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You don't need to travel far to encounter racism in the U.S. Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day. My black friends get pulled over all the

by odbol 10y ago

You don't need to travel far to encounter racism in the U.S. Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day. My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." I've seen people of color get discriminated against in the workplace. My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist. But anecdotes are not proof. Here's hard data on racism in the U.S.: - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop-and-frisk-by-the-numbers/#59a65fe0fb47 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop... ) - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-carolina-voting-rights-law/493649/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca... ) I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen.

ccvannorman 10y ago
I used to be in the "But I'm not racist and most of my friends aren't, so most people shouldn't be racist, right?" camp. Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. We've got a long way to go.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. Which is why I don't use Facebook and don't have many friends. Most Americans are huge racists and bigots.
pm24601 10y ago
The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I put myself in social situations as much as possible with people of other races and deal with the vague uncomfortableness. I probably still am racist - but at least I am pushing myself.
- mjolk 10y ago
  > The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I'm glad that you found a strategy that worked for you, but that doesn't mean that other people are racist.
  - jolux 10y ago
    It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US. I try hard not to be, but I think it would help white peoples' understanding to assume that you are racist and realize that it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society that needs to be actively fought against to be eliminated. No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray, the most important part is that we understand why it's important to combat racism and do so actively in ourselves and when it happens in public. The only solution to racism is active anti-racism and the destruction of "white" as a category afforded special privileges by our culture and institutions.
    - mjolk 10y ago
      > It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US...No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray... It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year). I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist. It appears that you're working on this and I wish you the best of luck. Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.
Chris2048 10y ago
You provide no proof of the anecdote you made, specifically: > My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." read the WP page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black unless you or your friend have statistics for you area, there is no way to diagnose individual cases of DWB. How did you come by the links you provided? If you googled "racism in america", for example, your results will be biased towards certain kinds of evidence, having the same result as cherry-picking. > Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color The article says: "Where there are black and Hispanic majorities, so too is there increased stop-and-frisk activity". The article doesn't give enough information to conclude what's going on (and we also don't know if what is shown is representative of relevant statistics available on that area), but the best they can conclude is "race is undeniably a factor" - this is not the same as "racism". Aslso, in the comments of that article: https://spatialityblog.com/2012/07/27/nyc-stop-frisk-cartographic-observations/ https://spatialityblog.com/2012/07/27/nyc-stop-frisk-cartogr... > Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. Again, you push a correlation, and imply causation as proof of racism. You could do the same with loans: too much or too little can be harmful. In the case of crack "it's the same drug" isn't relevant, if it was, why would black users just switch to powder cocaine? It's the answers to that question that shows the difference, and the reason crack is considered more harmful. It's also not entirely true that crack is a different substance: "despite the fact that powder cocaine and crack cocaine both derive from cocaine, the two are different substances." -- http://cocaine.org/the-difference-between-powder-cocaine-and-crack-cocaine/ http://cocaine.org/the-difference-between-powder-cocaine-and... Whatever the chemical basis, crack is made from powdered cocaine, and: > crack cocaine is more psychologically addicting than powder cocaine, and is thus more likely to result in chronic and heavy use take from that what you will. maybe the above is a result of it's association with poor, or even black users. But whatever the case, it does cause more harm. Why assume harsher penalties