Racism

[linguoboy]

I'm not a racist. That makes sense to me. Racism needs a motive in order to be active. To me, that means it doesn't exist; by itself

The motive is clear: to achieve and maintain power. What clearer motive could you wish for?

But what's the actual motive? I'm not saying motive as in the reason, but the motive as in the basis for racism, like its foundation

That's too bad, because "reason" is what "motive" actually means in this context. Maybe if you used words in the same way as the rest of us, these discussions would be a little more productive.

I feel like I've explained all this before: the motive is control. Dividing a population along racial lines makes it possible for one group to dominate the others and monopolise opportunities and resources.

Look at the history of the USA: What effect did defining a "White" race have? It allowed members of that particular group to completely dominate politics, keeping all opportunities for themselves. They appropriated land from the "Red" race and labour from members of the "Black" race. They reaped all the benefits of controlling these resources, making them far richer than they would have been from their efforts alone.

How does racism affect others who aren't racist? How does one get outsiders to support racism even if they aren't racist?

First of all, if you support racism, you're "racist". Again, that's literally what the word means. It doesn't matter what your underlying reasons are.

Second, I've just explained this: Everyone classed as "White" benefits in a system that's built to allow Whites to dominate political power and resources. Are you asking why non-Whites would go along with this? They're not given a choice. Slavery was maintained through continual terrorisation and violence. Indigenous people were deprived of land through wars, forced removal, starvation, and disease. Asians were kept out by exclusionary laws. All of these groups faced severe restrictions on their independent economic and political activity. When they did manage to accumulate some wealth and political power in spite of these restrictions, it was taken from them again by force.

And this still happens. Prison labour is slavery by a different name. Native Americans are still fighting for control of the lands guaranteed to them by treaty. Non-whites face restrictions on their participation in society that white people don't.

[Gormur]

First of all, if you support racism, you're "racist". Again, that's literally what the word means. It doesn't matter what your underlying reasons are.

Thanks for explaining that. I didn't learn this at school

Sorry about my wording. I was trying to say that racism had to come out in acts of aggression in order to be racist. My point was that race and racism exist for those who participate in them. On their own they wouldn't exist

That's probably just my theory though so feel free to disregard it. I wanted to know where racism came from but I think I understand it better now

[linguoboy]

Sorry about my wording. I was trying to say that racism had to come out in acts of aggression in order to be racist. My point was that race and racism exist for those who participate in them. On their own they wouldn't exist

I don't agree with that. As societies mature, violent acts become rarer overall, and individual acts of racial aggression become the exception--which is one reason why they get so much attention. But many of the most damaging and persistent forms of racism are things like redliningand employment discrimination, which aren't the least bit violent.

[Gormur]

Sorry about my wording. I was trying to say that racism had to come out in acts of aggression in order to be racist. My point was that race and racism exist for those who participate in them. On their own they wouldn't exist

I don't agree with that. As societies mature, violent acts become rarer overall, and individual acts of racial aggression become the exception--which is one reason why they get so much attention. But many of the most damaging and persistent forms of racism are things like redliningand employment discrimination, which aren't the least bit violent.

I've heard an argument that says more homogeneous societies have low crime or especially low violent crime rates

I try to be mindful of what I read. Does homogeneous imply genetics, social standing or both? Things like this confuse me even though they probably shouldn't. I'm just an anal person

[linguoboy]

I've heard an argument that says more homogeneous societies have low crime or especially low violent crime rates

I try to be mindful of what I read. Does homogeneous imply genetics, social standing or both?

It depends who's making the argument. People usually state up front what kind of diversity they're focussing on--ethnic, economic, religious, etc.

We've known at least since Becker's groundbreaking work in the 60s that greater local income inequality leads to to greater crime (both violent and otherwise). As for genetics, it's complicated by the fact that more ethnically homogeneous countries tend to have less income inequality as well. So, for instance, the Nordic countries tend to have low ethnic diversity, low income inequality, and low crime. So working out the causality is bound to be tricky.

