News Why It's So Hard To Talk To White People About Racism

[Kintsugi]

@ihateusernames My experience of the difference between Southern racism and Northeastern racism has been interesting. Southerners tend to be very openly racist, whereas in NJ, it was something to be educated about in how not to look like a racist.

The main difference I see between NJ and here is classism vs racism. In the South, there is a lot of industry based on skilled laborers and unskilled workers. Therefore, the Colored Threat is imminent. "Dey took mah job!" (-South Park).

In NJ, I think class segregated the Colored Threat more. That impoverished black family isn't a threat to you, because you're a white collar CFO with kids in private schools. Ivy league. Nice neighborhood. Nice resume. Because the threat isn't so pronounced, the fear isn't there, so the hate isn't there, so the racism is muted. But White Space (as discussed in that radio clip) and Black Space are soooo segregated. It's its own racism. It's a different flavor from the South, where White Space and Black space are often one in the same. The only difference is when you see your black neighbors outside you get to call them niggers and feel a bit better, but they're just as qualified for your job, your loan, their kids go to your kids' school.

It's just a different flavor. Hard to describe.

 

[ihateusernames]

@Simply Simon I am a southerner, although I'm also kind of an allovertheplace-er, I know what you're getting at. But it has been my observation that this:

In the South, there is a lot of industry based on skilled laborers and unskilled workers. Therefore, the Colored Threat is imminent.

Is not a black-white issue. It's a hispanic-non hispanic issue. Blacks and whites may sit around, just feet apart, holding open contempt for one another- because that's what they're supposed to do- but come together readily to hate Mexicans- as it stands right now.

 

[Anarchy]

What a minefield!

and where to draw lines? for example, is being suspicious of the intentions of people who have blond hair, racist?

(JFI I've dark brown hair, a black (with some white) beard, and can look a bit semitic when I've been getting some sun (my father was where I suspect female Sephardic Jewish line stopped), I know I had a South African pilot worried about having me sat near the cockpit door!)

Incidentally, a tiny, blond haired, white girl I used to date, grew up on a Caribean island. If she was talking with people from the Caribean, her accent used to come out - that was bloody wierd! The white Africans I know, nearly all have a South African sounding accent, but I've met a few whites from the carribean who had the usual Carribean accents.

 

[garden]

From reading the comments left at the end of the article, I found that the rather emotional and defensive remarks really supported the authors premise.

Race is a social construct, and its a construct that seems almost useless in today's world...except for medical purposes really... Otherwise' I see no useful purpose. My daughter is Scott's Irish, English, Cherokee, Chinese, East Indian, and indigenous Fijian. I see no purpose in checking any boxes when I fill out forms for her where they ask for race. Only recently have I seen a box for multiracial, but still, what's the point anymore? It seems so irrelevant and archaic in today's world.

 

[ms spock]

Despite all that I see, and all that I've learned, I still have a hard time understanding white privilege. I mean, really letting it sink in.

I think that this is a sign that you are really paying attention.

I think unpacking my White privilege will take me the rest of my life to understand.

I expect to understand some things and then to understand some more as time goes on.

I imagine it is like a man understanding his privilege in terms of the women around him. So much is unspoken and that sense of entitlement is taught so young, and it is uncomfortable to see that you have all that unearned conferred privilege and advantages that are so common sense to you - it is hard to see them for what they are.

 

[ms spock]

Nice people are racist. Good people are racist. And the mean acts of some people who are racist is not really the issue, (though of course it is). The real issue is unpacking the institutionalised racism across our societies.

 

[Rumors]

Grew up in the south..white female... I find it interesting the conversation that goes on among people of color to me about how opressed they have been. I am female, I work in a male dominated business and own a company, I completely get how people can be unfair, but to think I have it as bad as some women did 50 years ago would be insane! To compare the life of an African American today to that of 50 years ago is insane!!! We have a black President, a female Secretary of State, and will most likely elect a female President one day soon... I think we all need to get over ourselves and just start living as human beings and stop finding reasons why we are different. We are all just trying to survive and when we start accepting responsibility for ourselves and stop finding excuses why we are failing as a society, we may find that we are all more alike than we thought...

 

[ms spock]

Have a look at this video @Rumors. (I put in my new media file: "Deconstructing White Skin Privilege".

