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The bottom line is, I seriously doubt most people that are racist or discriminate against other races even known why they do it. Their parents were probably racist, or they had a friend when they were little whose parents were racist and told them about their parents' theories, etc., etc. For some odd reason, some people need someone to blame, to hate, to look down on. As some of you may know, it's nearly impossible to convince anyone who believes strongly in something (such as racism) to change their minds. This is because of the fact that the prejudice is so deeply ingrained in them. They simply don't know any other way to function. I doubt any of those people in Martinsville that beat up the black kids have a reason to hate black people, or even know why they do.
These people who need someone to bash, combined with one or two people who actually do have some reason (however trivial or illogical) to hate a specific group of people, can lead to huge hate groups (such as the KKK). Over time, I doubt any of the members of the group have any reason to believe the way they do. It's simply the way they were raised, or what they became accustomed to.

malictus wrote:If you grow up as a white person in an area that is 99% white, there's a strong chance that you'll be racist

This is very true. For example, the native population of Romania is 100% white. Now, with immigrants from other countries and such, it's probably only 99.5% white. As a result of this overwhelming majority of whites, many (if not most) Romanians (especially the older population, who are not as open-minded and were raised when the population was nearly 100% white) are decidedly racist. They share the centuries-old American ideal that blacks are inferior, stupid, etc. Of course, Romanians have always had an "inferior" culture here (the gypsies), so looking down on an entire race is second-nature. It seems that whenever you introduce a new race to a population (as was the case with slaves here hundreds of years ago), they will be viewed as inferior until, after many generations, the popuation incorporates them and recognizes them as their own. Romanians (when I say "Romanians", I mean "many Romanians", not all) also share the same opinions on gays, gypsies, etc. Of course, it doesn't help the people's view of them that 99% of the gypsies are homeless, dirty, and beg you for money everywhere you go.

So, in conclusion, I believe racism is just the result of many people that need somebody to feel better than in order to function. If we were all the same race, somebody would find something else to discriminate against people for.

Pheadra wrote:I dont know wether this would fall under racism or just plain ignorance. But when I was a freshman I was in a sociology class with TONS of upperclassmen. As in I was the only freshman. But anyway. That has no relevence to the story. But the teacher was going around asking everyone what race they consider themselves or label rather. When the teacher got to me I told them that I was bi-racial.

This comment sent an upheavel throught out the class. And all I heard was "You cant be bi-racial! You dont have any black in you!!!"

At this point I tried to point out that bi-racial doesnt only refer to 1/2 black and 1/2 white, but can apply to two other races that have been "mixed". Like I am bi-racial because I am 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 white."

LOL. Yes! I finally guessed someone's race correctly! Though I still wasn't ruling out Egyptian.

I've gotten the same reaction from people about the word bi-racial. <shrugs> Little minds, little ideas.

Pheadra wrote:Stupidity amazes me sometimes.

After Einstein: "There are only two constants of humanity, death and stupidity. And I'm not so sure about death."

dance1005 wrote:I believe racism is just the result of many people that need somebody to feel better than in order to function. If we were all the same race, somebody would find something else to discriminate against people for.

I agree. Which is precisely why most of humanity needs a dramatic paradigm shift.

Arka wrote: I've gotten the same reaction from people about the word bi-racial. <shrugs> Little minds, little ideas.

Just out of curiosity, and since, if it is as you claim, nobody from this site has seen you, what race(s) are you?

dance1005 wrote:

Arka wrote: I've gotten the same reaction from people about the word bi-racial. <shrugs> Little minds, little ideas.

Just out of curiosity, and since, if it is as you claim, nobody from this site has seen you, what race(s) are you?

Actually, I never claimed that. I'm confident that at least six people from this site have seen me, though they almost certainly don't remember me (most of these encounters were in crowds or similar). Additionally, most are only intermittent posters. (The exception is Brian Ho. I'll leave all of you, including him, to chew on that one for a while. )

Even the people who've seen me are probably at a disadvantage on this one, though, unless they happened to grow up near a reservation or other high-Amerind concentration. I'm part generic-American-stock (white?) and part Tsalagi. The latter is probably more familiar to you guys as 'Cherokee'. I have no monopoly on the name and don't have any problem with you using whatever term you like for it. (It would be pathetically late for that, anyway, since 'Cherokee' is actually a Creek term for us!) However, it's worth noting that I personally use the term 'Tsalagi' since the language and syllabary, like Japanese, does not include the American 'r.'

