6 ms·

One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. We are so segregated that most white people will not learn about blac

One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. We are so segregated that most white people will not learn about black people's experiences with racism organically. It's only through articles like this and cell phone footage of violent police interactions that we become aware of this cruel alternative reality so many people live in. The disconnect exists within city-limits, but so much more so across regional divides.

Clubber 9y ago
You are absolutely right about that. I was brought up that racism was for poor white trash and anyone who is racist shouldn't be associated with. Of course I live my life that way, so all the people who I interact with aren't racist. Honestly, even people on the street I talk with don't say things like that. The last time someone said something like that was some old bumpkin in a truck at a gas station said something about Michelle Obama several years ago. I know racist remarks were quite casual in the pre-Boomer generation, but they don't seem that way now, but I wouldn't know because I'm not around it. I assume it is a lot better than the 80s, but I could never know. Of course I want to believe that racism is only a rarity today and limited to offshoots of society, and I assume many others want to believe that too.
- istjohn 9y ago
  Yeah, another element is that we don't even associate with other white people from different cultural or class backgrounds regularly. And people who have "controversial opinions" will be careful to keep their thoughts to themselves if there is any doubt about where the other people in the room stand. (Of course, things are different in the pseudonymous World Wide Web.) As a resident of a large, midwestern city, I can tell you that the suburbs are chock full of racists who know better than to let on to anyone who isn't "one of them." And that means more than having pale skin.
- mnm1 9y ago
  I think such rose-colored beliefs are dangerous and cause major harm so I do not want to nor do I believe them.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    You should believe what data tells you and not what I say or what any newspaper says. I was just having a conversation.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
No, it's invisible to people who don't try to educate themselves, who segregate themselves from the poor. It literally takes driving 20 minutes out of the walled neighborhoods and into poor parts of any city to dissuade yourself of this. Rural racism should surprise people even less because the people are fighting over limited resources in those areas. You don't even have to go that far. One of my friends (minority) had a story about how he woke up one day in his apartment and some dude was crawling through the window and he had to beat him off with a bat to get him out. These are the same kind of apartments that people live in six to a room (that's what illegal immigration looks like). Growing up in public schools, there were lots of kids like this and stories like this, and it sure as hell is not something that happens in neighborhoods with nice cars parked out front. How people have gone 20 or 30 years without seeing this is strange. That it could be surprising to people in this day and age (and it's not because it's not obvious, it's because people aren't looking or don't really care), is the biggest problem there is. When I was 18, I had lived a mostly sheltered middle class life and then moved to South Dallas for six months for church work. The things you saw that weren't 10 miles from every rich kid's doorstep were appalling, it at times was like living in a different country. Regular murders, people walking around with their guts hanging out in plastic bags because they got stabbed, schools that had barbed wire and metal detectors. You don't have to do much to educate yourself on it, there is no excuse.
- istjohn 9y ago
  But if you aren't aware of a problem, you have no way to know there is something you need to learn. If only everyone knew what they didn't know. I guess that's why we need more articles like this.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Entirely true, but not sure how distanced you have to get from regular day to day society that it isn't obvious. It is a major problem if entire groups of people can live such abstracted lives that they aren't aware this is going on. I struggle to believe that people really aren't aware of this and instead it requires constant discussion on well to do websites yet it never changes. Sometimes it comes off as tragedy porn.
scarface74 9y ago
The disconnect isn't just between Black and White it's between the poor and not poor. You'd be surprised if you heard the conversations between some upper middle class Blacks and if you didn't know what color they were, you would think they were some of the most racist White people in the world. (I'm Black).
- gottathrow 9y ago
  Your comments in this thread are fascinating and I'd love to hear your take on something. In the upper middle class, largely liberal society that I'm part of, I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling from how people talk about racism. They believe in racial equality and tolerance, which is great. But something uglier seems mixed in too. To me it feels like a class prejudice that wants to see the poor as beneath them, and racism is the perfect ground to stake that claim on because it's so objectively vicious. So on the one hand there's a sincere wish to be tolerant and accepting, but on the other hand there's this dark side: we want to see the poor as bad (racist), because if they're bad then we're good, they deserve to be poor and we deserve to be rich. Upper classes have always seen themselves as more virtuous in this way. They just define their virtue differently now. The new definition is arguably better because racism really is bad, but it's also convenient, and since there's not much wish to look at other things that are also bad, it doesn't seem to me to come out of a true feeling for equality. It is more like a reshuffling of the social pecking order (not the top layers, of course, just the bottom ones). When I hear people talk about uncouth racists, it's easy to imagine that in past times they would have been talking about how bad the poor smell and how crude their manners were. It feels like the distinction is still on that level, only the language has shifted. I'm sensitive to this because I grew up poor, and when I hear the unempathetic and even brutal way that many seemingly nice people talk about their inferiors, I shrink away internally. It's easy to imagine that they're talking about me too, even though I belong to their class now.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I came from a middle class neighborhood, but I have been around poorer minorities and become more aware of the issues that poorer Whites have. I have a group of five friends that I keep in touch with from a former job. We have a private Slack channel and meet for lunch occasionally - all tech people in our mid 40s. Three White, two Black. I don't think any of them are racists, but two of them say things that show their complete ignorance of the real world. We were talking about the difference between the education system in one part of the metro area - where the school system had lost accreditation and the school systems where we live - all top ranked in an affluent part of town. Their solution was, why don’t they just move? In the part of town with the unaccredited school on the opposite side of town average rent was $650/month. On our side of town, rent is $1600 a month. On top of that; public transportation is basically non existent because the county didn’t want to connect to the metro system because it made it too easy for the “wrong element” to come up here. Not to mention they blamed the housing crisis in 2008 on “poor people getting loans they couldn’t afford”. I had to explain to them how things really worked in real estate from someone who used every trick out there to get real estate without putting any skin in the game, did “strategic defaults”, and bought a new house three years later. Poor people couldn’t do that. Last but not least, I had to explain that welfare and other benefits to the poor was such a small amount of their tax dollars it wasn’t even worth worrying about.
keksicus 9y ago
>One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. That's because it doesn't exist, at least not in a real material fashion. Just like the 70-cents on the dollar claim.

