8 ms·

"What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." Be aware that when people say things like this they often do so to fee

"What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." Be aware that when people say things like this they often do so to feel virtuous themselves like only they are so enlightened that only they even consider being friendly to non white people. The idea that people in the Midwest (which has a population of over 65 million people similar to France and the UK) are only friendly to white people is pretty crazy.

tolbish 6y ago
Yes, people who have seen trends of racism in the Midwest against minorities firsthand should be disregarded. They are the real racists. /s Have you considered that their experiences may actually be true?
- prepend 6y ago
  Have you considered that their experiences may be true AND people are friendly to non-whites. Racism isn’t some binary flag where an entire region is or isn’t racist. People can have racist experiences without meaning everyone is shitty or even that someone is likely to have a bad time. Note this doesn’t mean people who are the subject of racism are racists. I read GP’s comment as meaning that making an overly broad statement that people in the Midwest are friendly to only whites is not accurate or useful.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  It is possible for someone to experience racism but apply a similarly out of touch generalization. I've experienced racism in Midwestern cities, but relative to other cities I've lived in the US? Talking in relative terms let's your anecdotes become broadly meaningful.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  sarcastic hyperbole is unhelpful at the best of times, but in this case it isn't really established to what extent "trends of racism in the Midwest against minorities firsthand" has been seen. The sole reason we might assume is that dexwiz mentions that they "Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area" with no more detail than that. How much of the midwest, where, for how long; what did they witness firsthand? what did they hear? It's a stretch to assume so much without projecting your own assumptions about the midwest. > Have you considered that their experiences may actually be true? We don't have experiences, we have conclusions. and without knowledge of the experiences that inform them, it's hard to judge their truth. There's also the issue of what "the midwest is unfriendly to non-white people" means; taken to either absolute is crazy: "any racism in the midwest means the midwest is racist", "any tolerance in the midwest means the midwest isn't racist". Clearly, the statement needs qualification to be useful, it's not a matter of "true or false" without clear thresholds.
scarmig 6y ago
Or maybe they themselves have experienced discriminatory behavior in the Midwest? As an LGBT guy, I'm always direct when pointing out that I left the South partially because of discrimination, and someone is always happy to butt in to say I'm making it all up and the South is perfectly open and tolerant. It gets tiring.
- prepend 6y ago
  “The south” is a really big region so maybe someone pops up because you’re tarring an entire region based on your individual experience. As an LGBT person, I grew up with people telling urban legends about gerbils and whatnot. Perhaps they witnessed a single person doing this, but attributing it to a large group is not very accurate. I grew up in the south in a super backwards small town and now live in a really forward town in the south. It’s a big place and there’s a lot of great places. Stereotypes are based on common behavior but don’t apply to everyone here or every part of the south.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    I'm tarring an entire region because I say, truthfully, that I left it because I experienced discrimination there? Can you elaborate the ways I'm obligated to caveat and contextualize my experience so I don't hurt other people's feelings by honestly relaying it?
    - prepend 6y ago
      You’re not obligated to do anything, especially not to help me and others better understand you or make your comments useful. “The south” ranges from Virginia to Texas. Maybe you lived everywhere and experienced discrimination everywhere. For me, I grew up in a down of a 1000 people and live just a few hours away in a town with maybe one of the most diverse cultures (including LGBT) in the country. If I said that because I experienced discrimination in my shitkicker little town that the entire south was similar, that would be wrong, and not very helpful to anyone trying to understand the south. I suppose you can avoid absolutes and generalizations if you want to help others. But you definitely aren’t obligated to help anyone. But generalizations jump out at me and annoy me because I’ve frequently encountered jerks saying something about perverts or crime stats and then just fall back on that they were just honestly relating their experience. But there is a difference between my experience and me saying that my experience applies to others. Especially if not backed by data and a suitable generalization.
Andhurati 6y ago
How do I know that they aren't giving me misinformation about everything else? Being non-white feels like I have to constantly avoid getting gaslighted in the US about my "race".
- jacobriis 6y ago
  I think I would be generally suspicious of people who are soliciting your support or affection by telling you most people are out to get you. (You're right that happens a lot here these days.)
  - boo_boo 6y ago
    I would be generally suspicious of people who are telling you that no one is out to get you and that your own observations are wrong.
disease 6y ago
How is stating your observations, as the OP did, "virtue signaling"? The act of denying that racism exists is a popular tactic of white supremacists.
DetroitThrow 6y ago
I keep hearing that the Midwest has a racism from kids who have lived in two cities their entire lives... It's very quotable, but when then you realize that black people are very underrepresented in west coast cities and people treat you accordingly there. And don't get me started about the claims of how color blind people have gone in southern cities like Nashville...
theflork 6y ago
OP should have said "What you will find is that SOMETIMES people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white), WHICH IS THE SAME THING AS IN BIG CITIES." I can't believe the backlash here - surely generalizing ALL OF MIDWEST to be racist is the wrong thing to do?
- burner831234 6y ago
  There is a distinct lived difference that is based on, you guessed it! generalities. Instead of nitpicking OP, its worth the attempt of empathy. The small towns of PA (hey! loved that someone put this here) can be just as racist as the small towns of Colorado but somehow this doesn't extend to the small towns of California. I say this as someone who has not lived everywhere but has lived in places where the common question (and yes, each town/city I lived in had a common question/conversation about my race)ranges from: Are you black? Are you jewish? Are you honduran? Are you armenian? Are you [some subgroup of..] indian Only in Japan, so far, am I - told - that I am American. Its amazing. Exposure matters. Certainly there are a smattering of places in the midwest where things are progressive. That being said, they are not as well known and compared to my life in SF/LA/DC (still kinda conservative)/NY, the amount you're allowed to live and let live varies. I'm more likely to hear some random comment about where I do or do not belong or some idiotic belief I have to disabuse about who I am in the Midwest and South.