[liljorna]

i don't get racism. i mean, i know what it is and i can see that it exist, but i really don't understand why anyone would hate, insult or exclude someone just because they have a different skin color or a different religion or come from a different country. my natural reaction to people from other cultures is curiosity rather than fear or hatred: i want to learn about their languages, beliefs and traditions. in that process, i might find that there are things i don't like or agree with, but that also happens with people from my own country.
i've been teaching german to refugees, mainly from african and middle eastern countries, since 2015, and i must say that i've learned a lot, both about their cultures and about some of my fellow germans' opinions about and behavior towards them...

i agree with what has been said about income equality. social class and the level of education are certainly more closely linked to crime rates than ethnicity is. the sad thing is that if we treat foreigners the way we often treat them, that is if we don't give them the chance to work and earn their own money, to find a good place to live, to make (german) friends, to learn about the local culture etc., they are bound to end up on the bottom of the social hierarchy, and some of them will indeed become criminals. in the end, right-wing politicians will point their fingers at them and be like "see! we told you so! we shouldn't even have let them come here!" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Gormur]

I found this http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/race-policy-dialogue-papers/concepts-race-and-racism-and-implications-ohrc-policyThis explains my point of view pretty much

[vijayjohn]

A certain conservative white American invited me onto Discord, supposedly to help me find a job teaching English in China. I ended up joining both the server he invited me to and eventually another one that's affiliated but with less restrictive moderation. Both have turned out to be chock-full of liberal white Americans. A black user on the one I joined first said that a lot of white people, such as the ones on these servers, think they are the smartest people in the world, which shocked me although it does seem to explain a lot of their behavior - in particular, why they seem so eager to shut down any non-white users who question their preconceived notions about virtually anything. I can't imagine seriously believing at my age that no one knew better than me about anything, but apparently, that's exactly what they think. I've also come to realize they are incredibly cowardly about racism. Like, I knew they were cowardly, but I'm continually surprised by just how cowardly they are.

[linguoboy]

So one of the most common instances of strawmanning I encountre in discussion of race is the suggestion that anti-racists want white people to "apologise" for being white, when what they really want us to do is apologise for being dicks (and, ideally, not be dicks in the first place). I just had an experience along these lines which I thought could serve as an illustrative example.

An acquaintance on Facebook (a friend of a friend who added me after an exchange in the comments of one of her posts) posted a meme about white people's unwillingness to pronounce African names correctly even though most of them are spelled phonetically and contrasted this with their ability to properly pronounce names with highly idiosyncratic spellings when these are borne by white people. The example given was "Phoebe". Commenters responded by posting their own examples. 90% of these were names with traditional Irish or Welsh spellings likes "Siobhán", "Niamh", and "Siân". This rubbed me the wrong way and I said so.

You see, I've seen white people complain about these names, too. So I thought the implicit argument--that white people should try at least as hard to pronounce African names correctly as they do Celtic names--was proceeding from a false premise. Speakers of minority languages like Irish, Welsh, and Breton have had to fight to have their native names recognised with their native spellings[*], so it seemed unfair to single them out in such a context.

I was told in no uncertain terms to stop "policing" and "micromanaging" the thread. Realising that I'd made a mistake, I posted saying I was "stepping off". Privately, the acquaintance explained further why he didn't think the situations were comparable and asked me to reflect further. He also thanked me for not doubling down "as most white men tend to do".

I took that request to heart and gave more thought to the differences between Black people bringing up these names in the context of a discussion about having their own names disrespected and white people mentioning them when they've never had someone flat-out refuse to even attempt to pronounce their own names correctly. Later, I went back to the thread, not with the intention of continuing to argue but just to read what others had written. One Black woman with a French name brought up an experience she had where, when introducing herself over the phone, the white woman on the other end politely inquired about about her name and pronounced it correctly. (At the time--as she revealed later--she thought she was talking to another white woman.) But the same woman, when meeting her in person, couldn't be bothered to get the name right and asked if she could call her by a nickname. This and other stories really brought home to me how a superficially similar phenomenon can have very different impacts on white people and on POC.

