Why is racism still relevant.

[Alkatjo]

I know everyone's enjoying the Halloween festivities but i'd like to ask the community a question regarding racism. A little backstory first.

I wasn't really ever raised around racism, and that's extremely ironic considering where i've lived. I spent most of my years in Frankfurt, Germany on the American Airforce base before i moved to my current home in Arkansas. The German people i grew up with were an extremely nice group of people. I lived in a fairly diverse neighborhood, everyone on base was different in some way. We had latinos, blacks, whites, multiple groups of people attending the same school, Bittburg Elementary School. I can't ever remember a time when racism was present in that school, despite the huge diversity everyone got along fine. It wasn't much different when i moved to Arkansas, which is ironic again because it's the deep-ish part of the south. Now keep in mind racism was a fairly taboo thing to me. I knew what it was but i didn't know why it made people feel the way they do (at that time of course). I couldn't help myself to feel empathetic for the people effected and questioned those who knowingly hurt others. The response was usually something along the lines of "because x looks that way" or "because i hate x's kind". A normal person wouldn't form those opinions on his/her own, alright, lets just clear that up. You don't hate someone because they look a certain way, that's irrational behavior. You wouldn't look at a Latino man walking down the street and think to yourself "man i really don't like the way that guy looks", because that wouldn't make much sense. Why do you hate the way he looks? What did he do to you? Why would you judge someone based on a chemical pigment in their skin. I mean, he's human? He's not a monster or an alien, there shouldn't be a reason to hate him. You may think "i don't like what he's wearing" because that would be along the implications of culture shock. He may/may not wear the same things as you do. To him, you're at the opposite end of culture shock.

I digress, my main question is how do completely normal individuals adopt racism? I've looked into this a little bit and some of the main reasons seem to stem from the last generation. It's probably the most frequent answer to give out to cover their rep. "Well my parents hated non-whites so i guess i should too". I'd like to know why you guys think stuff like this still exists, because apparently I'm not getting the memo.

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[Goku®]

I don't know man mondays i tell you

[Foxscotch]

I digress, my main question is how do completely normal individuals adopt racism?

comes from their parents. their parents got it from their parents. etc. and just unwilling to admit that they are wrong. because if you admit that you are wrong, then that means your whole life you have spent hurting other people for dumb reasons you don't even understand

[otto-san]

any prejudice/bias is learned or conditioned into someone. if, for instance, during one's socialization, it was treated as normal to be suspicious of certain people, then that behavior would be adopted, and it might be difficult to unlearn after an extended period of time, because our brains tend to look for information that fits the patterns we believe to be true, and actively seek patterns where none may even exist, which enforces previous biases and establishes new, tangential biases.

the best way to avoid becoming prejudiced is to never let yourself become biased against people in the first place. the moment that happens and you accept that bias as truth, the reinforcement process is out of your control unless you realize it's happening. people who are tribal have probably always been tribal, and will most likely always be tribal because people see things through their own reality, not an objective one.

[Alkatjo]

comes from their parents. their parents got it from their parents. etc. and just unwilling to admit that they are wrong

Their parents must be pretty awful if they're unwilling to break that cycle.

any prejudice/bias is learned or conditioned into someone. if, for instance, during one's socialization, it was treated as normal to be suspicious of certain people, then that behavior would be adopted, and it might be difficult to unlearn after an extended period of time, because our brains tend to look for information that fits the patterns we believe to be true, and actively seek patterns where none may even exist, which enforces previous biases and establishes new, tangential biases.

the best way to avoid becoming prejudiced is to never let yourself become biased against people in the first place. the moment that happens and you accept that bias as truth, the reinforcement process is out of your control unless you realize it's happening. people who are tribal have probably always been tribal, and will most likely always be tribal because people see things through their own reality, not an objective one.

So the primary factor here seems to be conditioning from their parents and the adoption of a particular bias more or less? It's funny you bring up conditioning as we've just finished covering our mid term on psych and that was one of the major topics we needed to cram up on. I figured from answers i was receiving it would have something to do with conditioning.

[Willymcmilly]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

[otto-san]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

by all metrics this is 100% incorrect. and even if it wasn't, if everyone agrees that a word means a certain thing, then it practically means that thing

[SeventhSandwich]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

[Alkatjo]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

It's not so much as me throwing around the word because i want to, as it is that i just don't want to type out "conditioned bias against a certain group or local minority based on specific traits of that individual's background" everytime i want to mention anything related to racism or the context itself.

[Foxscotch]

Their parents must be pretty awful if they're unwilling to break that cycle.

see:

because if you admit that you are wrong, then that means your whole life you have spent hurting other people for dumb reasons you don't even understand

teaching your kids differently is definitely admitting you are wrong. and once you've already raised kids, you'd have to face the fact that you also raised your kids to be awful people
of course, it's not ALL on their parents. you have a responsibility to grow up too, beyond what your parents taught you

[Drydess]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

this is what happens when you only read the title

[Dreams_Of_Cheese]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

>a mature discussion about what racism is and why it exists
>reads the word "race" and assumes that obviously the discussion is about people misusing the term

what is your problem? at least wait until someone is actually "throwing around the word... like a football" before you start your rant.

[Perry]

Here we go again, throwing around the word "racism" like a loving football. Everyone who acknowledges the concept of race is a tribal. Someone out there a couple hundred years ago just decided to start misusing "tribal" because people didn't agree with them and it stuck and now everyone thinks its an actual term for racial prejudice.

Typically, this argument is broken in every aspect. When it comes to racism, the ones who are perpetrating look for any negatives to try and shift the blame from themselves to other people. This is a prime example of saying "well some people are just faking it!" when clearly that's almost never the case. People who misuse the word 'racism' probably don't exist at all. If they do, they're probably a tiny minority of mentally unsound people somewhere on the planet. Either way they're not worth debating at all.

If you aren't against racism, you're for it. You can't ever take a neutral stance ever because then you're enabling racism to continue. Every day people are mistreated in some way thanks to racism, whether it be a black person excluding a white person for the fact that they are white, or a hindu man hiding their purse when near a muslim man. You can never change this. The only thing you can do is stick up for the rights of others, let people know that its not okay to mistreat others because of their race, and try to limit the effects of racism. If you don't, you're essentially letting it continue and therefore helping it.

Also clearing it up, everyone has some inherent bias and that's perfectly normal as a human being. The goal is not to brainwash everyone to stop being tribal, it's to stop this bias from affecting others or causing others to experience misfortune. When you rigorously teach the youth to be accepting of others regardless of their race, gender, loveual preference or disability, you aren't trying to change their opinions on these people. You're simply trying to establish the sense of right and wrong into their brains, so that they know its not alright to discriminate. If you don't, they'll probably grow up thinking it's alright to discriminate since nobody ever told them it wasn't.

[tber123]

The way I see it, racism is something learned from parents or pretty much anyone else. If someone grows up around parents constantly yelling "mondays and spics should hang!", or constantly listens to stuff like talk show hosts spreading propaganda about Canadians and Australians being evil bastards or something as a kid, they're pretty much going to believe the same thing. Racism could still be considered relevant because there's still enough blatant racism around from people who actually mean it.

[Lego lad]

also probably has to do with experiences as a child, my teacher said her grandma was tribal because she grew up during some large race riots, not sure which ones though