Hey there, I was wondering if I’m the only one who feels like this or not.
So I grew up thinking that we people all look different and never had a concept of something such as “white” and “black” people.
But especially in the last years I noticed more and more that a lot of people make such a big thing out of whether someone is “black” or “white” and what their ethnicity is.
It feels like it’s to the point where they make this define their core identity as if it’s very relevant how people look and how bright/dark their skin is as if this changes their personality.
It’s like so many of these people constantly bring this up to the point where it’s brainwashing and they literally even use racial slur as slang that was used in the past to devalue and enslave people based on their skin tone.
Since I experienced this it made me very uncomfortable since I never had this concept before and now I constantly have to obsessively think about it and feel like it’s manipulating me and these people still bring it up all the time.
I think this is driving me insane cause I never would think about humans so strongly because of their skin or something since it simply isn’t relevant and it just feels wrong but I can’t escape it since so many people continue to make such a big deal out of it.
Edit: To the people saying people have different advantages because of their skin, I’m fully aware of that and I wasn’t intending to debate that. My question was primarily about if other people have the same uncomfortable feeling that many people differentiate between people based on their skin and make such a big deal out of it (so more a personal feelings question than a generale debate about why it exists) because imo in a healthy society this shouldn’t be the case. But in my opinion the fact that we continue this behaviour instead of changing it is the exact reason we have racism and the issues of inequality based on someone’s skin in the first place. We need to start to change at some place and not just give up on it. If we continue to see people as “black” or “white” instead of just seeing them as “people” and only look at the past we will never end this issue. Ignorance is certainly not the solution. I found these videos where I think Elon Musk and Morgan Freeman are pretty much hitting the nail on the head.
I agree 100%. The answer is that people are dumb and like tribalism so they keep it going. Anyone that thinks perpetuating division will result in progress is an idiot, and frankly identity politics are a distraction from real issues like poverty
Great that someone can relate and I’m not the only one thinking this!
Poverty is a real issue in America that is also often influenced by race. Race is a real issue in itself that has many different facets.
Racism is a real issue, race is made up and needs to go away. If we divide people arbitrarily using a skin color chart, we’re encouraging people’s minds to see differences where there aren’t and feeding the beast that is racism. We need to recognize the effects of racist behavior, but not play their game
I hate to be the person to burst your bubble but racism isn’t going anywhere no matter how much people wish it would. Tribalism is heavily ingrained in humanity, people will always separate themselves into us and them. Pretending those differences don’t exist won’t solve the issue
Not with that attitude
You’re not. I’m black and being a lemmy user is a bigger part of who I am than my skin color. I hate the othering and division.
America is literally founded on racism. First white settlers came and gave smallpox to anyone who looked different than them. Then they imported dark skinned people and made them literal slaves. Half the country fought a war over the right to keep slaves. There was even a period of time when Italians weren’t considered white as a means to discriminate.
There is a lot more context than just skin tone, and unfortunately the hatred for anyone who isn’t white was never curb stomped out
gave smallpox to anyone who looked different than them
It’s not like they had a choice in who did/didn’t get it.
Nope. Sadly.
“We gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital,” Captain William Trent, a militia captain, wrote in his journal. “I hope it will have the desired effect.”
https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html https://allthatsinteresting.com/smallpox-blankets
White has an advantage because they always get the first move. To be more fair, any tournament should rotate the players between black and white pieces.
Whiteness is an exclusionary concept used to create an ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’. Hasan Piker gives a great breakdown of it here.
Historically, it comes from a justification of chattel slavery. Painting ‘whiteness’ as purity and superior and ‘blackness’ as inferior and subservient. Leeja Miller gives a great analysis about how this has influenced Eugenics in American history (which inspired the ideology of the Nazis) which is still practiced to this day in certain circumstances.
It’s long, but Knowing Better gives an extremely detailed history of neoslavery in American history. To understand why ‘whiteness’ is still so prevalent in America in modern day, it’s important to understand the history of systemic racism and how it persists to this day.
Though not “black” and “white”, I know that some black people do not like being considered African American. There is a difference between someone who has family come over through slave trade, and someone who came to America willingly from Africa.
I can understand why they might feel that way, they had family sold into slavery by others in their countries. They’ve lived on unable to express themselves for generations, and are culturally different from people from their ancestors homelands.
So being black and calling them African American may not acknowledge what they see as clear differences between the two.
This reminds me of this interview of Elon Musk and Don Lemmon where I think Elon is hitting the nail on the head. And the irony being Elon is more African American than Don Lemon since Elon actually is African and Don just is American.
