Why in the US is anti-black racism still so prevalent while other forms of bigotry have improved

[Wesley_Clark]

Anti-black bigotry isn’t as bad as it was say 100 or 200 years ago. Having said that, there is a rich history (this is for the United States) of various other forms of bigotry. Anti-semitism, anti-asian bigotry, anti-irish, anti-italian, etc.

For the most part, these groups have integrated now. Irish, jews and Italians seem fairly integrated despite them having serious problems 100 years ago. I don’t know a ton about anti-asian bigotry, but it doesn’t seem like a major issue in modern America. People don’t look at a white-asian marriage the way they likely do a white-black one.

But anti-black bigotry is alive and well. It has improved in some areas (the end of official segregation, higher support for interracial marriage, etc) but this form of bigotry seems to withstand the test of time.

Hell, anti-gay bigotry has changed quite a bit in just the last 20 years. There has been a lot of improvement in that area. In the new Pew political typology report, it found that Core conservatives (the base of the republican party) for the most part don’t care about homosexuality anymore. Its a non issue for them, that wasn’t the case as recent as 2004 when anti-gay prejudice was used to help motivate them to get to the polls.

So why does society seem to make such improvements in bigotry against jews, irish, italians, asians, gays, etc. but anti-black bigotry doesn’t improve nearly as much?

Is it because the crime rate is higher among blacks? People use that as a reason to hate them? Nobody is worried about asian crime or irish crime. However the current administration is trying to make Latino crime and immigrant crime a bigger issue by portraying latino immigrants as rapists and MS-13 members.

But the issue is that there are at least 4 factors in people who commit a decent amount of street crimes (probably more). Young, males, poor, black. Not all criminals are like that, but a large disproportionate number fit that compared to the % of the general public who fit those 4 categories (probably only 1% of the country fit all 4).

But the other 3 items really aren’t used for bigotry purposes. Nobody says ‘men are terrible’ or ‘young people are terrible’, or really even ‘poor people are terrible’ like we do with black people. When a young, black, poor man commits a heinous crime people don’t say ‘all men are dangerous’ or ‘all young people are dangerous’ or ‘all poor people are dangerous’ per se. It seems like the crime thing is more a justification than a reason, but I don’t know.

Point is, not all criminals are young, poor black men. But a large % are compared to the % of the public they make up. However if you take any 1 of those factors away, crime rates drop dramatically (young poor black women don’t commit many crimes. Old, poor black men dont’ commit many crimes. Young middle class black men don’t commit many crimes, etc). But society seems willing to forgive the male, poor and young aspects more than the black aspect of it.

On the other end, one of the major reasons to persecute jews was because they were too successful. They do better than other groups. So if you don’t succeed enough (like some people accuse blacks or latinos) people criticize you, but if you achieve too much (like jews) they criticize you. Even with blacks, Obama was criticized for accomplishing too much (even if people didn’t say that was why, him being an overly successful black man seems to have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way) just as blacks in the ghetto are criticized for accomplishing too little.

Anti-muslim prejudice seems to be growing. I assume because of fears some don’t share western values, and fear of terrorism.

So do people have to be personally affected by bigotry to share a prejudice? But groups like asians or gays aren’t out making people’s lives worse so people don’t care. But fear of black street crime and paying for black welfare, or fear of Sharia law or Islamic terrorism is a threat to people existentially? So prejudice requires people to actually be negatively affected personally? Or does it require identity aspects you strongly identify with?

So long story short, why does this particular form of prejudice survive longer and more sustained than other forms? Many other forms of prejudice have improved compared to this one.

Also, is Europe really considered a vacation from racial tension? I’ve heard some black people say going to the UK was like taking a vacation from racism. Is that true? Is that all of western Europe or just the UK? I"ve heard the UK is more divided by class, not race.

[HurricaneDitka]

I think most of the OP reads like it’s based off some personal anecdotes and impressions. I’m not sure larger conclusions about the state of racism in America could or should be drawn from such a tiny sample.

[Little_Nemo]

The situation with anti-black bigotry has greatly improved. I’ve seen it happen in my own lifetime. There’s still a lot of anti-black racism out there but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was just a few decades ago.

[kk_fusion]

One factor is that other ethnically separable groups typically arrived in the U.S. through selective immigration. They were picked for their above-average skills and managed to be successful despite initial bigotry. It even happens with “technically black” (for lack of a better word) immigrants from the Caribbean and West Africa these days.

