# It's upsetting when other whites reveal their racism to me. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 20, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307 "2012-03-20T13:41:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/201 "2012-03-24T03:26:02Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I use the only consistent definition for racism I know of. Racism is the belief that there are human races. There are none. And it seem stupid to pretend that there are. That’s stupid and if you think that you are also stupid. Fuck, **Rand Rover** is rarely reasonable on any point but if you basically get to give yourself a gold star for talking about how bad some racist you interacted with was, and all the guy did was mention someone was black or Asian or etc then he really does have a point by saying people like you are precisely why we’re never going to move past racism in this country. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/202 "2012-03-24T03:28:32Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > You are correct, and I see the irony that you’re pointing out. **Rand** identifies me as a militant black poster frothing with all kinds of extreme racial politics. But if he saw me on the street, he probably wouldn’t know what stereotype to apply to me. The very fact that we have the notion of “passing” indicates that the dictates of race are arbitrary and man-made. The point flew right over his head. > > Race is real. But only as real as any other social construct. Which (and I don’t know that you’d disagree with this) is essentially “as real as it gets.” People die over social constructs and have since time immemorial, people kill over them. Laws get written that reflect them. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/203 "2012-03-24T03:36:41Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > So, to me, a racist is somebody who hates a group of people based on an arbitrary set of traits (which might only be known to the racist). Does that hated “race” map conveniently to a cluster of allele frequencies? Maybe, maybe not. There’s more genetic variance in Africa than in the rest of the world, so by being racist against blacks, somebody is really being racist against a bunch of relatively unrelated groups who happen to have dark skin. If you’re a racist and want to back up your racism with biology, then try to hate a genetically isolated population which is reasonably distinct from other groups. > > \*Europeans colonizing Africa, etc. Not really accidents in any sense other than things the OP, the racist colleague, and the temp workers can’t do anything about. That’s the thing though, racism is old. Hating people based on arbitrary differences is very old, as old as civilization I would say. Wars have literally been fought over people wearing different types of clothes, people gesticulating in different ways when they worship a shared god and etc. So I don’t think any modern day racists really care about biology in the first place. I know some of them will sometimes cherry pick random things from biology to try and justify racism, or even summon up late 19th century theories about innate inferiority of certain groups of people and try to act as though it is 21st century suppressed science, but that’s just a symptom of an underlying irrational hatred. Explaining the biological stupidity of racism does nothing to really address the root causes of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/204 "2012-03-24T05:18:42Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I use the only consistent definition for racism I know of. Racism is the belief that there are human races. There are none. And it seem stupid to pretend that there are. So how do you figure that whole Jim Crow thing worked? Did they just pick people at random and assign them to a race so they’d have somebody to pick on? “Okay, people, we’ve got the new regulations here. Our town has been designated to be sixty percent ‘white’ and forty percent ‘colored’.” “Colored? I thought they agreed to go with ‘negro’.” “No, that got hung up in committee. They decided to start the program off with ‘colored’ and switch to ‘negro’ later if this segregation thing catches on. Now I want everyone to look at your tickets. If the last digit is a 3, 4, 7, or 9, you are now ‘colored’. Please give up your seat to a nearby ‘white’ person and go stand at the back of the building. You’ll find pamphlets back there explaining all of the things you’re no longer allowed to do.” “Wait a second, Jim, how can I be colored if you’re white? I’m your brother.” “Don’t get uppity with me, boy.” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/205 "2012-03-24T06:22:49Z")
**TriPolar** , your reasoning is not reasonable. Using your logic, someone who thinks in terms of “male” and “female” is sexist. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/206 "2012-03-24T16:46:01Z")
Belief in human races is different from a belief in phenotypic differences which may be associated with a population. For example, we can tell whether someone is “black” by looking at them. We can often tell that someone had some Asian ancestors by population characteristics and (I’m in the process of writing a paper on this) there are physiological differences (Vizioli, 2010) in our processing of faces from a member of the same “face phenotype” as us, preventing those of us not familiar with other faces from recognising them. Now that’s one way to operationalise race: within a group where repetition suppression reliably occurs when confronted with a stimuli face of that type. However, that’s not the concept of race TriPolar is referring to as far as I’m aware. He’s (probably) referring to a belief that one’s neighbour is more likely to be biologically similar to one than the guy from halfway across the globe. That’s the impression I get from those that believe in race. ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/207 "2012-03-24T21:25:52Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > The part with the elephants, or the part with the brooms and the buckets of water? Either way, I think I’ve just had a childhood memory ruined by the dope. > Again. I was thinking of the six dancing mushrooms, along with the adorable tiny mushroom who steals the show, while dancing out of step with the rest. And sorry about the childhood memory…such is life. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/208 "2012-03-25T06:03:11Z")
