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Moving from Georgia to Washington I was surprised to see just how much racism was still alive and well in Washington. It might not be as widely talked about par

Moving from Georgia to Washington I was surprised to see just how much racism was still alive and well in Washington. It might not be as widely talked about partially because there are so few non-white people to be racist towards relative to Georgia. This stuck out to me the most in the white people being racist towards black people, in GA the white black split is 60.8 to 30.6, whereas in Washington it is 78.7 to 3.5. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=washington+state+demographics+vs+georgia+demographics https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=washington+state+demog...

ergothus 9y ago
I explicitly didn't claim these areas are racism-free. (And Washington is a bit weird, as it's vastly rural save for a handful of places that attract a lot of out-of-state people, more so than, say, Atlanta, Des Moines, etc). But here's one anecdote to demonstrate what I'm talking about: My wife grew up in Hampton, VA, and when she was a teenager they painted over the "whites only" signs at the community pool. The rule hadn't been enforced in a long time, but everyone was fine with it being there. A generation+ was raised with a glaring symbol that some people were considered lesser, and being told that it's no big deal. Her grandmother once wandered a store for 15 mins trying to find a black employee to get something down off a shelf, rather than have any of the white employees do manual labor. (And yes, my grandparents had a lot of overt racism too...but they learned to tone it down whereas her grandmother didn't). Her father had views that are reprehensible and would sound a bit harsh coming from a KKK member. The stories about sexism are less horrifying, but far from good. Racism is everywhere, racism is bad. But if we want to improve things, we can't pretend that everyone is equally racist - we need to acknowledge and try to correct. The reason I have hope for humanity is not that we're perfect, or even good, but that we RECOGNIZE these behaviors as bad. Slavery? Still happens, including in affluent nations, but we consider it a wrong, which is a necessary first step to getting rid of it. Ditto racism, sexism, homophobia, etc - the human species has a lot of work to do, but we've made progress. I don't want to lose that because people ignore the higher rates of overt and blatant racism in ANY area by saying "well, it's true other places too". That's false equivilancy.
- placeybordeaux 9y ago
  Fair enough, I'm just a little tired of people that live in overwhelmingly white areas patting themselves on the back for their lack of racism when they have rarely if ever interact with non-white people. It's like Mongolia boasting about how they have never lost a navel battle. I agree that there is still large amounts of overt racism in the south that affects many people.

ergothus 9y ago

I explicitly didn't claim these areas are racism-free. (And Washington is a bit weird, as it's vastly rural save for a handful of places that attract a lot of out-of-state people, more so than, say, Atlanta, Des Moines, etc). But here's one anecdote to demonstrate what I'm talking about: My wife grew up in Hampton, VA, and when she was a teenager they painted over the "whites only" signs at the community pool. The rule hadn't been enforced in a long time, but everyone was fine with it being there. A generation+ was raised with a glaring symbol that some people were considered lesser, and being told that it's no big deal. Her grandmother once wandered a store for 15 mins trying to find a black employee to get something down off a shelf, rather than have any of the white employees do manual labor. (And yes, my grandparents had a lot of overt racism too...but they learned to tone it down whereas her grandmother didn't). Her father had views that are reprehensible and would sound a bit harsh coming from a KKK member. The stories about sexism are less horrifying, but far from good. Racism is everywhere, racism is bad. But if we want to improve things, we can't pretend that everyone is equally racist - we need to acknowledge and try to correct. The reason I have hope for humanity is not that we're perfect, or even good, but that we RECOGNIZE these behaviors as bad. Slavery? Still happens, including in affluent nations, but we consider it a wrong, which is a necessary first step to getting rid of it. Ditto racism, sexism, homophobia, etc - the human species has a lot of work to do, but we've made progress. I don't want to lose that because people ignore the higher rates of overt and blatant racism in ANY area by saying "well, it's true other places too". That's false equivilancy.

placeybordeaux 9y ago
Fair enough, I'm just a little tired of people that live in overwhelmingly white areas patting themselves on the back for their lack of racism when they have rarely if ever interact with non-white people. It's like Mongolia boasting about how they have never lost a navel battle. I agree that there is still large amounts of overt racism in the south that affects many people.