gamblor956 6y ago
Or, you know, it could be based on personal experience with the many racists that dwell in the Midwest. Years ago I moved back to CA from the Midwest, leaving a very-well paid job to be unemployed, because of it.
nharada 6y ago
Nobody is saying every single person in the midwest is only friendly to white people. This is so obstinate it doesn't even seem genuine to me. At the risk of feeding the trolls -- I grew up in the midwest. I can tell you that I both experienced racism myself and saw a lot of it in my high school both in students and from my classmate's parents. Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting. But comments like this downplay the experience that many people in these places do have. In my experience, it takes a relatively small number of racist people and a whole bunch of folks who don't call that shit out to make it less comfortable for someone who isn't white in their day to day lives.
- jacobriis 6y ago
  OP: "What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." P: "Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting." If these statements are equivalent, you have my apologies. English is not my native language. I think I will have to study for 10 lifetimes to understand. "Some people are friendly only if you look like them" would be a more defensible claim. Probably that is true everywhere on earth. But, the text of the original statement is about the behavior of Midwestern people [1] generally towards non white people generally. [1] Not all Midwestern people are white in any case. Nebraska: 86%, Ohio: 82%, Illinois: 71.5%
  - kettro 6y ago
    They sorta are, if you actually read the context of each. They're generalizing from different ends: one is saying that there are _some_ people who are not friendly if you're not white; the other is saying that _most_ people are friendly. The implication is that there is a subset of the populace that is unfriendly, and a subset that is friendly. Both comments say basically the same thing.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    "What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." should be "What you will find is that most people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." So you are correct in noting the statements are not equivalent. By leaving out the word ‘most’ for whatever reason (typo, bias, etc.), the communication efficiency of the comment was reduced. Good catch.
lewisinc 6y ago
You're right, the above declaration should probably be refined a bit. You should be both white and straight. I would say it's hard to take what you've said seriously having personally known people who have left the midwest specifically due to the discrimination they faced. Except I do have to have to take it seriously because it's a toxic attitude that belittles the struggles that people face due to discrimination by attempting to minimize their experiences.
q845712 6y ago
I lived in the midwest for over a decade and am married to a midwesterner. I'm also ethnically one of the 'model minorities' so to some people I'm white, while to white supremacists I'm assuredly not. Most people in most places are basically friendly. However. Even just being recognize you as 'other' can get old, like being asked "where are you from" or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them. Here's one story of folks being un-friendly: I was at a public event, basically a version of a county fair with my wife's family somewhere in the rural midwest. There's a stage with small-name bands performing, food vendors, and a small carnival-ride section. As the sun sets we lose track of her parents, and as we're looking for them I also got separated from my wife. I felt like the crowd was also slowly changing and like I was starting to attract attention in the form of unfriendly looks. I find my wife and try to express this, but her face clearly says it's all in my head and why am I talking about anything other than how we can find her parents. Just then a physically imposed man walks up, plants himself firmly in front of me, and asks in the least friendly way possible, "how's it going brother?" I answer him in unaccented neutral native-born american english (don't remember what i said, but likely something like "good how you doin"), and my wife is like, "ok you're right, we have to find my parents and leave." So just to be clear - I can't know what might have been, but I strongly suspect that having grown up here and being a native speaker made that evening simpler. And again, I'm someone who many people look at and just process as "white" so I can easily take my experiences as a shallow sample from the tip of the iceberg. And that kind of "unfriendly" experience is something that happens more often if i leave coastal metropolitan areas.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  Just curious... What ethnicity are you? On the west coast, outside of a couple cities, my experience has been the opposite - though I'm of a darker complexion. And I'm not too fond of rural attitudes on race anywhere - if the rural west coast is somehow different, I'd love to hear your contrasting anecdotes. I know on the east coast it's certainly not the case.
- jacobriis 6y ago
  "Even just being recognize you as 'other' can get old, like being asked "where are you from" or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them." Chicago, infamous MAGA country. Where the city buses are ruled by white supremacists harassing all innocent people who look different from them! In a city that is only 31.7% non-Hispanic white, they have a lot of work to do!
ok_coo 6y ago
If you're native american in the midwest, you will experience discrimination and your life will be harder than it needs to be. Similar to the difficulties that other POC experience. It's just the way it is, better than it used to be but it's still there and it's naive to think this is a problem that has gone away. Source: my family.
asdff 6y ago
People might not be objectively racist, but if you grew up in a school district where the high school of 14,000 kids only had 10 black people attending, you will hear some disgusting stereotypical comments and some very off color jokes eventually whether you are a minority or not. People uttering these things might not even see how damaging these comments are to the groups they target, because they've never met very many of these groups or ever been around someone who would check their behavior. It's just a fact of life when you grow up lacking any perspective of another culture, and the national culture encourages you to adopt biases that aren't rooted in reality, and you have no personal experiences to disagree with them. People also so kindly forget that the midwest experienced white flight like nowhere else. That sentiment is still in living memory among the older generation.
- dexwiz 6y ago
  This is spot on.
- mark-r 6y ago
  Yes, white flight was real. One kid I went to school with moved immediately after he had a knife pulled on him, but I don't know any of the details so can't say if it was race related. Our own family moved about a year later. If I had stayed in that house I probably would have went to high school with Prince, but if I checked the yearbook of the suburban school I graduated from I doubt I could find a single black face. I never heard those stereotypical comments you speak of because there was nobody to speak them about.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  "White guys have names like Lenny, whereas black guys have names like Carl."
vangelis 6y ago
It's true, you just have to go thirty minutes outside the city.

