Wow, that’s an amazing comment. It’s that simple, huh? If you don’t see racism, you’re a racist? There are over 300 million people in this country, all with different life experiences. And we’re supposed to reduce this to “they are racists”.
Not just willful disregard but willful self deception reinforced by the media.
This is the real “fake news” white Americans make up for other white Americans.
For example : Take the sitcom Bing Bang Theory which represents Caltech a d Caltech Physics department to a great extent. All the cast is white except for the Indian who of course is someone mediocre who made it due to the money his parents have 
In reality, this is the graduate population of Caltech Physics. http://pma.caltech.edu/people?cat_one=Graduate%20Students&cat_two=Physics
If you look through, the above cite : more than half of the population is non white.
Then look at the Big Bang Cafeteria scenes - it’s all mostly whites
No, not at all. I consider people who identify as ‘white’ to be racists because they believe that humans can be separated into races. ‘Race’ is an artificial concept, there is no such biological property. To me racism is the belief that there are different human ‘races’, and all of the problems of racists and racism stem from that. I know people don’t like it when I say this. I wish there was some better way to say it, but I don’t believe we can fight racism without destroying the false underlying basis of it entirely.
One issue regarding discussions of race and racism in the US is that automatically and unless someone redirects things, it quickly evolves into “racism against blacks”; blacks are the one group Americans think of as “tradisionally disenfranchised” but they are neither the only ones discriminated against by reason of their ancestry nor the only ones who have a history of such discrimination.
That simplification is, itself, racism, as it disregards the history and problems of every other group who’s gotten the short end of the American racial lottery.
Just one example of many, from this same thread:
There are a whole fucking lot of Native Americans who’d like to know when the fuck has America been black and white.
Touche. America has sinned mightily against Native Americans, and they were here before any of the rest of us.
I think in some cases it’s simply a matter of context. I’m an old white guy, and until just now I’d never noticed that. Is that depiction considered racism? Is my lack of awareness ? I’m really not sure.
Please understand, I’m an old guy who grew up in the rural south. The people around me used “nigger” as commonly as we would use the word “tall”. My grandparents would punish me for playing with the black kids a few streets over. I was told “They ain’t our kind, and they need to know their place.” I’ve been to older stores back in the sticks that still had 3 restrooms. On my first job pumping gas I was admonished by the owner that we didn’t “serve their kind”. In the context of those experiences, the minor offenses of today don’t seem like a big deal.
Uh… there most definitely is such a thing as race.
If you mean relative to, say, 1960, I would agree; if you mean relative to a decade or two ago, I’m less certain. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I just don’t know. In terms of my regular interactions with people, I don’t think much has changed during my adult life, but I’m definitely seeing movements and rhetoric that I couldn’t have imagined seeing 10-20 years ago, and it’s deeply disturbing. Words matter - they represent ideas, and bad ideas can become romanticized and popular in ways that might seem far-fetched initially.
White people don’t see racism unless it’s just over-the-top obvious. We’re just not in a position to understand what racism is, which by itself is understandable. The problem is that even when you point out that someone has biases - not that they’re racist but simply biased - people tend to get defensive. Even among self-identified ‘progressive’ white males such as myself, we don’t want to acknowledge that we have flaws or that we have biases. There’s a human tendency to assume that we know what we think we know based on our own observations and experiences. Speaking as a white male, I’ve seen this problem with race and with gender as well, a tendency to white male-spain everything to people who have a much better understanding of the subjects we think we know, but really don’t.
As an artificial human-created sociological category, sure. But I’m pretty sure that poster’s point is that we as a society should strive to dismantle this human-created categorization since it’s done so march harm.
It’s interesting you note it as a disease, because I always thought racism was some psychological disorder or akin to a psychosis, think about it, how many people in psychosis without treatment are able to define what’s wrong with them or accept it? Same with racism.
So when you fill out forms, be it for a Driver’s License or the Census or any other form that asks, what box do you check for race or ethnicity? Do you check “none of the above”, “white”, “black”, “other”?
I’m not sure about Canada or the Netherlands, but the UK certainly has an issue.
But before diving into that, let me first make clear that I use the term “racism” honestly. For most people, in the US, it means negative thoughts and activities towards black people and they ignore the Chinese lady they work with, and the Indian guy, and the Brazilian lady, etc. and they ignore positive racism.
