There's a famous quote (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to Reagan: "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American."
As a brown man, I feel this viscerally; I am not only deeply proud to be American, but I feel accepted as an American by my non-immigrant peers.
I think the nuanced way of putting it isn't so much that "America is not racist", it's that every country in the world deals with racism as a problem, but America is perhaps among the least racist.
Daryl Davis¹, through conversation, convinced a number of Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. See “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America”².
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav...
Anyway, this experience is the reason I roll my eyes when someone calls ____ a nazi. There are legit nazis in the world, and they’re a truly unpleasant bunch.
Used to play airsoft with a guy who had a totenkopf tattoo. He wasn't pleasant at all. Not sure anyone wanted him there but so long as he didn't break any of the rules they weren't sure if they could refuse him service.
Though as a counter my friends dad has a bunch of neonazi tattoos under his hair (he doesn't shave it any more) and was a very solid bloke who had a troubled path getting there.
Even the actual neo-nazis can reform.
And... unless you're in a marginalized minority group, you really aren't in a position to know how racist people are.
Oh yeah, I just remembered, we also recently had a president for four years who was overly racist. Remember his attacks on Judge Curiel? Remember Mexicans "are rapists"?
So yes you’re right anyone can empathize. But I don’t think that’s what OP is saying. You really cannot fully understand unless you live it. Just like you cannot understand true poverty in African countries, when you’ve spent your whole life living in a (relatively) rich one.
But I (a black African man) can never truly know or experience what the average Uyghur goes though day to day, because I just haven’t lived it.
So no, when we say that, we are not “excluding” anyone - in fact the more allies a minority has, the more likely they will achieve equality. But lived experience is different.
However lived experience can also introduces biases — for instance, would you trust a court of law to deliver justice if the victim was also judge and jury? That lived experience which provides sensitivity and also can make one too close to the matter at hand to see things clearly.
I think people with and without lived experiences can pull together and make positive contributions.
I say this because there are so many examples of solutions proposed by people with lived experience that are utterly counterproductive, because they shut out the voices of those without lived experience but who might have balancing views drawn from the broader human experience.
My experience is that people are more likely to share racist views with other people of their ethnic group but would likely never be overtly hostile to a person of a different race.
Also, I think if you are in a marginalized group it's extremely hard to disambiguate racism from general assholery.
If you don't get hired for a job you'll never know if it was because the interviewer was racist or because he just didn't like you
A great example was how shutting down travel at the start of Covid-19 was seen as racist. Yet, there should have been no issue as it was the only thing we can do in our global environment to slow the situation. Yet, the people in charge came up with that as racist.
"When Mexico sends its people, ... they're rapists." - Donald Trump
That time he said April Ryan (reporter) should "go set up the meeting" with the congressional black caucus for him.
Shithole countries.
The Muslim ban. Which for a while people around him tried to get him to pretend wasn't a Muslim ban, but really wanted to keep using those words, so he did.
I don't have any complaints about shutting down travel over COVID-19. It should have happened sooner, and I don't know anyone who ever disagreed with that. On the other hand, he did go out of his way to unneccessarily try and rename COVID the "China virus," which sure looked like racial scapegoating to me.
But, I would say that his mysogyny is much worse. And, his love for dictators. ("love" being his term)
Does this mean that it is not empirically measurable then? That would explain a lot because actual data is what I find missing from the claims of how prevalent racism is.
As for empirical data, there's tons. Maybe start with this Brookings report since it's on the topic of the OP (housing) https://www.brookings.edu/research/biased-appraisals-and-the...
"The question is: What explains this? We don’t know with any precision. In our paper, we reviewed literature on racial bias and pointed to its potential as an explanation, writing: “Our findings are generally consistent with the widespread presence of anti-Black bias.” We left it for future work to explore some of the relevant mechanisms that link bias to valuations and quantify their importance."
So the thought is that it MIGHT be bias (a bit presumptuous then to title the study "Biased appraisals..."). And we are waiting on future studies to actually provide the causal link.
But even if every bit of the 23% delta is caused by racial bias, we need to consider the trend. As far as I can tell every important sociological data point on this matter (employment, wealth, marriage, laws, etc.) has been improving decade after decade. I don't know what numbers this same study, or one equivalent to it, would reveal from say 5 or 7 decades ago, but I assume it would have been substantially worse.