Whereas “native” American blacks, who had lived in captivity for generations, were a cross-section of any typical native population, and that was not enough to overcome everyday discrimination.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Wesley Clark, you should do some more reading about the history of discrimination in the U.S. There are lots of kinds of discrimination.
Start with these Wikipedia entries:

Discrimination in the United States

Racism in the United States

Gender inequality in the United States

Religious discrimination in the United States

Heterosexism

Opposition to immigration

Then you should read some books about the subject. It’s more complicated than you think. As HurricaneDitka says, you seem to be relying on personal anecdotes. I’m not sure how much attitudes have changed for the many kinds of discrimination, and I would be reluctant to make a guess without some serious study of the matter.

[AI_Proofreader]

@kk_fusion

One factor is that other ethnically separable groups typically arrived in the U.S. through selective immigration. They were picked for their above-average skills and managed to be successful despite initial bigotry. It even happens with “technically black” (for lack of a better word) immigrants from the Caribbean and West Africa these days.

Whereas “native” American blacks, who had lived in captivity for generations, were a cross-section of any typical native population, and that was not enough to overcome everyday discrimination.

To be fair, quite a sizeable portion of the original European immigrants weren’t even a representative cross-section; they were castoffs sentenced to exile to the colonies for crimes against the state.

Personally I think this should be a point of pride for Americans, like the Botany Bay mythology in Australia. Unfortunately we went the other way with it and everyone’s always lauding “law and order” and respect for the state.

[Little_Nemo]

@kk_fusion

One factor is that other ethnically separable groups typically arrived in the U.S. through selective immigration. They were picked for their above-average skills and managed to be successful despite initial bigotry. It even happens with “technically black” (for lack of a better word) immigrants from the Caribbean and West Africa these days.

Whereas “native” American blacks, who had lived in captivity for generations, were a cross-section of any typical native population, and that was not enough to overcome everyday discrimination.

I think you can easily argue the opposite is true. African “immigrants” to America faced far harsher conditions, both in transit and for generations following, than any other group of immigrants faced. So only the toughest and most skilled survived.

[kk_fusion]

@AI_Proofreader

To be fair, quite a sizeable portion of the original European immigrants weren’t even a representative cross-section; they were castoffs sentenced to exile to the colonies for crimes against the state.

Maybe European, that’s why I specified “ethnically separable”, which I also think is in the spirit of the OP.

@Little Nemo

I think you can easily argue the opposite is true. African “immigrants” to America faced far harsher conditions, both in transit and for generations following, than any other group of immigrants faced. So only the toughest and most skilled survived.

I’m not talking Darwinian selection here. Compare the generation of black plantation laborers that were freed in the 1860s to, say, the generation of East Asian engineers that got admitted in the 1970s. Assuming for the moment that both groups are equally affected by racial prejudice, who is more likely to break out of it through socio-economic success?

[Nava]

@AI_Proofreader

Personally I think this should be a point of pride for Americans, like the Botany Bay mythology in Australia. Unfortunately we went the other way with it and everyone’s always lauding “law and order” and respect for the state.

While combining it with the entrepreneur/frontierman mythos.

[Filbert]

@Little_Nemo

I think you can easily argue the opposite is true. African “immigrants” to America faced far harsher conditions, both in transit and for generations following, than any other group of immigrants faced. So only the toughest and most skilled survived.

Huh? The skills required to survive slavery would be very different to the skills required to live in the modern world. The tendency to be meek, unimaginative, and do everything you were told without question may help in surviving long enough to have children when enslaved, but it’s not a great trait combination for getting on in the business world.

It’s probably completely irrelevant at a genetics level anyway, human personalities are far more complicated than that. How many current African-Americans are wholly descended from enslaved ancestors anyway?

[Wendell_Wagner]

According to this Wikipedia entry:

African Americans

> Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as black, around 10.3% were “native black American” or ethnic African
> Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the U.S. as slaves. These individuals make up well over 80%
? of all blacks in the country.

So the answer to your question, Filbert, is about 82%, if those numbers are correct.

[iiandyiiii]

@Wendell_Wagner

According to this Wikipedia entry:

African Americans - Wikipedia

> Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as black, around 10.3% were “native black American” or ethnic African
> Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the U.S. as slaves. These individuals make up well over 80%
? of all blacks in the country.

So the answer to your question, Filbert, is about 82%, if those numbers are correct.