I asked the thread-owner if he thought it would be appropriate for me to comment again apologising and he said yes. I did and one of the other commenters thanked me for doing so. I'm still following the thread--not in order to collect more "cookies" for doing the right thing, but to hear more stories and understand better what some of these folks have had to deal with. It was all a very humbling experience. I could have reacted very differently--by getting defensive, by continuing to argue, by dismissing the criticisms and walking away--but I recognised that I was being "called in" but someone who trusted me not to respond reactively and I made a conscious decision to confront my error and work through it.

I wasn't asked to apologise for "being white". I came into a situation where mostly Black people were talking about experiences unique to POC and I talked over them, minimising the uniqueness of these experiences based on a framing I'd developed in white-dominated spaces. I was told not to do this and to reflect on why I felt entitled to act the way I did. It was a reasonable request, politely worded, and after heeding it, I decided an apology was appropriate. It was actually a perfect opportunity to put into practice what I'm learning in the course on intercultural communication I'm currently participating in through work. I messed up, but I learned from it, and I'll do better next time.


[*] And still do! Only last year, an Irish man had to take the Irish government itself to court for refusing to spell his name properly in official documents.

[Gormur]

Interesting. I've been wondering about this lately. Like why there are names/names that aren't allowed (i.e using special characters or naming a child Concrete) then I see these names that seem to be, and probably are completely made up that are given to people with African ancestry

I know personally that I memorize words by appearance and if I haven't heard a word or name I won't know how to pronounce it. That's why I know they're new or made up. Interesting. I guess my question would be to those people who make up names to give their children. I'm not for or against what they're doing. I'm just not sure how that works and how they get around the law of naming a child whatever one desires. Does that make sense?

[linguoboy]

Does that make sense?

No.

The fact that you, with your extremely limited experience of this vast world around us, haven’t previously encountered something doesn’t mean it was “made up”. Only a completely solipsistic individual could believe that.

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

I wasn't asked to apologise for "being white". I came into a situation where mostly Black people were talking about experiences unique to POC and I talked over them, minimising the uniqueness of these experiences based on a framing I'd developed in white-dominated spaces. I was told not to do this and to reflect on why I felt entitled to act the way I did. It was a reasonable request, politely worded, and after heeding it, I decided an apology was appropriate. It was actually a perfect opportunity to put into practice what I'm learning in the course on intercultural communication I'm currently participating in through work. I messed up, but I learned from it, and I'll do better next time.

It's interesting that you point out that you were asked to (and then engaged in) reflection upon your minimizing of the uniqueness of their experiences, but have you considered that they might not be all that familiar with the experiences of white people with exotic names and that they simply assume their experiences are racialized and unique to the POC experience? Because it seems to make as much sense to me that they should be expected to reflect on whether or not all white people get treated with the courtesy of having an effort put into the rendition of their names as it would for you to have to reflect on the uniqueness of their experience. The story you told about the woman who was treated differently when spoken to in person does seem to point to racism, but the two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive - plenty of Brazilians I've met have stopped butchering my name in favour of a nickname they decided to give me.

From the outside, it looks like you came upon a group of mostly black people who, unfamiliar with what it's like to be a white person with an exotic name, assumed that the problems they face having an unusual name stem from their being black and that white people mustn't have this issue. They likely think this not because they've had lots of personal experience seeing effort be put into white people's names and not theirs but more likely because they are racists and assume everything, including this, is easier for white people. You basically called them out on this and (surprise surprise!) they didn't like it. You, being a rather woke individual, are extremely open to having a black person tell you you're wrong about this and that you're being insensitive, so you capitulated and have now developed a justification for why you were wrong that enables you to swallow this indignation.

