8 ms·

I'm from the South where this has been beat into us from youth. It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practic

I'm from the South where this has been beat into us from youth. It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practice slavery. That and the Jim Crow laws are to our eternal embarrassment. The only good thing about it is our opportunity to learn from it. I take some exception to your response, however, which seems very directed. There is not a single spot on this earth which hasn't had problems with racism, or a single one of us who has an ancestor who wasn't a racist. Latin America has its own problems with racism, as does Europe, Asia, and god-forbid even enlightened parts of the North and Pacific Northwest, too. I don't disagree with your point, but I'm not sure of its relevance.

tptacek 10y ago
Of the "western democracies", or the "industrialized western countries", or however you want to lump those countries together: * The US has unusual size, both geographically (which matters here) and population * The US has unusual diversity * The US has an unusually toxic history with racial diversity, in large part because unlike (say) Belgium, their racial history occurred almost entirely within their own borders The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries. We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! As a demographic, they get less value from the public school system than any other, and so we have persistent pipeline problems reinforcing these disparities. Black people can't even reliably rent rooms on Airbnb. In 2016. "Race realists" and "HBD people" would have you believe those phenomenon are due either to biological differences between black and white people, or to our pathological responses to those biological differences. That's horseshit, as the HBD's aptly demonstrate when they try to deploy and extrapolate from their corpus of dubious or cherry-picked statistics. So I'd say: unless you truly believe that the black/white disparity in the US is genetic, the evidence for the US's outlier cultural issues with racism is right there in the numbers. We're politically correct in part because we're right in the middle of trying to fix these problems. Political correctness isn't a good thing. Also: when I take antibiotics, they wipe out my gut bacteria and give me stomach problems. That's not a good thing either! It is, in fact: a bad thing! But I don't call the whole enterprise of eradicating a bacterial infection in my body into question over it, nor do I back off the dose to try to minimize the bad side effect.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  > The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries. I think this is completely fair, but I also wonder if it's just because of America's inherent exposure. In Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race), but skin color sure as hell does matter on a lot of levels, and that's because the rulers (Spanish) were light-skinned. That divide is still endemic and the cause of many issues in those countries. Is that any less toxic than what's happening in America? If you are one of those affected there, obviously not, and even to those not directly affected, it is arguable, or rather, it can't be argued at all. > We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. Absolutely. The system targets African-Americans. But what might be even more important is what % of our prison population is poor. Poor people go to prison because the system doesn't care about them, whether that's due to skin color or being born into the wrong family in a small town or any number of issues. > The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! This is undoubtedly true, but keep in mind that African-Americans are only about 12% of the population, in other words, they should be 1/10th of your co-workers (if we're going by ratio of the entire US population), which isn't as extreme as the racial disparities we might expect. Hey, in the Southwest, the bigger disparity lies with Hispanics - they are not represented fairly in tech, but we often don't think about them to the same extent. If I'm trying to make a point, it's that these issues are endemic, and they are hugely problematic, but we have an undue focus on different parts of our society, whereas the problems that create them are often much wider in scope. We're looking for a bug in function B when it's really in function A and it's causing problems in function C, too... What's happening is our modern economic system is balanced against a lot of people. If you are poor, your condition sucks, no matter your skin color. African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness", and then you see the rise of Trumpism and other bad things. I think trying to focus too much on race is to miss the larger systematic issue in our society, which is crony capitalism combined with globalism, and that doesn't care about your race.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pdeuchler 10y ago
Yeah, as someone from the South this bothers the crap out of me too. Bill Gates went to an elitist private school that is still having problems with diversity: http://crosscut.com/2007/04/lakeside-schools-dirty-little-secret/ http://crosscut.com/2007/04/lakeside-schools-dirty-little-se... There was a really good article in a Boulder (where I live) newspaper recently about how living in a majority white area can really skew people's ideas of racism since they aren't confronted with its challenges on a daily basis like people in the South: http://www.boulderweekly.com/news/black-in-boulder/ http://www.boulderweekly.com/news/black-in-boulder/ I mean, just go to certain parts of LA, or the entirety of Boston, to get a good dose of any kind of racism. The idea that racism is the South's problem or that all racial tension is the South's fault boggles my mind and has, in my personal experience, been a extremely accurate indicator that the person who parrots such things has never in their life had to live in an area where you are forced to coexist with people of a different race or ethnicity. It's been found time and time again that the refusal to acknowledge racist attitudes within one's own community, regardless of one's personal or outward ideology or rhetoric, is one of the largest contributors to the vicious cycle that perpetuates discrimination. But I guess given recent events I shouldn't be surprised that we're still seeing such denial. It's just funny to me how the vast majority of the POC I know from my hometown and college ended up moving to "racist" places like Greenville, Nashville, New Orleans, and Atlanta instead of "enlightened" cities like Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and Portland. Weird, huh?
- kbenson 10y ago
  The point, as I see it, was to compare and contrast the experiences people may have had growing up 30-50 years in the past, not to say anything about the current state of the South. Part of accepting past bad behavior and mistakes is letting it be used as examples where applicable. The only thing getting defensive in this case does it make it harder to discuss past mistakes, which in turn makes it easier to repeat them. Every state (or country, for that matter) has parts of its past it would rather not discuss, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed. I think if you feel the South is being attacked in this instance, it's more your perception than reality.