are there to harm black/poor/etc communities, when we are talking about a severely harmful substance. Are things better when drugs like this are treated with lighter sentences? > North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting I'm not so familiar with this one, but I do feel there is more correlation stated here, with some questions about causation: Some raised here: http://www.dailywire.com/news/7992/5-statistics-show-voter-id-not-racist-aaron-bandler http://www.dailywire.com/news/7992/5-statistics-show-voter-i... for example: > African American voters, who were less likely to hold the required forms of photo ID The suggestion here is that this is why the vote was restricted in this way. But ID restrictions also correlate with attempts to reduce voting fraud, plus what isn't there a difference between IDs held and IDs that can be obtained? > The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result. put another way, Sunday voting is racist, because it disproportionately aids black voters? without more context about the effect of Sunday voting on voter opportunity/consistency, it's not really possible to judge. More concerning to me are perhaps the claims of undue focus, e.g.: > fraud was more common in mail-in absentee voting, which was not affected However, I would be skeptical given the other things in the article claimed to be "smoking guns". In summary, I don't dispute the above might be true, but I'm not convinced by the article above , because they don't answer some basic, obvious questions I'd have about the implied causes.
mjolk 10y ago
> - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop.. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop.... ) Or "stop and frisk" took place in areas with higher crime rates, where, coincidentally, non-white people live in higher density. Weird how you didn't want to address the disproportionate rates of crime by race, which I think is closer to the root of the problem, no matter how uncomfortable it is to talk about. > - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. This statement gets paraded around a lot. The idea is strict penalties to discourage use, which is why crack-cocaine sentencing converges with that of methamphetamine (predominantly "white" drug). Whereas crack-cocaine decimated predominantly minority-inhabited areas of major US cities, would you have preferred for the response to be weaker? > - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca.. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca.... ) Per article: "...a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and out-of-precinct voting." There's nothing intrinsic in someone's skin color or ethnic background that would cause someone to not have a valid ID -- and under a democratic leadership, the ruling party will do everything in its power to make sure the votes continue going in their favor. It's not racist or xenophobic to want a voter of a district to prove he or she is from that district. I don't know much about North Carolina and maybe they're terrible racists, but I still plainly reject that America is by-majority racist or xenophobic. > Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day...I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen. We're just trading anecdotes, so my statement of experience that I haven't seen it disproportionately affect non-white people is on even footing with your assertion of seeing it "every day". Maybe I'm being sensitive, but it seems like you're trying to suggest that I don't "listen" or that I have major misconceptions about my world experiences, which is a weirdly casual thing and vaguely insulting. > My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist. It's possible that you see racism every day because you associate with racists. I don't socialize with people that have exposed themselves as racists (because I find them ridiculous and small), which might explain the differences in our perceptions.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Those are policies and law, not people. Silicon Valley is not representative of the U.S. quite the contrary, specially since driving while black might be linked to heavy use of predictive policing[1] in California (yes the minority report thing), Facebook is definitely not what I would consider representative of people, actually the contrary again. I have to say that I had the prejudice that the U.S. people were racists and traveling around the place proved me otherwise. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  Of course they are people! The cops in the first 2 examples, the judge / DA / prosecutor / jury in the 3rd example, and the legislators ho wrote the law in the 4th example.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Those are policies enacted by politicians, and those politicians are popularly elected by the people in elections. The people of the US absolutely are racist xenophobes; they've proven it by their voting patterns over and over, especially with the latest election. They're just good at hiding it from you when you talk to them in person. The real racism comes out in the voting booth.

