Racism

[md0]

I think I'd prefer a term different from ethnicity, though I'm not sure what.

Kızılyürek, a Cypriot scholar working on those issues, uses the word "conscience" as opposed to "roots" to capture this distinction. So, two people may both have, say, Indian roots, but not necessarily the same conscience.

I don't find the terms very clear to be honest, I would still go with ethnicity as my first choice.

[vijayjohn]

Does anyone happen to be familiar with American teacher and activist Jane Elliott and her "blue eyes, brown eyes" racism experiment? If you're familiar with it, what do you think of it? Her experiment is controversial and has been widely criticized, but she seems to be of the view that white people can't really understand racism without experiencing it in all its harshness, even if only for a few hours at most. Do you agree? Do you think subjecting people to this kind of discrimination, and then pointing out how real it is for some people, is the most effective way of making privileged people aware of it?

My first exposure to this experiment was a Channel 4 documentary where Elliott tries her experiment out on people in Britain. I find the narration towards the beginning of the documentary pretty misleading, to the point where I was actually kind of horrified when I saw the beginning of the experiment. I got the impression that she was trying to make the brown-eyed people in the experiment discriminate against the people who didn't have brown eyes and that that was all there was to it. I thought if I was in that experiment, I would've run out the door. But then I eventually came to realize that she was doing a lot more than that and trying to show white people what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of the racism that our societies not only tolerate but promote and perpetuate.

[Yasna]

So happy to see parts of the American left standing up to the radical, obfuscating narratives of grievance studies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQbnyUBhP4E

[vijayjohn]

Someone brought up the Chump administration's concentration camps months ago on this forum. Some fellow left-wingers I know are very worried about this. What do people outside the US know about this? How do you feel about it?

People here also bring up (and complain about) ICE a lot. Are people outside the US familiar with this abbreviation in this particular context? I'm curious because I'm very much out of the loop and I don't think I've ever seen any discussion about it except from either Americans or Canadians.

[Yasna]

Die Plagen von Baltimore

"Gemeint waren die Tweets, mit denen der amerikanische Präsident am Samstag den demokratischen Abgeordneten Elijah Cummings angegriffen hatte, einen seiner gewichtigsten Kritiker im Kongress. Cummings’ Heimatstadt Baltimore erklärte Trump zu einem „gefährlichen und dreckigen Ort“, zu einer „ekelhaften“ und „rattenverseuchten“ Stadt, in der „kein Mensch leben“ wolle. Am Montag legte der Präsident nach. Er nannte Sharpton einen „Hochstapler“, der „Weiße und Polizisten hasst“. Und weil „König Elijah und seine Crew“ in Baltimore gescheitert seien, habe die Stadt die übelste Kriminalitätsstatistik der Nation. Dass ein Politiker, der einen Teil einer Großstadt und ihres Umlands im Kongress vertritt, wenig bis nichts mit der dortigen Verbrechens- oder Schädlingsbekämpfung zu tun hat, scherte den Präsidenten nicht."

"Doch einige arme, fast nur von Afroamerikanern bewohnte Stadtteile haben an diesem Aufschwung keinen Anteil. Wer die Kultserie „The Wire“ über das trostlose Rauschgiftmilieu von Baltimore anschaut, erhält ein bis heute realistisches Bild des Alltags. Als 2015 nach dem Tod des Schwarzen Freddie Gray in Polizeigewahrsam Proteste in schwere Randale mündeten, wurde im Westen der Stadt ein ausgebrannter Drogeriemarkt zum tragischen Symbol: Die Brandstifter hatten das einzige größere Geschäft weit und breit zerstört. Supermärkte oder Apotheken sahen sich in ihrem Unwillen bestätigt, Filialen in den armen Stadtvierteln aufzumachen. Obst und Gemüse zu kaufen, ist mancherorts in einem Drei-Meilen-Radius unmöglich. An Jugendzentren und ähnlichen Einrichtungen mangelt es. Halt suchen viele Kinder in Gangs."

"Voriges Jahr wurden 309 Morde in Baltimore begangen – mehr als in New York mit seiner fast 14 mal so großen Bevölkerung. Das FBI führte Baltimore 2017 hinter Detroit und Saint Louis auf Rang drei der gefährlichsten Städte Amerikas. Dabei schien die Polizei vor einigen Jahren auf einem guten Weg gewesen zu sein, der Gewalt Herr zu werden. Beileibe nicht nur Trump-Anhänger argwöhnen, dass die neue Gewaltexplosion eine Folge der Vereinbarung sei, die das Bundesjustizministerium zum Ende von Barack Obamas Präsidentschaft mit der Stadt Baltimore getroffen hatte. Seitdem, so heißt es, traue sich die Polizei nicht mehr, in der nötigen Härte durchzugreifen."