I consider myself to be both white and Tsalagi. I do not think this is a contradiction. I briefly tried to refer to myself as biracial when I was younger, to emphasize the non-contradictory-ness, but it always got the same "You're not black!" response. Also, as I got older I found that there were scholarships and employment opportunities which discriminated on the basis of race, which I didn't feel was justifiable. (Giving me presents is nice and all, but the facts of my birth should not be an excuse for punishing white men for being white men. ) So I stopped revealing my race altogether for a while - just put down "Other" on applications and so forth.

Nowadays, I generally don't discuss my race outside of a select group of friends. I'm fairly good at letting people assume what they want - most think I'm white, and that works well for me. If you look at certain things - shape of my eyes, shape of my head, texture of my hair, level of endurance, etc. - yes, they are Tsalagi. But the features aren't so radically different from most "normal" whites', and there's a lot of variation in any race. So people make the assumption that's statistically plausible (ask any of the people who've figured Ho was Chinese or Japanese over the years). This suits me just fine, at least when I'm on the receiving end.

So yeah, that's the long version. The short version is, "Anglo-saxon and Tsalagi, and if you've never heard of that last one it's not MY fault."

Now back on topic, who here thinks we should abolish those stupid "Indicate race (choose one)" questions on forms?! ME!

Everyone is racist. Whether you say you are or aren't you are. Now I will delve a bit deeper into my statement.
All the following is information gathered from an upper college level social psychology course I took. In a room of white people and black people (I am only using these two races because it's a more classic condition) the black people will tend to group together more with other black people and similar situation for the white people. This people might not consider racist, but in reality it's the second stage of prejudice (Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport one of the most imporant social psychologists of the 20th century).

When we see an object we classify it into different categories. If you are to think of a bird, you may think of something shaped like a sparrow, that is what we call a prototype of the class (in this case the class: bird). The prototype is crucial for all cognitive processes since it eases our mental strain. That is why children sometimes have a difficult time grasping the concept that a penguin or other non-flying bird is still considered a bird. Now these prototypes are not the same as stereotype. A stereotype is when a prototype becomes rigid and unable to change. In other words, when a child is told that an emu is still a bird the child should add what's called an exemplar to the class, which means it's something that does not fit the prototype but still is in the class. Now if the child refuses to allow exemplars he has just created a stereotype for bird. In other words, the child would only consider something a bird if it looks like a sparrow. This is an internal process that we do whether we like it or not. The same applies to social classes or races.

In a study by James D. Johnson et al. (1997) they did a study of people who claimed to not be racist on the campus of University of North Carolina. They used 44 white males and 57 white females in this study. All claimed to not be racist and most were from the north carolina region. The experiment was that they would read an article about a violent crime that was committed (the article made no mention of the race of the individual). The second part of the experiment was that the people in the room would either be sat in front of a white person pleading guilty to a crime or a black person pleading guilty to the exact same crime.

(just as a quick explanation there is a system psychologists use to measure what is called dispositional attribution. Higher numbers means that the person attributes the person's actions to something internally wrong: IE. if you see someone trip while they walk. if you think they're uncoordinated because they tripped that is an internal attribution, if you look for extrenous variables such as a large dropoff, you are looking for something in the environment that caused it and that is an external attribution.)

In the experiment it turned out that the dispositional attribution for black people committing the crime was 223.8% compared to that of the white people. In otherwords people would think that committing the crime was more habitual for the black person while with the white person they would sympathise with his situation more and think that it might have been because he was just having a "bad day". They also found that women also had a higher dispositional attribution than men for black people by 71.4%.

All these people weren't racist. But they showed a symptom of implicit stereotyping. Implicit stereotyping is when you are not even trying to be racist/sexist/anythingist but make assumptions or generalizations about someone based on their stereotype. This is a form of covert racism. Then there is overt racism which you can find down south more (ok that's just a stereotype ). Explicit stereotyping is something we can control but usually people can't get rid of explicit stereotyping they just convert it to implicit sterotyping by exercising self-control. note that it is still present.

Ok so now I can safely call you all racist and for those who argue I can now say that you are too lazy to read.

well as long as where listing statistics


25% of the population
50% of the crime

LOL

Green Tea wrote:Explicit stereotyping is something we can control but usually people can't get rid of explicit stereotyping they just convert it to implicit sterotyping by exercising self-control.

Can't or won't?