I have, for example, mostly experienced positive racism from when I lived in Japan. When people talk about “white privilege”, it’s very clearly a thing. If you go wandering around a black neighborhood at night and a police officer stops you, he’ll more likely than not warn you that is dangerous out and you should go home. Whereas if a black person is wandering around a white neighborhood at night, the officer will be deeply suspicious of their intents and, minus perfect behavior, quite possibly end up arresting that person.
You read that example and probably think I’m terms of that the later case is racist but that the former isn’t, and that’s not correct. Positive treatment is also racist.
In Japan, as a foreigner, the popular rule of behavior is that if you are not perfect, you will be thrown out of the country without hesitation. If you’re Filipino and you get drunk and get caught pissing in an alley, you’ll be thrown out of the country without even being given the chance to go to your apartment and pack your things. If you are late renewing your work visa, they’ll ship you out. (Note: This might have changed in recent years due to an increasing reliance on foreign labor.)
But I was late with my visa renewal (I hadn’t noticed that the sticker said it was both good for four years AND one year, just the first), so when I was about to leave the country without a valid visa, they warned me against leaving the country and helped to get it renewed. I was white. White foreigners are alright, just not Southeast Asian or black, or anything else.
For many things (small things), I would probably be able to get into more trouble than your average Japanese person and get away with it, because whiteness is godliness from a cultural sense. The Japanese consider themselves part of the Caucasian world.
But, at the same time, most Japanese would not be willing to have a serious relationship with a white man, because they’re mildly opposed to miscegenation. Half white children tend to get a cold reception from their grandparents.
So I have also seen and experienced negative racism as a white person, in Japan. Like I said, it was mostly positive - where I’m treated better than others, including sometimes the Japanese themselves - but at heart I’m just a giant amalgamation of cells that consumes and procreates in accordance with the same evolutionary background as all of them. There’s no reason for the positive nor the negative. And racism is usually a mix, it’s not confined to being all good or all bad.
But where most people sort of enjoy experiencing positive racism, if they go to Asia or Mexico or wherever, personally I’m not too fond of it. I don’t like irrational things, so it still sticks out to me when I sense it occurring. So I put it under the heading of racism where most people would go to Mexico and think, “The people are so friendly!”
Lack of racism is lack of caring. If my daughter wants to marry a guy from Egypt, I don’t care, so long as he’s nice. If I’m thinking how amazing and special and foreign he is, and how he brings along all this stuff from ancient history, etc. then that’s racist. If I don’t like him because he makes me think of terrorists, that’s also racist, but it’s not the only version of racism. Like I said, racism is anything beyond giving zero fucks one way or the other.
In the UK, there are very sharply separated Muslim areas. The nearby locals wanted to be super PC so when there were hints that they were selling children to each other as spouses, they suppressed that information because it would be anti-PC to arrest them for breaking the laws of the land.
The Muslim community (as I understand it from reading about the situation) is a strongly separate community. There is not a lot of withing together and hanging out and so on. They’re there in town, but it may as well be a different town that just happens to exist in a donut hole of our town.
In American history, we used to have sharp borders like that - with the East Coast creating all these Little Italies and Little Ukraines and so on, the West Coast has a half dozen Chinatowns, but that’s no longer how it works. Chinese people come over and just pick a place to live. They might try to pinpoint someplace more popular with other Chinese, because they want access to a Chinese supermarket, but it’s not a huge deal, and white people don’t avoid moving in, nor do Indians or anyone else. It’s not a matter of being pushed into that area, it’s just that that’s where there’s a Chinese supermarket.
Ignoring the African American issue, the US is among the most inviting and diversity-friendly places on Earth. Canada may be ahead of us (though, I know they have problems with their native people in places). I’m unaware of state of the Netherlands, but we’re probably ahead of the UK, France, Germany, etc.
If you watch Dr Who, for example, they’re clearly trying to include diversity as an active measure. They clearly know that it’s a thing that requires active investment. And, more importantly, I would be willing to bet that if you threw a White Nationalism rally in the UK (if the government allowed it), you’d probably get a crowd the size of or larger than our Unite the Right did, even though the UK has a smaller population. But, in the UK, they probably don’t allow it because they don’t believe in Freedom of Speech.
And that’s one reason why they probably have the division and the racism, because they don’t allow people to talk and they have their stupid libel laws that don’t let the press raise concerns in advance.
