Running racism in America thread

And though I was born in the first year of JFK’s presidency, Obama is the best POTUS of my lifetime. They are all flawed, some psychotically so, some just unqualified or both. Being the first nonwhite President against a deeply racist opposition from MConnell and FOXNews, he had limitations. He didn’t push back back hard enough thinking if he did he would alienate the middle of the road voter. In the end, those people went with trump any way. Not that he could foresee this, no one could. But if he pushed back against the Republican Senate like LBJ, it would have been better.

 

It's no crime to be a racist. It's the human condition.

 

And, let me guess ... you're in the non-racist camp?

 

Of course racism is inherent in humans. Tribalism and racism are the same thing. We are good, You are bad. It’s the history of the human race

 

We are not born racists or oppressive towards others, but religion, the media, TV, movies, ads sure do create them.

 

See, it's not just how you act, it's what you think. Even more viscerally: How does your amygdala respond?

When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, I was exposed to racist and ethnocentric ideas pretty much every day, from family, peers and the media. Mom sent us to a liberal Lutheran church whose pastor traveled south to minister at Selma. One of the two most genuine Christians I ever met.

The congregation was aghast. As they say, the most segregated day of the week is Sunday.

Did all that shit just roll off the back of a 7-year-old? Hell no. I am my father's son, and my grandfather's grandson. I have the self-awareness now to recognize that they weren't always right -- but when I was 7 or 8 or 9, they were always right. I don't believe anybody can purge all of that poison out of their system.

Go to Nigeria or Japan. You don't think you'll be viewed through a racial lens? You bet you will -- and the refraction will not be positive.

 

Monday is Native American Day

it ought to be The Christian Church Sanctioned Genocide and Slavery Day.

 

100 percent agree. We can't broad-brush-stroke people into certain camps. Some people have overt predilections toward certain attitudes and others understand why such attitudes are bad and actively avoid them.

I don't think I'm stepping too far out of line by saying that I agree we can't just say humans are inherently racist, but I believe we have inherent biases. It can be a benign thing like I hate eggs but someone else loves them. Or we have a bias to congregate toward groups of people we have interacted with and tend to trust those groups more than groups we haven't. But I think the trick is for people to understand exactly what you said up above—just because they aren't from my group doesn't mean I shouldn't give them a chance. That's where even the most woke among us fall down. We're (and by we I mean the royal we not that I'm including any one person in this) all about the idea of equality and a colorblind society, but we get caught up in these biases that we don't properly regulate.

We're going to be a better place if we first recognize the history of how we marginalized people, second how we have our own biases and three actively work to embrace others and make it socially acceptable to do so. If I may be so presumptuous, I think living in an urban, diverse environment helps that. We get the chance to actually encounter character rather than how groups are portrayed. My in-laws are good-meaning people and are very accepting of others, but they fall into traps where they say something because it's a joke that people around them say but don't realize how it might be offensive. They also live in a very homogenous region of CA.