European kids are taught that racism is bad but not how real, systemic, subtle racism actually looks. We are taught that slavery and hitler is bad, so our bar for what is acceptable is very low.
This is also why Europeans will get offended if you point out something subtly racist they did/said. They think you’re straight-up comparing them to Hitler and the KKK.
That seems like how it is in the US too.
“Racism is only a thing very bad evil people do. I’m not an very bad evil person. Thus I cannot have done racism.”
“what you said was kinda racist”
“How dare you, I’m not a racist!”
The unacknowledged shift from the adjective form “racist” to the noun form “racist” is the best indicator that someone doesn’t really get what racism actually is in real life.
As an example of why that’s wrong, I can do something stupid without being a stupid.
Many people need to accept that they are not perfect, and be open to learning. Instead, many people lash out. Gotta protect their ego.
True, but nothing new there under the sun.
Everyone always laughs at the people who complain about “woke” and asks them to “define woke”, but can you define racism?
Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnic background.
From Wikipedia
a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
From Merriam-Webster
harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races
From Cambridge dictionary
As for Woke
chiefly US slang, disapproving : politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme
From Merriam-Webster
a way of referring to the acts and opinions of people who are especially aware of social problems such as racism and inequality, used by people who think these acts and opinions have gone too far
From Cambridge dictionary as “wokeism”/“wokery”
The guy was obviously being a troll.
But, there certainly isn’t a consensus on racism. Some vocal elements demand that for for something to be racist, there also has to be a racial power imbalance working in the favor of the person being racist… and they’ll use that distinction to explain how actions that would be evaluated as racist by the definitions you provided actually aren’t if the target is in a position of racial privilege.
And, personally, I think that definition was literally seeded as a wedge by state actors for the explicit purpose of sowing discord, but here we are.
That’s just misapplying an academic definition in a colloquial circumstance, which happens a lot in various disciplines. It’s like the “what is a vegetable” question: it means different things to a botanist, chef, and tax collector.
Colloquially, racism means prejudice based on the perception of someone’s “race” (ie: ancestry, physical characteristics such as skin tone).
That covers things like assuming a black man knows about gangs and rap based only on their skin color.
There’s also the institutional level where individuals might not really think or feel anything about race, but it still is a factor. Stuff like closing polling places in predominantly black neighborhoods, or individual police officers who are given a quota and only assigned to black neighborhoods. Housing in the US has a long history intersecting with the idea of race. “The Color of Law” was a pretty good read on it.
Wikipedia puts it nicely:
Racism can also be said to describe a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others, whether that group wants such benefits or not.
When I was in grad school I lived in an international student dorm where I was basically the only American. One day we had a party, and after a few drinks the Europeans started into this game they’ve all seemingly done a hundred times before where they started saying the most vile shit I’ve ever heard to each other while laughing. Like “OK, sure everyone in my country is drunk all the time, but it’s better than you guys letting in all those thieving gypsys!”
So they did a full round of about 20 people throwing the worst racism/nationalism I’ve ever come across in real life at each other, including absolutely dunking on the only black guy as if he was a representative for all africans, then like a hive mind they all turned to me and someone went “At least none of us are as racist as these Americans!” followed by uproarious laughter. I ask myself internally all the time if my behavior is problematic, but it seemed like these people never learned that skill but instead were taught “USA=racist, everyone else is good” and never questioned it or themselves.
For years this led me to privately think “Man, Europeans are way worse.” But then, you know, we elected Trump twice and the Klan came back dressed in camo.
words vs deeds
Such a weird take, every single other thing isn’t binary, yet suddenly racism is? Self reflection and critical thinking are what’s lacking.
Shouldn’t have to be taught to treat others with respect or how you would treat yourself.
Shouldn’t have to be taught to treat others with respect or how you would treat yourself
No disrespect, but I disagree. Respect is absolutely a learned behavior.
what ever respectful means is a defined by your culture. What is considered respectful is different in the uk versus the us, at least that’s what thought this post was about.
Kids absolutely need to be taught this. Kids don’t magically share, or treat each other with respect. You teach kids how to be respectful everyday.
You teach behavior and biases, but it’s well observed that kids naturally don’t see distinctions between groups of people until it is taught to them, and that kids do feel empathy naturally, and will feel upset about perceived injustices and such. Isolating a white kid so they don’t see a Black kid until they’re 15 is a learned thing, if they’re raised in a shared environment, they won’t see a difference. What you teach is how to act on it (like sharing), how to handle emotions about it. Restricting experience is teaching.
You need to be taught to treat others the way you would yourself?
Or are you teaching your kids who and what to respect? Because you’re doing the latter, not the former and are perpetuating these issues.
This has nothing to do with culture at large, that’s justifications for rasicm, and that’s what you’re teaching your kids. The exact issue that’s trying to be pointed out.
what ever respectful means is a defined by your culture. What is considered respectful is different in the uk versus the us, at least that’s what thought this post was about.