  - 10y ago
MisterBastahrd 10y ago
If you're from the South, then you know it's been beaten into you with a wink and a nudge. The South is terrible for the "but everybody REALLY knows" line that happens when you are no longer in mixed company. Most Southern whites are particularly thin-skinned when it comes to anyone calling them out on either their racism or their inability to perceive racism... and I say this as a white guy whose family owned plantations. I personally feel no shame for the sins of my ancestors. They lived in their own time with their own set of rules and laws and morals. It's the behavior of my living kin that bothers me.
- jtnegrotto 10y ago
  I've found that here in Louisiana people tend to be less racist overall, while those who are don't hide it. There are the guys who get drunk and throw slurs around, and worse, but I've also never seen as many interracial couples anywhere else. The openness makes it easier to know who your friends and enemies are. I agree with not feeling ashamed about the sins of your ancestors, but I also don't believe in blaming others for their ancestors' sins. One branch of my family owned a plantation in Haiti. Then the revolution came, and that branch came to an abrupt end. While I'm extremely bothered that the revolutionaries killed the children as well, I'm not going to blame their descendants.
  - mrtree 10y ago
    Thinking of racist people as "the enemy" isn't going to solve anything.
jessaustin 10y ago
There is not... a single one of us who has an ancestor who wasn't a racist. Well, my mother isn't a racist, and never has been. Perhaps you meant to say, "there is not a single one of us who doesn't have a racist ancestor"?
astrodust 10y ago
Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest. The South has a lot of problems many of which it created for itself by not keeping up with the times and instead violently opposing those changes. This pattern plays out again and again and again with a multitude of important issues: Inter-racial marriage, gay rights, gay marriage, climate change... Attitudes can change if the extremist activists stop creating an environment where there's such tremendous social pressure to conform to these extreme views. It's difficult to be an outlier in some parts of the US because you'll be persecuted, shunned, all but run out of town. The loud, angry Tea Party crowd puts everyone in a difficult position. So congratulating yourself that South Carolina isn't as racist as South Sudan is really not helping.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  It also doesn't do people any good to sit in offices and pat themselves on the back for being better educated than the average person 1500 miles away.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Debate, the interchange of ideas, is not possible without stating a position.
- cderwin 10y ago
  > Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest. Who should we compare America to then? France? France is hardly a model society with its outlawed burkas on beaches and the home of the LePen family. Moreover, apparently anti-semitism is such a pressing issue that it has been outlawed in France (along with Holocaust denial) since 1990. Greece? The Golden Dawn Party (a Neo-Nazi party) holds 18 of the 300 seats (6%) in the Greek parliament. South Africa? The end of apartheid is barely twenty years old and racism is apparently "alive and well"[0]. Norway? In 2011 a far-right extremist group (anti-Muslim) killed 77 people and members of the UN claim the government is doing too little too combat right-wing extremist violence against Muslims.[1] Germany? In June a poll found that more than 40% of Germans support a ban on Muslim immigration.[2] Additionally, apprently 60% of Germans believe Islam has no place in their country, and last year attacks on refugee camps increased 500%. The Balkans? In the '90s these countries were entirely reformed through a nearly 10-year period of war and ethnic cleansing. Sure, maybe the ideal might be similar to Canada, Australia, or Great Britain, all of which are predominantly single-race societies. But where is that shining city on the hill out there that we should be comparing ourselves to? I can't find it. Our goal can't be to become "less racist" than any of those "Western" countries listed above. It just has to be to get better. For clarity, I'm not claiming that the U.S. is any more or less racist than any of countries above. I'm just saying they all have their problems too. [0] http://www.relativityonline.com/home/racism-alive-and-well-in-south-africa/ http://www.relativityonline.com/home/racism-alive-and-well-i... [1] http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/698540FAB1879590C1257EA50049AD72?OpenDocument http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYe... [2] http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/anti-muslim-sentiment-in-germany-hits-record-high/590291 http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/anti-muslim-sentiment-in-germany-... [3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-germany-islam-does-not-belong-in-country-a7027361.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisi...
cderwin 10y ago
Interestingly, despite all the problems in the U.S., there is an argument to be made that America is among the least racist countries in the world[0]. I also imagine fighting a civil war in which race was a controlling issue within the last 200 years is something a sizable share of nations have done. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
czep 10y ago
> It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practice slavery. Civic pride is an interesting concept that can have positive and negative impacts on behavior and psychology. Your desire to feel proud of your state is impeded by its history of slavery, but I'd argue that you shouldn't feel ashamed of living someplace simply because of its history. I feel proud to be part of a culture and civilization that openly acknowledges the mistakes of the past. I also feel distraught that so many people continue to hold on to racist beliefs, but I don't let this make me ashamed of the state I live in. First and foremost, we are humans. We should feel bonded by that before being bonded as Louisianians, Californians, or by any other political structure. And as you rightly point out, no US state can point to a clean history of love, peace, and harmony. So don't feel bad to be from the South. It sounds like you reject that ugly piece of its history anyway, so as long as you stand up for what's right today, then you can rightly feel proud of yourself and your fellow citizens. My main point is that the 'feel-good' you get from blind flag-waving patriotism is not worth the price you pay: that price is ignorance or hand-waving about historical evils. Recognize the evils of the past, but don't let that make you feel ashamed about your citizenship.

