Are Americans secretly racist?

reply to post by TheTardis


"It has to start at home. Kids cannot be raised to think that white people are all oppressors or that they are owed something in life because their great ancestors were slaves."

I have no friends or family that think that. As a matter of fact. In my 30 plus years of life and having been all across this globe. I havnt met anyone who thinks that crap you said.

"It has to stop somewhere and that is my point. It continues because people live up to the stereotype therefore making it easy to stereotype people. Somewhere along the way someone has to break the mold."

Perpetuating a stereotype, stop thinking people think that way. And please dont tell your kids ( if you have any) that people think that way. Unless you plan to create racist.

reply to post by Chance321


I'd probably be called an Uncle Tom online, but to my face, not so much.

People get wrong ideas of what racism is...

We try to crowd in with people that look like us(colour) to act like us(age) and thats perfectly normal, its one of our basic survival instinct. Now you can still say i don't like hanging with person B because he is different from me and we wont get along.

Now this could go bad when you try to rate people by their colour/age and categorize them. Associate all of them with something they do. Or when they think A is better than B.

You can dislike, but don't hate!
You can see the good and the bad, but don't rate!

Originally posted by poloblack
reply to post by Chance321

 

I'd probably be called an Uncle Tom online, but to my face, not so much.

don't worry, I have an Uncle called Tom, and I'm white

reply to post by TheTardis


Socio-economic and education levels play a large role in this mode of thinking. And that works both ways.

reply to post by Chance321

Like I said, is this the best they can come up with for obama? Not his lousy record but this? Really? I'm sick of the whole damn race garbage, whats wrong with voting for the best qualified.

As we get closer and closer to November, you will see all sorts of attacks on Obama and people of color in general. That's my opinion. I could be wrong but I have seen this happen many times.

reply to post by blueorder


LMAO. That was good!

Originally posted by PLASIFISK
reply to post by TheTardis

 

"It has to start at home. Kids cannot be raised to think that white people are all oppressors or that they are owed something in life because their great ancestors were slaves."

I have no friends or family that think that. As a matter of fact. In my 30 plus years of life and having been all across this globe. I havnt met anyone who thinks that crap you said.

"It has to stop somewhere and that is my point. It continues because people live up to the stereotype therefore making it easy to stereotype people. Somewhere along the way someone has to break the mold."

Perpetuating a stereotype, stop thinking people think that way. And please dont tell your kids ( if you have any) that people think that way. Unless you plan to create racist.

Wow.. You TOTALLY missed my point. I am white.. Why would I tell my kids that we are oppressors? My point is that a large segment of the black population is raised that way. And before anyone jumps on me and calls me a racist. I use to work for a school system that is more in the bad parts of town than good and I have watched it in schools. Even at the youngest ages a lot of the young black kids seem to have a lack of respect for white teachers. They will listen to the black teachers but they act and say things towards the white teachers that they didnt think up themselves. They heard it at home or from their role models.

But I would NEVER teach my kids this stuff crap and if you somehow got that from what I said then you need to read it again. I was saying that minority parents as well as white parents need to teach their kids better and that if people dont want to be stereotyped then they need to not live up to those stereotypes.

And if you have not ever seen kids being raised in homes where they are tough poor values you maybe went to far. You dont have to go all across the globe. Find the bad side of your town and you see if there are kids raised in welfare homes with parents still waiting on their Obama hand outs and blaming the white folk for not getting it. The blame game has to stop. Thats my point. People need to start doing for themselves. Stereotypes didnt come from thin air.

OOPS

reply to post by TheTardis


While slavery happened long ago, some people remember the lynchings and extreme discrimination, which wasn't a very long time ago, and they hold on to those memories. It's not always bitching about slavery. Just a thought.

birds with the same feather will flock together. its natural. its historical part of survival. we attract like and repeal different. and for your information Americans is not a Race but a group of people who believe in GOD and freedom of Religon including Satanist and Muslims and all colors of humans - trying to live harmonously, while we have various groups and a government that has a hidden agenda which uses these differences to further its own agenda.

Originally posted by poloblack
reply to post by TheTardis

 

While slavery happened long ago, some people remember the lynchings and extreme discrimination, which wasn't a very long time ago, and they hold on to those memories. It's not always bitching about slavery. Just a thought.

Geez.. Ok.. I am sorry.. Let me get out a encyclopedia and see if I can list every example so I dont get nit picked. Point being your average thug gangsta holding up his pants in a local middle school is not acting like a little ass hat because his great grandpa was lynched. He is going it because he is allowed to by his parents and he has a crap attitude because maybe his dad isnt around and his mom is on welfare and his role models are older thug gangstas. if you want to blame that on segregation or lynchings feel free but i am 40 years old and I live in a average sized city in the middle of the country and I have always had black people in schools with me growing up, I have worked with them and I have friends that are black as well. I have NEVER in my lifetime seen then treated any differently and I have never seen anyone "lynched". I am not sure where the hell you live that people in our lifetime are getting lynched but its not around here and I have not seen it on the news. So anyone my age or younger has no excuse for acting like they are owed something by the world. And I use black as my example because that is what I have been exposed to most, not to single any one race out. But trying to say they act that way because someone they might have known was lynched is crazy. As I said. The excuses need to stop at some point. If people want the blatant racism to stop then people need to stop living up to the stereotypes and stop screaming racism every time someone doesnt get the outcome they expect from somewhere. Hell I got called racist one time because I wouldn't sell a underage kid cigarettes when I was younger and worked at a convenience store.

reply to post by Jaellma


Everyones a little bit racist. It depends on if you're serious about it or not.

