is roughly half way between her career and my career,and it offered what was at the time the finest schools to be found in the county. This town is not unique in it’s make-up, living two towns over would have meant the same thing in those terms.

Thank you for sharing your background a bit. I was madly in love with a girl of color who was the ONLY half-black, half-white Jewish girl in the entire synogogue growing up. She and her brother were it. My kids are aware of this, and they know my Mom had quite the serious love with a black fellow when she was a teenager ( 1952-ish, in the Bronx ). It matters, I think, to share all of one’s past with one’s kids because it helps them form a framework for how they view the world. In the case of our household, and I don’t mean to make this such a stark contrast ( ahem…), I continually have to balance negative stereotyping and remarks with other remarks to try to get the kids to SEE.

How explicit have my conversations been? Well, not explicit enough I fear, hence my OP. Remember, they’re not the same race as I am. This topic has never NOT been a source of conversation in our house as the kids have grown up. What better way to make them understsand tolerance and acceptance than to remind them that they wish most deeply that other kids were tolerant and accepting of them. Now, as teens, I believe you are spot-on: They are accepted as white in a way that Latinos or Black kids are not. I feel that sucks, but you are correct in that statement.

When son or daughter has said something overt, and that hasn’t happened much, I’ve let them know how it pains me. I know that at one point a few years ago, I said words to the effect of, " Don’t you realize that if I felt that way about Asians, you would not be my kids?? " That stopped 'em cold but of course, comments like that have limited impact in the long-term. I wish they didn’t. They shouldn’t.

How they view themselves is so important, and it would be horrible if they viewed themselves as better than anyone else on the planet. They learn far too much from the mass media, esp. my daughter who is quite enamored of reality t.v. shows and m.t.v. programs. Her view of how folks of color live- opposed to anyone else- is skewed. In fact, she thinks that folks of color live a certain way, which in of itself is insane, and subtly racist.

Hmmm. I used to shoot a lot of music videos, especially rap videos. Shot a bunch of M.T.V. Cribs as well. They’ve grown up hearing those stories. I have not been aware of this, but clearly the people of color in my life who are…just…people in my life who I work with, who I enjoy, whatever, have not seeped into conversations in the ways that public figures I’ve met who are of color have seeped in. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to make sure I presented things that way. It kind of smacks of gladhanding a bit, you know? " Hey kids, I met this great crane op at work, and he was African-American !!! " You know what I am saying here. However, it is possible that because it is not remarkable to ME who I meet or am working with or friends with, I don’t remark upon it much to my kids and that may be a part of the problem, thought I surely didn’t want it to be. Food for thought.

All of the posts in here are well-thought out and contribute in a positive way to this dialogue. Even the ones I don’t agree with.

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Agreed.

I’m concerned that the OP might be overly dismissive of the kids’ views. I do not know how the racial dynamics play out in that area, but in my experience, there is a good bit of pandering to blacks (Black History Month is usually implemented as wholesale praise of blacks rather than a detailed examination of said history; various activities for [non-Asian and Jewish] minorities only). Black students also tend to be more insular than many other races, and, for one reason or another, are more prone to crime. When college-application time comes (they may be thinking about that already), blacks get a bonus while Asians are arguably discriminated against. Not to mention, the image the media give of blacks, (when they not being obligatorily complimentary as per PC), are not exactly good.

I’d say, rather than giving a knee-jerk “Racism bad!” reaction, which will probably just alienate them more from you (certainly they’re less likely to share views with you if you consistently shoot them down), ask them on what basis they make those claims. Not only is it then easier to educate them, you too may learn something more about the truth-value of their claims. At any rate, reasoned discussion is far to be preferred over empty rhetoric on your (and possibly their) side.

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Hippy Hollow, great post (just as I expected)! I wish that I were as well read about this subject as you are.

When I read the above mentioned snip, I thought to myself, “Oh, he’s probably talking about Neil.” Neil, as in Neil deGrasse Tyson, who works at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. He’s actually the the director of the Museum’s Hayden Planetarium, which is part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space Science.

I don’t know Neil well, but I’ve worked with him in the past (I occasionally contract myself out to them as a transcriptionist for the various fora that they host), and you’re right–that brutha is smart as a whip! And funny, too. And, in my experience, a nice guy. Oh, and cute! :slight_smile:

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Cartooniverse, I’m about to go meet with some friends, so I’ll reply to your post later on.

And, athelas? I’m not quite sure what to make of parts of your post, but perhaps I’ll mull it over and address that later on, too.