It sounds as though you’re saying, “I really hate being called out for being racist, so if you think I’m being racist, shut up about it.” Wouldn’t it be better to encourage people to let you know if you say something clueless or stupid or offensive? I’d much rather someone clue me in than let me go around continuing to show my ass.
I don’t think the distinction you’re drawing matches the way the word is used. It’s racist to assume that your Asian buddy is going to be good at math, or that your kid’s black friend plays football, or your Indian co-worker can do a good Bollywood dance. Cultures can be discussed without making prejudgments about people based on their skin tone or ethnic background.
The correct definition is belief that any racial group is superior or inferior to any other. Nothing in the definition mentions authority or power structures or minority/majority status. David Duke and Louis Farakkhan are both racists, equally so.
And frankly, any attempt to substitute a different definition under which it’s supposedly impossible for members of one group to be racist, or for members of another group not to be, pisses me off. Not only is it factually wrong, but it undermines the struggle against racism.
“In the US, young black people are more likely to listen to rap than to baroque music” isn’t stereotyping, in principle; it contains a completely unnecessary qualifier (skin color) but it’s fact. Alas, the presence of the unnecessary qualifier smells of racism. “He’s black so he’s sure to listen to rap” is a race-based stereotype and that makes it racist (it’s considering that person’s race as the one item which imbues and defines his whole being): for all you know, that guy might be first flute in his school’s marching band, aiming for a spot in Juilliard and not interested in anything composed after 1857.
How are you expressing those things your son objects to is very much the key point. Are you using unnecessary qualifiers? Are you stereotyping based on race (by any definition of that word you care to use)? If and when the answer to both is “no”, you may be able to correct your son, but if the answer to either is “yes”… then he’s right.
The question is too broad to really answer without specific examples, IMO. Nava’s example would be a statement that is almost definitely factual about more American blacks listening to hip hop than baroque- so it should not be racist. For example, stating that 1/3 of black males will be incarcerated sometime in their life is factual, and not necessarily racist.
It’s the tone and intent that make something racist, really. If your kid is just joking, you should tell him that calling someone a racist is a very serious allegation and could damage someone’s life, and not to throw it around lightly. If you are actually saying stuff that puts down other groups as a “joke”, it’s likely your kid is picking up on it.
So, it really, really depends on exactly what you’re saying whether it is racist or not. Stating tendencies w/o a negative connotation to it is not racist. Asians DO eat more rice than white people, and there’s nothing wrong with it or talking about it… BTW, there would be no point to travel if all people were the exact same. We’re all basically human, and cultures vary.
edit: btw isn’t stereotyping an INDIVIDUAL, not noting something that is actually true about groups? In the way I use and understand the word, stereotyping is ASSUMING things about a PERSON based on a group you attribute to them.
While I appreciate the intent of this definition, it’s really just like saying “I’m not racist; X isn’t a race”. If you’re accused of racism and offer either as a defence, you’re not defending yourself against the spirit of the argument. You’re instead just saying “no, I don’t meet this narrow definition of a racist and ergo my bigotry/prejudice cannot be criticised”.
This exactly. Cultural differences exist. Trying to pretend that they don’t is not only stupid, it usually involves pretending that all other cultures are exactly like yours, which is a highly dodgy way to think.
The problem kicks in when you assume that a cultural difference makes another culture inferior, or is inherently worthy of mockery, or when you assume that a general cultural difference tells you anything about an individual.
Yes. So many of the bad things in history were greatly aided by these sorts of feelings. Are there any good things in history that were?
I don’t know. I strive not to, and I encourage others to strive not to (if we’re takling about race/religion/ethnicity/gender/etc., not philosophy/advocacy – i.e. it’s okay to dislike Nazis, or KKKers, in my view), and we should teach our children that these beliefs are wrong.
Don’t know. But I think there are lots who strive to not be prejudiced, and I think we all should do so. Do you disagree?
I feel really complicated about this. I teach high school in an incredibly diverse school–60% Hispanic, 20% Black, 10% Asian, 10% white (roughly), and that doesn’t begin to convey the reality: two thirds of our kids are poor, and that doesn’t correlate to race, really, so all of those groups have that divide down the middle; about half our kids are immigrants or first generation American, and that, too, is not at all correlated to any racial group (lots of African kids in the black population, some of the white kids are Middle-Eastern immigrants, etc), so that’s another type of diversity.
My point here is that the factors shaping my kids’ sense of identity are vast and complex, and to simply ignore those–to not have conversations about them–would be like refusing to admit they have genders. It seems to me that it matters that David is from a middle-class African-American family and his grandma is a Church Lady, because it gives me a lot of insight into how he’s likely to react to different approaches from me, a middle aged female authority figure–and it’s going to be different from how Bev, who was born in Ghana, is going to react. If David talked to me like Bev does, he’s be trying to convey contempt; Bev is conveying affection. I need to know that to do my job properly. And I only know that because I spend a lot of time talking to kids about their families, and how their families do things.
Furthermore, identity is complicated for these kids. They are shaped by their background, they do come from different frames of reference, and they are living in a world in which people make all sorts of assumptions about them based on their identity. Which means they need to talk about these things. They think about them all the time. It can’t just be a taboo.
