raccism -- how does it start?

[Venetia]

i was about to make a legit serious post in
viewtopic.php?f=175&p=796966#p796966
and realized lolrecroom.

so i made it here for discuss making.


re: supremacy sites like stormfront.org

all the content is super lol, but ... well it kind of makes me sick when i remind myself these people legit think these things :[

it can't be all upbringing.

when i was growing up, if my parents or friends said weird shit, i'd go "hey thats weird shit" and form my own opinion.

most of these people seem to be able to form cogent sentences and string together abstract ideas or anecdotes ... it can't all be ignorance, either.

like ok, i can understand knee-jerk reactions in response to general stereotyping.
I can't help but expect a latina chick named Lupe, who's walking around in glittery-gold heels with 6-inch nails, talking on a phone to her friend, to be discussing something rather vapid.
When I see a group of black folk standing outside a liquor store on the shit side of town, listening to their friend's car's new sound system that probably cost more than a few months' rent, I go "lolblax".

These are all situational rationalizations though. I look at Nascar lovers and say "lolrednecks". But I never even gave another thought to a black college professor--it's not like he's going to be a shittier professor because he has extra melanin :/

other races experience "reverse-racism" too--but the causes for that are more overt, as they were likely targets of racism themselves many times and are simply embittered, I suppose.

but it's 2010 ... why haven't these people realized that they are dinosaurs of thought?


I can only liken these types of people to, for example, people who are afraid of puppies. One dog scared them as a kid and now they live forever with absolutely irrational, absurd cynophobia. But then ... How does it turn into hate?



what has to happen to you in life that'll make you start really vehemently believing in supremacy?

 

[Fusty]

The thing that surprised me the most on that site was their incredibly large userbase.
On the subject of how racism starts however, I think that the media is partially responsible for it.
In my country for example (The Netherlands) a politician named Geert Wilders (You might have heard from him) is trying to spread his beliefs about the Islam and immigrants. (He pretty much hates both)
The media spends so much time on him that it eventually led to a lot of people agreeing with him and thus voting for him.
When you ask those same people why they agree with him however, all they can say is: Uhh.. well... There are too many immigrants.
They completely ignore everything else that he stands for and only focus on the things they've seen on tv.
I think that if the media would spend less time on subjects like these a lot less people would be influenced.

 

[Incognitus]

Human beings only have a capacity to emphasize with a certain number of people as individuals. Everyone outside that just becomes an abstraction (the Monkeysphere" or Dunbar's Number).

Hence most people outside become identified with one or two characteristics not limited to the obvious such as skin colour. A lot of stereotypes are routed in facts/observation and real fears; "the X-es are stealing our jobs!" for instance.

Combine this with tribalism, nationalism and egotism (inevitably - after all, OUR LOT haven't done anything wrong - and if they did, it's justifiable because...) produces a racist.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_wh ... phere.html

 

[Ellie]

Generally the people I see tooting "the x are stealing our jobs" don't have jobs, don't want jobs, go to the job centre to pick up their dole check, and have had every opportunity to get one... and wouldn't have done the "stolen" job even if it was offered to them.

But then even that is a generalisation!

 

[Anski]

A good amount of it is upbringing though. Being a Texan (The only other popular person here I know of that is the from the same state is moog) my parents were/still are eminently racist. My father traveled the world in the Navy and was pretty much racist to everyone. But it's not a white being supreme argument, but rather that the stereotypes of the race make up the amassing populace and therefore the hate isn't very selective. A man who's still best friends with my father saved his life, and is very black.

However, we don't live in the deep south here in Texas, being as far north as I am. The general white supremacy racism that is here breeds from people who's families have been here since the age of discrimination and even as back as slavery. In short, I truly believe that the major part of supremacy racism is the upbringing, not due to bad or biased upbringing in particular, but family tradition. My mother was from North California and my father's blood comes from New York, i'm the only person in this state with my last name from my bloodline. It's a type of mindset someone is put into when they're young, whether it's culture or upbringing, that turns them out to spoil their view of everyone.

 

[Anski]

To further, I hate stereotypes just as everyone else, but one of my best friends is black, he's even listed as my brother on Facebook. I managed to come out of my upbringing, which wasn't abhorrently intolerant 'kill-all-dem-nyggas' mindset, but it was still pretty bad. Reading, becoming a more open (see: Liberal) person, and more versed in the knowledge of how the human race can survive in the future really brought me out of the mindset. And besides, nothing is going to happen if you sit on your porch all day complaining about blacks.

 

[moog]

south carolina is racist as fuck but after going to North Texas like anski said, its pretty bad. i live in the southern most city in the united states, and all we have here are a bunch of chilled out mexicans. seriously, if you want to find the most anti-racist part of the USA, just head to brownsville. there are like 10 black people, a handful of whiteys and a ton of mexicans, but everyone is SUPER NICE. Ive never made as many friends as fast as I have here. After coming from racist ass SC, I can honestly say that I enjoy being in an area with the same demographic as opposed to a ton of diversity.

then again, anski goes to Tex tech (im pretty sure) up in lubbock, which ive heard isnt THAT bad. Its mostly houston if I remember correctly.

 

[Sauk]

Racism starts with a lack of knowledge.

A lot of people deem others to be a certain " race " without knowing what the term actually means, or how someone constitutes as their own " race ". In the general sense, race has no meaning. It is literally a meaningless word used to describe physical attributes, since humans literally cannot have something that isn't labelled ( things without labels freak humanity out ). Race in the scientific sense means sub-species. So, the irony of calling someone a racist is in turn racist because the definition of racist is to think that a group of people are different from yours ( remember, race means sub-species ).

I don't know too many anthropological terms, but there are apparently 3 groups of hominid : Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.

Mongoloid: Native Americans, Philippians, Thai, Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean ( anyone asian ).

Negroid: Black Africans, Native Australians

Caucasoid: White Americans, Spaniards, Europeans, Italians, Semitic Arabs, Pakistanis, etc.


MEXICAN, PUERTO RICAN, ETC. ARE A MIX BETWEEN NATIVES AND SPANIARDS / BLACKS, THEY AREN'T THEIR OWN GROUP OF PEOPLE, THEY ARE A NATIONALITY.



Now that we have that clear, racism in terms of Black VS White ( in America ) stems from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the mis-information that is taught. Africans were buying and selling slaves for thousands of years, it was a common practice amongst the whole world. They were buying / selling slaves amongst their own people AND to the Arabs.

People tend to blame the English and Americans for " stealing ' their people, but the Arabics, French, Spaniards and Dutch had a hand in buying slaves well before the English got involved; They just manipulated it better. Pretend you're Asian and you've never seen a white person before. Someone sells you that person and tells you that their lives are valueless except for work. How would you treat that person, when you were told they were less than human? It isn't hard to believe that the African slavers would tell the European buyers that they were less than human, since the slaves being sold were mostly Enemy tribe POW'S.

The slave owners would then tell their kids what they were taught, who would tell their kids what they were taught, etc. etc. until TA-DA! The birth of Black VS. White racism in America.


Slaver Owners didn't buy slaves because they were " racist ", they became " racist " from buying slaves.