tolbish 6y ago

Yes, people who have seen trends of racism in the Midwest against minorities firsthand should be disregarded. They are the real racists. /s Have you considered that their experiences may actually be true?

prepend 6y ago
Have you considered that their experiences may be true AND people are friendly to non-whites. Racism isn’t some binary flag where an entire region is or isn’t racist. People can have racist experiences without meaning everyone is shitty or even that someone is likely to have a bad time. Note this doesn’t mean people who are the subject of racism are racists. I read GP’s comment as meaning that making an overly broad statement that people in the Midwest are friendly to only whites is not accurate or useful.
DetroitThrow 6y ago
It is possible for someone to experience racism but apply a similarly out of touch generalization. I've experienced racism in Midwestern cities, but relative to other cities I've lived in the US? Talking in relative terms let's your anecdotes become broadly meaningful.
Chris2048 6y ago
sarcastic hyperbole is unhelpful at the best of times, but in this case it isn't really established to what extent "trends of racism in the Midwest against minorities firsthand" has been seen. The sole reason we might assume is that dexwiz mentions that they "Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area" with no more detail than that. How much of the midwest, where, for how long; what did they witness firsthand? what did they hear? It's a stretch to assume so much without projecting your own assumptions about the midwest. > Have you considered that their experiences may actually be true? We don't have experiences, we have conclusions. and without knowledge of the experiences that inform them, it's hard to judge their truth. There's also the issue of what "the midwest is unfriendly to non-white people" means; taken to either absolute is crazy: "any racism in the midwest means the midwest is racist", "any tolerance in the midwest means the midwest isn't racist". Clearly, the statement needs qualification to be useful, it's not a matter of "true or false" without clear thresholds.

scarmig 6y ago

Or maybe they themselves have experienced discriminatory behavior in the Midwest? As an LGBT guy, I'm always direct when pointing out that I left the South partially because of discrimination, and someone is always happy to butt in to say I'm making it all up and the South is perfectly open and tolerant. It gets tiring.

