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I live in California. Your response got me to thinking that there are states where white is still the majority. I'm sure they are few anymore.

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ORIGINAL: Amaros

and by for the most virulent racists I've ever encountered were all from San Diego, go figure.

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and by for the most virulent racists I've ever encountered were all from San Diego, go figure.

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Yeah, I've noticed that too. I was surprised to discover how far to the right San Diego is.

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ORIGINAL: nicochan

I have driven to Richmond, VA, very close to Washington DC, and going the legal speed limit it takes 3 days if you drive all day -- including rest and bathroom stops and hotel stays overnight. 3 days. Was it really impossible to get the trucks, buses, food, ice, water, and other help there that people needed? No. How long did it take THEM? 6 days. 6 versus 3... 3 with stops even. These people that had to wait days on end with no food or water, nothing but their family (if they had any) and the clothes on their backs and what they could grab before they left, had to suffer for that long. It's just not right.

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ORIGINAL: anopheles

Master Jerry:

Don't you hate that it has come to this? I wish I had been able to visit New Orleans before the disaster, so I could have seen for myself the color lines, so to speak. I have been through the deep South before, and although it was a few years ago, at least at the time, and apparently now, racial prejudice seems to still be prevalent. I stopped in places in Alabama and Georgia where I thought it wasn't 1997, but 1957. It was my sincere hope that dynamic had changed, but it hadn't.


We're all just people. So my skin might be darker, and my accent might be different. To me, that doesn't make the measure of a man.

Your story saddens me.

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I once owned a black woman who moved to georgia, then to texas....
from the north...... (by the way she was a very high up computer geek)

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I have been involved in racism as I did get chased by a 'black gang' in Fort Lauderdale but I suppose that was because I got dropped off in that area by a taxi and was completly lost.

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The first time I experienced racism is right here in England I was 18 and dated a lovely Indian girl till her father found out (I worked in the same place as him) and was told she would not be dating any 'White Trash'. This shocked me but not as much as when I relayed the story to Race Relatons Board (Only out of interest in thier reply) only to be told don't be foolish he is not racist only white people are racist.

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This shocked me but not as much as when I relayed the story to Race Relatons Board (Only out of interest in thier reply) only to be told don't be foolish he is not racist only white people are racist.

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Racism comes in every form, and is not exclusive to the USA and I will always fight against it. But sometimes our zeal in doing so I have found can make people racist against thier own race just because we try too hard to show how much we are not racist.

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We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them.
And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective State-ment of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently. One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions.

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Yet most of the people I meet are just people, regardless of the color of their skin. They allow me to see them that way because I allow them to see me that way.

edited for typos and a nod to lovingmaster45, for having the courage and heart to openly state his change in thinking.

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ORIGINAL: sub4hire
The largest amount of racists I've met in one time in my entire life was last week in Nebraska. Of course that is only one family but still.

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ORIGINAL: BlkTallFullfig

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.

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This shocked me but not as much as when I relayed the story to Race Relatons Board (Only out of interest in thier reply) only to be told don't be foolish he is not racist only white people are racist.

Now the explanation I promised: The reason you were told only white people can be racists is that white people are the majority, and they are in power (able to affect lives of others), and are therefore the only ones who's racist sentiments count in the larger scheme of things; at least you will agree it's much more significant and consequential to the masses than the choice of whom one beds.

