Majority Of White Americans Say They Face Discrimination

a reply to: dug88

Slavery doesn’t effect you?!?!

Were you due no inheritance from your ancestors labor???
In a lot of cases there is even a direct paper trail where “ my great grand father worked as a maste carpenter for life with no pay” but the slave owners children recueved the benefits of that labor..

So I’m a big chunk of cases I would say that a lot of African Americans were definitely cheated.



(How you go about getting that back. I have no idea lol)

I think the big problem is them selling it along racial lines.. like being born black or white inherently assigns you to a team.

It shouldn’t be black vs white..

It should be racists vs non racists..

Slaveowners vs abolitionists..

a reply to: Grambler

We just need to follow Dr. Kings advice and love the ones who call us racist.

a reply to: toysforadults

Am in Houston for the winter. It's the most diverse city in America.

Our upscale apartment complex is extremely diverse. I take my dog for a walk and no one will say hi to me. Robed men and women in scarves over their heads sit on the grass near the fake lake drinking tea and they glare at me as I walk by. Like I have no reason to be in my own country? Like I'm the stranger?

I'm blonde and blue and obviously represent America in some way.

I try to smile but they just look at me and say nothing. One woman I tried to talk to knew no English whatsoever---not even the word "food." I was trying to tell her I spent 3 weeks in Turkey but we couldn't have a conversation.

Most of the New immigrants at my complex hate dogs. The kids run away screaming about our 12 pound poodle.

We're new to the city so we'd like to meet some people but it's not going to happen here at this place.

Younger men divert their eyes afraid to look at a woman. No one is any nicer to my husband and he's the salt of the earth.

I feel like I woke up in a different world here.

My great grandparents came from Sweden and raised their children to assimilate.

Why do I feel uncomfortable in my own country?

I can't believe I'm reading this at 1:53am when I gotta be up at 8 and ready for a long hard day at work.

Damn you race politics!!
lol

a reply to: scraedtosleep


Well, I'm a white 47-year-old and I certainly have been, on a daily basis for the two years I lived in the city. In job-seeking, at work once I finally found a job, at my kids' school, at the grocery store, both subtly and overtly. Before that I just kind of assumed that racism mostly was white-on-whatever-color, but damn did those two years open my eyes.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: SR1TX

It means white people are hardly discriminated against in America.

The "majority" of white Americans are watching too much TV and news.

but I'm not a CEO of a large company. It's a really, really small company. It's cuz I'm beige isn't it.

a reply to: RomeByFire

White privilege is nonsense,RBF. Wealth privilege is what it is,and aways have been.I grew up poor,was poor for most of my life,even now that things are somewhat better,we still don't have any privilege except my husband's salary,for which he works his ass off.And in my country,there is an "upper caste" and a "middle caste" and a "pisspoor caste" of black people.The lower caste is Still SoL even under the black ANC government.Because in this world,it is wealth that bestows privilege.Being white,i am like a 3rd class citizen in my own country.As we were under Apartheid,because we were pisspoor.

a reply to: toysforadults

Not really anything to add of any value. I will say, though, there was an incident about 10 years ago. My then-fiance and I were the only whit people within a 2 block radius. I was a bit tipsy, lighting firecrackers with a cigarette and throwing them at my totaled car (branch fell on it, holiday weekend so the insurance company wouldn't have it towed for 3 days) with a Dutch in my mouth and a beer in my other hand on my porch. Picture of responsibility, I was. Not long after was rock bottom but I'm getting off topic.

That was a very prolific neighborhood in terms of drug deals and shootings; hell, there was one cop car that came every night at midnight to the meth house a few doors down, blew the horn and someone would come out and throw a lunch bag through the passenger side window then run back inside (google "Schenectady police corruption" if you're unfamiliar with our area's police history).

Anyway, some older neighbors were fed up and began calling the sheriff's department when they saw the drug deals taking place. That didn't matter though, it must be the publicly intoxicated white guy throwing illegal fireworks at a crushed car from his porch while smoking a not-quite-legal cigar 15 feet from the cops. Why? Because he's white.

