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(It's worth noting that, while this sort of thing comes up a lot in the context of the midwest, the midwest isn't special in this regard.) > I think that commu

(It's worth noting that, while this sort of thing comes up a lot in the context of the midwest, the midwest isn't special in this regard.) > I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." The genetic basis for delineating "races" is sketchy at best. The cultural aspects are as important as skin color to the definition of race, which is why either the first or second definition of "race" in any reasonable dictionary refers to all these things aside from "melanin content". So at some point, segregating oneself from people who worship differently, go to different schools, play different sports, ... -- especially in communities where many of these divisions are inspired by geography distributions that were intentionally created along racial lines less than a century ago -- is more than just "unhappy coincidence". But let's set that aside for a moment and take your assertion as fact. > This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines. Indeed. Sometimes, the consequences of aggregate social behavior are more important than individual intent. (Actually, I'd argue almost always.) A community in which wealth is disproportionately divided along racial lines is a racist community, even if no one in that community harbors individual and purely racially motivated prejudice. > Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? Teach people how to think dispassionately about systems. I'm not sure that there is a way to fix this without switching from a "nominally typed" definition of racism to a "structurally typed" definition of racism. Such a definition already exists. And by happy coincidence, the programming analogy works especially well because this notion is already called "structural racism". > So it seems like it is an impossible situation. At least for the current generation, for whom anything short of direct and violent prejudice on the basis of a few phenotypes is the only thinkable definition of racism, and for whom "racist" is a stinging moral and personal indict rather than a statement of fact about an emergent phenomenon that may or may not have anything to do with the content of any particular individual's character.

mcguire 9y ago
All human communities like to define themselves in terms of in-groups and out-groups. All of them, including this one. In the Midwest, you have to make the decisions finer since most people around really are indistinguishable on the usual terms.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  I think the truth of that statement largely depends upon which "midwest" you're talking about. It's certainly not true in the suburbs around the mid-sized cities in the midwest. Or the smaller manufacturing towns in the rust belt. It may be true in the more rural areas of Minnesota or Kansas, though.
CodeCube 9y ago
> At least for the current generation, for whom anything short of direct and violent prejudice on the basis of a few phenotypes is the only thinkable definition of racism, and for whom "racist" is a stinging moral and personal indict rather than a statement of fact about an emergent phenomenon that may or may not have anything to do with the content of any particular individual's character. This is so well said, I think it deserves to be singled out So many people get personally offended when one is discussing these matters.

mcguire 9y ago

All human communities like to define themselves in terms of in-groups and out-groups. All of them, including this one. In the Midwest, you have to make the decisions finer since most people around really are indistinguishable on the usual terms.

throwawayjava 9y ago
I think the truth of that statement largely depends upon which "midwest" you're talking about. It's certainly not true in the suburbs around the mid-sized cities in the midwest. Or the smaller manufacturing towns in the rust belt. It may be true in the more rural areas of Minnesota or Kansas, though.

CodeCube 9y ago

> At least for the current generation, for whom anything short of direct and violent prejudice on the basis of a few phenotypes is the only thinkable definition of racism, and for whom "racist" is a stinging moral and personal indict rather than a statement of fact about an emergent phenomenon that may or may not have anything to do with the content of any particular individual's character. This is so well said, I think it deserves to be singled out So many people get personally offended when one is discussing these matters.