tptacek 10y ago

Of the "western democracies", or the "industrialized western countries", or however you want to lump those countries together: * The US has unusual size, both geographically (which matters here) and population * The US has unusual diversity * The US has an unusually toxic history with racial diversity, in large part because unlike (say) Belgium, their racial history occurred almost entirely within their own borders The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries. We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! As a demographic, they get less value from the public school system than any other, and so we have persistent pipeline problems reinforcing these disparities. Black people can't even reliably rent rooms on Airbnb. In 2016. "Race realists" and "HBD people" would have you believe those phenomenon are due either to biological differences between black and white people, or to our pathological responses to those biological differences. That's horseshit, as the HBD's aptly demonstrate when they try to deploy and extrapolate from their corpus of dubious or cherry-picked statistics. So I'd say: unless you truly believe that the black/white disparity in the US is genetic, the evidence for the US's outlier cultural issues with racism is right there in the numbers. We're politically correct in part because we're right in the middle of trying to fix these problems. Political correctness isn't a good thing. Also: when I take antibiotics, they wipe out my gut bacteria and give me stomach problems. That's not a good thing either! It is, in fact: a bad thing! But I don't call the whole enterprise of eradicating a bacterial infection in my body into question over it, nor do I back off the dose to try to minimize the bad side effect.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
> The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries. I think this is completely fair, but I also wonder if it's just because of America's inherent exposure. In Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race), but skin color sure as hell does matter on a lot of levels, and that's because the rulers (Spanish) were light-skinned. That divide is still endemic and the cause of many issues in those countries. Is that any less toxic than what's happening in America? If you are one of those affected there, obviously not, and even to those not directly affected, it is arguable, or rather, it can't be argued at all. > We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. Absolutely. The system targets African-Americans. But what might be even more important is what % of our prison population is poor. Poor people go to prison because the system doesn't care about them, whether that's due to skin color or being born into the wrong family in a small town or any number of issues. > The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! This is undoubtedly true, but keep in mind that African-Americans are only about 12% of the population, in other words, they should be 1/10th of your co-workers (if we're going by ratio of the entire US population), which isn't as extreme as the racial disparities we might expect. Hey, in the Southwest, the bigger disparity lies with Hispanics - they are not represented fairly in tech, but we often don't think about them to the same extent. If I'm trying to make a point, it's that these issues are endemic, and they are hugely problematic, but we have an undue focus on different parts of our society, whereas the problems that create them are often much wider in scope. We're looking for a bug in function B when it's really in function A and it's causing problems in function C, too... What's happening is our modern economic system is balanced against a lot of people. If you are poor, your condition sucks, no matter your skin color. African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness", and then you see the rise of Trumpism and other bad things. I think trying to focus too much on race is to miss the larger systematic issue in our society, which is crony capitalism combined with globalism, and that doesn't care about your race.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pdeuchler 10y ago

