The problem of White Supremacy - Spinoff from Buffalo Shooting thread (1 Viewer)

I would say that most of the replies to this post have been productive. I am a white male who grew up in several different areas of the country but spent my high school years in a small town in Arkansas. We had one black student in our high school. With that I have a question.

What percentage of the American population do you believe is racist?

So, this is really hard to quantify, and I'm not sure always very helpful. I think it's easier to say 100% of the American population is biased and prejudiced. Because 100% of the human population is biased and prejudiced. It's how we evolved, we make snap decisions based on a number of criteria that have been molded onto us by our experiences and shared stories. We do it all the time, we judge people by their looks, the way they dress, how they talk and yes by their race. It's a part of the way we're hard wired. I've posted this before, but I'll do so again:


It basically shows how most of us make snap decisions based on looks. It seems silly to me to deny this. It doesn't make people bad to be human. What you do once you know this is what defines you though.

So, what percentage of the population is racist? Well, I'd like to think that the percentage of the population that thinks that one race is genetically superior to another is small (although I fear it might be bigger than I think), we have way too many institutions in our country that allow for snap decisions of people to dictate how they're treated with little recourse. This doesn't require someone to be consciously racist to be damaging. It can be the guard at a 5 star hotel stopping a well dressed black man to question whether he belongs while letting the white guy in a track suit go by (this has been a social experiment repeated a number of times at a number of 5 star hotels).

This is why I think going back to process and reviewing in a conscious way what to do for a number of situations so we rely less on our intutions and more on objective facts is the best way to combat racism and all other forms of bias in our society.


The reason that I ask is, during the discussion on this post I have seen all white people lumped together, all republicans lumped together, all males lumped together, and so on. I think we can all agree that you can be a white male republican and not be racist (or maybe we can't). There is out there at least one of them?

If we are to truly get to the root cause and come up with solutions for our society, we have to stop grouping people together and assuming if one person does something then all people who fall into that category are the same.

We do this in our society (media) on a lot of issues
Abortion
Guns
Same Sex Relationships
Gender
Violence
Who you voted for

I believe if we can make this adjustment we can start to truly find the solutions to a lot of problems.

I agree with your point that we tend to fit people into villians and victims roles based on a set of attributes, and this makes moving forward difficult. There are challenges to the above which I don't think I can get into without getting political though.
 
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I would just say that this is unavoidably political and would need to be discussed at the MAP site.
That's why I didn't post news articles about it. I just wanted it out there that there is/was an (unsuccessful) effort by our government to address the problem.
 
The problem is something I mentioned before. Can't just call it racism. It is white supremacy specifically.

Just because it isn't the 50s style in-your-face type doesn't mean it's gone away. It seems this country now tries to go out of its way to avoid that conversation, especially when "black" people are the target.

I have yet to hear any politician or hardly any person call this an anti-black hate crime like they were so willing to do for asians a while back.

No explicitly anti-black legislation or money to concerned groups like they did for asians. The bottom caste still getting bottom caste "benign neglect" treatment.

So the problem continues.
 
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No explicitly anti-black legislation or money to concerned groups like they did for asians. The bottom caste still getting bottom caste "benign neglect" treatment.

So the problem continues.
Isabella Wilkerson is trying hard to make that Caste idea stick
It’s an important discussion to have
I’m glad you brought it up:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she prefers to refer to America as having a "caste" system.

Wilkerson describes caste an artificial hierarchy that helps determine standing and respect, assumptions of beauty and competence, and even who gets benefit of the doubt and access to resources.

"Caste focuses in on the infrastructure of our divisions and the rankings, whereas race is the metric that's used to determine one's place in that," she says
 
Education of racism needs to be a priority. Too many people, including teachers simply don't believe it exists

I've said this before:

There was slavery, slavery was bad, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, then there was racism, racism was bad, then Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks ended racism.

The End.

For decades that was basically pretty much all that was taught, with a little Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver added each February

An exponentially better job needs to be done


I’m glad my children go to a public school in the city. It’s a pretty diverse charter school and even though my oldest is only in 3rd grade, they seem have discussed racism quite a bit already and I’m really glad!
 
Isabella Wilkerson is trying hard to make that Caste idea stick
It’s an important discussion to have
I’m glad you brought it up:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she prefers to refer to America as having a "caste" system.

Wilkerson describes caste an artificial hierarchy that helps determine standing and respect, assumptions of beauty and competence, and even who gets benefit of the doubt and access to resources.

"Caste focuses in on the infrastructure of our divisions and the rankings, whereas race is the metric that's used to determine one's place in that," she says
Interesting. I've always associated caste with classism more than racism, but your, or rather Wilkerson's approach has merit I think.
 
Posted this over in MAP - good article about being a black student in a majority white school district. And the white parents who are either in denial or oblivious to what their children are doing in school
============================

I don’t remember the first time I realized that I was different from my white classmates. I don’t even remember the first time I understood what race was. But I remember the first time I was made to hate myself for being Black.

I was 10 years old when I was called the N-word for the first time.

We had been dismissed from class for the day, so I went to grab my backpack from my assigned cubby in the corner of my elementary school classroom. Before I could throw it over my shoulders, my classmate had made the announcement.

“Look everyone, it’s Tigger the [N-word].”

I was the only Black girl in the room, so I immediately knew that he was talking about me. If that wasn’t obvious enough, he made sure to clarify by staring and pointing at me while he said it.

The shock from the blow didn’t allow me to fully process what happened. All I could think to do was to question whether I had heard him correctly. When he said it again, he made sure to remove any doubt.

One incident, one word: that’s all it took for me to realize that I was considered the “other”. My innocence and naive childlike hope was gone as I was thrusted into a position of subordination.