When a white teacher thinks black kids are not as smart, and will never amount to anything better than a street thug, she conspires with the system to make him that way. How? she has lower expectations of him; she tells him "good job" when he gets a "C or D" on his work, and she approves of all his mediocre work, acting as if he's doing wonderful; what he is doing is being wonderful for someone who is never going to amount to anything anyway. When black kids ask some teachers about attending universities, they are frequently encouraged to forget it (it's too difficult and expensive), or encouraged to attend community colleges (no offense meant to people in community colleges). The same white teacher who sees other students as being like his/her own kids, is more engaging to white students, approving of their questions, forgiving of their behaviors, and more engaged/invested in their doing well academically.
The reason we are even discussing race matters here, is not because we all have happy/comfortable lives, and yet seek the love and approval of the rest of the nation. We are talking race matters because people in power do everything in their power to keep money and power within their hands and the hands of their siblings, and barring that in the hands of people who look like them, so that others are left poorer, disenfranchised, and unprotected.
The reason race matters is because race is frequently a determinant of class, and unless the laws are enforced to change that, and minds are educated to at the very least, respect others as equal humans, than justice will never reign and wars will never end.
In summary, I wouldn't care if some guy at some unknown address in England or OH hates black folk, unless that guy was in a position to affect black folk (administration, teaching, policing, congressional laws, presidential directives, etc), and that is frequently what happens. No one comes out and says I don't care, they just behave as if they are unaffected by the devastation of thousands of people simply because those people don't look like them.

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Racism comes in every form, and is not exclusive to the USA and I will always fight against it. But sometimes our zeal in doing so I have found can make people racist against thier own race just because we try too hard to show how much we are not racist.

Racism does come in every form, and we had a lengthy discussion on the "military response thead about it." I agree that some people deny who they are to such an extent that they forget who they are; it's no wonder though that some minds need to protect their owners that way, given that some people are thought of as dirty, unitelligent, animals; this to some extent was exemplified by the mayor of New Orleans' initial evacuation of very wealthy/white folks before poor black children.

I don't believe it's possible to be overzealous in ridding the US of the "us vs them" mentality and of being afraid/hateful of differences, especially when it becomes a huge handicap in how we deal with problems at home, and in how we affect ideology/political systems in the rest of the world. We are fighting to bring freedom to other people in the world while stripping individuals of freedom at home every day.
You may think it gets too much, but you wouldn't if you were more afraid of your police department than you could ever be of actual terrorists. M

Peggy McIntosh said:

quote:

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them.
And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective State-ment of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently. One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions.

http://www.campusaction.net/publications/Racism_Study_Circle/white_privilege.htm

i just thought this deserved a second read. maybe someone else will read it and give it some thought as well. the answer is not an easy fix, as the author implies. life isn't simple.

(in reply to BlkTallFullfig)

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ORIGINAL: girl4you2


i just thought this deserved a second read. maybe someone else will read it and give it some thought as well. the answer is not an easy fix, as the author implies. life isn't simple.

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ORIGINAL: gypsysoul

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ORIGINAL: girl4you2


i just thought this deserved a second read. maybe someone else will read it and give it some thought as well. the answer is not an easy fix, as the author implies. life isn't simple.

I don't believe there is an easy fix. One hundred and forty years after the American Civil War, race relations are still a hot topic.

The news media presents us with all these stories about poor black people, and the more I see these stories the more I feel polarized in exactly the opposite direction that lovingmaster45 has gone.

It's money. After Kanye (sp?) West made his famous statement, I psst'd a black co-worker in a dark corner of the shop: "psst....George Bush doesn't care about black people." He responded: "I've known that for a long time." I said: "I don't think he's particularly concerned about my white ass, either." He said: "Well, you work here. I assume you don't have money, either. "

It IS money. Money talks. People staying at the Hilton evacuated before people at the Superdome had money of some sort, or were of a certain "class" of people. I'm sure there were at least a few white people stranded in the mess. They don't make as good press as the black majority.

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ORIGINAL: pinkpleasures


i do know some middle class blacks but they too suffer indignities, and they worry about their kids in ways i don't have to.

when i returned up north after living in the deep south for years, i expected an end to this, but it is quite blatant here in Cleveland. i'd work for the NAACP, if i were well, on issues of fair housing, or become a guardian ad litem to keep blacks and latinos out of juvey hall at the same rate as whites.

First we massacure the native americans for their land; then we segregate Japanese into concentration camps and deface them of all property rights in doing so; then we have no trouble blowing away 1 million Vietnamese, etc. It never f**king ends.

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as an aside, after the native americans (and the french and spanish), the irish weren't treated too kindly either. we got it from both sides of the pond.

girl4you2