There are three distinct concepts I think you’re confusing:
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The idea of biological races. Yeah, a given culture’s definition of “race” is historically contingent and biologically incoherent. I think you get that and are assuming that’s all there is to it.
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Race as a correlative of ethnicity. There are some ethnicities whose members tend to have darker skin colors, and people tend to conflate skin color and ethnicity. Ethnicity (as a set of cultural institutions) is meaningful to some people, and some of them interpret a disregard for “race” as a disregard for their ethnicity, or as an attempt to suppress ethnic identity.
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Race as a social construct. When the above ideas permeate a society, people with different skin colors experience systemically different treatment—even in the absence of actual biological or ethnic distinctions. So people with similar skin colors can be grouped on the basis of those shared experiences, and the different behaviors resulting from those experiences feed back into the society’s conceptions of biological race and ethnicity. And it doesn’t suffice to counteract such social constructs by ignoring them—social behavior is taken for granted unless people make a conscious effort to reevaluate it.
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You are arriving at the same conclusions as Critical Race Theory in America, just from a clearly outsider’s perspective.
Your uncomfortable feelings quite directly align with the truth that “race” is not a historical or natural human element, but rather an entirely subjective construct built and enforced by white supremacists in the 1500s and perpetuated through today.
However, systemic issues as deeply embedded as white supremacy cannot be addressed without systemic solutions. One such solution is solidarity. People of color, especially in a system as deeply entrenched in racism as America’s, will often need to rely on one another in order to overcome racial barriers. Indigenous, Black, Asian, Latine, mixed, etc. folk do not have the same privilege as White folk do as individuals or as minority groups, and so they strategically find ways to create spaces and communities that prioritize the needs of themselves and their neighbors. It’s kind of like the queer community. If gay people had never been demonized, sure! There would be no need for careful interrogations of identity and sexuality. But the fact is that LGBTQ+ people and POC have both been abused and mistreated for centuries. The process of healing those wounds requires a huge degree of intentional community and commitment to understanding marginalized identities.
I am guessing that perhaps 80% of the “making a big thing” of race you see is this forging of community in solidarity. Now, racism is of course still a thing, so when you do see racial language that is centered around putting down, limiting, or otherwise devaluing lives based on race, feel free to call it the fuck out and feel as uncomfortable as you like. But! If you even see a glimmer of mutual aid, solidarity, and a recognition and redressing of historical denigration of non-white life, take a moment to pause and listen. For centuries race has been exclusively under the thumb of white individuals, so it might be time to let people of color have a moment at the reigns as we move towards healing.
You need to go further back than just 1500.
Western European thoughts on this were heavily influenced by the Ottoman and Byzantine empires.
Which were in turn based on the Roman empire.
Which were in turn based on the Classical Greeks, particularly those of Athens.
To exclusively blame western Europeans for this, when they were nearly wiped out by the Roman empire colonialism, is very short sighted.
I’m not doing blame at all, I am pointing out the general span in time at which our modern conception of “race” came to fruition, which happens to generally fall between the 1500s-1660, at which point “race” became near irreversibly and totally entangled with concepts of supremacy and the slave trade.
Thank you for understanding and please let this continue to be a space of transparency and kind discussion. We absolutely do not need to throw attacks of short sightedness and men of straw in this debate of already highly sensitive topics. I’m more than happy to answer any questions you have about my positions but I will not respond to further misrepresentations.
But you arent doing that.
You cannot do that fairly without pointing out, for example, the brutal and vicious racism where the British compared the Irish and the Scottish to Apes and to be different, inferior races.
These dehumanizing tactics used by the British to assert dominance occurred roundabouts the Irish Potato Famine (1845-52) which is very much in the window of 1660-present. So your narrative 100% corroborates my statement that the term “race” came to full fruition in circa 1660.
Europeans also do racism against other Europeans; I have no problem accepting this reality. Racism just has a really long and complicated history such that it’s impossible to list all its manifestations in a single comment. It’s weird and frankly annoying that you expect me to.
I truly can’t tell if this is a perfect textbook nostupidquestion or someone being disingenuously obtuse.
You should read up on the history of racism in the US. A lot of places it isn’t talked about, because we are the land of freedom. /irony
The first half of your comment is an acknowledgement that you don’t understand American culture and the second half is you casting declarative judgement upon it.
I don’t know which one of your minds to respond to.
Why would you judge it as something good to separate people based on how their skin looks like?
I wouldn’t say it’s “good” but it is what is. Humans connect with each other through shared experiences. Growing up black in America creates a unique cross section of obligate life events. Regardless of your culture or environment, there are things that connect you to other black Americans. Some black people prefer to engage with that identity, others prefer to ignore or actively avoid it. But either way, it’s a choice that defines a significant part of their personality.