All of which is to say that proposing a narrative that racism is rampant and getting worse does not seem to be supported by the data. To the contrary, it would seem that it is less than it's ever been and continues to decline.
EDIT: To be clear, I am not suggesting you or anyone here is proposing a narrative that racism is rampant and getting worse. But I think it's safe to say that proposal is prevalent in pop culture.
I'm not familiar with a narrative that racism is getting worse. My impression (and I thought this was in line with US liberal thinking) is that we are now beginning to admit that racism didn't go away with the end of slavery, it didn't go away with the end of segregation; it's still here. I'd say things are getting better, because many white people acknowledge racism instead of pretending it doesn't exist.
But it is already bad enough that Afroamericans had been kept from acquiring wealth by various means, judicial and extrajudicial for much of the last century. They are closing the wealth gap, but extremely slowly.
Ignoring that history is part of a basically racist system.
The dog whistle version of this, which you heard public figures using on TV, was "he doesn't look presidential."
The real point is that the conversation you described happens ten times over in most peer developed countries. If you think it's bad that a few people say this about Obama (who ultimately was elected President twice), imagine what it's like running for office as a person of color in France, Germany, the Nordics, Japan, South Korea, or Italy — it's nigh impossible. Whereas in America, the kind of racism you're describing has been relegated to retirees and people who generally lack power, in Europe, this kind of thinking persists in board rooms, popular culture, and even the British Royal Family (just ask Meghan Markle) — institutions with real cultural influence and power.
Ultimately, while racism continues to be a problem in America, it's much further along in solving that problem than pretty much any other developed country, save for maybe Canada, the UK, and ANZ.
An exception like "oh well you're one of the good ones"?
> I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronally, I think they are a very small insular group, if they exist at all.
Talk to old people if you want some disappointment then.
Yes. This includes most "old people". A lot of the talk an jabs or using racial epithets is superficial when you get right down to it. At least, in my experience.
They're very nice at the surface level. You wouldn't expect it, but oh boy was it there an it was deep.
I really, really do not believe that the racial epithets are superficial. It's not a uniquely old person problem by any definition, but it's extremely common.
When my grandmother was dying in a hospital, she had some dementia. I don't think she ever uttered a racial epithet to anyone in her whole life, but one day a hospital worker was trying to clean her room up and making a bit of a commotion, she sat up and told him to go away, that she did not like black people. We apolized to the man who seemed to understand the situation. My point is that people are complicated, sometimes they say things on reflex they would not say in a healthier more positive frame of mind.
People are concerned about existing as they were born as well. I think those people are less concerned about whether or not your grandma can be honest about her feelings towards black people.
> I don’t think she uttered a racial epithet to anyone in her whole life
I’ll start by saying this is an assumption and likely untrue.
As previously stated, lots of people who are racist are never overtly racist.
This is why I've never liked the notion of sneering at those who say "some of my best friends are race/ethnicity", as if that is proof of that person's irremediable evilness. Isn't it a good thing for people to, however superficially or insincerely, consider "exceptions"? To put another way, if people instead said "I consider race/ethnicity to be 100% bad", would this be better? Of course not.
As someone that moved to a very very racist part of the US in their teens (near a sundown town), this is by far the most scary statement you could write. I believe you would be far more concerned if you understood the enormity of it when you look at it in the converse.
This person you mention that creates an exception 'for one of the good ones' will also create an exception for their buddy when they lynch someone and they just forget to tell the police about it.
I recommend 'Neoslavery' by Knowing Better as a little chunk of more recent American history a lot of people would like to erase. Racism runs very deep in some places.
I don't deny such attitudes. But I would be suprised if such attitudes extended to a complete abnegation of local authority to prosecute a lynching. Even in a sundown town.
If George Floyd's murder had not been filmed Derek Chauvin would still be on the police force and not in prison. This is why you should watch the video attached in my previous reply. Especially in the south the local authorities were actively involved in gathering slaves (remember prison slavery is legal to this day in the US).