Clubber 9y ago

You are absolutely right about that. I was brought up that racism was for poor white trash and anyone who is racist shouldn't be associated with. Of course I live my life that way, so all the people who I interact with aren't racist. Honestly, even people on the street I talk with don't say things like that. The last time someone said something like that was some old bumpkin in a truck at a gas station said something about Michelle Obama several years ago. I know racist remarks were quite casual in the pre-Boomer generation, but they don't seem that way now, but I wouldn't know because I'm not around it. I assume it is a lot better than the 80s, but I could never know. Of course I want to believe that racism is only a rarity today and limited to offshoots of society, and I assume many others want to believe that too.

istjohn 9y ago
Yeah, another element is that we don't even associate with other white people from different cultural or class backgrounds regularly. And people who have "controversial opinions" will be careful to keep their thoughts to themselves if there is any doubt about where the other people in the room stand. (Of course, things are different in the pseudonymous World Wide Web.) As a resident of a large, midwestern city, I can tell you that the suburbs are chock full of racists who know better than to let on to anyone who isn't "one of them." And that means more than having pale skin.
mnm1 9y ago
I think such rose-colored beliefs are dangerous and cause major harm so I do not want to nor do I believe them.
- Clubber 9y ago
  You should believe what data tells you and not what I say or what any newspaper says. I was just having a conversation.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

