Racism and Racists

[Mike]

The lack of clarity over the term racism often hampers discussions about its nature and origins. Maybe that’s where I should begin and ask for a consensus? But I'm really more interested in members' personal understanding and opinions than in references to what scholars, journalists, or bloggers have written.

I’m motivated by W.E.B.'s thread on President Nixon being a racist, but the discussion doesn't have to be in that context. So, here are three questions with which to run. Do you think once a racist, always a racist? How does one determine whether someone else is a racist? What causes a person to be or to become a racist?

[Wingnut]

I think the term is losing a lot of it's impact due to overuse. That said, remember when Eric Holder said we were a "nation of cowards" because of our fear in dealing honestly with racism? The right wing talk show hosts went all crazy about that. The thing is I agreed with Holder. The subject is a minefield.

[Mike]

I think the term is losing a lot of it's impact due to overuse. That said, remember when Eric Holder said we were a "nation of cowards" because of our fear in dealing honestly with racism? The right wing talk show hosts went all crazy about that. The thing is I agreed with Holder. The subject is a minefield.Well, I want to believe that a number of us are capable of negotiating this particular minefield. :) So, tell me what answers you might offer to the questions I posed above.

[June Bug]

1. I don't think that once a racist always a racist. A shift in perspectives and paradigms of one's own consciousness is not easy but is possible. As long as time is a variable always is an impossible world in ever changing perspectives in humanity.

2. Racism can be individual, or subjective, based on the source and personal history of a person. I have seen 6 in 10 declare a person racist, by way of experience, and it be just timing and how a person responds to a member of a certain race at any given moment. I find classism and racism similiar to a point where socioeconomics should always be considered anytime a person is accused of racism. Unless overt it is not easy to determine, however prejuidice is and racial insensitivity is also. Racial sensitivity is usually experienced because of certain patterns of behavior one may have already experienced, I am sensitive to race based on personal experience and even to people deemed racially prejuidiced not racists.

3. I think it starts in childhood, seeds of prejuidice sown, or the working class forever frustrated with the ruling class and looking for a reason to despise the state and other races...

[Mike]

Evaluate the following. From my earliest recollections as a child my mom taught me to never (like NEVER) use the word, "nigger." To this day I cringe at the sound--admittedly an emotional reaction. Yet I recall once when I was a child, my mother's mother offered me some little black licorice candies and called them "nigger toes." (I have also heard some people say that they used to call what I know as "Brazil Nuts" by the same name.) Based ONLY on the anecdote above, I would NOT refer to my grandmother nor the other people as "racists." Am I wrong?

[June Bug]

i like white people too much to go there. i have nothing against anyone never have..if one or two get me wanting to be a bitch i say fuck off...you on my but for a reason? wha? weak...one girl a target? to be honest in my evaluation i think a man that abases themselves usually are gutter and time changes all things for me...maybe they fight to stay low...

[sky writer]

I think people can change.

[Wingnut]

Evaluate the following. From my earliest recollections as a child my mom taught me to never (like NEVER) use the word, "nigger." To this day I cringe at the sound--admittedly an emotional reaction. Yet I recall once when I was a child, my mother's mother offered me some little black licorice candies and called them "nigger toes." (I have also heard some people say that they used to call what I know as "Brazil Nuts" by the same name.) Based ONLY on the anecdote above, I would NOT refer to my grandmother nor the other people as "racists." Am I wrong? I don't think you're wrong. The term was more commonly used generations ago.

In answer to one of your earlier questions. Racism is a belief in the superiority of your own race over others or harboring antagonism for a group for no reason other than they are of a certain race. It is not criticizing or disagreeing with political beliefs of others.

[Mike]

I don't think that once a racist always a racist. A shift in perspectives and paradigms of one's own consciousness is not easy but is possible.I agree with you. I think that as humans each of us has an inherited genetic disposition toward fear of the unfamiliar--I believe it is associated with other inherited traits that contribute to self-preservation. I think these have the potential to contribute to racism; and in the presence of certain conditions they may exert themselves in that direction. But they can be overcome through experience and training. I think the one of the most effective ways to eliminate racist sentiments in a given individual is to spend enough time with a person or a group (the object of the racism) in order to establish a relationship and empathy. A key, however, is to reduce as much as possible the counter-influence of exposure to others whose peer-pressure might serve to reinforce racist tendencies, perceptions, and propaganda.

[premiere]

Do you think once a racist, always a racist?

In general, I say that people can change. Certain individuals, like someone who was raised in an environment where they were taught to hate, may not be able to change, however. Kind of like the reverse of your response to the n-word.


How does one determine whether someone else is a racist?

When they hate (key word IMO) people of another race solely because of their skin color. I think there are examples in American society where people will dislike those who insist on willfully and purposefully perpetuating a stereotypical lifestyle. These people aren't necessarily racist and they don't hate these stereotypes but often see them as dangerous. This perceived danger can be either physical, emotional or cultural or any combination of the three.


What causes a person to be or to become a racist?

Experience or environment. There are those who have experienced pain or loss and adopt a kind of revenge hate or blamed hate and there are those who were raised to be hateful or indirectly influenced during their childhood by something or someone else in their environment to be that way.

[Mike]

Experience or environment. There are those who have experienced pain or loss and adopt a kind of revenge hate or blamed hate and there are those who were raised to be hateful or indirectly influenced during their childhood by something or someone else in their environment to be that way.Explain more about this viewpoint. It seems to exist outside of my personal experience and I can't relate to it. Don't get me wrong--I have definitely felt pain at the hands of specific individuals, but I haven't perceived such individuals as representative of a larger group on which I could focus my hate. I haven't had the experience of placing blame or seeking revenge against persons A,B, and C for perceived harm inflicted by person X--if you know what I mean.