prepend 6y ago
“The south” is a really big region so maybe someone pops up because you’re tarring an entire region based on your individual experience. As an LGBT person, I grew up with people telling urban legends about gerbils and whatnot. Perhaps they witnessed a single person doing this, but attributing it to a large group is not very accurate. I grew up in the south in a super backwards small town and now live in a really forward town in the south. It’s a big place and there’s a lot of great places. Stereotypes are based on common behavior but don’t apply to everyone here or every part of the south.
- scarmig 6y ago
  I'm tarring an entire region because I say, truthfully, that I left it because I experienced discrimination there? Can you elaborate the ways I'm obligated to caveat and contextualize my experience so I don't hurt other people's feelings by honestly relaying it?
  - prepend 6y ago
    You’re not obligated to do anything, especially not to help me and others better understand you or make your comments useful. “The south” ranges from Virginia to Texas. Maybe you lived everywhere and experienced discrimination everywhere. For me, I grew up in a down of a 1000 people and live just a few hours away in a town with maybe one of the most diverse cultures (including LGBT) in the country. If I said that because I experienced discrimination in my shitkicker little town that the entire south was similar, that would be wrong, and not very helpful to anyone trying to understand the south. I suppose you can avoid absolutes and generalizations if you want to help others. But you definitely aren’t obligated to help anyone. But generalizations jump out at me and annoy me because I’ve frequently encountered jerks saying something about perverts or crime stats and then just fall back on that they were just honestly relating their experience. But there is a difference between my experience and me saying that my experience applies to others. Especially if not backed by data and a suitable generalization.

Andhurati 6y ago

How do I know that they aren't giving me misinformation about everything else? Being non-white feels like I have to constantly avoid getting gaslighted in the US about my "race".

jacobriis 6y ago
I think I would be generally suspicious of people who are soliciting your support or affection by telling you most people are out to get you. (You're right that happens a lot here these days.)
- boo_boo 6y ago
  I would be generally suspicious of people who are telling you that no one is out to get you and that your own observations are wrong.

disease 6y ago

How is stating your observations, as the OP did, "virtue signaling"? The act of denying that racism exists is a popular tactic of white supremacists.

DetroitThrow 6y ago

I keep hearing that the Midwest has a racism from kids who have lived in two cities their entire lives... It's very quotable, but when then you realize that black people are very underrepresented in west coast cities and people treat you accordingly there. And don't get me started about the claims of how color blind people have gone in southern cities like Nashville...

theflork 6y ago

OP should have said "What you will find is that SOMETIMES people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white), WHICH IS THE SAME THING AS IN BIG CITIES." I can't believe the backlash here - surely generalizing ALL OF MIDWEST to be racist is the wrong thing to do?

burner831234 6y ago
There is a distinct lived difference that is based on, you guessed it! generalities. Instead of nitpicking OP, its worth the attempt of empathy. The small towns of PA (hey! loved that someone put this here) can be just as racist as the small towns of Colorado but somehow this doesn't extend to the small towns of California. I say this as someone who has not lived everywhere but has lived in places where the common question (and yes, each town/city I lived in had a common question/conversation about my race)ranges from: Are you black? Are you jewish? Are you honduran? Are you armenian? Are you [some subgroup of..] indian Only in Japan, so far, am I - told - that I am American. Its amazing. Exposure matters. Certainly there are a smattering of places in the midwest where things are progressive. That being said, they are not as well known and compared to my life in SF/LA/DC (still kinda conservative)/NY, the amount you're allowed to live and let live varies. I'm more likely to hear some random comment about where I do or do not belong or some idiotic belief I have to disabuse about who I am in the Midwest and South.

gamblor956 6y ago

Or, you know, it could be based on personal experience with the many racists that dwell in the Midwest. Years ago I moved back to CA from the Midwest, leaving a very-well paid job to be unemployed, because of it.

nharada 6y ago

Nobody is saying every single person in the midwest is only friendly to white people. This is so obstinate it doesn't even seem genuine to me. At the risk of feeding the trolls -- I grew up in the midwest. I can tell you that I both experienced racism myself and saw a lot of it in my high school both in students and from my classmate's parents. Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting. But comments like this downplay the experience that many people in these places do have. In my experience, it takes a relatively small number of racist people and a whole bunch of folks who don't call that shit out to make it less comfortable for someone who isn't white in their day to day lives.