This is just what occurred to me as a strong possibility, I wasn't there and don't know the content of either that thread or, more importantly, the discussion you had with the owner of the thread which lead you to understand why your remarks weren't warranted the first time around, so I could be wrong.

[linguoboy]

It's interesting that you point out that you were asked to (and then engaged in) reflection upon your minimizing of the uniqueness of their experiences, but have you considered that they might not be all that familiar with the experiences of white people with exotic names and that they simply assume their experiences are racialized and unique to the POC experience?

Nope. Almost all the POC I know have a lot of experience navigating white-dominated spaces. They observe how white people treat other white people and how it differs from how they themselves get treated. They're not making unwarranted assumptions here.

That's one reason why I included the particular example I did: Exact same name, exact same participants. The only difference in the starting conditions was the perceived race of the person with the "exotic" name and that alone was enough to alter the behaviour of the other individuals. You could hardly ask for a better real-world experiment.

From the outside, it looks like you came upon a group of mostly black people who, unfamiliar with what it's like to be a white person with an exotic name, assumed that the problems they face having an unusual name stem from their being black and that white people mustn't have this issue. They likely think this not because they've had lots of personal experience seeing effort be put into white people's names and not theirs but more likely because they are racists and assume everything, including this, is easier for white people.

What leads you to this conclusion?

IME, BIPOC have much richer understanding of how white people treated in this country than white people do of how Black people are treated. It's not Black people who reacted with shockface-emojis when they see the latest viral video of some blatant act of everyday racism. They all know this happens to white people, too. They also know it doesn't happen as often or impact them in the same way.

You basically called them out on this and (surprise surprise!) they didn't like it. You, being a rather woke individual, are extremely open to having a black person tell you you're wrong about this and that you're being insensitive, so you capitulated and have now developed a justification for why you were wrong that enables you to swallow this indignation.

This is just what occurred to me as a strong possibility, I wasn't there and don't know the content of either that thread or, more importantly, the discussion you had with the owner of the thread which lead you to understand why your remarks weren't warranted the first time around, so I could be wrong.

I don't really feel comfortable sharing the whole conversation with my acquaintance (if he'd wanted it to be public, he'd've posted it publicly) but since this is a semi-anonymous space I feel comfortable sharing this particular quote:

Yes. I understand that your experience may be different. And Americans can be rude as you described. Rest assured: if they are rude to you, they are ruder to others. Sometimes much ruder.

(The incident he's refer to is my account of a USAmerican moderator point-blank refusing to say the surname of a participant out loud because it was French. I posted it in its own thread under the same post.)

Remember, they're not just speaking from their personal experience with their own names or the names of their family and friends. They're observing what happens in the larger society and taking notes. I've made the same observations. I wasn't disputing at all that there exists discrepancy in treatment due to race since I've seen it myself. I was mostly just quibbling with their examples. I think they may be overestimating how much of an effort white people put into pronouncing Irish names like "Saoirse Ronam" or "Siobhan Fahey" correctly--but I absolutely acknowledge that they do put in more effort than they do for African and African-American names like "Ijeoma Oluo" or "Lupita Nyong'o"

In fact, I thought of (and posted) my own example of this phenomenon. In 2012, a young woman named Quvenzhané Wallis was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. In fact, she became the youngest woman ever nominated (beating out Keisha Castle-Hughes by four years). It was an historic achievement. If you actually watched the awards (or read about them afterwards), you know what happened next was a disgrace. Tracy Clayton has summed up the situation quite well: http://www.postbourgie.com/2013/02/26/whats-in-a-name-kind-of-a-lot/.

In my post, I contrasted the treatment of Wallis to treatment of the actor Ralph Fiennes. His name also has a very idiosyncratic pronunciation--virtually anyone who attempts it will get it wrong the first time. But no one criticises his parents for this or suggests he should adopt an alias. But contrast, knowing how to correctly say his name is a mark of sophistication; if you get it wrong, it reflects badly on you. And that has everything to do with the fact that Fiennes is from a posh English family (his grandfather was Sir Maurice Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes) and trained at the Royal Academy while Wallis is the child of a schoolteacher and a truck driver, both Black, from Houma, Louisiana.