Umm that’s racism…. You’re describing what it means to be racist. If you need to be taught that only certain things/people/races/religion/colour are to be respected… that’s why people think black people don’t have livers.
You are the issue mate, full disrespect. You are racist. If you choose be respectful to someone only to blend into those around you… you don’t deserve any respect.
Self-reflection and critical thinking are almost always defeated by social conformance among healthy well-adjusted humans. For a social animal, it is more important to agree with the group than to be objectively correct.
social conformance among healthy well-adjusted humans
By racism you mean? Those are leaned behaviors that take over from being taught that others are different from you.
Humans inherently care, and love each other. Anything else is taught by someone else who thinks they know what’s okay.
The only objectively correct way to treat anyone else is how you treat yourself. Anything else is just learned hate.
Lmao, this is basically religious thinking, with the inevitable “problem of evil”. If people inherently love each other, where does hate come from?
where does hate come from?
From being taught that someone is different from you in some way.
Does this seriously need to be explained? And do you think babies naturally hate? That they are capable of it without being taught? They know to love and snuggle with humans, any. They’ll even snuggle with a deadly lion. They need to be TAUGHT otherwise.
Babies don’t care about colour, or religions, they don’t even know what the fuck that stuff is dude. Until they are taught.
From being taught
And who teaches? An another human, right? But doesn’t that human also inherently love other humans? So he must’ve been taught to hate too. If you go step by step into the past, at what point is hate introduced into human society?
Babies are not fully developed human beings, they don’t have a society, culture, or almost anything else, including basic survival mechanisms, so they’re a pointless comparison. It is ridiculous to think they, left to their nature, wouldn’t develop communities, trust and suspicion, stereotypes, etc. that can eventually build up to racism. We have documented wars among literal apes, humans are definitely not much nicer in their natural state (whatever that might be - it can’t be just “being a baby”).
And the human teaching the baby can CHOOSE what to teach the baby. If you’re teaching it to respect XYZ during ABC, you’re teaching it hate.
Babies and kids share, yes there will be fights, that’s also human nature, but look at those reasons. To provide shelter for those close. They aren’t doing it out of hate, it’s for protection or other issues.
Just because someone takes your food doesn’t mean you go to war, invite them, share with them. Yes it can go south, but that’s also taught behavior. The chain has to be broken somewhere, and if you need it to be pointed out that you’re one of the issues… well the cutters are there. Just because the past has hate, doesn’t mean you need to perpetuate it forward.
Please don’t talk at me. You’re not really addressing or engaging with what I said. You have a point to make that’s got nothing to do with me, take it to the top level.
Of course people don’t like it when it’s pointed out that they were actually taught to be racist.
You made a wildly racist remark in response to someone saying that everyone should be treated how they treat themselves.
Of course you’re gonna get called out.
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Humans inherently care, and love each other. Anything else is taught by someone else who thinks they know what’s okay.
The hell you on about? I ain’t givin shit about anybody who’s not already in my friend circle and sure as hell last time I checked I am human. Empathy varies a lot in humans, some people are naturally caring, some don’t give a damn if most people around them die, most are somewhere between so chill out.
The only objectively correct way to treat anyone else is how you treat yourself. Anything else is just learned hate.
Let others reap what they sow. Extend some respect at first and give benefit of the doubt but if they aren’t worth it, they simply aren’t worth it. Anything else and you’re gonna get used, trampled and disrespected.
And that extends to racist, homophobic or transphobic idiots who cannot argue for their stance. If a black person killed your dog and that was only black person you ever saw, yeah, fair you have bad opinion.
But if you’re like one of my coworkers who hates gay folk cause it’s fun, not respect, die in a ditch.
I’m Canadian and this is how I was raised too. Racism = Hitler, KKK, and neo-nazis. That’s why it’s bad.
So if you’re going to call someone racist, don’t be surprised if they think you’re comparing them to Hitler or the KKK.
And if you’re going to say that there’s different levels of racism and some are only as bad as stepping on someone’s toes, don’t be surprised if people don’t really care.
Only as bad as stepping on people’s toes
Well, only as bad as someone who cares whether or not they step on some people’s toes, and doesn’t notice/doesn’t care if they step on other people’s toes.
My European cousins tried to explain to me that it was weird how no Jewish people died in the twin towers on 9/11, like they had all been warned. I had to patiently explain that I had friends who died in 9/11, some were Jewish, and that whatever his source was, it was likely nazi propaganda, and extremely disrespectful to repeat obvious bullshit.
I remember hearing that conspiracy theory, snopes has a detailed page about its origins: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israelis-absent-911/
TLDR: originally it was not nazi, but Syrian propaganda. Obviously nazis pick up whatever fits their world view.
You just solved a 20 year old mystery that I didn’t even realize I was curious about. It was super weird, because these were relatively progressive, educated adults, and the audacity of the bigotry just sort of left me confused. This helps me understand a little bit better.
