I’m not blasting your desire to make everyone in the United states equal, I’ve watched programs on the BBC where people in life are interviewed every 7 years, in one case a Black woman had told the interviewer that the racial situation has gotten worse since 1968, because of the nature of the races of ‘sticking together’ and in which innocent black citizens were being stereotyped as criminals.
To get more than one assumption that the situation has gotten worse, which in my opinion, hasn’t. What do you dopers in the United states and abroard think? Has racism gotten more subtle in the US or has it (in some places) been near-eradicated?
Some people who remain prejudiced have gotten a little more careful about voicing their prejudices, as it is no longer socially acceptable in many circles to do so (viz the recent Trent Lott foofaraw).
Some people who had never really thought about it before have had their consciousness raised, and have realized that black folks are human, too.
Some people haven’t changed one bit, which is why the white supremacists are still in business.
Racism in the U.S. has not been eradicated, needless to say.
The biggest change I’ve personally seen is that the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor are both black. (And one of them is female.) I wouldn’t have believed that could happen, back in 1968.
And Colin Powell is/was always thought of as a GOP Presidential candidate.
Things have gotten dramatically better, but there is still far, far to go.
And his name is pronaounced Coll-in not something of the rectum.
How old was the black woman interviewed in 1968? If she was a child, she may not have been aware of how pervasive the racism was at the time.
Um, nope, sorry, it’s “Coe-lin”, just like the intestine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/gop2000guide/powellpost.htm
the person who said that racism is as bad today as it was in 1968 is not in touch with reality.
first off, i want to say that i live in the area of the country where the civil rights struggle had the most impact. the county in alaabma that i live in is 70% black, the neighboring counties are roughly the same %age. i am old enough to remember 1968 and before.
i could go on for many pages giving examples of progress. for the sake of time and not to become boring, i will list some things that i consider progressive.
1968:
blacks held no elected office here
black were not allowed in many businesses or buildings
it was against the law to kill blacks here, but the law was not enforced
blacks lived in shacks out in the country or in “quarters” in town
blacks were not allowed in many public schools
blacks could not get bank loans or credit in most places
not allowed to use water fountains or restrooms
people used racial slurs to their faces
blacks worked in the least desirable, lowest paying jobs only
i will stop listing here, i could go on for quite a while listing though,
needless to say, they had it rough
2003
practically all elected officials are now black
blacks live in any and every area of town
they get equal pay at most every job
they work at just about every business or factory
they can get loans for cars houses, etc.
they can go to any school that they want to
many, many more improvements have happened, too many to list
if it were possible to go back 35 years in time and spend a day here, people would be shocked at how it was.
its not perfect here now, but the changes made have been like night and day difference.
Here’s one situation were racism has been near-eradicated.
My cousin’s wife is a black doctor living in northern New Jersey. As far as I can see, she and her three adult children do not suffer significant racism. By and large, race is just not a consideration in their life choices – jobs, hobbies, education, friendships, etc. (Actually, they may have benefited from race in being accepted at universities; they certainly weren’t harmed by it.)
I’m a white guy. I was born in 1949. In 1968 I graduated from high school in Marlin, Texas, a small town in central Texas, and started college at the University of Texas. By 1968 enormous changes in civil rights and race relations had already occurred.
I can well remember during my high school years there were separate drinking fountains for Blacks, and separate bathrooms as well. At the only movie in town Blacks were required to sit in the balcony. At all the restaurants there were signs that said “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”. My father explained to me that meant that those restaurants did not allow colored people to eat there. He realized that desegregation was inevitable and reluctantly admitted that it was only fair that Blacks be treated equally. He also knew that society as he had always known it was about to be radically changed.
Marlin’s population was at least 50% black in those years, yet the graduating class before mine had one Black graduate, mine had two (out of 98), but by the following year the entire school system was completely integrated. The separate drinking fountains and bathrooms were gone and Blacks could sit where they wanted at the movies.
By the summer of 1968 I was living in Austin, the liberal mecca of Texas, and the hot local issue was whether or not to allow Blacks in the police department. I can remember discussing this with my fellow students. If we were stopped by a Black cop were we supposed to just do whatever he told us to? Would we find ourselves taking orders from a Black man?* The whole thing was imaginable. Even the most liberal among us were hard pressed to be enthusiastic about obeying a Black cop. “Well, we’re just going to have to get used to it” one said.
While there might be blacks in your classes, you hardly ever interacted with them. The sports teams were all white. (The University of Texas has the dubious distinction of having the last all white team to win a national football championship.) Interracial couples caused people to stop and stare. Even sharing a table with a Black person was troublesome, and having a Black family move into a neighborhood was its death knell.
Today I see Black cops and women cops and I don’t think twice about it. For Christmas Santa gave my kids got UT jerseys with Cedric Benson’s number on them. Benson is a Black running back. Until now I hadn’t realized the significance of it, but in 1968 there was no way that white kids would wear the number of a Black athlete. Interracial couples don’t get a second glance, and my next door neighbors are a Black family and I think they are great neighbors.