If you have made up your mind then fair enough, but if you haven't then take a look, and consider the other sources of information that have been already been added to this thread. Then, at least, you know what we are discussing in this thread.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/good-...k-to-white-people-about-racism_b_7183710.html

The above article is the basis for this discussion.

http://www.nationalseedproject.org/. Also this...
Link Removed

Hope4Now generously contributed these sources to the conversation.

 

[Anarchy]

I see no purpose in checking any boxes when I fill out forms for her where they ask for race.

Likewise, and the same for "disabilities".

Pigeon holeing and drawing attention to otherwise un noticable supposed difference was always one of the main tools of empire; divide et impera

I grew up in what superficially appears to be one of the whitest parts of Britain; a hill farming community in northern England, but people moved around, my father is dark enough to have occasionally been referred to as a "Paki", his maternal line came from somewhere on the Iberian peninsula . A group photo taken at a local mine entrance about 1900, shows a guy who I'm pretty sure is of Bantu origins, I'm guessing his descendants will be around somewhere. About 20 miles away, the ports on a tidal river always had communities of all origins and mixes, and I think that is the same all around the world, There are even a couple of Somali clans with Portuguese features. Most of us are of far more mixed origins than we realize.

With that said, I'm less disturbed by racists than I am by statists. a racist might be happy with separation and shunning, he doen't necessarily want to force others into the obsessive compulsive details of his system, or force others to pay for it. A statist does.

 

[ms spock]

@Anarchy do you want to start a thread on statists? Have you got some good articles?

 

[Rumors]

@Ms Spock Made up my mind about what? That I think we should all start living like human beings instead of the color of our skin? Is that such an atrocity? When we start learning from our past and not victimizing ourselves for generations we may actually be able to progress into a culture of no divide. If we continue to label ourselves then we will continue to be divided. I am certainly not racist, prejudice, or anything that would require effort of hate. If I don't like someone it certainly isn't because of the color of their skin. I don't like as many white people as Asian, black, or otherwise I am sure, but it is because they are ugly humans not because the color of their skin....

 

[ms spock]

a racist might be happy with separation and shunning, he doen't necessarily want to force others into the obsessive compulsive details of their system, or force others to pay for it.

My friend's brother and her father paid with their lives for what the racists did to them. So racism worries me a great deal.

Maybe where you live there are not such racist attacks @Anarchy?And perhaps you are not aware of institutionalised racism? David Gillborn writes about that very well. Gillborn, D. (2006). Citizenship education as placebo: ‘Standards’, institutional racism and education policy. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 1(1), 83-104. (See quote below in bold

Stephen was by no means the first young Black person to be murdered because of his race.
However, after years of campaigning by Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, a public inquiry was established into the circumstances surround-ing the murder and the police’s failure to prosecute. On its publication, in February 1999, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report (Macpherson, 1999) sent shock waves through Britain with its meticulous account of the bungled police investigation and its conclusion that:

racism, institutional or otherwise, is not the prerogative of the Police Service. It is clear that other agencies including for example those dealing with housing and education also suffer from the disease. (1999: 33)

One of the most significant aspects of the report concerned an attempt to move beyond the superficial and extreme notion of racism that had previously characterized policy debate (in education and beyond). Pre-Lawrence public authorities and commentators tended to work with a view of racism as encom-passing only the more obvious and deliberate forms of race hatred: as if ‘racism is restricted to a few “rotten apples” in a basket that is basically sound’ (Rizvi,1993: 7, after Henriques, 1984: 62). Remarkably, for a report that began with a racist murder (surely the most crude and vicious form of racism), the Lawrence Inquiry insisted on a broad reworking of the term ‘institutional racism’, that explicitly included unintended and thoughtless acts that have the
effectof discriminating (regardless of their intent): [Institutional racism consists of the]

collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thought-lessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

I don't know if you are familiar with The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Australia. It is the systemic incarceration and police killings of Indigenous peoples in this country. Well worth the read.

There is the Life Expectancy Gap between Indigenous and Non Indigenous peoples in this country is the period of time between the average death of Non Indigenous people in comparison to Indigenous people - it is significant in Australia.

Until 1972 there was a directive in our schooling agreement that if one parent of any child in a school objected to an Aboriginals being in a school, all Indigenous children were removed.

The last High School I attended an Aboriginal woman from the local community was raped by four police officers with a broken bottle in broad daylight in front of the community. There were no legal consequences to this. This worried me a lot at the time, and still comes back to me.

I know that my White skin privileged me in many ways, not the least being access to education and being alive today.