Why would living in a diverse community make one more racist?

Great Debates
41

Alligators do attack humans, for biological reasons. Your surmise is incorrect. If you said all alligators attack humans all the time, I would explain that they don’t, but I wouldn’t recommended wading into the river.

You have just admitted your prejudice towards people based on your perception of a non-existent class. Whether its malicious or not is irrelevant. You sound like you make assumptions about people based on characteristics unrelated to their character. So now I don’t like you, but I don’t carry that towards someone who resembles you.

42

Why? Obviously, because you have to spend some time around [Group X] before you realize just what assholes they are.

43

No. Not really. Because liking certain types of food is a big, big part of culture, which is the exact same thing that causes all the other undesirable characteristics that get attributed to race. What, exactly, do you think that people “really mean”?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized why I feel the way I do. I don’t dislike my black coworkers, and they act very, very black. But they’re from Georgia, Maryland, and Alabama, not DC. I don’t dislike the black people I went to school with in Pittsburgh. I don’t dislike the people on this board that I know to be black. So why can’t I stand the black people in DC?

Because they’ve got a chip on their shoulder. None of those people I mentioned dislike me. We are either friends, or we just “get along”. But the DC black community loathes the presence of white people. We’re “invaders” to them. While my office mates don’t feel threatened by my presence, DCers undoubtedly do.

So perhaps that’s the true root of racism in diverse communities. One side is the “true resident” and the other is the “invader”. Perhaps that has more to do with it than different customs and different social norms. Maybe it’s really all about territory.
And for those ready to handwave away my experiences, note that our last mayoral election broke along racial lines pretty heavily. Not the fourth paragraph in this article.

And note the joke in this Youtube hit at 3:12 about the Green line. I didn’t just make up its reputation.

44

But you are using the fact that he is prejudiced as indication that he must be wrong about everything else. You have provided no citations, while he has at least provided anecdotes from people who have dealt with the situation. He has not attacked anyone, while you clearly have.

Like it or not, stereotypes are almost always based on real attributes that have just been overgeneralized. The idea that people just one day decide to make up crap about other people is wholly ignorant.

You don’t discredit this by going “But you’re a racist!”

45

I used to live in South Euclid, a middle-class, racially integrated suburb situated among other racially integrated suburbs east of Cleveland; Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and University Heights. I really didn’t see many real-life examples of the negative stereotypes associated with blacks among my neighbors, likely because they too were middle-class.

The Giant Eagle a couple of blocks away from my house was the closest “nice” supermarket to East Cleveland, a poor, mostly black suburb of Cleveland. Thus, many East Cleveland residents would drive or take the bus “up the hill” to South Euclid for their grocery shopping. At Giant Eagle, I’d see far more stereotypical “why do black people do that?” behavior than among my neighbors.

I grew up in a what was then a lower-middle class neighborhood in northeast Buffalo. Blacks began to move in in the 1970s. Again, no conflicts; most were teachers, nurses, firemen, police officers, and the like. In the late 1980s, a combination of events resulted in an influx of low-income blacks into the neighborhood. At that point, whenever I returned home to visit, I noticed far more racist comments from my parents and old neighbors than in previous years. I can’t say I don’t blame them. At the house that was kitty corner from my old home, a car would pull up every 15 minutes or so. A horn would blast, and a black guy would emerge, drop off a bag of something to the waiting car, and retreat indoors. The black family that moved in next door kept a ceaselessly barking Rottweiler on a 4’ chain in the back yard. You could pick out the houses where the newcomers were by their weed-filled lawns.

In 1992, the 'rents packed it up, and left for an upper middle class suburb. The block where they moved to has Jews, Indians, Asians, and blacks, and no outward evidence of negative racial stereotypes, unlike the old 'hood.

I believe that, culturally speaking, there are far more differences between different races and ethnic groups in lower income groups than in upper income groups, especially what would be considered antisocial behavior. Rednecks collecting “project cars”, Italians screaming at each other, blacks blasting rap music and using car horns as a doorbell … all these things seem acceptable inside their communities, but not outside of them.

46

I’d have a chip on my shoulder, too. DC has a 5% HIV/AIDS rate, a 1/3 functional illiteracy rate and a 20% high school drop out rate. If you are toughing it, there are a lot of third world nations where you’d have better chances.

I’d be pretty pissed when I saw a bunch of white yuppies, who I likely have little personal contact with thanks to DC being one of the most divided cities on earth, reveling in the money and power this city doles out so selectively. When you put one of the richer cities on earth right next to one of the poorest in the developed world, and split it all on roughly racial lines, yeah…there are going to be some people who are resentful.

47

I suppose than, per the stereo type, Jews have horns?

48

I didn’t intend that to reflect on his arguments, just his character.
The trouble with his and your argument is that the attributes you refer to aren’t shown to be uniquely represented by the selected group. Who doesn’t like fried chicken or watermelon? Who doesn’t drive badly? Aside from congressmen, who’s that much of a spendthrift? I can point to any group of people and point out cases of people who are dishonest, mean spirited, and/or prejudiced, and many other negative attributes. So this isn’t about people randomly making up crap about other people. But people do selectively attribute negative attributes to other people, just because they are perceived as being different in some inconsequential way. Once those attributes become strongly associated with the group, they become the basis of the difference.