Before the modern internet it was really hard to fact check something. In 2001 in the eastern bloc it was still rare to have internet at home (in Poland only 10% of the population used the internet in 2001 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=PL), and English language knowledge was very low, the compulsory second language taught in schools was Russian before 1990 (this was the case in Hungary, I guess it was common in other Warsaw-pact countries).
I just looked up the snopes article now, I didn’t know the origin story an hour ago, but I suspected it was not true. If someone just heard this gossip around that time they didn’t really have an easy way to check it, and in their long term memory it was saved as fact.
If someone just heard this gossip around that time they didn’t really have an easy way to check it, and in their long term memory it was saved as fact.
And yet - *gestures to everything*
As an American the most openly racist thing I’ve experienced in person is someone from Europe talking about the Roma. I think we just talk about racism more.
I would wager a guess that you actually read on reddit someone experiencing that. Or someone talking about someone else experiencing that.
You would be wrong. I meet two people at college and they were both extremely hateful.
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I wanna party with those tiny men.
edit: not while they do a racism, they just look like fun lil guys…
Itt:
Americans are dumb af and know it, but Europeans are dumb af and don’t know it.
OH HOW THE TURNS HAVE TABLED
lol “im from poland and i never heard of racism” suuure i wonder what they call romani people …
Probably something like «rohadt cigány» if it’s anything close to the kurwas in Hungary.
Ignorance and racism are not the same thing. There’s overlap, but even if it can be hurtful, ignorance is not malicious.
Ignorance born of environment is understandable.
Ignorance born of anti-intellectualism is malicious.
What does “malicious” mean here? Structural racism often doesn’t have ill intent from any individual people, and nevertheless still affects people’s daily lives.
There’s a kind of stubborn ignorance which is very malicious. It’s how we got trump, in part.
Yeah that’s called hate
Americans aren’t anti-intellectual. We have a VERY high percentage that ARE.
The fascist portion of politics is staunchly anti-intellectual, but most of their supporters wouldn’t know what it looks like.
Tbf some people in Africa don’t know what racism is either. In some places white people are not that regular and some kids in the country side never even saw a white person, much less ever faced or understand the concept of racism. If you are somewhat isolated in a comunity you won’t get it until you start watching more problematic Tv or movies. Maybe that’s what this polish person said
I live in a big country, in a big city, and I don’t get why racism is even a thing, imagine being isolated!?
Of course, some people in africa experience racism from other black people. It isn’t all white v black, sometimes it’s Hutu v Tutsi.
Ethnicity is not race btw.
Let’s be real, it’s a semantic difference when we’re talking genocide.
you arr talking genocide. I was talking about Racism.
When I was a kid we had so few POC in our schools; it was simply because there weren’t many here yet. I had one black person in my grade school and three in my high school. It was just our population then, the area was mostly European immigrants back then. It has changed immensely now, and the racism against immigrants here is pretty vile.
Can’t be racist if you don’t know black people exist.
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Nice, this post is a circlejerk of Americans being racist to Europeans without even having met one in their lives probably.
“My uncle from Boston is Irish because he’s ginger and he likes whiskey. This basically makes me better specialist in the customs of country of Europe than any of people who live there”
Я думаю, поляк имел ввиду что он просто не сталкивался с расизмом в жизни, поэтому и не знал что это такое
Я думаю, что русскоговорящих на Лемми почти нет.
Edit: it’s funny how in a thread about racism, people are massively downvoting comments in a language other than English: D
Ist das wirklich lustig, auf eine ironische Art, oder vielleicht einfach nervig, weil es die meisten nicht lesen können?
It really is funny to me. Maybe annoying for others.
Let’s not pretend Google Translate isn’t a couple of taps away.
Let’s not pretend Google Translate isn’t a couple of taps away
Which only makes it weirder that the person writing didn’t do that themselves, but instead wanted everyone else to waste their time.
Jos aletaan kaikki vaan kirjoittamaan omia kieliä tänne niin eihän tästä koko hommasta tule yhtään mitään, ei kukaan jaksa pitää kääntäjää auki ihan vaan että voi yrittää ymmärtää tällaistakin roskaa. Ja konekääntämisen isoin ongelma on muutenkin että melkein kaikki nyanssit katoaa kuin tuhka tuuleen, ei ne ole kovin hyviä tämän suomenkaan kanssa.
Joko tuhlasin tarpeeksi kaikkien aikaa tähän, jotta ongelma tuli selväksi??
Que raro, el otro comentario está en otro lenguaje también y no tiene ese problema. Será que es la asociación con ese lenguaje debido ha eventos corrientes que es el problema con el estigma del lenguaje?
otro lenguaje
Which one? You mean the Ukrainian response that got four downvotes?
Stigmatising a language, which is frequently one of crucial elements of people’s identity, is pretty fucking racist.
Será que es la asociación con ese lenguaje debido ha eventos corrientes que es el problema con el estigma del lenguaje?
Зато мне нравится какую волну комментариев я поднял 😁 Мне очень не хватает тут комментариев И стыдно признаться из всех них перевод потребовался мне почему то украинского комментария, хотя по итогу он единственный меня поддержал
