There is also a history of hostility between Chinese and Blacks in neighborhoods where Chinese families own the stores. Really, it’s between any “middleman minority,” as Thomas Sowell calls them, and the surrounding community. Basically the two groups don’t trust or respect each other. The store owners view Blacks as lazy thiefs and Blacks view the store owners as outsiders who exploit them economically.
Again, speaking in generalities, there is a history of Black mistrust of Jews. I don’t mean all Black people and all Jews, but you’ll easily find many prominent examples with a simply Google search. Example one, “Hymietown,” by Jesse Jackson. Example two, Representative Cynthia McKinney’s remarks on Israel.
Well, there is ample evidence of African persecution of minorities in their countries, such as Kenya and Uganda persecuting Indians. People from every race persecute minorities. Any study of world history will show this.
Actually, it is. It’s just that Blacks have not historically had enough political power to act on their racism.
A lot of times it is.
Do you ever think they may have a good reason to do so? Perhaps the people from the community do not work as hard as their own family members. Perhaps the people from the community steal from them and call them names (as I observed here in DC when a black man told the Indian owners of a Subway to “go back to Iraq.”). And perhaps their is racism at play, too. But if there is, there is racism going both ways. The Blacks are just as guilty as the store owners.
These middleman minorities are offering a service to the people of the community – a service not being provided by members of their own race – and they get their stores burnt down for that?
At various family gatherings I have heard tales from my parents generation of the unmitigated ethnic hatred held by their parents’ generation (and earlier). To the working class white Roman Catholic Irish in that part of Massachussetts the epitome of evil were the working class white Roman Catholic French-Canadians. Worse than the (working class white Roman Catholic) Italians, worse than the (working class white Roman Catholic) Poles. Heck, the only thing worse than the (Jewish) factory owners were the French-Canadians who scabbed for 'em. (or perhaps vice-versa). But by my dad’s generation such attitudes were considered inappropriate at best, and certainly never ever shared in front of the grandchildren (a fair number of whom shared French-Canadian blood.
I see a fair amount of modern racism as being similar in spirit - us vs. them in a zero sum game. The major difference being that skin-tone is a visible, palpable difference - easier fodder for spreading fear and loathing.
Hell, go back and read British history. The English, Britons, Angles, and Saxons all loathed each other. Of course, all those groups are now amalgamated into one race. The hatred of the “other” is a recurring theme throughout history. In the U.S., however, we seem to have the view that we’re somehow unique in this regard.
I would say that classism plays a significant role in racial resentment.
As someone having moved from Los Angeles to the Derrty South (Jackson, MS), I came to realize that most of the complaints that white America have of poor blacks, seem to be more indicative of a poor, Southern sub-culture.
Black people come up with kooky names. So do country Southerners.
Black people and their silly Ebonics. Really country fellas darn’t egzactly speak King’s English.
Black people put too much stock in ‘keeping it real’. Country folks put too much stock in ‘keeping it country’.
Gangsta Image/Rebel Image
Black people’s disdain for higher education. I work with a few guys who have told me that college education is a little high falutin’
Black people mismanage money, especially if it comes in lump sum form. Same could be said of most lower income people who have never been taught basic financial survival skills.
Typically people who espouse these complaints, usually don’t have a problem with Carl, you know the black guy with the MBA in the finance dept. You know the one who ‘speaks so well’.
Pure racism doesn’t seem to care about class. If anything there seems to be more hate for an upper class, successful [INSERT RACE HERE] person.
Renob. Most of what you wrote in your last four posts, with the exception of the examples of various black-led African governments in Mozambique, Uganda and South Africa (among others) persecuting Indians, Asians and whites (among others), essentially supports the premise of the OP, that a lot of so-called racism in America is probrably more accurately cast as socioeconomic hostility and resentment acting out against nearby targets – such as Asian middlemen minorities – for perceived economic and social injustices in black communities. You’re right to cast the L.A. riots in that vein, except that most businesses in the area at the time were owned by racial groups other than blacks; and contrary to popular assumptions, not even black owned businesses escaped the rioting. Every successful business was targeted for looting and burning.