Second, George Floyd was not "lynched". It's even debateable if there were even racial motivations to the case. He ultimately died of a fentanyl overdose, and there is video evidence he was out of control at the time. Not to excuse Chauvin, but I'm not going to try to read his mind or judge his character on the basis that "he looks like a white supremicist" sitting in court.
Saying cases exist but we simply don't know about it, is dodging the question. You can't prove a negative. That's just being disingenuous. Where is the proof that lynchings are occuring but they are just being swept under the rug?
Neither of these things are true.
"An autopsy found methamphetamine and fentanyl in Floyd’s system at the time of his death. Investigators also found pills contained methamphetamine and fentanyl inside Floyd’s SUV and the backseat of a squad car officers tried to push him into.
"Schleicher pointed jurors toward the testimony of a forensic toxicologist who found fentanyl levels were “well below the ratio” of people who die from an overdose and a “very low” level of methamphetamine in blood taken from Floyd at the hospital."
https://apnews.com/article/trials-us-news-death-of-george-fl...
No, two autopsys and a jury determined that he died from a knee on his neck.
https://apnews.com/article/trials-us-news-death-of-george-fl...
> Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race.
Shifting somewhat off race, one of my biggest hopes with some of the covid / work-remote urban-to-rural diapora is that- by finally having some reverse brain drain- less urban places might finally see & hear from some more diverse people. Some cultural mixing & injection of other people can (I hope) add some empathy & sense in places that have had fewer & fewer huddling together & weathering the slow-but-ever-ongoing worldwide march of economic-stratification.
It's quite contradictory with what happens in practice. You can absolutely go live in France and be considered a Frenchman. However Americans will always identify you by your family's origin, even if you're born in the US.
Actually that difference in how countries see nationality was well illustrated when France won the soccer World Cup, and American commenters didn't see an issue with denying the French players they belonging to their country, and insisting they were from Africa and couldn't have changed that because of their ancestry. The French saw that as profoundly racist. See https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/19/17590302/t...
> "After the 2016 election, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla wrote a New York Times essay, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” making an argument similar to Araud’s (a piece that also follows a long tradition of liberal hand-wringing about identity in the US). In the piece, Lilla even cited his time taking a sabbatical in France as formative of his opinions on this subject.
> American liberalism’s emphasis on identity and difference, Lilla argues, is destroying the foundations of democracy in the country — helping the far right in precisely the way that Araud says
To be absolutely clear, I don't deny that modern American liberals employ rhetoric directly at odds with Reagan's quote, it's in fact exactly the point I'm trying to make. You can pretty much draw a straight line from that brand of progressivism to the predisposition to draw the (in my opinion false) conclusion that America is more racist than other peer countries. From my experience as a 1st-generation immigrant, that has been not only false, but I see my success as mostly being capped by the color of my skin in every other country except for the US, UK, Canada, and ANZ. I know that to hold true for basically 100% of my peers as well.
You don't just have to take my word for it, it's been true for pretty much every single immigrant group in American history. I recommend reading this thread which makes the argument better than I ever could: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045
> The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks.
American progressives (especially those like Trevor Noah) take this for granted in the world, and tend to undervalue just how unique it is; this kind of economic convergence within 3-4 generations is extremely atypical in the developed world. It's well and good that a handful of Africans go on to become successful football players in France, but normal non-athletic Muslim immigrants to France actually tend to suffer from multi-generational poverty.
Also, while the Vox piece you linked paints the French as tolerant and proud of their footballers, scandalized by Trevor Noah, the reality is a bit more complicated: https://twitter.com/footballfactly/status/102113333053048422.... Across Europe, footballers of color are only conditionally accepted.
In America, as long as you're a hard worker, believe in America's institutions, and are civically engaged, it doesn't matter where you're from, you will eventually be accepted as "American", and if anyone were to suggest otherwise, they'd likely get ostracized by most (if not all) institutions that hold power/influence.
I have been to America and it feels lots of different countries living in the same place, not necessarily a good thing. Again it's a subject full of nuances, but I have seen different people being completely integrated after just a single generation. What I think is relevant is how much a culture is exposed and capable of absorb different people from different cultures.
This has been true for pretty much every group of immigrants to America. I recommend reading this thread which makes the argument better than I ever could: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045
> The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks.
