Please define what is the only “usable definition of racism.”
I went with 80% though maybe I was a little harsh. It’s probably closer to 60 or 70%.
What in your regular interactions with people gives you any sense of their racism? The fact that they aren’t actively discriminating against people at that moment doesn’t tell you much. By that view, those same people probably love spiders because when you talk to them, they aren’t stomping a spider to death.
People don’t routinely talk about their racism because there is lots of social pressure not to be racist. In the same way that people want to keep their income hidden (see the recent poll on these boards asking that question), even racist people generally strive to be seen as not racist.
We do have open marches of white supremacists quite frequently now. One white counter-protester in Charlottesville, VA was killed by an unabashed racist protester last year. Did you hear anything about it? There have been dozens of others to protect ersatz Confederate monuments.
Racial segregation in America isn’t strictly enforced by law anymore but it’s still pretty bad. In housing, segregation is dropping incredibly slowly and more than half of black people would need to move in order to have them randomly distributed in neighborhoods. Census shows modest declines in black-white segregation | Brookings
Public schools are actually more segregated.
Modern Segregation | Economic Policy Institute
Tracking students into advanced, regular, and remedial classes within school systems further segregates public education.
Ludovic, I think using politics as a proxy for racism is really interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t know that it points in the same direction you do. 58% of white Americans voted for the most openly racist candidate in generations. You could argue some of them voted for his policy positions other than racism but it’s almost impossible to identify a consistently-held policy position he took as a public figure that wasn’t motivated by racism. You couldn’t count on him to say the same thing twice about abortion, taxing the wealthy, Medicare, the military, or really anything else but if you wanted him to support racist or xenophobic policies against black people, Hispanics, or Muslims, you could really count on Trump. For the 58% of people who voted for him, his overtly anti-American, racist policies should have disqualified him. Instead, the best that can be said about them is that they were willing to trade off the civil rights of people not like them in order to get some other public policy to work in their favor. That sounds like a workable definition of racism to me.
I think “makes broad racial generalizations” fits into the racist camp. I might not judge every person who tells ethnic jokes a racist but those people are skating on thin ice with me.
There’s a lot of room for racists below the lynching level.
The fact that you don’t see white people interacting with black people very much could also be a function of personal racism. Also, the ability of a racist person to appear not racist for a few pleasant interactions per day doesn’t tell us very much.
If this were the definition when I answered the poll, my number would have been much lower but I think it’s a terrible definition of racism. There might be many white people who would freely associate with black or brown people as long as they could still keep the black or brown people at enough social disadvantage to benefit themselves. Sounds pretty racist to me.
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What popped into your head? Apparently, you targeted white people for racism because of the color of their skin. Doesn’t that makes you a racist? That’s at least one out of the 310+ million Americans.
You later said, “This is about people’s perception of racism so I’m letting each user define it”, but you had already confined your poll to white racism only. White American people only. In spite of your specified criteria, members have shared their versions, concerns, and definitions of racism. They have certainly taken the edge off of your racist poll question. But that’s just my opinion.
What percentage of people are racist? Every person who blames white people for being white certainly qualifies as racist. People who were never slaves, but insist on blaming white people who never bought, sold, or owned slaves for slavery certainly qualify as racist. People who only hire Asians certainly qualify as racist. People who belong to groups like the KKK, black power groups, white power groups, Nazis, etc. certainly qualify as racist.
OTOH, I see no reason to answer your racist poll question, but thanks for inviting everyone, regardless of skin color, to answer .
There is nothing racist about the poll. It is a legitimate question regarding the percentage of white people in the U.S. who are racists. The fact that “racist” isn’t defined raises issues (as seen in this thread) but it doesn’t make the poll racist by any definition.
I have to add, no one ever has “blamed white people for being white.”
Wait, are you saying people who voted 40% are saying at least half of white Americans are racist? Because that’s not what 40% means.
It didn’t accomplish “nothing.” He got numbers.
It might be instructive if he were to share what inspired him to conceptualize and formulate the poll.
I didn’t answer the poll, and these two questions are why:
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How would I know? I haven’t polled everyone.
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How racist is “racist”? Acts racist? Acts violently racist? Acts mildly racist? Talks racist but doesn’t act on it? Talks racist only among peers? Has racist sentiments but suppresses them? Has racist fears but hides them? Is merely aware that different races have been treated differently and may expect different treatment?
Depending on the answer to 2, even if I had data the answer to the poll could be anywhere from 2% to 99.99%.
Uh huh. You’re a racist if you’re a Nazi or in the Klan. If you’re not a Nazi or not in the Klan, you’re not racist. That means we’ve solved racism in America, folks. But we’ll never get a simple “thank you” from those people, will we?
Wow…wow! You are getting super defensive my friend. I’ve targeted white AMERICANS. there are tons of “white” people outside america. More than in America, in fact.
My poll is not racist. You being so defensive and outraged reflects extremely poorly on you, however.
Your ad hominem attacks are weak and I will ignore them. 
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I said “believe is racist”, not “know is racist” so no polling is required.
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If you read my follow up posts on this very thread, you will have your answer. I’ve asked a mod to update my OP, so hopefully this will happen at some point in the future.
You want wild guesses, huh?
So it seems you meant racism = ‘too racist for me to want to put up with, assuming no other pressure to do so’.
Well. I’m a fairly tolerant guy, so you’d have to rather openly racist for me to cut you off - and unable to cut it out after I asked you and then subsequently reminded you to. So your average baseline racist would actually fly under the wire because I assume a percentage of these people realize that they need to adapt to their audience.
So I said 40%. Also, by the way, your distribution of available options is really weird.
I went with a high number simply because I have know very few white people who not only were non-racist but went out of there way to break down barriers like moving their families to majority black neighborhoods and putting their kids in majority black schools.
Is it racist to not want to see guys with their pants falling off, and hear “fuck” blasted out of car radios?
Give me a minute to brace myself.
And there it is.
You kids with your hippity-hop music… get off my lawn!
I suspect 25-40% of Americans are racist enough that they’d be happy if all non-white people were to disappear.
Those dudes with low hanging pants tend to have great asses. Why is it ok for you to ogle girls wearing short shorts but not ok for women or gay people to check out some man butt?
I wanted a 50% but went 60%. These days its harder to say (imho). There are days when I think we could actually be much better than that - more in the 25% range. But there are most days where my thoughts are that we’re just better at hiding our actual feelings than we were in the past.
[ul][li]Is that your definition of racism?[]Do you think it is a useful definition? []How does that definition “solve racism”?[/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan
Too many.
No, that is the definition of racism that it seems that those who want to downplay racism in america tend to use. That unless you are in an out and out blatant hate groups marching the street, you are not a racist.
It “solves” racism by allowing you to call racism a rare thing, something easy to avoid if you just don’t go to klan rallies and marches, while ignoring that racism is still prevalent in our society, and still negatively impacting minorities.