[Gormur]

Does that make sense?

No.

The fact that you, with your extremely limited experience of this vast world around us, haven’t previously encountered something doesn’t mean it was “made up”. Only a completely solipsistic individual could believe that.

I suppose. I don't actually believe it anyway. I'm just basing it off other peoples' assumptions. Thanks anyway

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

Nope. Almost all the POC I know have a lot of experience navigating white-dominated spaces. They observe how white people treat other white people and how it differs from how they themselves get treated. They're not making unwarranted assumptions here.

IME, BIPOC have much richer understanding of how white people treated in this country than white people do of how Black people are treated.

Remember, they're not just speaking from their personal experience with their own names or the names of their family and friends. They're observing what happens in the larger society and taking notes.

I can certainly understand why minorities have a better sense of what life is like for the majority than the reverse, given they have much more interactions with the majority than the other way around. But in this case, we're not just talking about POCs understanding of monolithic "white" culture, but rather the specific experience of white people with unusual names (unusual to your average American, that is). That's a subset of white people that are a minority in their own right, so what is the experience that POCs have of those particular people's lives? Is it hard to imagine that, through racial generalizations, some POCs may have overlooked that subgroup of white people, attributing to them a general exemption from cultural prejudice that they assume those people enjoy on account of their whiteness that isn't actually based on a particularly large amount of experience of it?

From the outside, it looks like you came upon a group of mostly black people who, unfamiliar with what it's like to be a white person with an exotic name, assumed that the problems they face having an unusual name stem from their being black and that white people mustn't have this issue. They likely think this not because they've had lots of personal experience seeing effort be put into white people's names and not theirs but more likely because they are racists and assume everything, including this, is easier for white people.

What leads you to this conclusion?

It's not so much a conclusion as a possibility, but to break it down point by point:

group of mostly black people who, unfamiliar with what it's like to be a white person with an exotic name

I think white people with unusual names are rare enough in the US that the average POC probably doesn't have much experience of how they're treated.

assumed that the problems they face having an unusual name stem from their being black and that white people mustn't have this issue. They likely think this not because they've had lots of personal experience seeing effort be put into white people's names and not theirs but more likely because they are racists and assume everything, including this, is easier for white people.

From what I've seen, racism is pretty common in the US, and I'm not restricting my definition of racism to white people who hate black people, as the other way around is not only possible but seems quite common as well.
It seems likely in this case as I found the comment "you don't double down like most white men" pretty racist, so that's giving me a sense of the mentality on the thread.

I don't really feel comfortable sharing the whole conversation with my acquaintance (if he'd wanted it to be public, he'd've posted it publicly) but since this is a semi-anonymous space I feel comfortable sharing this particular quote:

Yes. I understand that your experience may be different. And Americans can be rude as you described. Rest assured: if they are rude to you, they are ruder to others. Sometimes much ruder.

(The incident he's refer to is my account of a USAmerican moderator point-blank refusing to say the surname of a participant out loud because it was French. I posted it in its own thread under the same post.)

So in response to an example you gave of cultural intolerance involving white people whereby a white American refused to say a French name, your acquaintance said that while that's bad, if it were a POC on the receiving end it would be worse? But what's their basis for that?
I know you'll say experience, but I feel like prejudice is a pretty good contender here too. How do you know whether your acquaintance believes it would be worse for a POC because they've collected enough data to make a fair judgement or whether it's that they've been prejudiced against white people either through negative personal experience or cultural indoctrination (i.e. they are "woke")? I don't expect I'll be able to change your mind of your estimation of this person, but knowing you to the extent that I do, I wouldn't trust you to spot a devotee to wokeness, given I feel you are fairly close to being one (if not in fact one) yourself. Objectively, we can't know how this person drew their conclusion. You and I are likely to differ in our default assumption on this, and I'm not sure there's a way we can argue past that, but given that either of us could be right, it's at least something you should entertain as a possibility. I also accept the possibility that they haven't a racist bone in their body (though its hard to explain the "white men" comment in that case) and that they could be telling an objective truth.