> [@Imasquare](#): > > I’d rather be considered a n\_\_\_\_\_\_ lover than a racist. To me bigots are the lowest of the low I know. I guess it’s the fact that m parents only had about 2% of the racism their grandparents probably had that let me never understand this idea. It just never came up for me as a kid, and the black family at church was the kind that had my dad seeking out the husband as a church-buddy. My only impression was positive. I remember reading “n- lover” in a book and thinking that the phrase really missed the venom it was intended as. It was like someone had said, “Mutt lover!” Well, I don’t know why you have to call my dog a mutt, but if you think I love my dog, I guess you’re right. I get especially twisted about the OP’s point now that I have a Ugandan nephew via my brother’s adopting him. I just hope my brother has the strength not to deck the first guy who doesn’t see the child and drops some racial horror-phrase. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/209 "2012-03-25T07:35:12Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Again, he did not ask me anything about my background, but he did identify my blackness in his notes. My blackness filled up the room, blinding him to all other hypotheses (except for sickle cell anemia :rolleyes:). > . Funny story related to this issue: I’ll shave the set up WAY down for context but my wife is from Trinidad and for the sake of simplicity let us say black, I’m from the USA and FTSOSLUS white, and the first obstetrician we saw when she was pregnant had told her to go get a test for sickle cell trait and it had a check box on her form.:dubious: So we ask why it was checked “because you’re black I tell all black patients to get tested” but as she mentioned not women of other “races”. Both parents must of course pass on sickle cell trait for the child to have sickle cell anemia, and while its not impossible I have sickle cell trait if you want to be that careful why not test all women to start with? No other OB mentioned it, we assume it was probably just a way to send some business to the lab and she was hoping we wouldn’t care about the money since I was with her and I’m white so of course I’m rich(another racial stereotype removed from reality;) ) ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/210 "2012-03-25T07:52:34Z")
> [@grude](#): > > FTSOSLUS Are you freaking serious. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/211 "2012-03-25T08:33:06Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > Are you freaking serious. Yes because otherwise someone will come and ask me to define white or black as a race, or point to a post I made where I said race has no genetic or scientific meaning. Plus I am fond of ridiculous acronyms I make up on the spot. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/212 "2012-03-25T13:15:03Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Funny story related to this issue: > > I’ll shave the set up WAY down for context but my wife is from Trinidad and for the sake of simplicity let us say black, I’m from the USA and FTSOSLUS white, and the first obstetrician we saw when she was pregnant had told her to go get a test for sickle cell trait and it had a check box on her form.:dubious: So we ask why it was checked “because you’re black I tell all black patients to get tested” but as she mentioned not women of other “races”. > > Both parents must of course pass on sickle cell trait for the child to have sickle cell anemia, and while its not impossible I have sickle cell trait if you want to be that careful why not test all women to start with? > > No other OB mentioned it, we assume it was probably just a way to send some business to the lab and she was hoping we wouldn’t care about the money since I was with her and I’m white so of course I’m rich(another racial stereotype removed from reality;) ) I can understand your perplexity, but let’s look at it from the viewpoint of the doc. He or she was going through the OB checkup, and thought about sickle cell. That’s a good thing. Sickle cell is reasonably common in the US, and is a bad thing in pregnancy. Lets consider the options available to the physician: 1. interrogate the dad about his background and 2. interrogate the mom to make sure the dad is the dad or 3. blow it off entirely, knowing that if the kid does wind up with sickle cell complications, it’ll be the doctor’s fault, and the patient’s lawyer will ask “did it not occur to you that people of African ancestry have a high rate of sickle cell”? or 4. Tick the box and remove all doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/213 "2012-03-25T14:19:10Z")