I love multiculturalism because we people naturally have different cultures. But to obsessively base everything on skin color like you people on Lemmy is just weird and racist af!
I’m not sure who you mean by “you people” but that sounds kind of racist.
No but seriously, I don’t think it’s racist at all to describe shared experiences, as long as you don’t presume to know someone’s life experiences by the color of their skin. For instance, a lot of black people experience police discrimination in America. Being pulled over for no reason, needing to stay calm and respectful in the face of fascism, these are normal, common experiences that can traumatize a person. Talking about those experiences with people who have lived them can help you process and heal from the trauma.
A white person can also be pulled over by police for no reason. It could be because of the way they look. They may have been afraid that the police would randomly decide to murder them in broad daylight. This experience can happen to anyone, but because it disproportionately happens to black people, they are able to discuss it in short hand. “You been pulled over?” “Yeah, DWB. Motherfuckers.”
Two white people would not have the same conversation. “I got pulled over.” “Speeding?” “No, no reason at all.” “That happened to me once. Broken tailight, the cop was really nice about it.” “No, man, like he seemed angry and suspicious, and I thought he was going to arrest me or shoot me or something.” “For real?! That’s wild. You should call a lawyer and sue his ass.”
It’s not racist to describe these two realities. It’s not racist to ask about these experiences to learn from other cultures. It is racist to assume that these experiences are universal. You couldn’t say for sure that these are the experiences of a particular individual based on their race.
No matter how many excuses you will find to justify racism it’s just not morally acceptable. As long as we won’t stop making such a big thing out of what peoples skin color or ethnicity is we will never get rid of it.
The fact that people get discriminated and unfairly treated because they have dark or bright skin is a shame and it NEEDS to stop now instead of trying to justify why it is the case and keep on doing it.
So we stop it by pretending it doesn’t happen? Act like nobody experiences discrimination, and they won’t? Forgive me, but that’s incomprehensible logic.
Racism isn’t acknowledging differences, it’s demanding them. And demanding we treat everyone the same ignores the reality that different races live. We stop racism by celebrating our differences and learning from each other so that we might be more open to each other. To pretend we’re all the same is to ignore that which makes us special, and it is racism to expect the same from everyone regardless of their life experiences.
No that’s the exact wrong thing to do! Instead of ignoring it or trying to justify racism we need to STOP it and start tackling it by the root problem. There is no problem with different cultures and people cause that is what makes us so special in my opinion. But to devalue or discriminate someone solely based on their skin and make such a big thing about it is just wrong in my opinion. If you guys don’t see this very simple logic then I’m lost for ideas
I really thought you weren’t American, because of the way you see the situation. I’m looking at that dumpster fire from the outside, and can’t help but think about many of the same questions you seem to have. Sounds like you might have grown up in a multicultural environment, where modern hate media and polarization sounds completely alien to you.
I just said that so that they don’t hate on me. I’m from Europe
The reality is because of the lived experiences of people based on the color of their skin, people are different based on skin color. You’re right that it’s a stupid reason to think differently of people, but if people had been mistreated for many generations based on the color of their hair, and there was still a good chunk of people that something so arbitrary was somehow important, then you would want to approach a person with that hair color with understanding of that history and current struggle.
So why does it matter? Because 100 years ago, their great-great-grandparents had any wealth they managed to build up taken from them, 70 years ago their great-grandparents were kept boxed into separate, substandard areas, and 50 years ago their grandparents were kept from being able to buy homes outside low-income, substandard housing areas, and 30 years ago their parents were told it was their fault for growing up in crime-filled, poor areas with under-funded schools. And the whole time police have continuously treated them as that same substandard, poor, likely-criminal, so they have disproportionately been put in jail or grown up with one parent in jail. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s enough to lead people to treat them differently, either because they presume (until otherwise established) that they are poor, poorly educated, and likely criminal (by basically racist assholes) or with a certain amount of respect for their presumed struggles.
Taking it to an extreme, if a person comes across a very old person with a number tattooed in block letters on their forearm, they will respond one of two ways: with respect and concern for their presumed struggles and trauma, or with irrational hatred (by neo-nazis). Judging or “separating” a person for a barely noticeable tattoo that they didn’t even put on themselves may seem arbitrary, but only if you ignore the entire history that makes them different.
Good? I don’t know that you have to judge it as good, but it’s easy to understand WHY and also that is serves a purpose in the US it may not serve other places.