Remember, they're not just speaking from their personal experience with their own names or the names of their family and friends. They're observing what happens in the larger society and taking notes. I've made the same observations. I wasn't disputing at all that there exists discrepancy in treatment due to race since I've seen it myself. I was mostly just quibbling with their examples. I think they may be overestimating how much of an effort white people put into pronouncing Irish names like "Saoirse Ronam" or "Siobhan Fahey" correctly--but I absolutely acknowledge that they do put in more effort than they do for African and African-American names like "Ijeoma Oluo" or "Lupita Nyong'o"

I've never been to the US, but from what I see online, Irish names are generally trotted out as a bizarre curiosity and hopeless mispronunciations of the names by Americans are used as a kind of joke at our expense. This is usually the worst of it, there's rarely open hostility. It is also true that a decent amount of the Americans I come across (though there's a filter effect at work here, as I come across the ones who bother coming to Ireland) are actively interested in Irish names, culture and language, usually on account of their having ancestry from here. I can easily imagine this ratio dropping severely in relation to African languages and cultures on account of a lack of ancestry. I can imagine, therefore, some degree of discrepancy in interest from white Americans in mastering Irish names vs African ones (or African American ones for that matter), but I can't say how significant it is. At the end of the day, is the difference significant enough to warrant POCs ire at the different treatment in this case? What if we were to examine the difference between the average white American's attitude to mastering the pronunciation of an Irish name vs the average American POCs attitude to the same? Do you expect it would be the same? What direction would you intuit any discrepancy to be in, if there were one?

In fact, I thought of (and posted) my own example of this phenomenon. In 2012, a young woman named Quvenzhané Wallis was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. In fact, she became the youngest woman ever nominated (beating out Keisha Castle-Hughes by four years). It was an historic achievement. If you actually watched the awards (or read about them afterwards), you know what happened next was a disgrace. Tracy Clayton has summed up the situation quite well: http://www.postbourgie.com/2013/02/26/whats-in-a-name-kind-of-a-lot/.

In my post, I contrasted the treatment of Wallis to treatment of the actor Ralph Fiennes. His name also has a very idiosyncratic pronunciation--virtually anyone who attempts it will get it wrong the first time. But no one criticises his parents for this or suggests he should adopt an alias. But contrast, knowing how to correctly say his name is a mark of sophistication; if you get it wrong, it reflects badly on you. And that has everything to do with the fact that Fiennes is from a posh English family (his grandfather was Sir Maurice Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes) and trained at the Royal Academy while Wallis is the child of a schoolteacher and a truck driver, both Black, from Houma, Louisiana.

That seems like a pretty clear case of prejudice alright, but is it racial prejudice or classism? Because making this about white people vs black people puts an awful lot of people who are neither posh nor English on the wrong side of that.

[linguoboy]

That's a subset of white people that are a minority in their own right, so what is the experience that POCs have of those particular people's lives? Is it hard to imagine that, through racial generalizations, some POCs may have overlooked that subgroup of white people, attributing to them a general exemption from cultural prejudice that they assume those people enjoy on account of their whiteness that isn't actually based on a particularly large amount of experience of it?

So if there's particular issue you have to deal with, doesn't it make you more sensitive to the experiences of other people who have to deal with that issues, even if their experience isn't like yours in other respects? Like does being an Irishman living abroad only sensitise you to the issues faced by other Irishmen living abroad or does it cause you to take more notice of how all foreign nationals are treated where you are? And do you not notice at least some of the differences in the kind of treatment afforded to some of those foreign nationals based upon characteristics like country of origin?

It's not so much a conclusion as a possibility, but to break it down point by point:

group of mostly black people who, unfamiliar with what it's like to be a white person with an exotic name

I think white people with unusual names are rare enough in the US that the average POC probably doesn't have much experience of how they're treated.