After a few instances of that we started getting people trying to break in whether we were home or not, threats, graffiti, racial slurs carved into our front door... You name it, they at least tried it. I lost track of how many tires I had slashed. Windows smashed out of one of my cars (joke was on them, it was getting scrapped the next day anyway). All because I apparently called the cops because it HAD to be the white guy.

I'm not just saying that, either. We had friends in the neighborhood. They let us know who was doing what and why. I will say though... Living there was never boring.

i would hate to see a poll (and the backlash created by it) of minorities who feel they are discriminated in america. yikes.

a reply to: Grambler

First of all, surveying people to find out whether they FEEL discriminated against, is not worth a damn, because the truth is not about feelings, its about reality. Either one has, or has not faced actual discrimination in ones life. There is no grey space there, its a binary query. Yes or no. Factually, has a person experienced discrimination in their life? There can only be one of two answers, and the only way to establish this for certain, is to provide evidence by way of investigating each and every instance described by those reporting the problem.

Many people think things are discriminatory when they are not. For example, failing to successfully gain employment with a given organisation, is not discrimination on their part, unless it has to do with some arbitrary metric, like ones race, religious beliefs, evident gender or sexual preferences, or something of that nature. If it happens that one is not qualified for the position, then one should not expect to get the job. If one has the necessary qualifications, but little experience, one should not expect to get the job. If one has oodles of experience, but is also only a few years off of pensionable age, has a record of work with other employers which included time off sick, or several firings, then one should not expect to get the job. The reason one should not expect to get the job is not because one is being discriminated against, but because ones particulars with regard to the work, do not match the ideal criteria for prospective employees, laid down by the people hiring for the position.

Another thing to note, is that this is a survey, and surveys are particularly prone to both deliberate abuse, and incidental warping of the results. For a start, it is a fact that surveys are notorious for being run on sample sizes which render them meaningless, and being skewed also by targeting the survey toward people you suspect will answer it in a certain manner. This is common practice, when a surveyor is looking to "prove" a point, or create a statistic which supports their position, or the position of those upon whose behalf the survey is taken.

Its also massively misleading. Put simply, surveys deal with opinion, not fact. Opinion means nothing. Opinions are not facts, and only facts matter when it comes to things like discrimination. A survey cannot record facts, does not fact check respondents, and is therefore a damned poor indicator of what is and is not going on, in a given region, nation or within a particular social group.

originally posted by: Diisenchanted
a reply to: Grambler

Not saying that I feel discriminated against.

But I sure wouldn't mind getting some of that white privilege everyone keeps talking about.

But didn't you hear? The fact that you don't feel as though you have any privelages is just a symptom of that damn white privelage!

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

At what point does a person let go to things that happened to ancestors? Those BLM kiddies weren't even born then.

If we're nursing grudges for generations, then does that mean I ought to get angry at the Romans, er, Italians for what they did to England? How about the Normans? Should I be ticked off at the Vikings for their coastal raiding ways? I should also still be really upset at both the Germans and the Japanese for WWII ...

I might still be super pissed off with the Italians for destroying a lot of our British heritage, but then I see Italy and think, you know, they've got it bad enough already.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Do you realize how many white Americans receive no inheritance of worth from their ancestors who pass away?

Are you silly enough to think that people just automatically get a big inheritance every time an ancestor dies?

I got nothing from any of my grandparents except very fond memories.

a reply to: TrueBrit

That's where you've got it wrong.

In the US today, it *is* all about feelings. Most of racial bias and discrimination on all sides is about feelings and not truth. What do you think a microaggression is? It's about how people analyze things you did to see if you might have inadvertently made someone feel bad. I know you have enough vocabulary to get what that means.

It means it's not about what you meant to do, say, etc., it's all about how someone else feels.

In some places, they label as a microaggression simply moving in a taking a seat such that if one seat is left and the only person left to take it is minority, it's *your* fault for making them feel bad for having to take that last seat. That singles them out, especially if they are the only minority.

Really, in order to be labeled anything, all you have to do is make someone else feel bad whether you meant, tried to, or not.

