Culture isn’t the same as race, and disliking aspects of a particular culture is not racist.
I dislike a lot of American black pop culture (the aforementioned saggy pants, rap music, loud car stereo, gold teeth, tough guy posturing, etc.), but I love the black pop culture in Jamaica, and the Bahamas, and Senegal. Does that make me a racist?
I don’t think that I’m superior to any black person by virtue of being born white; that is what would define me as a racist.
Rand, is the bolded word a typo for morons, or does it mean someone else? I’m not mocking, just curious.
Statements like “I’m cool with whites, but I don’t like country music, mullets, trailer parks, or NASCAR” aren’t what I call racist.
Obnoxious, yes. Insular, yes. Stupid, yes. Ridiculous, yes.
But racist? Not so much.
Yeah, morons. I get fumbly on the blackberry sometimes.
Damn. I was hoping it was some obscure thing from The Fountainhead.
Apropos of nothing, you’ll be heartened to know that my favorite niece intends to win the Fountainhead essay contest this year.
Would you mind linking to an example or two? Thank you.
Unless in your community, the parts of town with the highest ethnic density are also the parts with the highest incidence of crime. Then it wouldn’t be prejudiced, it would be proof, right?
Der Trihs said that it was making the assumption that made it racist thinking. You have changed the premise of his statement, Fish. If you do that, you can get any answer you want.
You are going to have to change you user name! Give yourself time. My favorite background drawing, Poet on the Mountain is Chinese and I usually have five Asian CDs lined up and ready to go. Very soothing and restful.
You know how you have a mental picture of Dopers in your head…For some reason, I’ve always pictured you with dark skin. Rationally, I’ve never made any assumptions one way or the other. Maybe you remind me of one of my students named Brian.
You went on to mention some of the other cultures that you like. Most of my students (inner city kids) were probably more like the young people in those cultures than like the American black pop culture that you described above. My kids did like rap music, but they didn’t have many saggy pants and they didn’t own cars or have gold teeth. And they weren’t into the tough guy posturing except for a very small percentage.
I know that’s the image that leaves the impression, but the kids that I knew were just cool, friendly, funny and dear to me.
High crime rates in those areas would by definition be proof that they are high crime areas. Rather tautologically so. It wouldn’t be proof that “black people = high crime”.
This is an interesting question.
I live in an almost unbelievable melting pot - in my street alone I’m surrounded by working- and middle-class whites, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families, Chinese families, houses full of young Poles, Romanians or Brazilians doing cleaning jobs, west Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Hindus from India, and many many more.
The guys who stalk around here with an aggressive attitude and window-shattering bass are usually young men of south Asian or white working-class English origin. The black people I encounter daily are for the most part quiet and friendly. Which itself sounds like a stereotype, but it’s only personal observation.
The big difference between where I am, and the question posed in the OP, I guess, is that I’m not in any kind of monocultural ghetto. I don’t really associate bad behaviour with any one culture - assholes is assholes. I think it boils down to the thought that I would avoid “underclass” areas. Which makes me something of a snob, perhaps, but not a racist.
Were those areas dominated by a particular racial or cultural characteristic, I might start associating that behaviour with that particular race or culture; I like to think I wouldn’t though.
Race and racism are such charged words in America that it is almost impossible to have a meaningful discussion with it being hijacked or derailed.
Also, the word race originally did not refer to genetic material but to culture and group to which one belonged and so you could speak of the Irish race or the Spanish race. In America the word has changed meaning but not 100% so, in the end, the whole issue is confusing. A label like “racism” is defined as “bad” but otherwise not well defined. This is meaningless and confusing. It should be the other way around.
So, the OP “Is it racist to prefer certain populations or places due to cultural differences?” is unclear because it depends on how you define “racist” and it is meaningless anyway. Only the OP knows what he means by racist and can answer the question. It seems though that the meaning intended is “is it wrong to prefer…etc”. When we have no clear definition of the meaning of words then any communication becomes difficult if not impossible.