And it's easy to take this for granted, as Americans, but this kind of economic convergence within 3-4 generations is not universal. Muslim immigrants to France suffer from multi-generational poverty.
I know for a fact that if I tried hard enough, I could become the CEO of Google (like Sundar) or the CEO of Microsoft (like Satya), or even "fail" into a Director/VP position at any Fortune 500 corporation. I know I can probably become the Mayor of a major city, or a Governor of a major State, or even a member of Congress. I know that my Indian-American wife who is accomplished in her own right can potentially become the CEO of Vimeo (look her up!). I know I can probably become a star stand-up comedian (like Hasan, Hari, or Aziz). I know I can probably become a star actor in a Hollywood Blockbuster (like Mindy or Kal).
I type this comment while on vacation in Stockholm, where the streets are currently littered with campaign posters for the upcoming election in September 2022, and I do not believe that I or my children can ever see ourselves on those posters and be accepted as Swedish — no matter how hard we tried. I'm not confident that I'd ever be considered to meaningfully lead H&M or Ikea or Volvo, at least not over a white blonde Swedish person with generations of Nordic lineage. As I said above, I'm sure I'd be comfortable living in Sweden — it's a remarkably easy place to live — but my success is capped by the color of my skin in a way that it simply isn't in America (or Canada, UK, and maybe ANZ).
That’s part of why you see such frustration on the right when people oppose things listed in the constitution (gun rights, censorship of any kind, etc). In their world view, it’s an assault on America. It’s why they call the left un-American. It’s also why the left in the US always refers to “our democracy”, in their world view the US is a “multi-cultural democracy” (not a constitutional republic - which it technically is).
Both parties tapping into the same mojo
My friend had gotten married was looking to buy a house, and his wife having a lot of trouble driving out to a location only to hear it was off the market. So he decided the he would take some of the burden from his wife, and visit places after work himself.
Fortubately, he didn't coordinate this well enough so he ended up going to some off the same places as her.
Guess what? In the morning, his Hispanic wife would be told the house was aleady sold or the seller was no longer offering it.
That same day in the afternoon, he the White husband would get a tour and be told he could buy anytime.
Racism is alive and well, if it weren't the color of my friends face he wouldn't have a house today. Funny enough his white neighbors spontaneously moved after he arrived with his Hispanic wife, and now the entire neighborhood is more multicultural.
This isn’t really unusual when you are buying in a hot market. When I was getting my place it happened several times and the realtor would usually offer to give me an appointment at another place or just take my number so they’d call me if the current deal fell through.
I think the realtors don’t leave specifically for that reason: it serves as lead generation for their other properties.
Also, as an aside mini-rant, I'm not keen on the concept of race, because it's a very fuzzy and nondescript concept compared to ethnicity or color. Race isn't a meaningful term and is mistakenly used to describe nationalities, religions, ethnicities, or other communities inappropriately.
As a Canadian living in Malaysia (just shy of being in the top 10 most racist countries[1]) this is definitely true (although not against me as a Caucasian). There have been several times where I am in a Grab and the casual conversation with the driver all of the sudden turns racist whether it's against Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian etc. People over here are much less concerned about tact and racism is no exception.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-raci...
However, being looked down upon or discriminated against is one thing. Having to fear for your life and safety because they will hurt you just because of what you look like biologically is a different issue.
Take the infamous Japan for example, if you live there long enough as any non-white minority you should expect to be treated badly based on your appearance alone.
Take a white area in any US state or night time at a sun-down small town. Bad things will happen to you and the cops will be in on it. Or take driving as a minority in certain parts of the US, there is a chance you might run into a cop who might decide to frame you for some crime and at best you will spend a few weeks in jail before being set free. That can happen outside the US in say Russia for example, the US isn't special but the type of racism where you don't get jobs or get called names in public is different than being afraid day in day out or have large portions of a political party advocate for race wars, genoicide,etc...
I mean can you think of any other country where a minorities are incarcerated at a similar rate per capita as the US?
I use to think like you as well but the US is a bit special as with many things in this regard. But racism like many other evils are default settings on humans.
The USA is certainly the most racist first world country I’ve been to. (I’ve visited Canada, England, Denmark, USA)
The incarceration statistics for African Americans vs. white people alone tell you all you need to know.
