Are Americans Racist?

This morning on the radio I heard a commentator talking about the present troubles in Ferguson say that if the racism in the US wasn’t tackled it could in the end ‘bring down the republic’.


Is racism so prevalent and powerful in the US (or parts of it) that the view that it could end the union is a valid one?

 

Racism is mostly promoted by the media always focusing on race. The issue in Ferguson has nothing to do with race, but it's being made out to be for political reasons pertaining to divide and conquer.

Racism is only alive in the minds of certain people (of all races) who choose, for whatever reason, to make it an issue.

Most people don't give two shits about race, except those who are truly ignorant, or those with a political agenda, who exploit the issue for their own disgusting gain.

There are things that will "end the republic," but racism is not one of them. It's merely a convenient distraction as the ship sinks.

 

Racism is few and far between, unless you want to make something a race issue when it is not. People are calling Officer Wilson a racist...why? Because he shot a man who attacked him? Do you call a black police officer a racist for shooting a white guy?

The problem is some in the black community do not want to take a hard look at themselves so they would rather blame anyone else.

 

I think there is a certain degree of racism in all people of all races. It is human nature. It's probably rooted as a survival instinct but certainly crops up as a problem in multicultural societies. The really racist people can not look past these racial stereotypes on an individual basis. When your racism blocks your basic reasoning, judgments and empathy then it becomes a major problem. Real racism is an unwavering bias toward all people of a certain race.

I have no tolerance for blatant racism, but I also have no tolerance or racist over-sensitivity: "Mary is a black bitch" is not necessarily a racist comment. "Mary is a bitch because she's black" is a racist comment.

When racism is a clear incident, I will sympathize with the victims. When a race of people invent an imaginary racist event because of their own ignorant biases, they will not get my sympathy. That is exactly what these Ferguson protesters are doing. They are making up a racist incident where there is absolutely no evidence, they refuse to acknowledge the facts of self defense. They refuse to acknowledge their own racism and biases. Black people can be just as racist as anyone else, just look how skewed the reasoning has become. To ruin a mans life for defending himself from violent aggression. THEIR racism is now the problem at hand.

 

Absolutely. It's good for cable news ratings.

I don't see it in young kids. They have to learn racism from adults.

I don't think the current generation of young white Americans is being taught racism at home like they used to in past decades. I do believe that black teens are learning from ethnic pop culture that white people are the cause of all their problems.

 

Right now racism in USA (or North America at large, as this applies to Canada too) is mostly institutional. Most people agree that races are a stupid and meaningless concept, but when it's time to deal with the system this good old racism comes out of the closet. Media, police, government, employers, social workers, etc., all seem to have integrated racist stereotypes and it influences the way they treat the people they deal with.

 

Long term, I can only see that becoming a serious issue if the Republican Party absolutely dominates American politics for years to come, and it continues its policy of showing no interest in the black vote. Black people feel extremely powerless in many red states, which is leading to frustration. They don't know what to do.

I can remember when racial violence was a lot worse than it is now. My high school had a big problem with that. There were years when my parents said we shouldn't go to Washington DC, even though it was an easy drive, because there was so much black on white violence in the tourist areas. In recent years, I've felt extremely safe in all the most popular areas of Washington except on the long walk between the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial, where there are lots of trees, poor lighting, and no subway stations. The Mall, the Smithsonian, White House, and Capitol Hill areas now feel perfectly safe to me, night and day.

In the face of a growing Hispanic population, I don't see how the GOP can continue for long as a white supremacy party. They don't say it openly, but that's pretty much what it is.

 

Really? I thought the Republican party was just another corporate-controlled party just like the Democrat party. The only difference is that Democrat politicians pander to minorities and pretend to give a shit about their plight in order to get votes. But what the fuck has the Democrat party done for the minorities of this country other than given them easier access to EBT cards? How is enabling dependency by perpetuating a welfare state helping anyone?

 

I'm not going to review the entire civil rights movement of the 1960's, or list all the important changes to law resulting from it. Ever heard of Lyndon B. Johnson?

 

The Republican controlled congress passed civil rights legislation in America. Who elected a Senator from South Carolina who is black...Republicans.

Helping minorities is not about giving more and more to them like Dems seem to think.

 

Your views are insulting to millions of people in America. And people wonder why there is a division in this country

 

But this is 2014 -- not 1968.

 

I don't think Americans are any more or any less "racist" (whatever that means anymore) than people in any other country around the globe.

From what I am seeing around where I am (Minnesota, a blue state), and from what I have read in various sources, Americans aren't becoming more "racist" but, instead, more racially aware. It transcends simple ideas like blue state and red state, democrat and republican. I am seeing a lot more of an "us" and "them" mentality which, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. The American Experiment, by and large, has failed and we are just alive to see it in its death throes. This is really the only logical outcome given the philosophy this nation was founded upon.

 

You're wasting your time telling me this. You and I don't get to decide where the black vote goes. Until something big changes, around 90% is going to go to the Democratic Party.

 

According to a Associated Press poll -

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

[SIZE=12pt]http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-poll-majority-harbor-prejudice-against-blacks[/SIZE]

 

Opposed to the people as individuals, or to the dominant ethnic culture of the group?

The only black couple I know personally is in that category that many of their peers describe as "not black enough". On a survey, they would surely give a lot of answers that might be considered "anti-black".

 

We can call it whatever we want, depending on what we're talking about....but I think humans just have a tendency to recognize things that we think are different than us. Black people/white people, rich people/poor people, men/women, people with brown hair/people with orange hair....etc, etc. We are always going to recognize those differences. Now...that doesn't mean we should hate each other but we will never be "color blind", we will never not notice differences. I hear people say that they just see us all as one race. That might sound good but it isn't any more true than me looking at my hands and saying they are the same. They are both hands but one is a left hand and the other is a right hand. I don't have to favor one over the other but I will always know that there is a difference.

 

Don't know why black folks get so mad. Hell, they were given free passage to so many nice places around the world. Opportunities to work for character building. Opportunities to learn a new language as spoken in the deep south of the greatest country on earth. And nowadays, a chance to live among their peers in blissful middle class life. Yup. Gotter' made here. Don't know why they ALL can't just 'get some jobs. ' They're all over the place and white folks are hiring.


Ferguson? Missouri? All I know about Missouri is that my ancestors "owned human machinery" there in that state. Reckon it remains

a "little"racist there.

 

Humans have all sorts of dysfunctional natural tendencies that we learn to overcome, mostly during childhood. Ongoing racism can be thought of as a failure of education.

Ethnic groups are nothing more than a social construct.

 

To be sure...I wasn't condoning racism or saying that it was natural. Just that we will always notice differences and I don't even think that has to be a bad thing. Nothing wrong with celebrating differences.