Sure, but going further than that, it’s willful ignorance.
I must have missed where someone said this, sorry.
I agree with much of what you said.
I think progressives can have white guilt. I don’t think racists do. I don’t think racists feel guilty at all about their views. Progressives are not guilting white people into racism. That’s the only point I’m trying to make there.
I’m talking about hardcore racism, too, not people who fail to point out that #metoo was created for Black women. How I feel about that stuff varies from day to day, but it’s a far cry from “go back to your own country.”
IMO you’re right they do not. But also IMO they feel mightily put upon that anyone would question the legitimacy of their views. So they’re still angry about being called on their views.
Said another way …
“Guilt” is blaming yourself for other’s disapproval of you. Anger is blaming others for their disapproval of you. Both require recognizing that the disapproval exists. But they differ completely in how they assign blame for that disapproval.
Absolutely. They’re claiming that others are making them feel guilty, but their actual operating emotion is shame. Shame is just the discomfort from being exposed to judgment, regardless of whether you actually feel any guilt or responsibility.
Racists don’t feel guilty or responsible, they don’t intend to grow or change, they just want their feeling of shame to stop, which means silencing or punishing everyone who talks about who they are and what they do.
So I agree they don’t feel guilt but I think they’re definitely drowning in shame. They know we all think they’re trash, they know they’re trash, they just want us to stop talking about it. That’s why they act so puffed up, some of them literally going so far as to call themselves “Proud Boys.” That’s why they shoot women who point out that they have nothing at all to be proud about.
Which is ironic when you consider the contemporary meaning of “pride”.
Every day and in every way I am more thankful that I do not participate in the cesspit that modern social media has become. There is an SMS channel with my relatives* (decidedly not on Facebook), and for online acquaintances and strangers, this site and notalwaysright and finally, for people I meet up with in meats pace once a year – my department at Burning Man.
*My brother, his two sons (my nephews) and his sister-in-law (his dead wife’s sister – I call her my SIL once-removed). The rest of her family has gone MAGA and are excluded.
That is an astute observation.
No, if skin color is part of your sexual preference, that absolutely is racist. It’s just a form of racism where society has decided that fighting back against it would do more harm than good.
Often skin color isn’t even indicative of race. It can be the same as a preference for body shape, hair color, or gender. Calling it racist is like calling a preference for men misogynistic.
I have to disagree. Some prefer blue eyes, or blond hair or long legs, or hairy chests or smooth hairless skin or whatever. Saying you prefer the Nordic look rather than something else is just another preference.
Right.
Sexual preference for one’s race could be, probably is, a result of living in a racist society, combined with a biological tendency toward racism. When (for example) whiteness is held up at the ideal standard of beauty, more people are going to go for whiteness. Indeed, research does show that many people of color view white people as more beautiful, because that’s the messaging in this culture.
The problem is once you have an ingrained preference it’s pretty hard if not impossible to no longer be wired that way. I see it as similar to the thin standard of beauty. Once you’ve been conditioned to see thinness as beautiful, that’s unlikely to change.
So yes, racial preferences in sexual partners probably exist because we all have a biological tendency toward racism, and our culture reinforces that, but I’m not sure what can be done about it, other than be more inclusive as a culture about what is considered beautiful, so that future generations don’t have this hangup. I think we are all better off to acknowledge, however, that our preferences probably aren’t arbitrary.
I don’t see it. How is finding one skin tone more esthetically pleasing than another any different from any other physical preference? That is If we’re speaking solely about looks and not throwing a little straw in there.
If I think an unnatural-looking, fake orange tan is a turn-off, that’s not racist. Your race didn’t make you spray that garbage all over yourself.
(And I’m not talking about Trump; lots of people do that unfortunately.)
Funny how “white” is such an amazingly wonderful thing that we go to great effort to make it go away.
“I find paler skin tones more aesthetically pleasing” is 100% not the same thing as “I only date white people.”
Numerous people who would be considered white have darker skin tones than a number of people not considered white. So you are completely correct.