•••

My school district in Carmel, Indiana, is home to some of the best public schools in the US – it is where I received my education from the age of five until graduation. Other than the less than 4% of Black students in the district, the schools are made up of white hallways, white teachers and white students…….

Sometimes, I try to convince myself that if my white classmates and teachers were educated on the true history of this country, then maybe my experience wouldn’t have been what it was.

Maybe administrators would see how their choice to dish out a year-long suspension to a Black student for drugs while not punishing the white student (who was caught with more drugs) parallels the “war on drugs” in America.

Maybe they would see that adding extra security near the area dubbed “the Black Spot” mimics profiling and over-policing across the country.

My 16-year sentence in the school system ended in 2016, when I earned my diploma. After the world was forced to grapple with a reckoning on race and policing in 2020, Carmel now claims that they are ready to change, but I can tell nothing has changed.

As I scroll through social media, I look in disgust, but not shock, at the use of “[N-word] this” and “[N-word] that” in comments made.

But instead of tackling this very real racial abuse, teachers, administrators and parents are more afraid of the bogeyman in the corner: critical race theory.

White parents and families across the country are panicked by the idea of students being critical of the United States’ dark history – especially lessons that center the egregious actions of white people over time. The aim of critical race theory is to contextualize the history behind the racism and systemic oppression that we see today.

But the parents of Carmel don’t want their students to be taught about anything that may make their children feel guilty for their whiteness.

The school would rather cater to white comfort than address America’s skeletons.

I never got a say in learning about Black trauma: it was an expectation. At a young age, images of slaves with whip scars on their backs and the horrors of the backlash against the civil rights movement were already burned in my mind.

White students get a say in whether they want to learn about their history. I did not.

Throughout my entire education, I sat silent while teachers sugarcoated white history.

I vividly remember sitting in class while my teacher glorified the actions of white people: how brave they were for freeing the slaves, how kind they were for giving Black people rights, and how trusting they were when letting Japanese people out of internment camps.

Parents are also to blame for their failure to teach their children about racism. Their refusal to educate their children sends the message that they are fine with the way society has been functioning.

Through their willful ignorance, they are breeding a future generation of people who won’t change the dominant culture, because they believe that everything is sunshine and rainbows............



I have never heard that sentence before, but it’s very powerful, in a sad way!

“White Comfort”
 
Woof, it really is a warzone over there.

Some gems:



I retract my prior statement and amend it to the following:

Tigerdroppings is 4chan lite..



If you listen to 870AM between 11AM-2PM, you can hear some of the TD callers!
 
Isabella Wilkerson is trying hard to make that Caste idea stick
It’s an important discussion to have
I’m glad you brought it up:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she prefers to refer to America as having a "caste" system.

Wilkerson describes caste an artificial hierarchy that helps determine standing and respect, assumptions of beauty and competence, and even who gets benefit of the doubt and access to resources.

"Caste focuses in on the infrastructure of our divisions and the rankings, whereas race is the metric that's used to determine one's place in that," she says
Wilkerson's book "Caste" is a difficult read for the majority of Americans
 
So, I want to thank yall for starting this thread, specifically @DaveXA . I read every thought and I appreciate the effort. Early on, it was opined that "this can't be done without getting political" and, I won't lie, my expectations waned. But, 8 pages later, you've shown a discussion can be started, and sustained, and the key element of it all -- you tried. And that's what I'm proud of because that is mainly what is being asked. Make an honest effort, an honest assessment, to challenge ideology. I purposely lurked during the discussion, and refrained from contributing, because it is my sincere belief that for this issue to be resolved, it will take a conversation and resolutions being made BY white Americans amongst white Americans. Not as our saviors; no, we don't need to be saved. But as your problem to solve. I know that sounds harsh and unfair. You didn't create this system of oppression and you don't promulgate the ideology of white supremacy. Yet, it was a system built by white Americans to benefit white Americans and, ultimately, it will take white Americans willpower to dismantle it. Also, personally, it can be a bit exhausting and tiring being one of the few black voices, almost expected, relied upon, to push the dialogue and provide perspective for the masses. However, because my comments in the other thread were, essentially, the catalyst for this one, I didn't want to be seen as a pot stirrer. Agitating things and then going ghost when discussions happens. So, shortly, I'm making a post with some of my thoughts. For now, with all sincerity, I wanted to say THANK YOU!


You're welcome. And by all means, be a pot-stirrer. We can't change this system without each and every one of us taking a personal stake. I call out my white peers to seriously look at the history in the USA as written and the history that's been left largely untold.

If this history makes white Americans uncomfortable, well, I'm sorry about your feelings but tough ****.
 
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So for what it’s worth, it looks like we’re doing a decent job of keeping this thread apolitical.

However, I do wonder if that is, in fact, doing a disservice to the topic. The political realm is an area where significant advancement can be done on this front. It is by far, in fact, the most significant realm (see: Emancipation Proclamation, Civil Rights Act, Million Man March, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., etc etc etc).

I believe that talking about racism without talking about the very real political problems, solutions, and disagreements on the topic is painting a very incomplete picture of racism in America, which has been a political debate since our founding, as the thread goes on.

This topic divides right down political lines for the most part. And to fix the problem, first you have to admit you have a problem. One side of the aisle has a problem they haven’t admitted yet.

Without any green-lighting, I won’t go any further on the topic.
 
Jim brought up the point about how many people are racist. I think that population percentage wise it’s probably pretty small. I think the larger percentage would be bystanders, those who will not do something when this relatively small percentage is up to no good, which in essence, condones the actions of the real racists. That emboldens the smaller percentage and artificially enlarges their “numbers”. Pretty soon the smaller percentage’s ideas become the norm.
 

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