Websters:
I don’t think it’s racist to prefer certain cultures over others. The problem comes when people refuse to see past culture, including their own, when presented with individuals. People are the product of culture and culture helps us understand people, but we are more than just our culture.
Another problem is when people wrongly assume someone belongs to particular culture or subculture just because of their appearance. I’m reminded of Freejooky’s thread about the “thuggish” black students. Wearing a hoodie with Timberlands does not make for a thug any more than wearing jean cutoffs and sandals makes for a hippie. If someone dislikes a person based on misconceived notions of a particular subculture, then they are prejudiced. And if those misconceived notions are racially linked, they are probably using cultural preference to mask racial prejudice.
I have found that when people condemn an entire culture, they usually haven’t spent a whole lot of time being emersed in it. As a teenager, I hated country music and would say so reflexively, just like many people do with rap music. But then I started working at Six Flags, in a section of the park where country and western and bluegrass were piped in over the sound system in incessant loops. Over time, it wore down my defenses and I started to like some of the songs. So now, when I hear someone express utter hatred for country music, I’ll say, “I don’t really like most of it, but there are some songs that I really like.” I don’t belong to that subculture and don’t understand most of the things in it, but I can respect it enough not to bash it every time it’s mentioned.
Close-mindedness and cultural blinders aren’t necessarily racist, but that doesn’t mean they’re admirable qualities.
No, it’s not “almost impossible”. Maybe it’s not possible for all of us to be in agreement, but that doesn’t make the discussion unmeaningful.
This really is more of an IMHO than a GD. (It’s hard to be a debate when 96% of the posts are in agreement and the others are only mildly tilted the other direction.)
So, off to IMHO.
[ /Modding ]
No, it isn’t racist to prefer cultural elements against each other. That would be like saying it’s racist if you don’t care for Asian cuisine. Just like food, there are “ingredients” if you will that make up a culture’s “flavor”. That flavor is not going to be to everyone’s taste as we are all different in terms of our upbringing, exposure, level of adventurousness, and personal experience.
Racism is based on the premise that a person or culture is inferior implicitly because it came from someone of a different physical type from yourself. It’s the difference between saying: " I’d rather not try sushi because I don’t care much for Asian food." and " I won’t try sushi because it’s Asian."
I believe that cultural elements are subjective, but not intrinsically of equal value. Most are positive or neutral, but some are negative. The trick is to recognize that they are elements, and can be taken or left without casting a pall on the entire culture, or even taken further upon the ethnicity or race that produced that culture.
I think what Chronos said was largely overlooked. Nowadays, we are quick to break things down into Black vs. White. But, really, it is largely the socioeconomic differences that we are perceiving. It is not “racist” as much as it is “classist.”
Most of the things that people do not like in other cultures is “classlessness,” as my mother calls it. I think we are just more apt to notice the classlessness in Others, those who do not seem like ourselves. It could be a person going to Harvard to get his MBA, but if he is listening to rap (or country), rocking cornrows (or a mullet) and wearing saggy pants (or a camo outfit) and your assumption-meter goes off (you, of course, not being you).
Why are any of these things stupid or ridiculous?
The statement is all of those things because white people aren’t equivalent to country music, mullets, and NASCAR. Sure, lots of white folks dig that kind of stuff, but plenty more do not. So going around talking about how you like white people just fine, you just don’t like a slew of things that aren’t even part and parcel to being white…it’s a good way to looks like a collossal ass.
Other assertions that fit in the same obnoxious genre:
“I’m not racist, but I hate gold teeth.”
“Some of my best friends are black. That said, I hate rap music and cornrows.”
What makes them ridiculous is that they are non sequiters.
Not a chance. Look for yourself. I know your style.
:shrug: You are the one who made the claim, not me. Frankly, I think the posts you describe are rare or or nonexistent.