No, that’s your definition of racism.
I don’t recall saying so. Could you cite where I did?
Regards,
Shodan
This is interesting, because, based off many of the responders, “white racist” seems to be followed by an unstated “against black people” conditional. Nobody’s talking about what a white person thinks a Chinese guy dating your daughter, for instance. How they’d feel if a Indian moved in next door, etc. The fact that the default assumption seems to be “against black people” is fascinating.
I’m not really seeing that. You do state yourself that it only seems to be followed by an “unstated” conditional.
If the conditional is unstated, are you sure that you are not just reading it in there yourself?
You’re not seeing it? Page 1 “black” search: 55 results. That’s quite a bit when the question is “What percentage of white America do you believe is racist?”
If we’re not talking about whites, we’re talking about blacks, up to the point of whether they’re “racists too”. Any other minority you could count one one hand.
Of course, maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Really an ambiguous question. Where do you draw the line for racist?
Thinks everyone non-white should be deported? Obviously.
Get’s nervous when a black person gets on the elevator with them?
Doesn’t care if someone is in a mixed relationship but doesn’t want to date a non-white themselves?
Since I’ll bet that someone voted based on the last selection being racist I’ll draw the line at the first for balance. A very small percentage is that hard-core racist. Still, that’s going to be thousands in a population of 300 million+.
Perhaps we can define levels of racism.
I don’t think that “not dating people of another race” is racism. It’s just a factor of selection. Some women won’t date a man shorter than they are.
But let’s take that as our first level.
Dating Racist.
Then people like me, who detest hearing rap music blasted from cars, and seeing guys walking around with their pants falling off.
Rap Racist.
Deport Racist, as described above.
There was a Black man dragged behind a car several years ago, and a gay kid beaten almost to death and tied to a fence in the snow and died.
Murderous Racists.
Ok, the two least and the two worse.
What goes in between?
In prior posts the OP clarified that the level of racism they were asking about is “enough more racist than me that I don’t want to associate with them because of that”. Just for reference.
This is why I put my qualifying “line” is’ Where do you live? What school do you send your kids to?
I mean so many people applaud when a black kid goes to a white school. BUT, why dont we have equal applause when a white kid goes to a black school? Why do we applaud when a black family breaks the “color line” and moves to a white neighborhood yet at the same time, why dont we push for a white family moving into a black neighborhood? Why cant desegregation go in both directions? Why dont people who claim they are against racism, actually send their kids to black schools?
I think alot of my feelings comes from teaching in a majority black school where many of the black families were insulted by “desegregation” which basically says a black kid will not learn unless they are sitting in a classroom next to a white kid. Also where they would skim off the best and brightest black kids and send them to white schools.
This thread concerns white America specifically. And golly, how has white America typically demonstrated racism, you know, on a grand scale? Your stated other examples are valid and rare by comparison, but the guys that the white racists really really hate are the blacks. That’s how it is. I for one don’t find it fascinating.
Really? Around here the targets of our local idiocracy seem to be either Mexicans (by which they mean any vaguely brown-skinned person from south of, say, Kansas), and anybody perceived (again, often incorrectly) as being Muslim (and yes, I know that’s bigotry rather than racism, but tomato/tomahto).
I vote the single worst poll op I have ever seen.
I’d have gone with zero if it was an option as what pops into my head is “considers themselves racist” and virtually no one thinks of themselves as racist. Far closer to zero than to 1%.
Of course I could just as easily have gone with 100% if that was a choice because no matter what our explicit beliefs may be we all (not just Whites btw) behave subtly according to implicit beliefs that have racist impacts and participate in structures that are the result of racism and that further racial disparities (inclusive of many more groupings than the White/Black divisor). That’s the second bit that pops into my mind.
Damn stupid op.
And OTOH exaggerating the real extent and effect of racism in modern American society can also be used for self interested purposes, and often is IMO. And one aspect of that would be putting all kinds of relatively benign or ambiguous sorts of behavior under the rubric ‘racism’, as if it were of the more extreme kind when it isn’t.
I don’t think one side or other of the great cultural/political divide in American society has any monopoly on seeing ‘racism’ in a way that suits their agenda.
I agree it’s obvious if you simply look at what people wrote. Of course bigotry exists on the part of ‘whites’ toward others besides ‘blacks’ (as it does from ‘minorities’ toward ‘whites’, and among ‘minorities’ toward one another though the OP excluded that and is entitled to ask the poll question they want to). But a lot of the responses do seem to assume the question is white attitudes toward blacks.
Which has a historical basis. But it’s drifting gradually from American social reality where race relations as they apply to African Americans are often pretty different than as they apply to other minorities, and the growing proportion of people who don’t absolutely or even predominantly self-identify as being of one race. Talking social reality. In politics one side often tends to pretend it’s all about white v non-white and that’s the central fact of American life; and the other often tends to pretend there’s no issue left at all.
I interpreted the poll to mean “OPENLY” racist, I put 5%. Not so openly I’d say 20% and add another 5 for including * actual* Nazi, KKK or white supremacists. A poll for how many blacks are racist is due next as a control group for interpreting poll and political bias.
Also like to add; one having a preference for who they date or copulate with is not racist at all. If this were to be included, you may as well say every single person on every continent are racist. There are many facets that influence this, especially cultural influences and personal preference. You can’t force someone to be attracted to someone they are not even if based on skin color, nasal structure, cranial size etc… Everyone has a preference in duality.
My take is that >99% of all Americans are racist*, meaning that at some level they harbor negative stereotypes about other race(s). This includes the vast majority of those who declare they are color-blind, and virtually all who assure us that some of their best friends are other-racial.
The number of racists who act on their prejudices to the detriment of others is probably under 10%.
*using anally-extracted data.
Disliking rap isn’t racist because rap isn’t inherently black. When people refer to “urban music”, that’s not a euphemism; that’s an accurate description. Urban whites like rap just as much as urban blacks do, and suburban and rural blacks are no more likely to like rap than suburban and rural whites. Likewise with sagging pants, deadbeat fatherhood, and so on.
Now, it’s true that blacks are disproportionately urban and poor compared to whites. Which is an example of systemic racism. But that’s a different problem from personal racism, and needs to be solved in different ways.
Racism isn’t a binary either-or condition, and it’s not always conscious. A lot of it happens on a groupthink level or is structural, meaning embedded in our institutions. Finger-pointing at individuals isn’t that useful.
FWIW I don’t accuse anyone of being a racist. Label the behavior, not the person. And I don’t say “That was a racist remark” either. Never gets a good response.
Just to update and clarify: since we got told to pick the closest number, I figure that anyone who says “less than half” has to pick one of the lower numbers, and anyone who says “more than half” has to pick a higher one — and, at the current count, just over 64% has declared for ‘closest to 40%/25%/10%/5%/1%’, right?
We are now at 147 votes and I’m updating the results:
If we go by the median, it’s fair to say that most dopers thinks that around **40% of white america is racist. **
If we go by the average, the number is 40.6%.
This number is actually very close to Trump’s approval rating. I realize this is anecdotal so let’s not make anything else of it.
Given the lack of rigor of this poll, I’m going to say ±10% so somewhere between 30% and 50% of white America is perceived as racist. Perception, optics, you know. How things look. Not claiming to know what’s reallllly in people’s hearts or any such thing, ok?