Unfortunately intellectually lazy people gravitate to a binary racist vs not-racist analysis. Nuanced comparisons and suggestions mean looking under the rug where all the problems have been swept under.
Minorities in the US do have more opportunities but also effects of historical and systemic racism as well as white flight and other things specific to the US and other hetrogenous countries means minorities also live in 3rd world like conditions in some places.
A minority might get beat up and mistreated a lot in russia but slavery my means of false incarceration would be rare.
And believe it or not from Japan to Russia to Scandanavia there are a lot of nice,kind and hospitable people.
What comes as a shock to american minorities is how their race isn't even relevant unless the other person is also an asshole racist. Treating people differently because of race is too much work if you didn't grow up thinking that way unless it is a serious thing like marriage or a job (as opposed to serving a person at a restaurant).
- Americans are racist
- Europeans wrote their thesis on racism
- Asians wrote the original sources on racism that the Europeans cite in their thesis
[1] https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-r...
Here in Germany for example, black skin Africans report wildly different amounts of discrimination: the lucky ones are those who, due to some inexplicable subtility, tend to get misidentified as African Americans. Suddenly they are on the other side of that strange line separating immigrants from expats, without even trying.
european racism is also more xenophobia than about race, which is exemplified by the difference between africans and african-americans. it's less the skin color that matters but where you are from. an african-american is from a 1st world country with a western culture similar to europe, whereas a native african is from a 3rd world country. "from the bush", from a poverty stricken and war-torn region.
A mistake on the side of the potential xenophobe that usually turns out quite positive for the misidentified. "Welfare seeker" vs "impersonation of the Marshall Plan", the difference could not be bigger. The face of the "good GI", in popular memory, has black skin because that used to be so much of a standout feature back in the day.
do caucasian americans identify as europeans outside of america?
or mexicans as spanisch?
So, it’s no a skin issue by no mean.
South African Racism vs. American Racism
Gist of his answer is south African Racism is "blacks can't live here", US Racism is "well you could live here, but your loan was denied, sorry"
For example, Redlining just being turned into 'your address affects your credit score'.
https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/how-...
You said: "well you could live here, but your loan was denied, sorry"
My response was that there are laws that prohibit institutions from denying loans based on the factors you have cited.
They don't talk about it much in places that are really racist because they don't give a damn.
I like to think we're striving in the right direction too. Just at a different stage.
Could there be other explanations for that than racism?
The idea that all forms of discrimination are bad. Hear me out.
All discrimination is bad including cultural discrimination. However if a culture discriminates against sex or race how do I reconcile this paradox? By respecting a culture must I respect a culture a discrimination? The parent post is a confused person trying to make sense of the paradox.
My suggestion is to get above all of it. You don't need to crystallize discrimination into a hard black and white rule where if you discriminate your evil and if you don't your good. Much of America has this attitude and they can't rise above it.
There are legitimate logical and mathematical correlations between race and certain traits, between sex and certain traits and between culture and certain traits. To judge a person for these traits based off of sex, culture and race can be very rational due to these very real correlations.
But instead America has embraced woke culture which takes these anti discrimination views to the extreme such that you get male athletes with sex changes competing with women in female sports. It's sort of insane. But I get it.
This wokenesses attitude arises from a past where Americans took discrimination to illogical levels and committed atrocities because of it. Now our country lives in the extremes. You are either racist/sexist or you are woke. Pick one, because there isn't really a word for a moderate viewpoint on this topic.
The hypocrisy is all around us. Don't discriminate against gender but we must segregate restrooms into male and female versions. Are you saying males are lecherous pervs and we must give females a safe space to piss, shit and do makeup? It's actually completely sexist to segregate restrooms when men and women practically share every other space.
> generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination
I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously).
But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.
The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence
If Henry the Eighth said "I am not perfect, but I have treated my wives far better than anyone else in the world", then the admission that he is not perfect should not be sufficient to dismiss factual challenges to the second part of the claim.
Does the US have to be better than the rest of the world? All counties, everywhere?
This isn't really even allowing for equality with say Canada.
That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their reasons.
I personally find it reprehensible, but that’s my cultural values. I’m proud of where I’m from (US), where we have spent generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination based on race, gender or creed. It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction.