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Have You Ever Experienced Racism?

Have You Ever Experienced Racism?

  • Yes

    Votes: 53 82.8%
  • No

    Votes: 6 9.4%
  • Not Sure

    Votes: 5 7.8%
  • Racism Is a Myth

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    64
The bolded part is what I don't agree with. I see no evidence of that whatsoever. Especially personally.

Don't you think *I* would know?

If you line up a person of every race in front of me, I'm not going to assume a damn thing about a single one of them. Why would I have to? Why would anyone?

I don't buy for a second that everyone in the fricken world is racist/prejudiced/whatever. And I fail to see any indication of that in the real world.
I'm not saying that you or anyone is noticeably (even to yourself) racist/prejudiced/whatever.

I'm saying that everyone has slight stereotypes/prejudices.

You may subconsciously counter them, even.
Or, you may be one of the exceptions, who somehow countered all of their past experiences and is totally unbiased.
I don’t know if that’s possible.

What I was saying, however, is that if you allow for the possibility that you MIGHT be biased in your reasoning, you probably won’t make decisions that are biased.
 
I'm not saying that you or anyone is noticeably (even to yourself) racist/prejudiced/whatever.

I'm saying that everyone has slight stereotypes/prejudices.

You may subconsciously counter them, even.
Or, you may be one of the exceptions, who somehow countered all of their past experiences and is totally unbiased.
I don’t know if that’s possible.

What I was saying, however, is that if you allow for the possibility that you MIGHT be biased in your reasoning, you probably won’t make decisions that are biased.

That's just it, I don't think I'm an exception at all. Somehow countered all of my past experiences? Why would my experiences make me biased against entire groups of people I don't even know? The only bias I have is against individuals who did me wrong. Why would I apply a negative experience with a brunette to all brunettes? There may be some who do that, but I seriously doubt that everyone does, as is being claimed here.
 
That's just it, I don't think I'm an exception at all. Somehow countered all of my past experiences? Why would my experiences make me biased against entire groups of people I don't even know? The only bias I have is against individuals who did me wrong. Why would I apply a negative experience with a brunette to all brunettes? There may be some who do that, but I seriously doubt that everyone does, as is being claimed here.
Some are saying that, judging by their past experiences, the majority of persons who fit into a certain sub-group tend towards certain actions in a given situation.

Like the one person's (or so they say) multiple negative experiences regarding the capability of female Asian drivers, and is more careful when near them due to such.

Now, I would view that as a stereotype.

Some might view it as sexist and racist.

In my mind, as long as one realizes that they tend to place some people into a stereotype box, they can avoid a blanket application of such.
 
Some are saying that, judging by their past experiences, the majority of persons who fit into a certain sub-group tend towards certain actions in a given situation.

Like the one person's (or so they say) multiple negative experiences regarding the capability of female Asian drivers, and is more careful when near them due to such.

Now, I would view that as a stereotype.

Some might view it as sexist and racist.

In my mind, as long as one realizes that they tend to place some people into a stereotype box, they can avoid a blanket application of such.

I not only agree, I think forming stereotypes is human nature and we can't not do it. When we see a growling dog, we back up slowly, because our past experiences with growling dogs have taught us that it could be dangerous. If we weren't able to place an individual/object into a category based off of some characteristic, we wouldn't have gotten far as a species.

So when I waited tables, and got a table full of african-americans, I tried to pass them off cause they have a tendency not to tip. Stereotypical? You betcha. Was also 100% true in my restaurant career. Sometimes sterotypes are right.
 
Some are saying that, judging by their past experiences, the majority of persons who fit into a certain sub-group tend towards certain actions in a given situation.

I have to say that I haven't noticed those trends. I see people as individuals.

I've spent the majority of my career being the minority...working in heavily black/latino neighborhoods. What I've found is that it's really impossible to stereotype with any degree of accuracy. It is not a system of dealing with people that I've found useful.

My parents both have racist impulses, and expressed them frequently. For whatever reason, my brother and I were not infected with their views.
 
So when I waited tables, and got a table full of african-americans, I tried to pass them off cause they have a tendency not to tip. Stereotypical? You betcha. Was also 100% true in my restaurant career. Sometimes sterotypes are right.

My black friends tip. I find it interesting that based upon your experiences, the stereotype is right. Based upon mine, it's dead wrong.
 
Sadly yes. I have seen actions from KKK members driving and stopping at a young black couples house to a few teenage black kids keeping a few teenage white kids from going to a pool simple because of skin color. I had a friend that wouldn't let anyone in his car unless they were white. Racism is a sad thing to witness.
 
I haven't experienced racism persay.

But when I moved from England to South Africa, alot of people implied I had AIDS cause I was from there. And simply because I was from another country use to call me illegal immigrant. But I none of this in my mind counts as racism.
 