Yeah they tested me (white) as a cystic fibrosis carrier even though I told them my husband was Indian. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/214 "2012-03-25T14:41:11Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > I can understand your perplexity, but let’s look at it from the viewpoint of the doc. He or she was going through the OB checkup, and thought about sickle cell. That’s a good thing. Sickle cell is reasonably common in the US, and is a bad thing in pregnancy. Lets consider the options available to the physician: > > 1. interrogate the dad about his background and > 2. interrogate the mom to make sure the dad is the dad or > 3. blow it off entirely, knowing that if the kid does wind up with sickle cell complications, it’ll be the doctor’s fault, and the patient’s lawyer will ask “did it not occur to you that people of African ancestry have a high rate of sickle cell”? or > 4. Tick the box and remove all doubt. I share **grude’s** confusion. It goes back to that “black people ain’t all the same” thing. If I were an immigrant from, say, South Africa, and the doctor checked off the “sickle cell” box and the woman on the other side of the curtain is from Sicily and the doctor doesn’t check off the box, then that’s just a whole bunch of nonsense. The Sicilian has a higher liklihood of carrying the trait than the South African. Either everyone should get routinely tested, or the doctor should take a more nuanced approach to the racial medicine stuff. The doctor who treated me asked me absolutely no questions about my background. The least he could have done was ask if I was indeed the descent of African slaves. For all he knew, I could have been a first-generation American, the product of an Icelandic Jew and a Papua New Guinean, bearing an adopted English last name just for kicks. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/215 "2012-03-25T19:04:12Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I share **grude’s** confusion. > > It goes back to that “black people ain’t all the same” thing. If I were an immigrant from, say, South Africa, and the doctor checked off the “sickle cell” box and the woman on the other side of the curtain is from Sicily and the doctor doesn’t check off the box, then that’s just a whole bunch of nonsense. The Sicilian has a higher liklihood of carrying the trait than the South African. Either everyone should get routinely tested, or the doctor should take a more nuanced approach to the racial medicine stuff. > > The doctor who treated me asked me absolutely no questions about my background. The least he could have done was ask if I was indeed the descent of African slaves. For all he knew, I could have been a first-generation American, the product of an Icelandic Jew and a Papua New Guinean, bearing an adopted English last name just for kicks. Yup. You’re absolutely right. In a perfect world, the MD would tick the box for the Sicilian woman as well. Also, in a perfect world, she or he would have asked about your ethnicity. Of course by then, he or she is going to need to find out if your jewish parent was Sephardi or Ashkenazi, might as well get that test for Tay-Sachs while you’re at the lab. My point is just that they thought of a possible problem, and ruled it out. That’s not a bad thing. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/216 "2012-03-25T19:35:39Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Plus I am fond of ridiculous acronyms I make up on the spot. I was asking if you were being serious because I’ve never, in all my internet travels, seen that acronym, and I couldn’t figure it out and I don’t know why people here think that is cute when it’s not, and simply obscures clear communication. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/217 "2012-03-25T22:22:21Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > I was asking if you were being serious because I’ve never, in all my internet travels, seen that acronym, and I couldn’t figure it out and I don’t know why people here think that is cute when it’s not, and simply obscures clear communication. I didn’t get the impression it was supposed to be a common acronym but rather merely an abbreviated form of the phrase used about six words earlier in the same sentence. But I can understand the confusion. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/218 "2012-03-26T00:09:51Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Yeah they tested me (white) as a cystic fibrosis carrier even though I told them my husband was Indian. If you mean south Asian Indian that makes a lot of sense, because genetically Europeans and Indians/Pakistanis etc. are very close. Socially they’re considered different races, but genetically they’re hard to tell apart. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2012, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/219 "2012-03-26T01:03:33Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > That’s stupid and if you think that you are also stupid. Fuck, **Rand Rover** is rarely reasonable on any point but if you basically get to give yourself a gold star for talking about how bad some racist you interacted with was, and all the guy did was mention someone was black or Asian or etc then he really does have a point by saying people like you are precisely why we’re never going to move past racism in this country. So I assume that if I walked down the street in my predominantly black neighborhood and someone muttered “Honky bitch” as I walked by, I’d have no reason to get annoyed. After all, how are we ever going to get over racism if we keep acknowledging it, right? ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2012, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307/220 "2012-03-26T02:59:08Z")
This meme that if we just stop acknowleging racism, it will go away suddenly popped up, I think it gained in popularity after Morgan Freeman was quoted saying it. If one spends more than 2 seconds thinking about it, one would realize it’s possibly the most retarded idea of all time. Let’s try that with some other things: Pedophilia, Date rape, Crime, Sexism, Financial Fraud… The person making that outlandish argument has the responsibility to explain what is so freaking special about racism that it will go away as opposed to all the other societal ills we know won’t go away even if we don’t acknowlege it. Also not acknowleging racism hurts the VICTIMS and lets the assholes get off scott-free. It’s insane and bizarre. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-upsetting-when-other-whites-reveal-their-racism-to-me/616307.md?page=12)