You don't start because you believe the neighbors are somehow inferior, you start because you know that you have dangerous differences, or that they occupy some parts of you country that should be freed, or because they are in the offensive every now and then and so on.
Words have a meaning. Not all situations where a group is cautious or even hates another are racism. The same way blacks in the US being cautious of whites is not racism -- they do have a long history of suffering in their hands that justifies that as the prudent behavior.
When you understand racism in this context it becomes clear that the narrative of people being racist because they are hateful is far too shallow. It goes much deeper than that.
The thing is, fear can be totally rational and even justified and not your fault. In which case, it's not racism.
E.g. a black in the 30's south fearing of whites (for lynching, beating up, etc) is justified.
But a white feeling superior, and believing those blacks are animals, to be kept in their place, etc, that was actual racism.
[Added] If fact actual racism, from the first land grabs in Americas, to the development of official theories of "race" back in the 18th and 19th centuries (Gobineau, Galton and so on IIRC), is strongly tied to power grab -- painting the other as inferior to morally justify taking other their land and enslaving them. Racism was used as a tool to justify European colonialism, US slavery, Japanese conquests, etc.
Racism without having the upper hand, is hardly racism.
I know this means that there's an uncomfortable category, a shade of gray that is "justified racism" and there are situations where not being racist might mean you're putting yourself at risk by trusting someone (e.g. your historical violent white man example) that due to historical circumstances has the "upper hand" and might use it to cause you harm, and these aren't very comfortable or popular ideas, but ... too bad?
When you can wrestle with the idea that racism can possibly be justified or a useful heuristic, you can possibly relate to the people who are racist, understand their fears and mistrust, and possibly bridge a gap to where you can explain to them that they don't have much to fear from the other.
That's not how it works in those places though. The neighbor countries can (and historically have) turn around and attack the other neighbors again and again, and there are tension and provocations and such even after periods of relative peace.
And you can't tell someone who lost their loved ones due to this or that incident involving some people, that it's now all "water under the bridge". Healing from such things takes many decades, and even generations to actually heal.
If X murdered your father, you didn't want any relation with them, even decades later, even if there wasn't anything else to fear from them. And you probably wouldn't be best buddies with their relatives in general either. Now, imagine that in a more widespread way, where whole countries were under attack, with perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions dying, and you having multiple people you mourn from that time.
He is not ready to "forgive and forget" and put "water under the bridge" for what he thinks those many did (or continue to do) to his country.
That's not a response to a "legitimate threat", but it's the expression of a legitimate (as far as that person is concerned) grievance.
You're aware of the meme going around regarding this phrase I assume? :)
No, I'm saying there can be an objective, reasoned aspect as to racism, that is doesn't have to be purely based on "fear".
We might be "very often ruled by emotion" but there's also an objective reality out there. A black guy flirting with a white woman in the 20's Alabama would indeed find themselves hanging from a tree -- whether they were "objective" or not.
The anger and outrage helped keep blacks down, and thus their wages down, and keeping them for asking for more and competing with whites. Just like before the civil war it helped justify their being kept as slaves, and thus function as profit centers.
So it's not just irrational fear.
These are all conditions that cause racial tension to flare. It's actually quite predictable, which reminds us that the spread of racism is like a social disease and should be treated as such.
A thought experiment: would you react the same way if the original example was of an Egyptian singer being interviewed on an Egyptian channel and revealing that he/she was married to an Israeli?
For history is important to consider but not all historical situations are alike.
We could justify a reaction from whatever side, if they had equally suffered from the other side.
History is painful, and we might say "but she's just married to an X citizen, what's the harm", but the other's that got offended might have visions of their family or friends or themselves being killed, or treated badly because of being non X. It might not have been that particular X citizen that did those offenses, but they didn't see other X citizens rushing to their rescue either -- on the contrary, they might have seen a lot of them cheering for it. (And I'm sure the same would hold if an Israeli woman was revealing in a Israeli channel that she was married to an Egyptian -- and it could still be justified and understood under their experiences).
(Disclaimer: I'm a Bulgarian who's lived in the UK for the past decade. Most Bulgarians who have lived in Bulgaria their whole lives would probably disagree with me.)
We're so hardly conditioned to believe that "racism is wrong" that when we see instances of racism that actually make sense, we instinctively want to name it something else.
Part of it is that.
Another part is that we conflate any collective tension or precaution or generalization to "hating".
You might not hate blacks, but you still wont want to walk alone in 3AM in downtown L.A. Even if 99% of the people you meet there are great with you, it only takes 1-2 persons to attack or rob you to make the precaution (and thus the generalization) perfectly rational. That doesn't make you a racist, just a person aware of crime statistics.
Few, if anyone, can just say, "I'll just visit downtown L.A. at 3 AM without a care in my mind, and judge people I meet there on an individual basis". And even the few that do that, if they end having it bad, they rarely keep to the same ideal.
No, it's a pragmatic use. When you're persecuted, burned in furnaces, kept in concentration camps, gassed, etc -- and the rest of the population don't lift a finger about it, if not cheering, then you don't sit to ponder whether 100% of the German population does that to you, or it's just 70%, or maybe "merely" 30%.
>Do you allow non-Jewish Americans to resent Jews for their dramatic over-representation in positions of power, influence, and information gate-keeping (e.g. journalism, entertainment media, the Supreme Court, Congress, academia, the Federal Reserve)?
They sure are allowed to suspect people of the same roots helping out each other -- as opposed to a meritocracy. But even so, that's nowhere even remotely close to what the Jews themselves suffered, it's so lighter an offense that it's not even in question.
Besides, it's not what you "allow" or not "allow". It's what people will do anyway.
>Do you allow non-Black Americans to resent blacks for their disproportionate violence and anti-social behavior; for their dramatic over-representation in entertainment media; and for the astronomical net tax burden they foist upon everyone else (just over $10,000 per black American per year)?
Allowing it or not, they do. And if one statistically lives in areas where e.g. blacks are predominantly doing crimes, or they have suffered (like a friend who was shot in Atlanta mowing his lawn, because some dude had to get "initiated"), they also get to be fearful and even resentful. It's pragmatic, and it includes the whole group (and not just the bad apples in it) for plain statistical reasons. You can never know exactly all the actual bad apples (it's not like someone will hand you a list in advance) to avoid. But you learn to be more careful when around group A or B in certain situations or surroundings, for purely statistical reasons.
That's not the same as racism -- just a generalization. Heck, you can consider blacks perfectly equal, and capable of anything any white can do, and persecuted unjustly by the police, and redlined, and so on, and still not want to walk alone through central Los Angeles at 3:00 AM.
Southern slave owners, on the other hand, were racist without any provocation -- if anything, they DID the provocation by abducting and enslaving people, and they still considered them inferior.
(Not sure about the $10K per black/year amount. Even if true, it could be a drop in the bucket compared to state owned recuperations for past deeds such as, I dunno, the whole slavery thing. Continuity of state and all -- countries still pay for what they did in wars decades and centuries ago).
>When you abuse the word "they", it's going to be abused back at you.
Perhaps, but I don't see how.
Hey, just curious - if you'd change this historical example to a situation where persecuted people were able to actively organize and defend themselves from being killed (organize a self-defense force, then an army, build a wall around, etc), but overall population around them would still want to do it and cheer when it happens, would you call this racism? Because this example is not hypothetical and is routinely called "racism" and "evil" in mainstream western culture.