My black friends tip. I find it interesting that based upon your experiences, the stereotype is right. Based upon mine, it's dead wrong.

Shoulda sent your black friends my way!

They had a 100% track record in my experience. Now I can see how often it can be a self fulfilling prophecy (ie. I don't think you're going to tip, so I'm going to give you crappy service), but I sincerely hope that wasn't the case in my situation. I wasn't just making a buck at college, I started out as a professional server and bad service, regardless of the reason, wasn't an option. I've also worked the full range of restaurants, from fine dining to (shudder) a rib shack, so from my anecdotal evidence, it doesn't appear to be a socio-economic phenomenon.

Now don't get me wrong, I've waited on plenty of pleasant, very nice black people. They just pleasantly stiff you at the end of the dinner! I didn't mind, after a couple years. You start treating it like the stock markets. You gotta take the down days along with the ups.
 
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It may also be that the people I work with, for whatever reason, are more worldly and well-traveled, and there is peer pressure to tip.
 
Me too! I am better educated and have a great deal more experience than my white female boss, or HER white female division chief, and HER black female director...and better education and experience but less rank than HER boss...the white female wing commander, and HER boss...the OTHER white female BASE commander...

I'm tellin ya...theres a glass ceiling out there...

;-)

It DOES exist. Not downplaying womens experiences...believe me...I saw it in the military a LOT. But in todays PC world it is just as likely to be employed, but in a 'corrective' manner. And its STILL a form of 'ism'.

And personally...I dont care. I've got a GREAT job and I REALLY like working under 5 women...its GOOD to let them all get on top! ;) ( for the record...every one of them is VERY GOOD at what they do...)


I wasn't necessarily speaking about "glass ceilings". I was referring more to the attitudes women are met with, as compared to male counterparts. :?
 
I wasn't necessarily speaking about "glass ceilings". I was referring more to the attitudes women are met with, as compared to male counterparts. :?

I think that as a woman in a man's field, I'm always greeted with a faint smirk of condescension. It always takes me slightly longer to prove myself, to show that I really know what I'm talking about, that I've really done the job and I know it backwards and forwards.

As I get older, it gets slightly easier, but the fact that I'm an attractive woman is, and always will be, an obstacle in some ways. On the other hand, in some ways, it is also an advantage.

As a woman, I can do things men can't. And I'm well aware of that. Everything is a trade off.
 
I think that as a woman in a man's field, I'm always greeted with a faint smirk of condescension. It always takes me slightly longer to prove myself, to show that I really know what I'm talking about, that I've really done the job and I know it backwards and forwards.

As I get older, it gets slightly easier, but the fact that I'm an attractive woman is, and always will be, an obstacle in some ways. On the other hand, in some ways, it is also an advantage.

As a woman, I can do things men can't. And I'm well aware of that. Everything is a trade off.

I agree wholeheartedly, and that is what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned sexism.

It happens almost daily. A man will have to interact with me and approaches with an air of condescension as if I'm not going to be able to find my ass with my two hands. Normally it starts out the way, but ends differently... with at least them losing that superior attitude and just treating me as a very capable and experienced PERSON who is doing my job.

I don't want to be treated as a man - I am a woman and there ARE differences between the sexes and thank god for that... however... I want to be treated as the person that I am and not someone's second class citizen simply because I'm female. Period.
 
I not only agree, I think forming stereotypes is human nature and we can't not do it. When we see a growling dog, we back up slowly, because our past experiences with growling dogs have taught us that it could be dangerous. If we weren't able to place an individual/object into a category based off of some characteristic, we wouldn't have gotten far as a species.

I agree, in part. I stated in another thread that "it’s actually quite rare that the starting point of racism is belief in the genetic inferiority of certain racial groups. More often, it’s related to perceived aggression or offense from a group of people highly populated by a certain race or ethnic group, with discrimination against that race or ethnic group then becoming a convenient mechanism for quickly and effectively categorizing them."

In that thread, we were discussing the allegedly racist attitudes of the Minuteman Project and border vigilantes. I first referred to the cognivite scientist George Lakoff's commentary on the social conservative's view of illegal immigrants and the violation of their moral values that such immigrants' behavior involves.

Within Strict Father [conservative] morality, illegal immigrants are seen as lawbreakers (“illegals”) who should be punished. People who hire them are just pursuing their self-interest, as they should, and so are doing nothing wrong. [Of course, that’s not always true anymore.] From the perspective of the Nation as Family metaphor, illegal immigrants are not citizens, hence they are not children in our family. To be expected to provide food, housing, and health care for illegal immigrants is like being expected to feed, house, and care for other children in the neighborhood who are coming into our house without permission. They weren’t invited, they have no business being here, and we have no responsibility to take care of them.