No, it's invisible to people who don't try to educate themselves, who segregate themselves from the poor. It literally takes driving 20 minutes out of the walled neighborhoods and into poor parts of any city to dissuade yourself of this. Rural racism should surprise people even less because the people are fighting over limited resources in those areas. You don't even have to go that far. One of my friends (minority) had a story about how he woke up one day in his apartment and some dude was crawling through the window and he had to beat him off with a bat to get him out. These are the same kind of apartments that people live in six to a room (that's what illegal immigration looks like). Growing up in public schools, there were lots of kids like this and stories like this, and it sure as hell is not something that happens in neighborhoods with nice cars parked out front. How people have gone 20 or 30 years without seeing this is strange. That it could be surprising to people in this day and age (and it's not because it's not obvious, it's because people aren't looking or don't really care), is the biggest problem there is. When I was 18, I had lived a mostly sheltered middle class life and then moved to South Dallas for six months for church work. The things you saw that weren't 10 miles from every rich kid's doorstep were appalling, it at times was like living in a different country. Regular murders, people walking around with their guts hanging out in plastic bags because they got stabbed, schools that had barbed wire and metal detectors. You don't have to do much to educate yourself on it, there is no excuse.

istjohn 9y ago
But if you aren't aware of a problem, you have no way to know there is something you need to learn. If only everyone knew what they didn't know. I guess that's why we need more articles like this.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Entirely true, but not sure how distanced you have to get from regular day to day society that it isn't obvious. It is a major problem if entire groups of people can live such abstracted lives that they aren't aware this is going on. I struggle to believe that people really aren't aware of this and instead it requires constant discussion on well to do websites yet it never changes. Sometimes it comes off as tragedy porn.

scarface74 9y ago

The disconnect isn't just between Black and White it's between the poor and not poor. You'd be surprised if you heard the conversations between some upper middle class Blacks and if you didn't know what color they were, you would think they were some of the most racist White people in the world. (I'm Black).

gottathrow 9y ago
Your comments in this thread are fascinating and I'd love to hear your take on something. In the upper middle class, largely liberal society that I'm part of, I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling from how people talk about racism. They believe in racial equality and tolerance, which is great. But something uglier seems mixed in too. To me it feels like a class prejudice that wants to see the poor as beneath them, and racism is the perfect ground to stake that claim on because it's so objectively vicious. So on the one hand there's a sincere wish to be tolerant and accepting, but on the other hand there's this dark side: we want to see the poor as bad (racist), because if they're bad then we're good, they deserve to be poor and we deserve to be rich. Upper classes have always seen themselves as more virtuous in this way. They just define their virtue differently now. The new definition is arguably better because racism really is bad, but it's also convenient, and since there's not much wish to look at other things that are also bad, it doesn't seem to me to come out of a true feeling for equality. It is more like a reshuffling of the social pecking order (not the top layers, of course, just the bottom ones). When I hear people talk about uncouth racists, it's easy to imagine that in past times they would have been talking about how bad the poor smell and how crude their manners were. It feels like the distinction is still on that level, only the language has shifted. I'm sensitive to this because I grew up poor, and when I hear the unempathetic and even brutal way that many seemingly nice people talk about their inferiors, I shrink away internally. It's easy to imagine that they're talking about me too, even though I belong to their class now.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I came from a middle class neighborhood, but I have been around poorer minorities and become more aware of the issues that poorer Whites have. I have a group of five friends that I keep in touch with from a former job. We have a private Slack channel and meet for lunch occasionally - all tech people in our mid 40s. Three White, two Black. I don't think any of them are racists, but two of them say things that show their complete ignorance of the real world. We were talking about the difference between the education system in one part of the metro area - where the school system had lost accreditation and the school systems where we live - all top ranked in an affluent part of town. Their solution was, why don’t they just move? In the part of town with the unaccredited school on the opposite side of town average rent was $650/month. On our side of town, rent is $1600 a month. On top of that; public transportation is basically non existent because the county didn’t want to connect to the metro system because it made it too easy for the “wrong element” to come up here. Not to mention they blamed the housing crisis in 2008 on “poor people getting loans they couldn’t afford”. I had to explain to them how things really worked in real estate from someone who used every trick out there to get real estate without putting any skin in the game, did “strategic defaults”, and bought a new house three years later. Poor people couldn’t do that. Last but not least, I had to explain that welfare and other benefits to the poor was such a small amount of their tax dollars it wasn’t even worth worrying about.

keksicus 9y ago

>One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. That's because it doesn't exist, at least not in a real material fashion. Just like the 70-cents on the dollar claim.