One-third of SF Bay Area residents hope to leave soon, poll finds

Re:One-third of SF Bay Area residents hope to leave soon, po... by dpark on Monday May 02, 2016 @03:31PM (#11614734)

I seriously question the validity of that study. Racism has many forms and targets. You can't capture an objective measure of racism by looking purely at trends for the "n-word". You're capturing the researchers' bias as much as the subjects' racism. A foreign exchange student from Germany once remarked to me how she found it so odd that white and black students largely segregated themselves in the cafeteria (this was high school in rural Tennessee) and that she couldn't understand the racist tendencies that lead to this. Then I studied in Germany and realized that 1) there are very few black people there [1], and 2) plenty of Germans are racist against other populations, especially Muslims.

I wonder what this study would find if it expanded the "racist term" set. Maybe Texans are very racist against Mexicans. Maybe Washingtonians are especially racist against Asians. [2]

[1] It's not hard to overlook racism directed at a tiny fraction of the population because you just don't see it much. I didn't think there were really people in the US racist against Jews until I was an adult and encountered people who grew up around sizeable Jewish populations.

[2] I'm not asserting either of these as fact.

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Re:One-third of SF Bay Area residents hope to leave soon, po... by gwright on Monday May 02, 2016 @09:34PM (#11617194)

> plenty of Germans are racist against other populations, especially Muslims

I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but your comment is an example of a pattern I've noticed over the last few years that results in confusion more than clarity -- using the term 'racism' outside of the context of 'race'.

In most cases, I think 'prejudiced' or 'bigoted' is probably a more accurate label when you are talking about irrationally negative attitudes towards religious, political, cultural or national groups.

Not all negative attitudes are necessarily prejudiced or bigoted. Religion and politics exist in the realm of ideas -- one person's 'bigotry' can be another person's rationality and of course reasonable people can agree to disagree without there being any prejudice or bigotry involved.

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Re:One-third of SF Bay Area residents hope to leave soon, po... by dpark on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:47PM (#11617478)

To be clear, I'm aware that "Muslim" is not a race. I believe it's still valid to refer to racism against Muslims in this scenario. I don't believe that the German prejudice was motivated primarily by religious differences. I don't believe that an ethnically-German Muslim would face the same prejudice as, say, an ethnically-Moroccan or Syrian immigrant. I think this comes down to racism more than anything. Xenophobia might be another accurate label. It's not just religious disagreement, though.

I think most of the anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US these days fits into the same bucket. I don't believe most of it is really religious. You've got Donald Trump claiming he loves Israel and Jews and then claiming that Muslims are ruining/attacking America. That's not a case where the issue is religious disagreement or Jews would be as much a target as Muslims.

Again, you could certainly call this xenophobia. I think racism is still pretty accurate, though.

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