by odbol 10y ago

ccvannorman 10y ago

I used to be in the "But I'm not racist and most of my friends aren't, so most people shouldn't be racist, right?" camp. Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. We've got a long way to go.

Arizhel 10y ago
>Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years. Which is why I don't use Facebook and don't have many friends. Most Americans are huge racists and bigots.

pm24601 10y ago

The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I put myself in social situations as much as possible with people of other races and deal with the vague uncomfortableness. I probably still am racist - but at least I am pushing myself.

mjolk 10y ago
> The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist. I'm glad that you found a strategy that worked for you, but that doesn't mean that other people are racist.
- jolux 10y ago
  It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US. I try hard not to be, but I think it would help white peoples' understanding to assume that you are racist and realize that it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society that needs to be actively fought against to be eliminated. No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray, the most important part is that we understand why it's important to combat racism and do so actively in ourselves and when it happens in public. The only solution to racism is active anti-racism and the destruction of "white" as a category afforded special privileges by our culture and institutions.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    > It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US...No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray... It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year). I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist. It appears that you're working on this and I wish you the best of luck. Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.

Chris2048 10y ago

You provide no proof of the anecdote you made, specifically: > My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." read the WP page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black unless you or your friend have statistics for you area, there is no way to diagnose individual cases of DWB. How did you come by the links you provided? If you googled "racism in america", for example, your results will be biased towards certain kinds of evidence, having the same result as cherry-picking. > Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color The article says: "Where there are black and Hispanic majorities, so too is there increased stop-and-frisk activity". The article doesn't give enough information to conclude what's going on (and we also don't know if what is shown is representative of relevant statistics available on that area), but the best they can conclude is "race is undeniably a factor" - this is not the same as "racism". Aslso, in the comments of that article: https://spatialityblog.com/2012/07/27/nyc-stop-frisk-cartographic-observations/ https://spatialityblog.com/2012/07/27/nyc-stop-frisk-cartogr... > Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. Again, you push a correlation, and imply causation as proof of racism. You could do the same with loans: too much or too little can be harmful. In the case of crack "it's the same drug" isn't relevant, if it was, why would black users just switch to powder cocaine? It's the answers to that question that shows the difference, and the reason crack is considered more harmful. It's also not entirely true that crack is a different substance: "despite the fact that powder cocaine and crack cocaine both derive from cocaine, the two are different substances." -- http://cocaine.org/the-difference-between-powder-cocaine-and-crack-cocaine/ http://cocaine.org/the-difference-between-powder-cocaine-and... Whatever the chemical basis, crack is made from powdered cocaine, and: > crack cocaine is more psychologically addicting than powder cocaine, and is thus more likely to result in chronic and heavy use take from that what you will. maybe the above is a result of it's association with poor, or even black users. But whatever the case, it does cause more harm. Why assume harsher penalties are there to harm black/poor/etc communities, when we are talking about a severely harmful substance. Are things better when drugs like this are treated with lighter sentences? > North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting I'm not so familiar with this one, but I do feel there is more correlation stated here, with some questions about causation: Some raised here: http://www.dailywire.com/news/7992/5-statistics-show-voter-id-not-racist-aaron-bandler http://www.dailywire.com/news/7992/5-statistics-show-voter-i... for example: > African American voters, who were less likely to hold the required forms of photo ID The suggestion here is that this is why the vote was restricted in this way. But ID restrictions also correlate with attempts to reduce voting fraud, plus what isn't there a difference between IDs held and IDs that can be obtained? > The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result. put another way, Sunday voting is racist, because it disproportionately aids black voters? without more context about the effect of Sunday voting on voter opportunity/consistency, it's not really possible to judge. More concerning to me are perhaps the claims of undue focus, e.g.: > fraud was more common in mail-in absentee voting, which was not affected However, I would be skeptical given the other things in the article claimed to be "smoking guns". In summary, I don't dispute the above might be true, but I'm not convinced by the article above , because they don't answer some basic, obvious questions I'd have about the implied causes.

mjolk 10y ago

> - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop.. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop.... ) Or "stop and frisk" took place in areas with higher crime rates, where, coincidentally, non-white people live in higher density. Weird how you didn't want to address the disproportionate rates of crime by race, which I think is closer to the root of the problem, no matter how uncomfortable it is to talk about. > - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug. This statement gets paraded around a lot. The idea is strict penalties to discourage use, which is why crack-cocaine sentencing converges with that of methamphetamine (predominantly "white" drug). Whereas crack-cocaine decimated predominantly minority-inhabited areas of major US cities, would you have preferred for the response to be weaker? > - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca.. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca.... ) Per article: "...a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and out-of-precinct voting." There's nothing intrinsic in someone's skin color or ethnic background that would cause someone to not have a valid ID -- and under a democratic leadership, the ruling party will do everything in its power to make sure the votes continue going in their favor. It's not racist or xenophobic to want a voter of a district to prove he or she is from that district. I don't know much about North Carolina and maybe they're terrible racists, but I still plainly reject that America is by-majority racist or xenophobic. > Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day...I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen. We're just trading anecdotes, so my statement of experience that I haven't seen it disproportionately affect non-white people is on even footing with your assertion of seeing it "every day". Maybe I'm being sensitive, but it seems like you're trying to suggest that I don't "listen" or that I have major misconceptions about my world experiences, which is a weirdly casual thing and vaguely insulting. > My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist. It's possible that you see racism every day because you associate with racists. I don't socialize with people that have exposed themselves as racists (because I find them ridiculous and small), which might explain the differences in our perceptions.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Those are policies and law, not people. Silicon Valley is not representative of the U.S. quite the contrary, specially since driving while black might be linked to heavy use of predictive policing[1] in California (yes the minority report thing), Facebook is definitely not what I would consider representative of people, actually the contrary again. I have to say that I had the prejudice that the U.S. people were racists and traveling around the place proved me otherwise. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing

tehwebguy 10y ago
Of course they are people! The cops in the first 2 examples, the judge / DA / prosecutor / jury in the 3rd example, and the legislators ho wrote the law in the 4th example.
Arizhel 10y ago
Those are policies enacted by politicians, and those politicians are popularly elected by the people in elections. The people of the US absolutely are racist xenophobes; they've proven it by their voting patterns over and over, especially with the latest election. They're just good at hiding it from you when you talk to them in person. The real racism comes out in the voting booth.