Yeah, as someone from the South this bothers the crap out of me too. Bill Gates went to an elitist private school that is still having problems with diversity: http://crosscut.com/2007/04/lakeside-schools-dirty-little-secret/ http://crosscut.com/2007/04/lakeside-schools-dirty-little-se... There was a really good article in a Boulder (where I live) newspaper recently about how living in a majority white area can really skew people's ideas of racism since they aren't confronted with its challenges on a daily basis like people in the South: http://www.boulderweekly.com/news/black-in-boulder/ http://www.boulderweekly.com/news/black-in-boulder/ I mean, just go to certain parts of LA, or the entirety of Boston, to get a good dose of any kind of racism. The idea that racism is the South's problem or that all racial tension is the South's fault boggles my mind and has, in my personal experience, been a extremely accurate indicator that the person who parrots such things has never in their life had to live in an area where you are forced to coexist with people of a different race or ethnicity. It's been found time and time again that the refusal to acknowledge racist attitudes within one's own community, regardless of one's personal or outward ideology or rhetoric, is one of the largest contributors to the vicious cycle that perpetuates discrimination. But I guess given recent events I shouldn't be surprised that we're still seeing such denial. It's just funny to me how the vast majority of the POC I know from my hometown and college ended up moving to "racist" places like Greenville, Nashville, New Orleans, and Atlanta instead of "enlightened" cities like Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and Portland. Weird, huh?

kbenson 10y ago
The point, as I see it, was to compare and contrast the experiences people may have had growing up 30-50 years in the past, not to say anything about the current state of the South. Part of accepting past bad behavior and mistakes is letting it be used as examples where applicable. The only thing getting defensive in this case does it make it harder to discuss past mistakes, which in turn makes it easier to repeat them. Every state (or country, for that matter) has parts of its past it would rather not discuss, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed. I think if you feel the South is being attacked in this instance, it's more your perception than reality.
- 10y ago

MisterBastahrd 10y ago

If you're from the South, then you know it's been beaten into you with a wink and a nudge. The South is terrible for the "but everybody REALLY knows" line that happens when you are no longer in mixed company. Most Southern whites are particularly thin-skinned when it comes to anyone calling them out on either their racism or their inability to perceive racism... and I say this as a white guy whose family owned plantations. I personally feel no shame for the sins of my ancestors. They lived in their own time with their own set of rules and laws and morals. It's the behavior of my living kin that bothers me.

jtnegrotto 10y ago
I've found that here in Louisiana people tend to be less racist overall, while those who are don't hide it. There are the guys who get drunk and throw slurs around, and worse, but I've also never seen as many interracial couples anywhere else. The openness makes it easier to know who your friends and enemies are. I agree with not feeling ashamed about the sins of your ancestors, but I also don't believe in blaming others for their ancestors' sins. One branch of my family owned a plantation in Haiti. Then the revolution came, and that branch came to an abrupt end. While I'm extremely bothered that the revolutionaries killed the children as well, I'm not going to blame their descendants.
- mrtree 10y ago
  Thinking of racist people as "the enemy" isn't going to solve anything.