jacobriis 6y ago
OP: "What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." P: "Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting." If these statements are equivalent, you have my apologies. English is not my native language. I think I will have to study for 10 lifetimes to understand. "Some people are friendly only if you look like them" would be a more defensible claim. Probably that is true everywhere on earth. But, the text of the original statement is about the behavior of Midwestern people [1] generally towards non white people generally. [1] Not all Midwestern people are white in any case. Nebraska: 86%, Ohio: 82%, Illinois: 71.5%
- kettro 6y ago
  They sorta are, if you actually read the context of each. They're generalizing from different ends: one is saying that there are _some_ people who are not friendly if you're not white; the other is saying that _most_ people are friendly. The implication is that there is a subset of the populace that is unfriendly, and a subset that is friendly. Both comments say basically the same thing.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  "What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." should be "What you will find is that most people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." So you are correct in noting the statements are not equivalent. By leaving out the word ‘most’ for whatever reason (typo, bias, etc.), the communication efficiency of the comment was reduced. Good catch.

lewisinc 6y ago

You're right, the above declaration should probably be refined a bit. You should be both white and straight. I would say it's hard to take what you've said seriously having personally known people who have left the midwest specifically due to the discrimination they faced. Except I do have to have to take it seriously because it's a toxic attitude that belittles the struggles that people face due to discrimination by attempting to minimize their experiences.

q845712 6y ago

I lived in the midwest for over a decade and am married to a midwesterner. I'm also ethnically one of the 'model minorities' so to some people I'm white, while to white supremacists I'm assuredly not. Most people in most places are basically friendly. However. Even just being recognize you as 'other' can get old, like being asked "where are you from" or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them. Here's one story of folks being un-friendly: I was at a public event, basically a version of a county fair with my wife's family somewhere in the rural midwest. There's a stage with small-name bands performing, food vendors, and a small carnival-ride section. As the sun sets we lose track of her parents, and as we're looking for them I also got separated from my wife. I felt like the crowd was also slowly changing and like I was starting to attract attention in the form of unfriendly looks. I find my wife and try to express this, but her face clearly says it's all in my head and why am I talking about anything other than how we can find her parents. Just then a physically imposed man walks up, plants himself firmly in front of me, and asks in the least friendly way possible, "how's it going brother?" I answer him in unaccented neutral native-born american english (don't remember what i said, but likely something like "good how you doin"), and my wife is like, "ok you're right, we have to find my parents and leave." So just to be clear - I can't know what might have been, but I strongly suspect that having grown up here and being a native speaker made that evening simpler. And again, I'm someone who many people look at and just process as "white" so I can easily take my experiences as a shallow sample from the tip of the iceberg. And that kind of "unfriendly" experience is something that happens more often if i leave coastal metropolitan areas.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
Just curious... What ethnicity are you? On the west coast, outside of a couple cities, my experience has been the opposite - though I'm of a darker complexion. And I'm not too fond of rural attitudes on race anywhere - if the rural west coast is somehow different, I'd love to hear your contrasting anecdotes. I know on the east coast it's certainly not the case.
jacobriis 6y ago
"Even just being recognize you as 'other' can get old, like being asked "where are you from" or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them." Chicago, infamous MAGA country. Where the city buses are ruled by white supremacists harassing all innocent people who look different from them! In a city that is only 31.7% non-Hispanic white, they have a lot of work to do!

ok_coo 6y ago

If you're native american in the midwest, you will experience discrimination and your life will be harder than it needs to be. Similar to the difficulties that other POC experience. It's just the way it is, better than it used to be but it's still there and it's naive to think this is a problem that has gone away. Source: my family.

asdff 6y ago

People might not be objectively racist, but if you grew up in a school district where the high school of 14,000 kids only had 10 black people attending, you will hear some disgusting stereotypical comments and some very off color jokes eventually whether you are a minority or not. People uttering these things might not even see how damaging these comments are to the groups they target, because they've never met very many of these groups or ever been around someone who would check their behavior. It's just a fact of life when you grow up lacking any perspective of another culture, and the national culture encourages you to adopt biases that aren't rooted in reality, and you have no personal experiences to disagree with them. People also so kindly forget that the midwest experienced white flight like nowhere else. That sentiment is still in living memory among the older generation.

dexwiz 6y ago
This is spot on.
mark-r 6y ago
Yes, white flight was real. One kid I went to school with moved immediately after he had a knife pulled on him, but I don't know any of the details so can't say if it was race related. Our own family moved about a year later. If I had stayed in that house I probably would have went to high school with Prince, but if I checked the yearbook of the suburban school I graduated from I doubt I could find a single black face. I never heard those stereotypical comments you speak of because there was nobody to speak them about.
Chris2048 6y ago
"White guys have names like Lenny, whereas black guys have names like Carl."

vangelis 6y ago

It's true, you just have to go thirty minutes outside the city.