I think you don't know much about the USA if you think that. There's an incredible diversity of given names here[*]--as you would expect in a mass immigration nation. More than half of all European Americans identify their ethnic ancestry as something other than "American" or "English" and heritage names are common. The use of surnames as given names--for girls as well as boys--is a frequent practice, especially among those of British or "American" origin. Moreover--in stark contrast to most European countries--there are essentially no legal limits to what name somebody can adopt or give to a child. Coining new names is common. Despite the fact that we come from an extremely conservative naming tradition generally (being mostly Irish and German Catholics), my cousins coined a complete novel name for their child by combining elements of their respective given names.

The diversity of surnames is even greater. My surname is shared with only ten other living people in the entire USA. (And, in fact, I use a unique form of it, so not only am I the only person alive with this surname, I may be the only person with this surname who has ever lived.) And that's hardly unusual: 14% of the population has a surname which occurs fewer than 100 times in a population of 330 million people. (The top ten surnames cover less than 5% of the population; for Ireland, by comparison, the figure is 7.4%.) I live in an HOA with 12 households. Only three of the owners have a surname in the top 1000 most common surnames in the USA according to the 2010 census. The most common of these (Marquez) ranks 287 on the list.

So there are a lot of unusual names among white people here. People of all races have a lot of experience dealing with them.

From what I've seen, racism is pretty common in the US, and I'm not restricting my definition of racism to white people who hate black people, as the other way around is not only possible but seems quite common as well.

What you're calling "racism" here I would call "racial animus". These do not describe the same phenomena.

It seems likely in this case as I found the comment "you don't double down like most white men" pretty racist

He's absolutely right though. That is what white men tend to do in these sorts of situations. It's what you're doing right now. You are right now telling a USAmerican you know better than he does how racism operates in the USA and you're indirectly telling Black folks you're better at recognising racist behaviour than they are.

So in response to an example you gave of cultural intolerance involving white people whereby a white American refused to say a French name, your acquaintance said that while that's bad, if it were a POC on the receiving end it would be worse? But what's their basis for that?

I know you'll say experience, but I feel like prejudice is a pretty good contender here too. How do you know whether your acquaintance believes it would be worse for a POC because they've collected enough data to make a fair judgement or whether it's that they've been prejudiced against white people either through negative personal experience or cultural indoctrination (i.e. they are "woke")? I don't expect I'll be able to change your mind of your estimation of this person, but knowing you to the extent that I do, I wouldn't trust you to spot a devotee to wokeness, given I feel you are fairly close to being one (if not in fact one) yourself. Objectively, we can't know how this person drew their conclusion. You and I are likely to differ in our default assumption on this, and I'm not sure there's a way we can argue past that, but given that either of us could be right, it's at least something you should entertain as a possibility. I also accept the possibility that they haven't a racist bone in their body (though its hard to explain the "white men" comment in that case) and that they could be telling an objective truth.

"Wokeness" is not a cult, let alone some magical reality-distortion field. It's not even a coherent ideology. It's just a slang term for a loosely associated constellation of attitudes and ideas--so loose, indeed, that I have really no way of knowing what all you're grouping under this umbrella.

Your argument at this point is pure Bulverism. You hold the belief that "wokeness" is wrongheaded. Based on a few key phrases, you diagnose both me and the person I'm quoting as suffering from it. Then you use that as the basis on which to discount our testimony and our judgment. It's a circular argument.