On the other hand, with kids, talking through something means inappropriate jokes, horrific statements of “fact”, and all sorts of potential for hurt feelings and the damage of stereotype threat. Furthermore, some of the most terrible, disgusting racist bullshit I’ve ever heard is dressed up in “you know, it’s just their culture”. And I always fear I am lying to myself that I can keep a firm line between “using cultural competency as a place to start when trying to understand an individual” and “using sterotyping as a lazy way to avoid thinking”. I try to be so careful in my own language, to keep all of my own humor self-deprecating, to never punch down.
I know teachers who feel pretty strongly that they should just treat all kids the same, to not see race, but what I think they see is a room full of white kids that happen to have a lot of variation in skin tone. They don’t see every kid as a blank slate, they just assume that kids’ cultural experiences and frame of reference is the same as their own. And in my experience, while those teachers may do solid work, they are rarely extraordinary–they don’t connect with kids. Kids like to know you have some sense of what their life is like. And the kids who do the most poorly in the classes of teachers who don’t see race are almost always poor and/or under-represented minorities because the teacher has no sense of where the student is coming from. On the other hand, I’m sure I’ve given kids the wrong impression when I haven’t been careful enough about my language. I’m sure I’ve hurt people, badly, and they’ve never told me and I will never know.
Overall, I think I am a better teacher because I pay attention to cultural variations and am willing to acknowledge that they exist. But it keeps me up nights.
I think in the sense that if you consider your own race too diverse to be stereo typed yet other cultures and races you can easily stereo type you might be slightly racist at a very low level.
I think we evolved to sterotype, I think it is simply learning from experience. If we get bad input it can cause us to wrongly stereo type. I don’t see all stereotyping as bad.
I read a while back that people of Japanese/white American parentage are 5 times more successful in mathematics-based subjects than the average American citizen. Is this racist? To suggest that such people have a higher “mathematical intelligence” than those from the pure Japanese or White race?
Yes, it is racist. You are taking the results of one study, limited in time, limited and scope, taking it out of context, without regard to scores of other possibly relevant factors and using it to support a racist conclusion, and that racist conclusion has negative results on people and on society, even if you take the (extremely shallow) “positive” conclusion that you are saying something positive about Japanese people.
In fact, we have every reason to believe—to the extent that such conclusions are even true in a general sense—that race has nothing to do with it.
I can see the importance of talking to kids and getting to know them, as individuals, but I’m getting hung up on the next step - where putting David or Bev into these different boxes helps you gain insight into their likely reactions. They sound at odds with each other, to me. Do you have any more examples of how this works for you?
Well, it means that David likely comes from a pretty regimented, authoritarian background and he’s likely to take me raising my voice at him or showing exasperation pretty hard—I need to be careful with him to make sure he knows, say, I’m annoyed at a situation, not disappointed in him. And if he does think I’m disappointed, he’s likely to shut down, not come and talk to me. So I need to pay extra careful attention to his body language. Bev, on the other hand, I need to hit over the head three times just so she notices I’m talking: she assumes that if it is important, I WILL keep bringing it up, so if I don’t, it must not be.
Now, these are things that can be true for any kid, but in both those cases I started with, well, not an assumption, but maybe a hypothesis based on cultural background. And in both those cases, over the years I’ve become aware of a lot of nuance beyond those hypotheses. I don’t think having a hypothesis is racist, but I think it can easily slide into making stereotypical assumptions.
Agreed. It shouldn’t be the subject of silence. The problem is that it is so much more likely to be used as a cudgel or a strait-jacket.
I know a black man who refuses to eat watermelon, because he hates the stereotype so much. I think he’s over-reacting, but he has a point. If he was in a public place, munching down on watermelon, some jerk would see it and laugh at the stereotype. The problem is that my friend is trapped in the stereotype, either way.
To his (and my?) credit he and I were able to talk about this. (He also said that if I ever called him “boy,” he’d punch me in the face, and I said, “Okay, that’s fair.”)
I know I fulfill just as many stereotypes as I debunk. If someone laughs because they see me enjoying some fried chicken, you know what? I will laugh back at them and keep on eating that yard bird.
I’ve had well-intentioned people lecture me on the importance of caring what They think. I swallowed all of it because I didn’t want to be the one to disgrace the race (the horrors!).
But now I really wish I hadn’t. Because it gave me a damn complex. I wish someone had sat me and down and told me that life has way too much shit in it to be afraid of what They think. There are times when you need to care, of course. But not indiscriminately, 24/7. And not when it comes to the food you eat.
Part of what makes a person the individual he or she is, the individual Manda Jo is trying to get to know, is his or her cultural background.
People don’t develop in a vacuum. A kid who’s growing up as the seventh of nine in a working-class Irish Catholic family isn’t exactly the same person he would have been if he’d been adopted by a pair of Japanese professors with no other kids. All those factors - siblings, social class, culture - make a difference to how the kid interacts with the world. Being aware of that isn’t ‘putting the kid in a box’ - it’s responding to the child as an individual with an individual history, rather than pretending his life outside the classroom doesn’t matter.
That makes more sense. I agree with the bold, and I think it could also lead to the kids coming to the wrong conclusion about your motivation. A Bev who thinks “Why is she repeating this? I’m not stupid.” or a David who thinks you’re handling him more gently because you’re afraid he’ll fly off the handle.