jessaustin 10y ago

There is not... a single one of us who has an ancestor who wasn't a racist. Well, my mother isn't a racist, and never has been. Perhaps you meant to say, "there is not a single one of us who doesn't have a racist ancestor"?

astrodust 10y ago

Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest. The South has a lot of problems many of which it created for itself by not keeping up with the times and instead violently opposing those changes. This pattern plays out again and again and again with a multitude of important issues: Inter-racial marriage, gay rights, gay marriage, climate change... Attitudes can change if the extremist activists stop creating an environment where there's such tremendous social pressure to conform to these extreme views. It's difficult to be an outlier in some parts of the US because you'll be persecuted, shunned, all but run out of town. The loud, angry Tea Party crowd puts everyone in a difficult position. So congratulating yourself that South Carolina isn't as racist as South Sudan is really not helping.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
It also doesn't do people any good to sit in offices and pat themselves on the back for being better educated than the average person 1500 miles away.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Debate, the interchange of ideas, is not possible without stating a position.
cderwin 10y ago
> Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest. Who should we compare America to then? France? France is hardly a model society with its outlawed burkas on beaches and the home of the LePen family. Moreover, apparently anti-semitism is such a pressing issue that it has been outlawed in France (along with Holocaust denial) since 1990. Greece? The Golden Dawn Party (a Neo-Nazi party) holds 18 of the 300 seats (6%) in the Greek parliament. South Africa? The end of apartheid is barely twenty years old and racism is apparently "alive and well"[0]. Norway? In 2011 a far-right extremist group (anti-Muslim) killed 77 people and members of the UN claim the government is doing too little too combat right-wing extremist violence against Muslims.[1] Germany? In June a poll found that more than 40% of Germans support a ban on Muslim immigration.[2] Additionally, apprently 60% of Germans believe Islam has no place in their country, and last year attacks on refugee camps increased 500%. The Balkans? In the '90s these countries were entirely reformed through a nearly 10-year period of war and ethnic cleansing. Sure, maybe the ideal might be similar to Canada, Australia, or Great Britain, all of which are predominantly single-race societies. But where is that shining city on the hill out there that we should be comparing ourselves to? I can't find it. Our goal can't be to become "less racist" than any of those "Western" countries listed above. It just has to be to get better. For clarity, I'm not claiming that the U.S. is any more or less racist than any of countries above. I'm just saying they all have their problems too. [0] http://www.relativityonline.com/home/racism-alive-and-well-in-south-africa/ http://www.relativityonline.com/home/racism-alive-and-well-i... [1] http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/698540FAB1879590C1257EA50049AD72?OpenDocument http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYe... [2] http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/anti-muslim-sentiment-in-germany-hits-record-high/590291 http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/anti-muslim-sentiment-in-germany-... [3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-germany-islam-does-not-belong-in-country-a7027361.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisi...

cderwin 10y ago

Interestingly, despite all the problems in the U.S., there is an argument to be made that America is among the least racist countries in the world[0]. I also imagine fighting a civil war in which race was a controlling issue within the last 200 years is something a sizable share of nations have done. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

czep 10y ago

> It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practice slavery. Civic pride is an interesting concept that can have positive and negative impacts on behavior and psychology. Your desire to feel proud of your state is impeded by its history of slavery, but I'd argue that you shouldn't feel ashamed of living someplace simply because of its history. I feel proud to be part of a culture and civilization that openly acknowledges the mistakes of the past. I also feel distraught that so many people continue to hold on to racist beliefs, but I don't let this make me ashamed of the state I live in. First and foremost, we are humans. We should feel bonded by that before being bonded as Louisianians, Californians, or by any other political structure. And as you rightly point out, no US state can point to a clean history of love, peace, and harmony. So don't feel bad to be from the South. It sounds like you reject that ugly piece of its history anyway, so as long as you stand up for what's right today, then you can rightly feel proud of yourself and your fellow citizens. My main point is that the 'feel-good' you get from blind flag-waving patriotism is not worth the price you pay: that price is ignorance or hand-waving about historical evils. Recognize the evils of the past, but don't let that make you feel ashamed about your citizenship.