The US really only has the one thing: The African American issue. But that’s not the entirety of the picture. It’s a small portion. Obviously a significant one, but to focus on it is to gloss over a whole bunch of other stuff.
But I will note some points:
- Part of our population was enslaved. Ignoring the ramifications of that and lumping it under racism is being a bit simplistic. You also have issues like teaching a whole group of people to not trust the rest of society and then switching around one day and expecting the culture to flip on a dime as well. And, minus a trusting culture, that impacts finical decisions, school decisions, medical decisions, etc. which affect how prosperous that person or their children become.
It moves beyond racism to “the weight of history”.
- Africans do well. Barack Obama became president. Others from Africa do about as well as we would expect from their educational attainment. Minus the weight of history, the effects are strongly different.
I leave it blank or write in “human”.
I check “white”. So, in your view, that makes me a racist…
I am not young either and understand how you would’nt notice. That’s the nature of self deception.
Racism comes in many blatant and subtle forms. I am not sure why are you asking the question. What do you think ?
Maybe it was your lack awareness. What really matters is what you will do once you have the awareness.
It seems like you witnessed a lot of racism. I hope that helped you see how the other side may have felt. I also hope you have educated your kids and grandkids well to recognize it and oppose it.
I hope you really don’t mean that. It’s this type of desensitization that keeps racism and bias alive.
In a herd of cattle, it’s the ones who directly encounter the cattle prods who are viscerally aware that they aren’t free to roam.
Like most white people, I’m seldom aware of when things as I experience them are not experienced the same way for nonwhite people. I don’t embrace an identity as “a white person” – that doesn’t freaking matter. I don’t get deprived systematically. I’m left to think that the degree of fairness and reasonableness of the systems I encounter is how those systems are, when they’re not — they’re like that for me and other people marked as white by external observers, but they’re not like that for folks who are marked by external observers as nonwhite. Especially black.
Racism corrals all of us (as do the other oppressive ‘isms’ for that matter). But it specifically does so by disempowering and dehumanizing black people (in modern times, in America specifically if not worldwide; at other times and in other places, other people, other racial ideologies – and in our own time and culture not limited by any means to black people, but I daresay no ethnicity or race is quite as downtrodden by racism in our era / culture as black people are).
Ok, I’ll answer.
If you want me to believe that racism is “ubiquitous” and a “crippling disease” and you want me to “do something about it”, then the burden of proof is on you. I don’t believe those things are true, but if you want me to believe them, feel free to make a logical argument based on verifiable evidence. I’ll be happy to read anything of reasonable length.
I believe that racism is relatively rare in the USA and while it would be great if it were eliminated entirely, there are many pressing issues more in need of attention. The primary evidence being the what the polls show. (See here for polls and lengthy discussion.) Asked in any way, the number of people self-identifying as white supremacists or saying that black people are inferior is very low, often within the poll’s margin or error. This is in agreement with what I’ve observed in a lifetime of traveling the USA and talking to a great many people–a very small number are openly racist, while most are not.
And what about claims of subconscious racism? Almost all claims of that sort that I’ve encountered are based on the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is pseudoscience. And then there are people who offer their own anecdotal stories about discovering their own biases, which recalls the saying “the plural of anecdote is not data”.
And what about the fact that a certain sitcom misrepresents the racial makeup of a certain academic department? I see no reason to care. It’s a work of fiction. Sitcoms cannot harm anybody. Neither can movies, paintings, poetry, literature, music, jokes, or Democratic politicians who impersonated Michael Jackson in blackface three decades ago. The fact that so much angst is poured out on these topics tends rather to suggest that there’s a lack of more serious race-related topics to deal with.
Well, the one item that I do think is important is about how minorities are treated by the justice system, in particular seeing how minorities end up with more time or harsher punishment for the same crimes that whites are found to commit.
Unfortunately, the burden of proof is on the OP, but that doesn’t really address the questions/concerns raised in the post. Minorities - especially those who have been victimized the most - understand almost from day one that the burden of proof is on them. You’re not bringing anything new to this discussion by pointing that out; you’re validating his experiences, which is that you have no idea what it means to live on the other side of whiteness.
“Feel free to make a logical argument” – uh, no, because life experiences aren’t syllogisms. Life isn’t a fucking math equation. So let’s not try to develop an algorithm, and maybe just drop the smug and be open to read about and listen to someone else’s life experiences.