[linguoboy]

Today I learned that "Underground Railroad escape rooms" for elementary school children are a thing and I kind of hate all of humanity.

[linguoboy]

Die Plagen von Baltimore

The president’s Twitter attack on Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings reflect a law-and-order manifesto with a long history.

One of his very first acts as president was forcing his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to try to undo a consent decree with the Baltimore police department that had already, for the most part, been signed and sealed. The decree was created in response to the rampant abuse, corruption, and racial discrimination the Justice Department found in that department after several Baltimore officers were arrested for killing Freddie Gray in 2015.

The Trump administration wasted tremendous energy and resources trying to kill off this decree and those like it in other cities. Instead of making police departments operate smarter—and in alignment with the Constitution—Trump argued that it was time for police to get rougher. These consent decrees, in Baltimore and cities such as Chicago, would allow inner-city crime to spin out of control, the president warned.

But that’s not exactly what happened. Despite decreasing local trust in law enforcement and several high-profile police corruption scandals, Baltimore’s crime rate dropped 7.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, and the murder rate fell by 9 percent, according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice. That crime drop also happened despite the long litany of reforms imposed upon the police department—reforms that some argued would intensify crime and the so-called “Ferguson Effect”—and despite the fact there was no permanent police commissioner for most of 2018.

[Yasna]

The president’s Twitter attack on Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings reflect a law-and-order manifesto with a long history.

One of his very first acts as president was forcing his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to try to undo a consent decree with the Baltimore police department that had already, for the most part, been signed and sealed. The decree was created in response to the rampant abuse, corruption, and racial discrimination the Justice Department found in that department after several Baltimore officers were arrested for killing Freddie Gray in 2015.

The Trump administration wasted tremendous energy and resources trying to kill off this decree and those like it in other cities. Instead of making police departments operate smarter—and in alignment with the Constitution—Trump argued that it was time for police to get rougher. These consent decrees, in Baltimore and cities such as Chicago, would allow inner-city crime to spin out of control, the president warned.

But that’s not exactly what happened. Despite decreasing local trust in law enforcement and several high-profile police corruption scandals, Baltimore’s crime rate dropped 7.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, and the murder rate fell by 9 percent, according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice. That crime drop also happened despite the long litany of reforms imposed upon the police department—reforms that some argued would intensify crime and the so-called “Ferguson Effect”—and despite the fact there was no permanent police commissioner for most of 2018.

I don't think you can draw any conclusions from the crime statistics of one year.

[vijayjohn]

You can from all the efforts to single out majority-black cities, though.

[linguoboy]

You can from all the efforts to single out majority-black cities, though.

Its classic dog-whistling. Everyone finally accepts that "inner-city" is code for "Black" so now they need new words. Trump's helped promote "Chicago" and "Baltimore" as replacements. Now Ivanka's getting in on the action.

As that article points out, two years the CPD asked for Federal help with Chicago's crime problem. Trump ignored them. He's not actually interested in finding a solution. We're just a rhetorical device he uses to distract from the problem at hand and fire up his base. Sad.

[linguoboy]

So a foaf is complaining on Fakebook about a run-in he had online with a Spanish guy. Apparently, the Spanish guy had posted lots of selfies, including one in which his skin tone appears very dark, and this USAmerican dude suggested to him that maybe it was because had some "Moorish DNA". Reportedly (he didn't share his actual words), the Spanish guy reacted badly, so this guy went and posted a rant on his own wall about what a "racist" he was.

Now maybe the Spanish guy's reaction was racist and maybe it wasn't (as I said, I didn't see what it was, so I can't really judge). But my reaction was "OMFG who shares speculations about the racial background of someone they've only just met based on a photo?" Racial identity is complex and emotionally-laden; a lot of people aren't comfortable discussing it even with people they've known for a while. Why would you make it one of the first things you discuss with a new person?

(My reaction is partly coloured by a conversation the two of us had. He kept pushing me to tell him my "least favourite accents" and I kept trying to steer us toward a more general discussion of accents in general. Finally, to clue him into why I didn't like this approach, I asked him, "You want to know what kind of people I'm prejudiced against?" And he got very offended that I was accusing him of having "sinister intentions".)