So, what was the question again? Oh, yeah. Have we made improvements in race relations since 1968? It would seem to me that anyone who claims that nothing has improved either is too young to know what it was like in 1968 or else has a very poor memory.
*The idea of women on the police force was, at that time, simply laughable.
In 1968, I was only 7 years old. Still, I remember enough to know that things have changed a lot, and for the better. One of my older sisters was known as a “radical” at school, because she had a couple of friends who were black. Any interracial couple on the streets of Baltimore stood a pretty good chance of being harrassed (and the people doing the harrassing always said the same thing: Just think of what a hard time their children would have!), and in 2nd grade, I had a friend named Howard. Now, this probably would not have attracted too much attention had Howard been white, or if my friend had been black, but a girl. But as things stood, I heard it at school a lot (I was something of an outcast): ‘Oooh, Norine’s gonna marry a black boy, and they’re gonna have little dark-skinned kids!’
My hubby’s parents also tell a story of a time, around 1970, FIL was working as an engineer at Westinghouse. One of his co-workers was black, and FIL invited said co-worker and wife to his house for dinner one night. My in-laws were the talk of the (all-white) neighborhood for weeks! Some people were shocked and horrified that they had a black family visiting. Others proudly pointed out how “progressive and open-minded” my in-laws were!
I can’t imagine any of these situations happening today.
I wasn’t anything but an undeveloped ovum in my mother’s ovary in 1968, but I believe we’ve come along way since then, in terms of race relations. I have never faced anything as overtly racist and hateful as what my parents faced growing up (and they didn’t even live in the South).
I think things have improved dramatically in the last 35 years, and that, yes, we do have a long way to go.
why is it that I hear that in the US, Black and White populations keep a distance from each other, and maybe places in society or governments have Black people, other than having the typifed degrees, but out of obligation filling the race quota, and that when they get this job, alot of collegues are superficial towards each other.
The distance isn’t as big as it used to be. To be sure, it still exists to some degree, but as black Americans gain economic parity, interaction between the two groups has increased. Blacks are in the workforce and they are no longer barred from universities or other institutions. Black culture is becoming more and more incorporated into the mainstream. Interracial relationships, while still taboo in too many places, are becoming acceptable by mainstream culture. Forty years ago it would have been against the law in many places for whites and blacks to even be friendly with one another. Nowadays, everybody has a “black” or “white” best friend.
There are reasons, though, that white and black people aren’t perfectly comingling with one another.
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Like like likes. As long as blacks identify more strongly with each other than with white people, you will have self-segregation. As long as white people view black people as different or alien, they will cluster with each other.
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The US has a history of segregation that has not been completely eradicated. Discrimination in housing still occurs. There are still such things as “black neighborhoods” and “white neighborhoods”. White flight is still a reality. And then you have the situation where minority groups–like black Americans–choose to live together willingly, because they like it that way.
Both of these things thwart integration. But then again, 100% integration rarely occurs among any racial/ cultural pairings, especially those with the violent history shared between white and black Americans.
This is a distortion of reality. No black person would ever get hired if they did not have the “typified” degree. Their race may give them an edge, but at least theoretically they aren’t hired without the appropriate qualifications.
Affirmative Action exists for a variety of reasons. One is to compensate for past discrimination.
Because people are stupid and will find any excuse to alienate others? I don’t know.
Fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of being misunderstood.
And I say that personally. I’ve noticed that I can interact with a friend from Keyna and be completely at ease but with my black coworkers I’m always afraid of being misunderstood, or prejudged or just accused of being part of something I’ve never had anything to do with.
“why is it that I hear that in the US, Black and White populations keep a distance from each other”
Because we like different music (at least us over 30, anyway)?
Seriously though, everytime I have a normal, everyday interaction with someone black and we both treat each other with basic human decency and without regard for skin color whatsoever, I think about all that I hear about racial problems and and I think that here in the real world, most of us seem to be getting along just fine.
America is a big place, and there are areas where you would be hard pressed to see any black person (much of the rural midwest, and rural new England, and even fairly big cities in the west). I grew up in towns where there were very few black people. However I grew up with Native Americans (Indians). I am always shocked when I meet people from the east coast who have never once met an American Indian. But they would probably be surprised to know I never knew a Jewish person until I was over 20 years old. I suspect many black people have grown up in places that are heavily black as well.
I am also half Mexican, and half European - actually since I live in a place that is 80% Latino I identify with that side very closely now. Yet sometimes I meet, especially online, people in the United States who have no contact at all with people with a Latino background, or no friends from those ethnic groups.
In big cities people from all sorts of backgrounds sort of collide, and many people seek the “comfort” of their own group. This leads to division, but at the same time, as my own parents are evidence of, people from different backgrounds heavily intermarry too. I work in a school with children, and many of them are from “mixed” backgrounds. I don’t think anyone seriously forsaw this in 1968, but today I think it is safe to assume that by the year 2100, or maybe even 2050, there will be no clear racial majority, and America will become something like Brazil when it comes to race- very mixed…but even there, some racism remains.
Plus, now that such a future looks likely, some elements (not just white supremacists but black groups as well) may become more vocal, and that makes things sound worse than they probably are.