I then commented that "as illegal immigrants are viewed that way, and as most illegal immigrants are persons of full or mixed-blooded Indian descent, and given that most Americans incorrectly consider Mexicans a racial group and group Indians of Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, or Salvadorean descent (just to offer several examples) into the “Mexican” group, it’s not surprising that you hear Mexican jokes or slurs; “Mexican” identity has become a way to easily aggregate the people violating the social conservatives’ moral precepts."

Let's consider the example of blacks next, who are stereotypically regarded as being the greatest users of social welfare programs in the country. Apart from being inaccurate, since whites use more total welfare (because of their greater numbers), and there is thus a greater probability of encountering a white welfare user than a black one, welfare provision is regarded as another violation of the social conservative's principes. It is considered to be free provision of rewards to a person that has not worked for it, thereby undermining individual responsibility and self-reliance. (That this is misleading and untrue is irrelevant; the fact that social conservatives believe it to be true is the important part.) If blacks are regarded as the primary users of welfare services, then it stands to reason that blacks would also be regarded as uniquely irresponsible. Blackness then becomes a convenient mechanism for quickly and effectively mentally categorizing welfare users, with certain "urban" traits (speech in the black dialect, a certain style of dress and appearance, etc.) strengthening the categorization more.

This hardly stems from a pre-existing belief in black racial inferiority; it's just that black skin color is associated with welfare usage, high crime rates, and other aspects of "ghetto" life that social conservatives regard as profoundly immoral. And that can lead to racial discrimination, even if the offender is not aware of the exact nature of his or her conduct.

So when I waited tables, and got a table full of african-americans, I tried to pass them off cause they have a tendency not to tip. Stereotypical? You betcha. Was also 100% true in my restaurant career. Sometimes sterotypes are right.

This sort of racial discrimination would be dismissed by most people as relatively innocuous, and I do tend to agree to some extent. It's not related to any significant social institutions that affect the average daily lives or conditions of blacks, and can thus cause relatively little harm. And more than anything else, it's symptomatic of a more racist socio-cultural environment than a direct cause of the illness. You've developed expectations of blacks based on the fact that their behavior patterns seem to deviate from those of whites.

At some point in the future, when differential treatment and conditions of whites and blacks ceases to exist, perceptions of very significant divergences in behavior patterns will also fade away. For example, I wouldn't expect you to discriminate between WASP patrons and "white ethnic" patrons because you've not been conditioned to expect different behavior patterns from the latter group, or even to be able to quickly identify them as distinct, as people were able to do in times past. I might have expected a waiter in 1910 to treat Italian patrons differently than the "Anglo-American" patrons, but I'd hardly expect it in 2010 because the WASP and Italian populations are similarly socialized now, with Italian ethnic background being a novel curiosity rather than a life-changing stigma.
 
Some are saying that, judging by their past experiences, the majority of persons who fit into a certain sub-group tend towards certain actions in a given situation.

Like the one person's (or so they say) multiple negative experiences regarding the capability of female Asian drivers, and is more careful when near them due to such.

Now, I would view that as a stereotype.

Some might view it as sexist and racist.

In my mind, as long as one realizes that they tend to place some people into a stereotype box, they can avoid a blanket application of such.
I just don't see people as members of a big group and make blanket assumptions about them. Nothing in my past experiences makes me judge an entire race of people because there has been no consistent behavior in any one race of people, in my experience. I see and treat people as individuals.
 
I not only agree, I think forming stereotypes is human nature and we can't not do it. When we see a growling dog, we back up slowly, because our past experiences with growling dogs have taught us that it could be dangerous. If we weren't able to place an individual/object into a category based off of some characteristic, we wouldn't have gotten far as a species.

So when I waited tables, and got a table full of african-americans, I tried to pass them off cause they have a tendency not to tip. Stereotypical? You betcha. Was also 100% true in my restaurant career. Sometimes sterotypes are right.

Before I was married, I dated a woman who worked at a TGIF. It was in an area that bordered on upper middle class white neighborhoods and one of the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the county so it had whites and blacks of generally the same socio economic background and most attended the highly ranked public school nearby. I can testify to your experience because I was there all the time waiting for her to get off work--I usually sat in her section or at the bar (not a drinker but I was treated as family by the people who worked there). I saw time after time Black HS and college age kids stiff servers. One of the servers was a very articulate young black lady whose brother was at Harvard Law, she was going to the local medical school.

One day a large group of black hs kids celebrating a birthday. This black server noted to me "I sure hope they don't sit in my section--I haven't made squat tonight" She said that blacks always stiff her so it was not racist. Anyway, a white server got them-they camped out for two hours, and left her about 2 dollars on a 250 dollar bill and of course filled up her whole section during the prime time of 8-10 on a friday night. They ran her ragged such as she would ask them if they needed anything and only one would say Another coke. when she brought it, another would say I need a refill and they were laughing about it

the manager told them not to ever come back. The head one called him a Racist!!,, the black kitchen manager came out and told them in no uncertain terms to get the F out of there.

