Do white people have an unconcious collective prejudice against those of color?

DaveC426913

"I have come to the sad conclusion after all these years that we white people seem to be born with an unconscious prejudice against our brethren of color."

If I may:

1] Anecdotal information - even yours (though you have an impressive worldliness) - is poor evidence for drawing objective conclusions.

2] There is very rarely consideration for racism between other cultures. Do we really stop to consider how, for example, Africans feel about East Indians?

3] It is not a personal thing between two specific races. We become aware of- and fear- that which appears different. It is a general thing, which becomes more pronounced the more obvious the difference. We don't have an obvious racist attitude towards, say Italians (or any other white culture), because frankly, it is difficult to distinguish them. When you hear of a shooting on the news, the primary piece of identifying information is the colour of the person. We hear that the shooter is black, or white. We do NOT hear that he is Italian or Irish.




"Here in Brasil, most middleclass families have a maid, most often, colored."

This is not an individual decision, it is institutionalized. If 90 percent of the candidates for housekeeping are, in fact, black, there's a 90% chance that you will end up with a black maid, no matter how you feel about it.



I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, I do believe you are correct, it's just not as simple or (pardon the pun) as black and white as that.

Polly

Can anyone ask 42 to read my previous post? Bin Laden is leaving on a helicopter!!

Joel

Umm, no. Could you enlighten me?

the number 42

Let me try again.

"Hang on - you're not Jewish, are you? "

the number 42

Uh? Tell me more. Is the pilot too White or something?

Joel

I'd say, 'huh', but it would be too cruel to let the comedian die on the stage.

the number 42

That there is comedianism, bud.

klusener

No, it was brought much earlier. But dalits are a different matter, remember there are many castes. Dalits are predominantly in the North and me being from the South I don't know much about them but I think they are similar to Naxalites (sp?) in Andhra Pradesh, who use violence against the landlords. Dalits are at the bottom I think, so Brahmins wouldn't choose to do that even if they could, usually they just choose a lower caste (but not too low ) in school certificates and things like that, but still follow Brahmin customs, that's the only way some of them can get into medical schools and such, which are hard to get into on merit...

Joel

I must appologise for any sins I have made and hope for redemption. Do you think those Hail Marys will help me, 42?

the number 42

Hail Marys are for girls. Saturday night is for VODKA!!! See you later, I'm going out.

Evo

Prejudice, racism, discrimination are all learned. Perhaps there is to a small degree a natural tendency to be wary of things that are not familiar to us.

I am white and I was born and raised in the southern part of the US, in Houston, TX. My mother is French and I was raised to be understanding and caring of those less fortunate than us. My mother explained racism towards black people and why it was wrong. As a result, I grew up in a community that was very prejudiced towards blacks & hispanics without becoming prejudiced (btw, Americans don't consider people from India to be black, even though some are much darker than African Americans, some people from Mexico have darker skin than African Americans, it's not so much skin color as ethnic group).

There was a movie when I was a little girl called "South Pacific" which is in part about the racial discrimination of the native Pacific Islanders. This was the first time that I became aware of just how varied and widespread racism was. There is a song by Rogers & Hammerstein that really stuck with me.

"You've got to be carefully taught"

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Joel

Have a good one! I'll do a couple of Our Fathers then, just to be safe. (And read about enzymes used to digest vodka, while your out drinking it...)

Clausius2

Go to a marginal outskirt (some like where I live) and you will change the title of your thread:

"Do black people/muslims/gypsies have an unconcious collective prejudice against those of white color?"

klusener

Well I think it is more of a "fear" against whites than a racist attitude. You should read "The Shadow of the Sun" by Ryszard Kapucinski, a Polish author, one of the best commentaries of Africa from the 1960s to the present, he says how Africans still remember how white people came to their land during the colonial times and well into 1936 into Nigeria, I think or some country close to that, and stole them and sold them into slavery. So I think for Africans, that element of fear and distrust still lies in them. I am not sure this exists for Afro-Americans though..

As for Muslims, I don't know, the Muslims I know are almost white as whites you see in America, for example some muslims from Lebanon and in the Middle East are whiter than Americans, but I realize that OBL is darker than Americans, so maybe those from the Hindu-Kush area are probably darker.

singleton

I would venture to say that everyone has an unconcious prejudice towards anyone who is different. It just so happens that skin colour is the first factor in any social context (you see their skin before you hear their accent or listen to their words). There is nothing "bad" about it and it will never change unless some day in thousands of years there are no longer "purebreds" of any race but humans are just "mutts" :P.

Everyone feels most comfortable around those most like themselves [obvious].

klusener

I remember after 9/11, some Indians in NYC wore crosses on their necks, so the mainstream American wouldn't mistake them for Muslim, because some poor Punjabi gas station owner was murdered by an American because he mistook him for a Muslim. Americans might still remember the news, maybe... Many Pakistanis were also brutalized after 9/11...

Amusingly, I also remember a kid in my school who had lived in America for some years, (near Cupertino (sp?), California I think) and the Americans in his school used to make fun of him because he brought Indian food to school and they teased him for it. His parents were doctors and after a while he was so psychologically scarred that they quit their practice in America and moved back to India. Now that i think about it, I shouldn't have said amusingly, it was actually pretty sad..

Astronuc

White persons (European) or individuals of any other ethnic group are not inherently racist or ethnist. Rather, as others have indicated, such negative behavior is learned - transmitted from adults to children, from older generations to the next.

My father worked for the World Council of Churches for a few years, and my parents entertained people from all over the world. I was accustomed to seeing people from Africa, Asia and SE Asia, as well as European. My parents also taught me that all peoples are equal.

I am an expatriated Aussie living in the US. I came with my family to US, and lived not to far from Evo, in the mid 60's and 70's. That was a time of turmoil in the US concerning the civil rights of minorities, and 1968 was tumultous year with the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Chicago riots during the democratic convention, and the open racism across the US. Adding to that was the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement, as well as various counter-culture movements.

I had several friends of African-American (black), Hispanic (brown) and Asian (color?) descent, as well as European. It would have been strange for me not to. On the other hand, as I matured, I learned that not everyone felt that way, and I also came to realize that US society was heavily segregated.

During one summer in the 1970's, I worked at an oil refinery for a summer job. The personnel were integrated, but during breaks and lunch, the white males went upstairs to socialize, the black males went downstairs, the women and others (generally older) congregated on the main floor. I was amazed. I drifted among the groups, but spent most of my time downstairs. In the evening everyone left for home, and the blacks would generally go to a predominantly black neighborhood, whites to white neighborhoods, hispanics to hispanic neighborhoods, and so on. That is the way it was, and still is in many parts of the US.

I got to know most of the people with whom I worked. At the end of the summer, I left to return to university. I went to say good-bye to my new black friends, and to thank them for sharing their time with me. One, with whom I have been particularly close during the summer, said to me, "You're not like other white people." I was very sad, and not surprised, to hear that.

Racism, ethnism, nationalism, chauvinism, etc are still part of humanity today. It's not just whites, it is every ethnic or racial group. I would hope that humanity would now be making greater and faster progress to overcome what is effectively a continuation of tribalism and clanism. We still have a long way to go.