So, yeah, it's all about feelings and not about facts.

I can tell you with 100% certainty there is no such thing as discrimination based on color or how you look.

That's just patently untrue. And it's not so much discrimination.. as much as companies being forced to adhere to rules to keep on a % of minorities on their workforce. I was let go from a job solely for the fact that I was white, because the large company I worked for had to maintain a certain % of minorities in my department. It was ironic, because I was more qualified than others, but was let go anyway - my previous boss actually lined me up with an interview with an old business acquaintance after the fact for a job interview, and she confided that this was the reason he had to let me go. He didn't want to.. had no choice however.

Which I guess the "reap what you sow" comment at the beginning of this thread is somewhat true. Those rules were only put into place because of previous lack of fair hiring procedures. Larger companies usually end bearing the brunt of this, as they are often audited, usually due to some lawsuit in their past regarding minority firing or hiring.

It's a catch 22 I guess - have to fairly interview all who apply, but.. there is no way to track this. You can only interview those who apply for the job. So the tail-end becomes firing white employees to keep the "correct" amount of minorities on board. So.. long story short, yes.. while it's not discrimination per se, same result. Skin color can still get you fired from a job.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Your post is exactly why I posted this article.

In any effort to discuss racism, it constantly devolved back into feelings.

You can cite fact after fact, but at the end of the day, none of the matters because 9f feelings.

Whites can't comment on racism, because they don't know what it feels like to be black.

I know this cause I went to college.

I had to unpack my invisible knap sack of white privilege, I had to be careful not to microagress, and so on.

Racism exists for sure, and I want to fight it. When you would ask people who say they have been victims of racism what that was, they would say things like they feel like people look at them funny when they are shopping, or they don't feel accurately represented on tv.

Its garnage, but it is very effective in shutting up a factual discussion.

And now, predictably, this is leading to white people doing the same Damn stupid thing.

That's why we should focus on facts instead of feelings in all dicussions of racism or discrimination.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: HeadCrunchMcRockGroin

And you're basing this on what exactly?

I'm basing it on the fact that the "majority of the majority" cannot possibly feel like they're being discriminated against by minorities, the math doesn't add up unless the majority are watching too much news and TV where the race baiting is happening.

Who taught you that? Thats absolutely incorrect and makes you look ignorant.

The definition of Descrimination:

the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

It has nothing to do with "majority" or anything else, get educated

a reply to: Grambler

The irony is that whites wouldn't feel that way if people would stop telling how horrible we are for making them feel that way and then trying to make us break it down (unpack our privilege) so that we would see it from their point of view.

I've known all my adult life that if I, for example, decide to seek out authentic cuisine, I am often looking at finding a mom and pop shop mostly patronized by people of other ethnicities and cultures. It has gotten better with the foodie craze, but still, it means going into an eating establishment where most of the food items are completely unfamiliar, most of the people in the place do not look like you, it's pretty obvious you have little idea what you are doing, you aren't familiar with cultural norms, etc. Guess what? People look at you funny. That doesn't mean they are being racist. It means you're providing entertainment because you are a curiosity. Sure, some of them will be a bit hostile, but most are just curious what you're doing there.

I remember race relations were a hell of a lot better 8 years ago before something happened...

a reply to: ketsuko

There is no one rule that applies to everyone in any large group....

But what percentage of Europeans did recieve an inheritance??

60-70% maybe on a guess...and this has been dropping in the modern era.. in the civil war era it would have been at least that percentage maybe higher..

Then compare that to the less than 1% of African Americans that did and is there any doubt why the majority of African Americans are in poverty???

In fact I would bet 90% of the rich and powerful today had rich and powerful parents. Who had rich and powerful grand parents.

If we were to say that NOONE gets ANY inheritance anymore. We just burn it all like the joker in dark knight. How much wealth is lost???

How many people who are rich and famous today are penniless tomorrow??

The vast majority of people born poor, stay poor. The people who do not are not the rule. They are the exception and a society where the average person fails and only the exceptional make it, is doomed to fail.