A FOB Asian coffee shop owner is being pummeled by the media and activists for telling an experienced Afro-Brazilian that he didn’t want to want to hire him because he was black.
That was a terribly stupid and clueless thing to do, but the coffee-shop owner employs a multi-ethnic team, which makes him less racist IMHO then the shops which only give work opportunities to their own ethnic group and make up excuses to not hire others.
Though it could be argued, open racism is worse because it helps make racial discrimination more culturally ‘normal’.
Fecal occult blood
Follow-on biologics
Fixed odds betting
Foot Over Bridge
Fall Out Boy
Forward operating base
Fractional Orbital Bombardment
Federal Office Building
Free on Board
Fresh off the boat
:mad: Take the bother to type out what you fucking well mean instead of confusing people with your private or local acronyms. :mad:
The rest: “It must be true, I read it in the Daily Mail!”
And: So you are trying to suggest that this overtly racist guy may not be as bad as certain hypothetical covertly more racist people? Yes, I suppose it is probably possible to imagine someone whose covert racism is so extreme as to be worse than some real person’s overt racism. So the hell what? No generalization about covert vs overt racism follows. It is also possible to imagine people whose covert racism isn’t nearly so bad (the vast majority of humanity probably falls into this category). On the whole, overt racists are likely to be a lot worse than covert ones (who at least know enough to be ashamed). But there may be exceptions, and one can certainly imagine exceptions.
They’re both bad. Hidden racism that is violent is worse than open “I’m not happy if my daughter dates a black guy” racism, but open racism can be worse as well.
It is tempting to say overt racism is better because at least everyone agree that it is wrong and unfair. But even a supposedly enlightened place like this message board shows this isn’t true. Someone could be called a “nigger” to their face, and some folks will insist that they shouldn’t be upset because it’s just a word…it was just a joke…rap artists say the same thing…the person deserved it.
Still, short of a violent confrontation, I’d rather experience open racism than hidden racism. Because I hate being played the fool. If someone doesn’t want to hire me because I’m black, I’d rather they say so upfront rather than tell me something vague like I’m not a good fit. The former at least lets me know it’s nothing personal.
I am having trouble telling if the use of the “FOB” acronym is meant to be meta-commentary, or serious.
If serious, the irony, it burns.
I can’t really vote, as I won the privilege lottery: white female. I will say that I have friends who grew up here in the south (overt racism) and moved north (hidden racism) <----- I know these are generaltities! and some think that it’s better out in the open, and others like having the option of not having to confront it. I almost used the word “prefer” but that doesn’t really seem apt here. It seems like a very personal choice.
Obviously, in society in general, it would be great if people got their heads out of their asses and stopped being racist shitbags, but that didn’t seem to be the OP’s question.
If I personally had to choose, I think I’d be with Monstro - I’d rather have it out in the open than be worrying what people are saying/doing behind my back.
Is it more racist to use the N-word or to use racist code-terms like “Tobey”? Hard to say. Sometimes the subtler shades of ignorant assholishness are difficult to see.
It’s a positive sign, I think, that this is a question we’re in a position to ask, but it also seems like it might have us turned around backward a little bit. Open racism is worse. Hidden racism is better specifically because it is a type of racism that is possible to hide; it’s the last vestige of intolerance that is available to the bigot, because we’re slowly but surely taking away the preferred forms. When hidden racism is so severe that it becomes open racism, then we do something to get rid of it. That’s why they have to hide.
But then you have people – like me, to be clear – who grew up in a world where straightforward, open and notorious racism isn’t a normal thing, and we think oh, maybe that would be better? But it’s clearly not better, overall; we already know what the world looks like when open racism is the norm. You can only really believe it would be better in the open if you kid yourself about what it means when it’s in the open. Like so:
Less racist! “Black people shouldn’t make coffee for white people” is less racist!
Yes, it’s bad to not give opportunities to anyone but your own ethnic group. And making up excuses doesn’t change how wrong it is, obviously. But explicitly not hiring somebody because they aren’t of the right race is not less racist than anything. It might be functionally the same as other, more discreet kinds of racism, for sure, but being the same doesn’t somehow make it better. If everyone had this rule of forthright racial exclusion… well, we know what that would be like.
Calm down. The OP almost certainly meant “fresh off the boat.” In other words, a recent immigrant, as opposed to one who has been in Australia for his/her entire life. And it really doesn’t matter in the context of answering the poll question.
Hypocrites who disguise their bigotry may disgust me more, but overt bigots generally are worse.
White Citizens Council racists in the 1960s caused more damage than Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner-style parents who talked a good game but were appalled at the thought of their daughter marrying outside her race.
I voted that open racism is worse…but this is because it implies a society where open racism can exist at all without being roundly condemned.
A healthier society would be one where only hidden racism could exist, because no one would tolerate it openly.
(A healthier society yet would be one where no one has those feelings at all. It actually astonishes some people, today, to learn how poisonous the anti-Irish bigotry was, only a century ago. If we can overcome that, we can probably overcome all other forms of bigotry.)
That’s not fair to the characters (as if one can be unfair to fictional characters). Both mothers in the movie were fine with the kids getting married, and the fathers weren’t appalled: they were afraid for them.
Not really? If you don’t know someone and they just come out and say they don’t like you because you’re black, well ok then fuck them. But if you know someone, and they seem nice and thoughtful, then over time it starts to leak out? That’s not cool. It makes you put their every word and action in perspective regarding yourself or other minorities.
If someone says that I’m just not a good fit, I don’t know what the hell that means. It could mean I’m everything from unqualified to a bearer of bad body odor. It could mean they didn’t like my personality.
Telling me I’m not wanted because I’m black would be a hurtful thing to say. But at least I’d know that I didn’t do anything wrong…that it’s not like I’d have the job if only I had worn a different outfit or smiled more during the interview.
Back in the 70s, my mother called up a daycare center and asked if they had any spots. She was told yes, come on over! So she promptly did, with her two black kids in tow. And when she showed up, she was told, sorry, we don’t have any spots left. She left with a strong suspicion that she’d just been racially discriminated against, but without the satisfaction of hard evidence. If you go through this enough times, you start getting hypersensitive and distrustful of everyone who is white. That was how she raised me to be: Distrustful of whites, particularly those in positions of authority.
If racism was more overt than covert, she would have been able to warn her babies to trust everyone except for the mean people holding up the “No blacks allowed” signs, instead of trying to protect them by painting all whites with the same brush. Everyone is a potential racist when racism is hidden. The good guys are easy to distinguish from the bad guys when the racism is out in the open.
