# Why in the US is anti-black racism still so prevalent while other forms of bigotry have improved **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 26, 2017, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866 "2017-10-26T03:56:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/41 "2017-10-27T19:20:58Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > First of all, it is as bad as I say, and we’ve had a number of threads on just that topic. And secondly 1% of the country _at a time_. That’s high enough to cover a pretty big chunk of people watching fox news some of the time, directly or online. Finally 2.1m I think is a cherry-picked number from when fox briefly dipped between other news stations in the ratings battle. > > You can say this about any civil rights movement. How many people go out and protest anything? But yes, protests tend to be indicators of public opinion. > > I’d agree it’s _a_ way of gauging feeling, and so are the things that I’ve mentioned. If it really is so bad, why do you keep watching? 2.1 million is an average week. Last week they average 1.7 million per night, about one half of one percent of the country. Other protest movements had much bigger protests. The march on Washington had 200,000 people when there were 150 million fewer people in the country. The march for life has attracted as many as 650,000 people. The Daily Show was able to get 250,000 people for a march with no discernible message. Neither the white sumpremacists or BLM has been able to been able to get more than a couple people at a time. ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/42 "2017-10-27T19:42:36Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Fox News gets 2.1 million viewers in prime time. That is less than 1% of the country. Even if Fox News is as bad as you say, it would say nothing about the country in general. > BLM members and white supremacists are less than 1% of 1% of this country. They tell us less than Fox News. It’s even less representative when you consider the \*average age of a Fox News Viewer is 68: > **[Fox News’ Biggest Competitor: Mortality](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-twilight-of-fox-news/497684/)** > > The average age of a Fox News viewer is about 70. The average life expectancy of a white American male is about 80. They can get away with subtly or blatantly racist rants that would provoke outrage from viewers of other networks, because their average viewer grew up before the civil rights movement and the attitudes expressed seem perfectly natural. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/43 "2017-10-27T22:28:19Z")
This is just a theory of mine, but it seems to me that people tend to assign to all members of a group they consider “other” the worst qualities of any representative of that group they’ve happened to encounter. Since “white people” are the predominant group and, in most communities, “black people” are the others most likely encountered, any negative interaction with one of “them” results in thinking that’s just how they all are. For a lot of people, their only exposure to some of these other groups is in the media. President Obama probably annoyed a lot of people who never even met him, gee, he even annoyed me on occasion although mostly not, but think of the Republicans! But what a lot of people see and hear on the media is young black men committing crimes. That is only a small part of what they hear, or what they could hear, but that’s what gets through because these people are other, not like them, etc. So any young black man becomes suspect and I guess they expect the old black man to shine their shoes, once the cotton is picked. A little reflection would tell them otherwise, but they don’t reflect, why should they? I had a family member who was very prejudiced. Not that he would have joined a lynch mob or anything, but he actually believed black people were good at some things, generally, but bad at others. Like, they were okay at football, but shouldn’t be politicians. Imagine his chagrin when one of his football heroes ran for office and was actually a REPUBLICAN. He had no choice but to shut his eyes and vote the straight Eagle ticket, as he put it. One of his daughters and one of his sons married “others,” so his attitude didn’t carry over, and now he’s dead, and that’s how it goes. Where I am, I don’t see a lot of anti-black racism. In fact it goes the other way. A black Democratic candidate is raising unprecedented amounts of campaign money–although in these times it could be any Democrat, I guess. (And being that it’s a politician saying it, it could be a lie. Now see, I just thought of that. If it had been a white politician I would have thought it immediately. Racism.) But we have never had a black senator from here. Once you get so many black mayors, so many black governors, senators, presidents, etc., that you don’t even count them any more, then you will probably be able to say there is no racism. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/44 "2017-10-27T23:53:28Z")
> [@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. I disagree with that. The race-baiters like Sharpton and his ilk would have you believe otherwise because they make money off it. Morgan Freeman has said it best, in a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace: > [@](#): > > Wallace: “How are we going to get rid of racism and ….” > > Freeman: “Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/45 "2017-10-28T03:00:29Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > If it really is so bad, why do you keep watching? For the same reason I watch trump interviews – because it matters. Recently FOX has been going on about “the \*real \*russia scandal”, and then guess what? I encounter people that use that same phrase and then launch into some nonsense about clinton. > [@Clothahump](#): > > Morgan Freeman has said it best, in a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace: That video gets linked to a lot: “Look, here’s a black guy saying we should stop talking about race!”. What difference does it make if one person thinks that? For example, with regards to some of the shootings of unarmed black men, if we as a society acknowledged that the need to improve officer training and accountability, that would be it, and there’d be no need for any kneeling NFL players. But instead, enough of a proportion of the population sees a black guy, thinks “well, he probably deserved it” and try to handwave the issue. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866/46 "2017-10-28T05:25:50Z")
It seems to me that racism has changed. Racism used to be about white superiority. Now racism is more about fear and expectations based on stereotypes or personal experience. While it’s portrayed as a white vs. minorities thing, everyone is actually racist towards everyone else. With blacks getting by far the worst of it, but returning it in kind to the extent they have the power to do so. But that’s just individual racism. Institutional racism runs almost all in one direction. That actually is for the most part a whites vs. minorities issue, although there are some cases where it’s also minority vs. minority, such as in Chicago, where African-Americans successfully sued a Latino company for only hiring Latinos. Of course, with Latinos becoming more numerous, more powerful politically, and more successful economically, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to engage in some institutional racism themselves against African-Americans. Some even say that there will be no such thing as Latinos as a distinctive ethnic group, they’ll just be considered white. We’re already seeing some of that now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-in-the-us-is-anti-black-racism-still-so-prevalent-while-other-forms-of-bigotry-have-improved/799866.md?page=2)