To me, i make racism a joke. If a racist subject comes up in a conversation, i always try to make the best out of it, and make people laugh, of course everyone wont find it funny, and a few people will get offended, but hey, its comedy, and i think its funny. We will always have stereotypes, based on cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, it just depends on if people take the stereotypes to heart...

I hate seeing people be seriously racist though, i just cant understand why they think they're any different, or better than another person based on skin color...

reply to post by poloblack


See, I never understood the need to call anyone that. Yes, some people were happy in their slavery, but that doesn't mean that they WANT subservience 24/7. It just means that they were content with their lives.

And that continues today--the sad part? The one's called Uncle Tom today are not the content-to-be-slaves. Most those labeled Uncle Tom prefer to actually work for a living.

And I'm flabbergasted that people don't see this.

reply to post by 8fl0z
You are correct. I always get a chuckle out of people who say "I am not racist. I just love MY race."

Like it justifies their denial as being racist.

reply to post by TheTardis


Well, I don't give a damn about some punk wearing his pants down his ass...doesn't represent me or mine. And I'm from Georgia, so I know about things you probably don't. You totally missed my point, but, oh well. Didn't say anything about lynchings being an excuse for saggy assed pants and people acting like douches. I'm an objective guy, and I tend to try and see things from each perspective, but hey, that's just me. Until more people do that, this dialogue is going nowhere fast.

People use any information available to them - both empirically proven and not - as a basis upon which they can judge a stranger. We do this in order to determine the potential danger that stranger could place us in.

We're judgemental animals first, sophisticated philosophers second.

We judge strangers based on their "otherness" - how similar or dissimilar they are to ourselves.

Those who claim colorblindness would do well to dislodge their eyeballs from their sphincters - there is no sense in recommending a similar removal of their noses as that's impossible. One enjoys the sweet scent of their own lie like no other.

Any other opinion on the topic was already covered in my cultural feminism class back in '92. Yawn.

Originally posted by randomname
reply to post by getreadyalready

 

so it's a culture thing. if the black people in the park were named the huxtables and clare was making potato salad and theo was playing horseshoes, you and your family wouldn't be intimidated.

thanks for making me understand american racism.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I have to admit that I am a "culturist", rather than a racist. I feel more comfortable with people of similar backgrounds to me, i.e., similar education levels, economic class, etc. If I walked into a park and all the people were white, but they were hillbilly types with mullets and missing teeth, I would definitely feel uncomfortable. I'm not exactly proud of that, but if I were to be very honest, that's how I feel.

I can recall only once being uncomfortable around blacks, but not because I'm racist. My husband and I were visiting Chicago last year, and we decided to save some money and ride the buses. At one point, we were in a primarily black neighborhood. We had to run to catch this bus, and when we walked on, we were literally the only two white people on the bus. I felt uncomfortable because I was worried that these blacks would feel some antagonism towards us, being in "their neighborhood". Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong. I remember a woman cheerfully got up and offered me her seat because she could see I was out of breath from running. There were no dirty looks, and no comments under the breath. I spent the rest of the time on that bus totally relaxed -- talking with people, playing with the baby next to me, etc. - the exact same way I would have behaved if there were only white people on the bus.

Originally posted by poloblack
reply to post by TheTardis

 

Well, I don't give a damn about some punk wearing his pants down his ass...doesn't represent me or mine. And I'm from Georgia, so I know about things you probably don't. You totally missed my point, but, oh well. Didn't say anything about lynchings being an excuse for saggy assed pants and people acting like douches. I'm an objective guy, and I tend to try and see things from each perspective, but hey, that's just me. Until more people do that, this dialogue is going nowhere fast.

Then I guess I have no idea what your trying to say. My point was that people should own up to their own actions and admit that if you act like an idiot people will treat you like one. If you look scary people will be scared of you and if you teach your kids the wrong values your setting them up for a life of problems.

My point is that if we start teaching proper values in homes all of this will eventually be gone. But trying to blame every little thing that happens on racism is just stupid. Sometimes bad things just happen and sometimes people are just crappy and sometimes things just don't go your way and sometimes people just aren't going to like you but it doesn't have to always be because of someones skin color.

Originally posted by hhcore
reply to post by Jaellma

 

In my experience,Americans seem to be passive aggressive racist. They will claim otherwise, but if you ask them, they will tell you they have a "black" president.

I am glad we have a former CIA operative president.