[TheSilverEagle]

1.) Do you think once a racist, always a racist?
2.) How does one determine whether someone else is a racist?
3.) What causes a person to be or to become a racist?

Once a Racist I think you can change although you may have your doubts
but you can accept the thing or overlook it any other way.

You can determine someone is a racist unless they flat out announce
it or state it or their actions give you the sign of it. In many cases it is
seen through their actions other than words. There can be numerous
answers to this question.

Anything since crazy people exist or complete nut jobs or schizophrenics.
Childhood experience, family influence, the group despised caused harm
or some type of conflict. Even delusions can take the mind to think what
is someone. Affected human emotions and number of things can contribute
to this.

[premiere]

Explain more about this viewpoint. It seems to exist outside of my personal experience and I can't relate to it. Don't get me wrong--I have definitely felt pain at the hands of specific individuals, but I haven't perceived such individuals as representative of a larger group on which I could focus my hate. I haven't had the experience of placing blame or seeking revenge against persons A,B, and C for perceived harm inflicted by person X--if you know what I mean.

In regards to experience, I believe that it's possible for an individual to adopt a type of revenge or blame hatred on another race. In my own personal experience I've watched it happen in gang scenarios. Growing up in southwest Detroit, there were quite a few guys who ended up joining a gang after being victimized by someone outside their race. For example, I knew a Mexican guy who ended up in LC after his cousin was severely beaten by a small group of young black men. His cousin wasn't in a gang and neither were the young black men but it sparked a hatred in the Mexican guy. Now, to be fair, southwest Detroit was a very polarized place to begin with when I was younger so the environment was such that if you were inspired, for lack of a better word, to take sides the structure was already there to go to.

In regards to environment, perhaps a better example than what I touched on in my previous paragraph would be some of my wife's family who live in Tennessee. Now, I really do not like being in the deep south. I lived in Arizona for a few years and spent a lot of that time climbing, etc, in New Mexico but when I went with my wife to visit her relatives in Tennessee I was reminded of why I can't stand being there. Virtually all of her relatives have a stereotypical white southern attitude (perhaps I should explain at this point that I'm Lithuanian and Irish) where blacks are seen as an almost subspecies. Regular conversation dripping with racism and ignorance. Little things even, like how her grandfather doesn't like shopping at Wal Mart because "ever since they freed the niggers they're all at Wal Mart taking up space." The thing is, that's how they were raised. It's how their father thought and their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers, etc. It's like a traditional idiocy they have going on down there. I, myself, have a bi-racial daughter (from a previous relationship, even though my wife is not like her relatives and the only reason we were there is because her great-grandmother had just died and there was a funeral) and I was so glad that I didn't subject her to their company. Traditional white southern ignorant environment that teaches generation after generation to be ignorant and hateful.

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

Rules violations moved to the Dump. (http://politicalforum.net/showthread.php?412-quot-Stereotypical-indeed-and-quick-to-assume-quot)

[africanhope]

Well, this is a topic close (or more possibly far) to my heart. I live in a country with one of the most racist histories in the world. Racism was official policy in South Africa, and in the era I went to school, it was even taught to us. So racism is something I grew up with, and face everyday.

First a few explanations: I am a white South African. I am 33, which means I grew up in the so-called 'Small Apartheid' of PW Botha, and the 'enlightened time' of FW de Klerk. I missed being able to vote in SA's first fully democratic election by one year, as I was only 17, and voted for the first time in 1999. I am not a racist, and hate racism in all it's forms, from all races.

Okay, so that is the background.

About my people, the Afrikaners. I do not believe my great-grandfather and grandfather were racist in the way we understand the word today. They looked around them, and saw a small nation surrounded by people with strange cultures, more numerous than them. Out of fear, and out of having seen their culture almost destroyed only a decade before by the Brits, they followed a policy they thought would protect their own culture and, so they believed, the cultures around them. Was this policy a good one? Hell no, it was a stupid, evil, unfair policy. But this was the best plan they could come up with back then.

My own father was raised in the height of apartheid. He was raised with the propaganda. He believed that the Afrikaner was called by God to bring civilisation to Africa. He did not hate black South Africans, but did not think they were able to run the country. For his time, my father was actually to the left of politics, as he too taught us not to use racist terms towards black South Africans, and he taught us to respect all human beings.

After 1994, unfortunately, my father did become more racist, for various reasons.

I have to run now, but will continue this post soon.

AH

[June Bug]

Once a Racist I think you can change although you may have your doubts
but you can accept the thing or overlook it any other way.

You can determine someone is a racist unless they flat out announce
it or state it or their actions give you the sign of it. In many cases it is
seen through their actions other than words. There can be numerous
answers to this question.

Anything since crazy people exist or complete nut jobs or schizophrenics.
Childhood experience, family influence, the group despised caused harm
or some type of conflict. Even delusions can take the mind to think what
is someone. Affected human emotions and number of things can contribute
to this.


I think that words can reflect disregard for racial sensitivity and be regarded racist, words have just as much power as actions. Words can stir the pot and cause action. Words like actions are creative there are many documents for example that cause reactions that reflect racism such as propaganda, or laws and bills that don't reflect equality from a very racist past historically. For example we spoke of Haley Barbour's "words" though not directly racist, are racially motivated in being antagonistic no matter his motive, and in historical context not only was it insensitive but was determined as offensive by several black people who heard him out. He didn't even mention the "N" word.

[Mike]

In regards to experience... ignorant environment that teaches generation after generation to be ignorant and hateful.OK, I understand. Your explanation clarifies it nicely for me. Thanks :)