Actually, they do. Or, more particularly, people hold views because they were raised with those views or because they find it more comfortable to hold those views than to challenge their own preconceptions or for a whole lot of (non-)reasons.
I know several people who claim that they only began to dislike or scorn a particular group after they met members of the group and saw how they “really” were. The problem with their statements is that I knew several of them before their “conversion” and I would say that they were only waiting for a trigger to express feelings they had long held (or to find a target against whom they could focus a more generalized feeling). The guy I worked with who claimed that he only began to hate blacks after he was assigned a job where he was the junior member of an all-black crew and suffered a fair amount of hazing also revealed in other discussions that his parents were stereotypical black-scorning working-class whites. He may have felt that he “had a reason” to hate blacks, but he was already carrying the thoughts before he ever met a black person. (He also worked as the junior member of another crew–all white–who hazed him, but he described their hazing as “initiation rites.”)
The same thing occurred with some black acquaintances who claimed that they only developed a hatred for whites after they were taunted or harrassed, yet they described much worse harrassment from other blacks and the white taunting was pretty small potatoes.
There may often be a source of ethnic hatred or ethnic clannishness related to competition for resources, but once it has developed, it is passed from one generation to the next long after any reasons may have faded into remote history. Hatred can be (and is) learned even without some purported “reason”–it is taught by one generation to the next generation.
How true. An army buddy of mine from Houston said much the same thing. He didn’t want any “buck n-----s” to crowd in line ahead of him. He changed the subject when we asked if he enjoyed have whites do it.
An ignorant, pointless observation. Black Americans are not Africans. Africans are not black Americans.
No because you left out crucial elements - large scale organization and government support. You also ignore the fact that many of the LA rioters - some scholars say most - were actually Latino. There were plenty of white people who took advantage of the mayhem to steal from shop owners as well.
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No. There aren’t any good reasons to stereotype. There aren’t any good reasons to abuse individuals because of their membership in a supposedly undesirable group. If the shopowners in question aren’t prepared to treat black Americans as individuals, they should indeed head back to where they came from. No one should be free to come to my country as a guest, set up shop, and then use historical disadvantage as an opportunity to abuse me.
A hypothetical situation:
A white American male is about twice as likely as a black American male to sexually abuse children. A recognizing this, a group of newly arrived immigrants decide that they want white guys banned from the parks in their ethnic enclave. After all, they’ve seen the exentsive news coverage of Catholic priests charged with child sex abuse, the extensive new reports of white guys kidnapping, assaulting children. So they instruct their local police to harrass any white guys that attempt to use the park, even though it’s a park that white guys have been using since it was created. Do you agree with this? If not, why not?
No, but I was pointing out that where blacks had power, they abused just as whites have done. My point was that any ethnicity is guilty of racist actions. Don’t simpy single out whites.
And yet everyone does it (including Blacks). Why is that?
I agree it’s wrong to stereotype, but you also have to recognize that these individuals are putting up with a lot of shit from the surrounding population. They are submitted to as much racism as they deal back. I see it often here in DC. Blacks are just as racist against Indians/Arabs/Asians as these shop owners are racist agains them.
No one is being “abused.” You don’t like it, don’t shop there. Or, better yet, set up your own business. Of course, the only reason many of these Asians came to the neighborhood was because there were no black-owned businesses in the first place. If the people in the area hate Asians so much then they should open their own businesses. How come poor immigrants can do it while poor Blacks can’t?
One, we’re talking about public space here, not a private owned business, so no one can be banned. However, I would say that if there was a spate of molestations in the park by white guys, then the police would be justified in harassing them. Just as if there is a spate of crimes committed in a park by black guys, the police are justified in harassing them.
Yes, I guess my point was that of all of the innumerable mutual loathings we Americans have possessed the ones that occur across color lines seem more generally persistant.