Most of those would still likely have some non-slave ancestors, so if by “wholly” he means “entirely and without other ancestry”, then the answer is probably much smaller.

[John_Mace]

@iiandyiiii

Most of those would still likely have some non-slave ancestors, so if by “wholly” he means “entirely and without other ancestry”, then the answer is probably much smaller.

I doubt there are any African-Americans who trace their lineage back to slavery times that do not have some European admixture. I’ve never seen a DNA analysis of such a person that came back: 100% Sub-Sahara African. I started a GQ thread asking if anyone had heard of someone like that a few years back and no examples were offered.

With the average admixture for African-Americans at ~20% European, that means one in five of their great-great-great…-great grandparents was white. That’s a lot of white ancestors when you’re talking 6-7 generations or more.

[up_the_junction]

Fwiw, I had quite a lot of fun reading this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1seelc/black_people_of_reddit_who_have_spent_time_in/

American black in London would walk into a room and find the only black guy in that room and ask how he’s doing. This would confuse the black man from London.

One day in primary school our teacher was talking to us about bullying and the various reasons someone might get bullied. She asks one of the black kids ‘can you think of an instance when you’ve encountered racist bullying?’ black kid thinks for a while and then says ‘Yes, loads of people are horrible to intangible-tangerine because she’s a ginger.’

[Dinsdale]

Hey women? How’s President Hillary Clinton working out for you? To paraphrase Chris Rock, surprising to see AMericans hate women more than blacks!

[up_the_junction]

@John_Mace

.

With the average admixture for African-Americans at ~20% European, that means one in five of their great-great-great…-great grandparents was white. That’s a lot of white ancestors when you’re talking 6-7 generations or more.

Generally, it’s a lot of rape.

[monstro]

Anti-black bigotry has changed a whole lot, Wesley. I always have to remind people that black Generation Xers were the first generation of black Americans to have been born into first-class citizenship. Anyone who was born prior to the 1960s cannot say this.

I have black coworkers who are in their late 50s and 60s. Only one is at the management level; the rest work in low-level administrative positions. Lazy and shiftless? Stupid? No. It’s called growing up black in the days of Jim Crow. Google “Virginia’s Massive Resistance”. A whole generation of black Virginias had their educations robbed from them. Find me an European immigrant who had this experience.

There’s a lot more anti-black bigotry than other kinds of bigotry because black people were enslaved for 300 years. So the racist baggage that Americans carry in their collective headspace is 300 years old. It will take a long time for people to shed that baggage. And it also doesn’t help that black people didn’t instantly become financial successes right after Emancipation. Because discrimination. Turns out that being “economically delayed” only entrenches bigotry. Black = poor in many Americans’ eyes. And Americans hate them some poor people.

[Kimstu]

@Filbert

The skills required to survive slavery would be very different to the skills required to live in the modern world. The tendency to be meek, unimaginative, and do everything you were told without question may help in surviving long enough to have children when enslaved, but it’s not a great trait combination for getting on in the business world.

This assessment of “the skills required to survive slavery” long enough “to have children when enslaved” is pure speculative horseshit.

For one thing, many slaves reproduced as a result of rape by or at the instigation of white owners, rather than being allowed to choose their own partners as a reward for sustained docility.

For another, it’s absurd to suppose that “meekness” and “unimaginativeness” necessarily improved one’s chances for survival in slavery. As in almost all situations in human life, intelligence, robustness and self-control were probably the most successful characteristics in coping with hardships.

Assuming that slaves were passive and docile “by nature” because they were bred for those traits, either deliberately or indirectly due to the circumstances of their enslavement, is not much less racist than slaveowners’ assumptions that slaves were passive and docile “by nature” because it was an innate part of their racial heritage.

ISTM that the persistence of anti-black racism in the US is mostly due to the prolonged and virulent nature of anti-black discrimination and oppression in the US. You can’t base centuries of social and economic policy on the assumption that a racially identified segment of the population is literally less than fully human without getting seriously messed up in the head on racial issues.

[Markedward]

82% of blacks are not direct descendants of slaves…get ur head out of ur ass…as for the high crime rate, rape, murders, robbery, young, and not so young, black males have low i.q. And are opportunist who feel the world owes them. Pertaining to crime by comparison, Most white males who commit home invasions tend to rob then leave the scene whereas a black male usually rapes the female resident then steals the Property then flees…again, it goes to the low I.q.

[Tilt-A-Whirl]

You seem to be quite the expert on having a low IQ.