When activists began urging us all to have more difficult conversations about race, this isn't really what they had in mind.

[vijayjohn]

What does he even think racism is? In fact, what does he think race is?

[linguoboy]

What does he even think racism is? In fact, what does he think race is?

I'm kind of afraid to ask. In the fallout from our disagreement over accents, he asserted that a purely aesthetic judgment was possible, so I wouldn't be surprised to find that he conceives of it simply in terms of personal animus.

[Johanna]

Racial identity is complex and emotionally-laden; a lot of people aren't comfortable discussing it even with people they've known for a while. Why would you make it one of the first things you discuss with a new person?

Not to mention that in Europe, the concept of "race" doesn't exist in the American sense, we are mostly about ethnicity.

Sure, skin color and whatnot play a part, but it is overwhelmingly about language and culture. In other words, my nephew's very black mother, who was born in Eritrea but grew up here and speak fluent Swedish with a local accent, will always be a lot more accepted into Swedish society than your random white person from the US who moved here as an adult.

The only people who actually care about skin color are the white supremacists, really. Or as we want to label them, Nazis.

[Yasna]

Not to mention that in Europe, the concept of "race" doesn't exist in the American sense, we are mostly about ethnicity.

Sure, skin color and whatnot play a part, but it is overwhelmingly about language and culture. In other words, my nephew's very black mother, who was born in Eritrea but grew up here and speak fluent Swedish with a local accent, will always be a lot more accepted into Swedish society than your random white person from the US who moved here as an adult.

The only people who actually care about skin color are the white supremacists, really. Or as we want to label them, Nazis.

This was the direction America was moving in too until the identity politics crew decided that modern-day America itself is a white supremacist society.

Mind you, the actual evidence for such a worldview is spotty at best, but that doesn't seem to bother them.

[vijayjohn]

The US has been a white supremacist society longer than it has even existed. If it wasn't, Donald Chump wouldn't have even a chance of becoming president.

[Prowler]

I remember sometime ago seeing someone elsewhere ask why a lot of Eastern Europeans were racist and what basis did they have to feel superior to others when their countries are generally poorer than Northern and Western European nations. He also added that, at least he could understand Northern and Western European racists feeling that way since their countries are richer and more developed.

I personally think that's the wrong way to look at it. it's as if that person is pretty much saying that only rich people or people from rich countries have the right to be racist and xenophobic. They also fail to see the point that there's idiots in all sorts of social classes and countries and any very racist person could probably make up a bullshit excuse to justify their reasoning. So whether they come from Bulgaria or Norway is irrelevant.

Not to mention that it seemed like a typical case of singling out Eastern Europeans for racism and xenophobia. For some odd reason, a racist Polish person will receive more flack than a racist German person.

[vijayjohn]

That's pretty weird, but honestly, I can't recall ever seeing a German person be explicitly racist whereas I have seen a Polish person (and a Romanian person and a Serbian person and a Hungarian person) say some pretty racist things. British racism can be particularly upsetting for me personally, though.

[Prowler]

That's pretty weird, but honestly, I can't recall ever seeing a German person be explicitly racist whereas I have seen a Polish person (and a Romanian person and a Serbian person and a Hungarian person) say some pretty racist things. British racism can be particularly upsetting for me personally, though.

I haven't really seen any act of blatant racism in real life, tbh. By this I mean I've never seen someone being blatantly racist to someone in a violent manner or even insulting them. Except for maybe that time I saw an old woman arguing with a black guy about who's first in line and eventually telling him to go back to his country to which he retorted "it's your country we're gonna rule someday". I found that exchange completely stupid and embarrassing and probably everyone else in the supermarket overhearing that thought the same as well.

Of course I've heard people saying racist things but they usually know their audience well and only seem to let their guard around relatives and close friends. Never saw anyone saying that stuff directly to a member of a group they dislike except for that one exception. So it's very hard to know who's bigoted and who's not. For all I know, other people might have racist relatives, but I don't know their relatives nor have I ever been to their houses, so I'm obviously not hearing their conversations.

[linguoboy]

I saw one just yesterday. I was on the train and two women were having a conversation in Chinese. A guy standing near them was glowering in their direction and started barking "English!" at them until I told him to shut up and he started yelling at me instead.