I don’t think so. The Jim Crow south harmed its own economic development with “sundown towns” and other formal and informal policies of racism which limited the economic activities of black people. White store owners and restauranteurs could have made more money with black customers on top of white customers, but they preferred to go along with the prevailing racist attitude than actually make decisions that would improve the economic benefit for all.
In essence, in the Jim Crow south, the white majority prioritized hurting black people over helping white people.
I don’t think the causation worked very clearly in either direction, but without the racism, slavery could not have existed. As we’ve seen in the times since slavery ended, racism did fine without slavery.
White male, leans slightly right of center. I see more racism than I would like to see on the conservative side of my own party. I also see a very large number of conservative Americans who consider racism one of the biggest threats to American society. I often feel the left is far more racial than the right because they seem too willing to accept that certain segments of society are not capable of rehabilitation and assimilation into main stream America. I feel like the left attempts to prohibit valuable research that would inevitably lead to a quicker path toward assimilation of any minority. Tough love does not close doors on people, it opens them. We have plenty of whites and all other races that fall under this umbrella of social assistance. I have no problem with the amount of money going out here. I would just like to see more of it spent on investing in the people they are trying to help.
I often hear the phrase that "they have to jump through hoops to get a little check". I feel it is racist to give up on any segment of society. It is fair to expect anyone to pull their own weight if they are capable of doing so.
I often see the right embracing good roll models and rejecting what they feel are bad roll models. The left tends to lean toward hip and cool which isn't very good at paying bills for the bulk of us.
Long story short, I feel the left is at least as racist as the right. The large quiet bunch that hangs out around the center has it right!
I, for one, would like to hear more about these white slaves. You don’t mean indentured servants, do you- 'cause that’s not really the same thing. Of course, there were “mullatto” slaves who could pass for white- is that what you meant?
Do you not see that race and racism in the US causes some people’s weight to be heavier or lighter than others’?
Let’s take race out of it for a second and consider the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Poverty, unemployment, under-education…these were not monopolized by the Catholics. You had segments of the Protestant population in the same position. But they did not carry the additional social burden of being Catholic, which gave them a leg up.
Same with, taking an historical example, black and white people in the post-Civil War south. There were plenty of white people who were uneducated, underemployed, scrambling for survival as subsistence farmers, too. But they didn’t have the additional social burden of being black, which gave them a leg up.
~Believe it or not~, the same unequal distribution of “weight” exists today.
I completely disagree. I think this is just an argument conservatives use to support racism - or at best to allow it.
We tried the hands off approach to racism. We tried it for almost a hundred years. We let racism go on in the hopes that it would eventually work itself out and fade away.
It never happened. The longer we let racism go unchallenged, the stronger it became. Racism became institutionalized and grew.
We finally acknowledged that racism was not a problem that was going to die off on its own. We needed to take active steps and kill it. And those active steps to fight racism have been working - racism is decreasing.
So history has shown that racism is a problem you have to fight. Fighting racism works - not fighting racism doesn’t work. Anyone arguing we should do less to fight racism is really saying we should have more racism.
There were white slaves. Not just the de facto white slaves who were considered to be black because they had some black ancestors. There were also some slaves who were acknowledged as white.
But not very many. There may have been a few hundred. And white slavery died out in colonial times.
Overall, 99.99% of the slaves in American history were black or were considered black. White slavery doesn’t get talked about much because it was a historical footnote in the history of slavery.
I agree with everything you said, of course any good programs would take all these things into consideration. Plenty of whites fall into these same categories as well. I just believe more could be done to rehabilitate those who need it and it is fair to expect them to fully particapate in their own recovery if they have the ability to do so.
That argument applies to all crimes. The more you fight it, the less you get of it, but at some point it becomes a bit much.
Do you think we could nearly eliminate drug use if we regarded drug users as no better than Klansmen? Heck yeah. We’d still have drug users, but it would be so marginalized that few would admit to it. I do notice that we’re starting to treat spousal abuse and rape that way, and that’s positive. I wonder what other societal evils we can totally marginalize by treating it the same way we do racism?
Again, I agree with everything you said. I feel we just need to awknowledge that racisim can show itself in many ways. Giving up on any group or race is bigoted.
I don’t get why some people are so offended by my OP; I’m not racist (at least not philosophically and intentionally; I’m sure I’m biased like most people to some extent) and I’m against racism as a policy. I just don’t think it’s this demonic thing or the cause of all historical evils that it’s made out to be. I think racism is something that evolved in us but I think to a large extent we can also overcome it.
To say it has evolved in us is to say it’s natural, but that is factually incorrect. Ethnocentrism may be natural, but racism is much more than mere ethnocentrism. It’s not “the cause of all historical evils,” but it certainly is a historical evil, and people are still suffering its effects, as some have mentioned in this thread.
I think this calls for a cliché: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
The problem is the Left often isn’t even fighting racism per se - they just want to invert the hierarchy so that minorities of all sorts get a free pass and the privileged are punished for their collective sins. This is what happened in Rwanda and what happened in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. It’s perfectly PC to generalize about men or white people or straight people. I dislike the term “social Marxism” because to me class is a totally different (and more important) issue but the way liberals want to punish white people is very similar to the way Marxists punished the Cossacks in the Soviet Union.
Who’s offended by the OP? There are other statements you’ve said that were offensive, and many have disagreed with the OP, but there wasn’t anything offensive in it.
Virtually no one who is racist thinks they’re racist, so it’s not particularly useful (for you or me or anyone) to say “I’m not racist”. That’s one of the main things about racism – most people who have it don’t know it.
It’s probably not the cause of all historical evils, but along with other forms of bigotry, it’s at least partially responsible for most of them. And, unlike other causes like economics, resources, religion, etc., racism has nothing going for it – racism doesn’t help anyone at all.
How is ethnocentrism any better than racism though? In the context of America, white and black Americans are different ethnicities, even if they’re both American. Racist conservatives in the US are not very fond of (white) Europeans either, they tend to see them as all being cowards or liberals.
I’ve been around Occupy and read a lot of liberal forums online (believe it or not I actually consider myself a leftist) and there is definitely a strong desire to punish white people for the past. The Left is essentially anti-Western and also has absorbed a lot of right-wing anti-government ideas; this is going to be the downfall of liberalism and humanism if they don’t wise up.
I agree with you iiandyii. I would note, however, that racism and politics are intertwined in such a way that neither party has very healthy incentives anymore.
I think discrimination (mentally, not like for jobs or anything) can actually be rational in some cases, because people are biased towards their own communities. Not only that but the conflict between two given groups can mean that being alone amongst the other group can be dangerous. Hell even Jesse Jackson admitted he breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed someone following him down the street was white.
Being a young man of any race is going to get you a little extra scrutiny wherever you go. I’m sure it’s much worse when you’re black, but we’ve all been there.