Hate to say it but some "racism" is based on an objective basis as that Indian former editor of the Dartmouth Review noted in his book "The End of Racism" where he noted cabbies in NYC avoid black males not because of racism but because over a 5 year period almost every cabbie in NYC murdered was murdered by black males
 
I lived in Utah for 10 years, and your statement makes me wonder if you've ever been there.
Not the point; he could have said Antarctica, or the North Pole.
Racism exists, to deny this is "the head in the sand".
Acknowledging its existence is the first step to "recovery".
 
Before I was married, I dated a woman who worked at a TGIF. It was in an area that bordered on upper middle class white neighborhoods and one of the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the county so it had whites and blacks of generally the same socio economic background and most attended the highly ranked public school nearby. I can testify to your experience because I was there all the time waiting for her to get off work--I usually sat in her section or at the bar (not a drinker but I was treated as family by the people who worked there). I saw time after time Black HS and college age kids stiff servers. One of the servers was a very articulate young black lady whose brother was at Harvard Law, she was going to the local medical school.

One day a large group of black hs kids celebrating a birthday. This black server noted to me "I sure hope they don't sit in my section--I haven't made squat tonight" She said that blacks always stiff her so it was not racist. Anyway, a white server got them-they camped out for two hours, and left her about 2 dollars on a 250 dollar bill and of course filled up her whole section during the prime time of 8-10 on a friday night. They ran her ragged such as she would ask them if they needed anything and only one would say Another coke. when she brought it, another would say I need a refill and they were laughing about it

the manager told them not to ever come back. The head one called him a Racist!!,, the black kitchen manager came out and told them in no uncertain terms to get the F out of there.

Hate to say it but some "racism" is based on an objective basis as that Indian former editor of the Dartmouth Review noted in his book "The End of Racism" where he noted cabbies in NYC avoid black males not because of racism but because over a 5 year period almost every cabbie in NYC murdered was murdered by black males

Like I said, sometimes stereotypes are right! It sucks, and I wish it wasn't that way, but we form stereotypes for a reason. It was a defense mechanism back in the day and still is in a way. Like if I manage to foist a table I know isn't going to tip on to some newbie server then I get to make better money that night.

I know there are exceptions. There always are. I just didn't come across one in my seven years of waiting tables.
 
Not the point; he could have said Antarctica, or the North Pole.
Racism exists, to deny this is "the head in the sand".
Acknowledging its existence is the first step to "recovery".

Racism exists even in the mountains of Utah. That's my point.
 
Like I said, sometimes stereotypes are right! It sucks, and I wish it wasn't that way, but we form stereotypes for a reason. It was a defense mechanism back in the day and still is in a way. Like if I manage to foist a table I know isn't going to tip on to some newbie server then I get to make better money that night.

I know there are exceptions. There always are. I just didn't come across one in my seven years of waiting tables.

Well Even Jesse Jackson noted that if he was walking down a dark street one night and saw four young men coming his way he'd be relieved to find they were Jewish Boys wearing yarmulkes vs Black dudes wearing gang colors
 
I've only encountered racism towards me once.

I have to listen to sexist bull**** from the females in my class every day. But that's ok. They can keep the man-hate, I'll keep the extra 23% in my paycheck :2razz:
 
On the basis of their race? No.

Lets pretend Catz has to make a choice between two almost identical neighborhoods to move to. But the only thing different between these two neighborhoods is the skin color. Would you pick the black neighborhood or the white neighborhood? And you have to pick either one, so which one is it going to be, Cat?

A) White

B) Black
 
I just don't see people as members of a big group and make blanket assumptions about them. Nothing in my past experiences makes me judge an entire race of people because there has been no consistent behavior in any one race of people, in my experience. I see and treat people as individuals.
So, as a hypothetical, you are telling me that if:

You, during your days of running people down a river (If memory serves, you mentioned white-water rafting?), experianced that a majority of white males of an age within 10-15 years of you (excluding those with certian religious backgrounds) tried to hit on you at some point during the trip.

Are you saying that, given the above, you would not then form a stereotype that would lead you to expect this behavior out of any other white males within 10-15 years of your age, when transported down a river by a female of your general attractiveness?

I think that you might.
 
Lets pretend Catz has to make a choice between two almost identical neighborhoods to move to. But the only thing different between these two neighborhoods is the skin color. Would you pick the black neighborhood or the white neighborhood? And you have to pick either one, so which one is it going to be, Cat?

A) White

B) Black
What are the slight differences you mention (as inferred by your "almost identical")?
 
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