People naturally separate into like groups as a matter of being fundamentally tribal, even though these are barriers we generally try to break down. The point though is that in the US there is often a cultural difference when splitting between white or black, just like there’s a cultural difference for “grows payot sideburns”, “dresses flamboyantly or effeminately as a man”, “speaks Spanish at home”, etc, etc. Sure, people are just people and we don’t need to point out differences maliciously, but we ARE different and those are often things we like to celebrate. At the root, we want our differences to be a positive not a negative, but by and large we aren’t changing our cultures anymore to blend into one big homogeneous, colorless group.
In most of Europe, black and white (or brown or purple or whatever) isn’t a meaningful cultural distinction. In the US it is. Now whether or not we should police language or even whether or not the situation is sometimes uncomfortable… those are different topics altogether.
Both.
He’s an outside observer, and spot on.
If you’re one color and you’re living in a culture where you’re surrounded by a majority of people of a different color who don’t treat you as one of them, then you’re going to identify more with the community of your own color.
There isn’t such thing as “different color” with human skin. We all have different shades and tones by nature. People naturally look different. Your skin even changes depending how much you’re in the sun and it doesn’t make them a different person. This is really not hard to see
Yeah but that’s not how the majority of racists see it. If you aren’t pure white they don’t like you. Period.
Yea and that’s the point I’m trying to make that this racism makes me feel bad. I thought I find some people that are also fed up with it like me
The victims feel worse.
Yeah it’s not about that. It’s about culture, history, systemic racism, discrimination, found family, community…
This “I don’t see colour” argument is an old blind argument that ignores all of the above.
Post-Occupy American media social discussion has focused on nothing but race/race relations for the past ~15 years. Our 0.01%er overlords know its an immutable difference between people and use it to drive a wedge between us in the name of “progress.”
Answer: you’re white, right? Few people who experience growing up black in America come away saying “what’s the big deal about race, anyway?”
If you want to know what the big deal is with being black, there’s wonderful tradition in American literature of telling you all about it. Pick up a copy of Black Boy by Richard Wright for a place to start.
Why are people making more of a thing out of it than they were 10 years ago? Well, my personal view is that the whole “just don’t talk about it and it will go away” has not worked. Life outcomes for white and black people are statistically quite different and it’s due to more than just talking about race. So I think people are getting sick of being quiet about something that clearly matters, and are talking about it openly. Others are responding by saying that talking about it is the entire problem and is, itself, racist. This is about the dumbest shit ever IMHO but some people are just really sick of having to hear about it and as a sheltered white person you have little personal reason to care. That is unless you care about other people.
White people who are sick of hearing about it loooove that Morgan Freeman video. They love it. It tells them just what they want to hear. But one extemporaneous comment by a celebrity does not make a thorough analysis of the topic that works for everyone. So yeah, sorry about that.
I would be genuinely interested to see what Freeman now thinks of that 16 (or more?) year old clip. While I don’t in any way question his experience or opinion, I think in some way that mindset was very much a (perhaps necessary) product of its time where color-blindness was considered to be the whole picture rather than a smaller bandaid solution of limited efficacy in the context of a holistic healing process.
Obviously he has had an extensive career making films that talk about race, so it’s contradictory on the face of it for him to say “stop talking about it.” Okay, dude! Stop making films that talk about it then!
Yeah. It was an off the cuff remark and right before it he commented on Black History month as limiting black people’s history to just one month a year, which is plainly stupid. Are we offended that Veterans Day bans all appreciation of service folk the other 364 days a year? No.
He is rich and famous and would love to not have the “black actor” label applied to him but again, an extemporaneous comment by a celebrity does not make a thorough analysis that works for everyone.
In other words, being able to choose to disregard the concept of race is itself an expression of privilege.
In a perfect world where everybody had that attitude, it would be the right attitude to have. But as long as some people continue to not only regard it but also use it as a tool to discriminate and oppress, their victims do not have a choice but to regard it also. To tell minorities they shouldn’t care about race is to deny them the means to describe how they’ve been wronged.
Exactly. Very well said. And with all respect to Mr. Freeman, he is rich and famous and enjoys a certain level of privilege in that.
No, you’re not the only one. It makes me feel uncomfortable as well, especially if it’s white people making a huge deal about being white or others not being white. That’s creepy AF, as this has been used historically as a really bad reason/excuse to mistreat others.
Yes I agree. But why can’t we stop calling people “white people” in the first place? Why can’t we just acknowledge each other as people/human beings?
Because we have to acknowledge the systemic privilege of white people. I’m so very white. I have my problems and my concerns, but none of them are for my looks. Black people do not have that luxury.