I've never been to the US

...but you're not about to let that stop you from making sweeping generalisations about it!

from what I see online, Irish names are generally trotted out as a bizarre curiosity and hopeless mispronunciations of the names by Americans are used as a kind of joke at our expense. This is usually the worst of it, there's rarely open hostility. It is also true that a decent amount of the Americans I come across (though there's a filter effect at work here, as I come across the ones who bother coming to Ireland) are actively interested in Irish names, culture and language, usually on account of their having ancestry from here. I can easily imagine this ratio dropping severely in relation to African languages and cultures on account of a lack of ancestry. I can imagine, therefore, some degree of discrepancy in interest from white Americans in mastering Irish names vs African ones (or African American ones for that matter), but I can't say how significant it is. At the end of the day, is the difference significant enough to warrant POCs ire at the different treatment in this case? What if we were to examine the difference between the average white American's attitude to mastering the pronunciation of an Irish name vs the average American POCs attitude to the same? Do you expect it would be the same? What direction would you intuit any discrepancy to be in, if there were one?

A name shouldn't have to be from your own culture for you to care about not mangling it. I think even starting from different definitions, we can both agree that holding that view would be properly called "racist", right?

It's hard to overstate how important names are to the people who bear them. Getting them right is pretty much the basement when it comes to showing respect for another person. POC are not exempted from the expectation that they will pronounce other people's names correctly, even if they originate in a different culture. (YMMV, but, if anything, I generally find POC better at dealing with unusual names because they have more experience with this, often because they come from a culture where diversity and creative in given names is expected and because they're used to navigating a culture which is different from their own.)

That seems like a pretty clear case of prejudice alright, but is it racial prejudice or classism? Because making this about white people vs black people puts an awful lot of people who are neither posh nor English on the wrong side of that.

You can't easily separate the two in the USA. That's a pretty basic fact you need to understand if you're going to try to perform any kind of analysis our society. Social mobility in the USA has always been closely linked to being accepted as "white". It's why my ancestors moved easily into the middle class without even having to lose their accents.

I'm not "making this about white people vs black people"; white people, through our behaviour, are doing that. Black people are pointing it out. And white people who don't like having this pointed out are doing what they always do and blaming the Black people for noticing what they didn't notice and/or don't want to have to acknowledge.

[*] It's always hard to know what someone else will consider "exotic", but I'll point out that Nevaeh, Rylee, Gianna, Aaliyah, Skylar, Nova, and Kinsley were all among the top 100 most popular given names for girls in the USA in 2019. I've never met someone with any of those names; have you?

[vijayjohn]

This discussion reminds me that both BlackZ (remember him?) and I have names that are foreign to our heritage ethnicity. Whenever people ask me how to pronounce my name "correctly," my answer is "......" I have to say, I was pretty stunned at my sister-in-law's pronunciation of some Hindi words I'd taken for granted given how other Indians seem to pronounce them, including [ʋɪˈd͡ʒɛ]. (Also [ˈsaɽʱi] for sari and IIRC also [kəˈɽi] for curry).

[Yasna]

From what I've seen, racism is pretty common in the US, and I'm not restricting my definition of racism to white people who hate black people, as the other way around is not only possible but seems quite common as well.
It seems likely in this case as I found the comment "you don't double down like most white men" pretty racist, so that's giving me a sense of the mentality on the thread.

Those of us who hold black people to the same standards as everyone else can clearly recognize this as a racist comment. Anyone who disagrees, feel free to provide an example of a comment in the form of "you don't [negatively perceived action] like most black men" which wouldn't be considered racist.

[linguoboy]

Those of us who hold black people to the same standards as everyone else can clearly recognize this as a racist comment. Anyone who disagrees, feel free to provide an example of a comment in the form of "you don't [negatively perceived action] like most black men" which wouldn't be considered racist.

I could potentially give you a whole range of comments in this form which wouldn't be considered racist, depending on the background of the speaker, the listener(s), their relationship, and the context in which they occurred. Do you really not understand how context determines meaning, not even after nearly a decade of participation in a discussion group dedicated to language learning and linguistics?

[Yasna]

I could potentially give you a whole range of comments in this form which wouldn't be considered racist, depending on the background of the speaker, the listener(s), their relationship, and the context in which they occurred. Do you really not understand how context determines meaning, not even after nearly a decade of participation in a discussion group dedicated to language learning and linguistics?

Let's hear a couple of them (spoken by a white person).