Do you really think that most people are racist?

amother

Apricot

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 1:21 pm

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

Everyone ask yourself a question:

If you have a repairman come to fix your fridge, does it make any difference to you if he's white, black, or Arab?

Honest answer to yourself. You don't have to answer the question publicly.

Of those three, only Arab will scare me just for his race. The other ones will scare me only if something in their appearance or behavior seems scary. Am I an Islamophobe?

For example, if I see someone loitering on the street, black or white or pink with purple stripes, I'm going to get nervous. If I see someone with a hoodie up and stringing curses together, I'll be nervous- doesn't matter what their race is. But if I see someone in a business suit, or dressed casually but walking purposefully, then I won't have reason to suspect any of them.

leah233

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 1:30 pm

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

How about the following scenario?

You are walking alone late at night in a dangerous neighborhood. You realize that people are quickly walking up to you. Would your feelings be the same if they are (a)two Caucasian middle aged women or (2)two black or Arab teenagers/young adults?

I'm not denying that I would feel differently in the two scenarios

amother

Lilac

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 1:34 pm

amother [ Apricot ] wrote:

Racism is always about focusing on externals to draw assumptions about members of a group. Yeah, assuming an Arab is dangerous is probably racist.

Discrimination is a basic benchmark of intelligence. The ability to associate like things, differentiate between unlike things, and draw patterns, are basically the definition of an intelligent being. There's no real difference between being nervous about someone based on the color of their skin, being as people with that color skin are statistically more likely to pose a threat; or to be nervous about someone based in their apparel, being as people that wear that apparel are more statistically likely than other population groups to pose a threat. (No, the fact that one is by choice and one is not is not a logical differentiation in terms of definition of the word.)

Racism is by definition (yes, I know that's not what the dictionary says) unfounded prejudice. When there is a basis for said prejudice or wariness, as there generally is (things don't come from nowhere), decrying racism is an insult to intelligence. Whether the chicken or the egg came first is irrelevant when discussing the fact that there is now a chicken crossing the road in front of us.

amother

Apricot

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 1:39 pm

DrMom wrote:

That is an over-simplistic analysis, tarring millions of voters with a racist brush with no evidence whatsoever.

Obama and Gore held different opinions, espoused different policies, and are different people. Why does voting for one of them mean you must vote for the other? And why does deciding not to vote for one of them automatically deem you a racist?

I think people are pretty sick and tired of these sorts of baseless accusations and race-based hysteria.

Okay, I live in NYC and I'm speaking primarily about the attitudes of the people I knew (very RW yeshivish) when Obama was running for president.

Most people that spoke about Obama were just saying "he's black," end of story. Nothing to do with Israel. Nothing to do with economic policies. Those people voted for Gore and Kerry because they wanted the Democratic programs, but Obama was suddenly terrible because he's black, regardless of his policies.

If Hillary had won the primary in 2008, how many RW people (in NYC) would've voted for her? Plenty, I'm sure - she would've taken the John Kerry vote from 2004. It was only after Obama that the yeshivish world in NYC became so conservative. Before that, they were very happy to take the extra money.

Btw, I'm a conservative and middle-of-the-road yeshivish. But this was the rhetoric I was subject to in school and from my friends, whose parents' opinions they repeated. My parents heard the same ideas from their RW coworkers (my parents have both been conservatives their whole lives).

amother

Apricot

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 1:41 pm

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

Being afraid of an Arab is different, though, since their religion teaches them to kill Jews. It's like if an Amalekite would be afraid of a Jew in the times of Shaul, knowing that he had a commandment to wipe them out. Is that racist or just fact?

According to Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of "Son of Hamas" and son of one of the seven founders of Hamas, the moderate Muslims are the most dangerous, since you never know when a moderate has crossed into fundamentalist territory. That's why saying that most of them are moderates is foolish... they're moderates until they're not.

#BestBubby

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 2:07 pm

leah233 wrote:

People are not afraid of women but they are afraid of young black males. And this is true of black people as well! There is a reason for this - crime statistics.

Even Jesse Jackson (who is black) admitted he is fearful of young black males.
Does that make Jesse Jackson racist?

#BestBubby

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 2:11 pm

nicole81 wrote:

I do think most people are racist, overtly or not. In my opinion, denying the existence of institutionalized racism, and whitewashing its impact, is also racist.

How is racism INSTITUTIONALIZED in USA? The only group that it is legal to discriminate against is white straight males. Blacks and other minorities have certain privileges (affirmative action). That is why Elizabeth Warren claimed to a Native American!

And to say if you deny INSTITUTIONALIZED racism proves you are a racist - just wow!

Last edited by #BestBubby on Sun, Dec 08 2019, 2:43 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Lilac

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 2:17 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

Yes. Let's call a spade a spade. Everyone discriminates. Usually there's a background reason for it. If you wouldn't discriminate between different people and groups, you'd be institutionalized. It's part of being an intelligent organism as apposed to an inanimate object.

ora_43

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 3:15 pm

behappy2 wrote:

Humans are programmed to be racist. How would you know who to trust, who to be wary of, who might befriend you, who to keep your distance from? We learn from our parents, society and experience. If you were harassed by males your mind helps you out by telling you males can and will harass you and keep your armour up around them. This is in essence racism. Obviously not all men will harass you but your brain will have some sort of rule to help protect you and help you live well and not have to figure out each new situation as if you never experienced it.

Let's take the guilt out of it. Of course we can be open minded and question our biases but biases do serve us.

But we have to be aware that this natural brain tendency can do more harm than good.

Our brains often tend to sacrifice long-term gain for short-term gain. Craving fatty foods that we know are bad for us, being more scared of a dark alleyway than global warming... And developing fear of "the other" quickly, even though long-term that's just as likely to put us in danger as keep us safe.

And our brains tend not to understand statistics in a real, intuitive way. Meaning like - we see that 50% of the people from a certain group who we meet act a certain way, and jump to "that's how Those People act," when really, the people we meet aren't even slightly representative of the group as a whole.

(or in other words - who are you more likely to interact with, an elderly Muslim man who loves all mankind and values kindness above all, a three-year-old Muslim girl, or a 24-year-old Muslim extremist who hates Jews? Obviously the third, by a factor of about a hundred - he's the one who'll go out of his way to find Jews to be unpleasant to. Nobody goes out of their way to say "hey, just wanted to let you know I have zero problem with your ethnic or religious background.")

It's all natural, but natural doesn't mean good. Illiteracy is also natural, learning disorders are natural, phobias are natural, PTSD is natural.

amother

Apricot

Sun, Dec 08 2019, 3:36 pm

ora_43 wrote:

So much this. An Arab person could be Muslim, Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Jewish...

And it's way too simplistic to say the Muslim religion teaches hate of Jews. Some branches of Islam do, most don't (but that's been argued over on other threads...)

The majority of Arabs in the world follow which religion?

Again, a Muslim is a moderate until he's not, and the change is not readily apparent.