Please note that there will always be a few people who *do* choose to eliminate those stereotypes (or, if you're fond of the "can't be helped" theory, who are capable of eliminating those stereotypes). There will also be people who aren't capable of forming the stereotypes in the first place, such as in certain forms of autism and Asperger's Syndrome (choosing my words carefully, here), or in other similar defects of social/interpersonal awareness. Racism isn't a necessary part of the human condition. That said, it is (currently) a pervasive one, and when we ignore the (tiny number of) people to whom it doesn't apply, your description is pretty useful.

Using that description, I'd like to point out that there are two schools of thought regarding racism as a problem. One school, the one I belong to, feels that the stereotyping process itself should be reexamined and that we should limit our stereotypes or respond differently to them. The other school feels that the stereotyping process is necessary and that what we should change is the content of the stereotype, so that we view black people with more sympathy, etc. (but still as black and thus foreign unless we're black ourselves).

Arka wrote:

Green Tea wrote:Explicit stereotyping is something we can control but usually people can't get rid of explicit stereotyping they just convert it to implicit sterotyping by exercising self-control.

Can't or won't?

Please note that there will always be a few people who *do* choose to eliminate those stereotypes (or, if you're fond of the "can't be helped" theory, who are capable of eliminating those stereotypes). There will also be people who aren't capable of forming the stereotypes in the first place, such as in certain forms of autism and Asperger's Syndrome (choosing my words carefully, here), or in other similar defects of social/interpersonal awareness. Racism isn't a necessary part of the human condition. That said, it is (currently) a pervasive one, and when we ignore the (tiny number of) people to whom it doesn't apply, your description is pretty useful.

Very good point with Asperger's and autism, I wasn't actually thinking along those lines. I should clarify my statement. The only way to remove an explicit stereotype is to convert it to an implicit stereotype. However, you can get rid of implicit stereotypes, but it is sometimes difficult. This obviously depends on how strong of an explicit stereotype was the starting point. And I apologize that I used the word racist a little too liberally, I should've defined it specifically as a stereotype against race, that does not include prejudice. Prejudice is in a world of its own that I will not divulge into now because I have to write a term paper on Voilence and Culture (no doubt the word racism is in there at least 500 times)

Kill all the white man.

Green Tea wrote:

Arka wrote:

Green Tea wrote:Explicit stereotyping is something we can control but usually people can't get rid of explicit stereotyping they just convert it to implicit sterotyping by exercising self-control.

Can't or won't?

Please note that there will always be a few people who *do* choose to eliminate those stereotypes (or, if you're fond of the "can't be helped" theory, who are capable of eliminating those stereotypes). There will also be people who aren't capable of forming the stereotypes in the first place, such as in certain forms of autism and Asperger's Syndrome (choosing my words carefully, here), or in other similar defects of social/interpersonal awareness. Racism isn't a necessary part of the human condition. That said, it is (currently) a pervasive one, and when we ignore the (tiny number of) people to whom it doesn't apply, your description is pretty useful.

Very good point with Asperger's and autism, I wasn't actually thinking along those lines. I should clarify my statement. The only way to remove an explicit stereotype is to convert it to an implicit stereotype. However, you can get rid of implicit stereotypes, but it is sometimes difficult. This obviously depends on how strong of an explicit stereotype was the starting point. And I apologize that I used the word racist a little too liberally, I should've defined it specifically as a stereotype against race, that does not include prejudice. Prejudice is in a world of its own that I will not divulge into now because I have to write a term paper on Voilence and Culture (no doubt the word racism is in there at least 500 times)

Yeah, I didn't really bother to define my terms before entering this discussion, which was a Bad Idea, but... eh, I think I get what you're saying. Thanks for being able to discuss it intellectually.

BTW, as an FYI, people who are oblivious to race (or to any element of physical appearance in general, really) are treated very badly by [most of] the rest of the world. IMO, this and the fact that people rarely eliminate their stereotypes (or go without forming them) are not unrelated.

I NO A KID WITH ASPERGURS THAT LIEK TO FIRE OFF SERIOUS RACIAL SLURS

I think it's so funny a lot of people in retail stores automatically suspect black people of shoplifting, but anyone that ever worked at Keystone at the Crossing can tell you, them bitches wearing Prada steal more than anyone else.

I don't know about this... around here, I automatically get suspected of shoplifting. And I am many things, but black is not one of them.

It's probably a regional thing. Whoever sticks out the most must be a criminal with nefarious motives.

I once got suspected of having a bomb in my carryon when getting on a plane... But then again I am a chemistry major.


(EDIT: Is carryon one word, two or a hyphenated word? I think it's hyphenated now carry-on.)