Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Of course it can. Who do you think has never wondered if they should cross the street at night to avoid someone in part because of their race? Or had less than charitable thoughts about an athlete or performer based on racial stereotypes? Or made fun of a person of color's non-typical name?
People (not me) used to call one of my high school classmates, who was a great student and musician in the band, an "oreo."* Teammates (and this one I have to cop to) used to rub the head of one of my few black teammates for "luck" before football games (in my defense, I truly did not see the racial issue at the time). What I did was racist, even though I wasn't aware of it.
I mean, do you remember the ethnic "jokes" of our (or at least my) youth? Maybe there's an argument that Millennials are doing a lot better (if so, that would be thanks to the PC movement of the '90s on), but yes, literally everyone our generation and older has shown bias against people of color.
I was going to refrain from pointing out that you're actually attempting to rely on a dictionary definition in a discussion of something deeply complex and nuanced, but you keep doing to so I will say: you can't be serious with this line of argument.
You also apparently either have lived some sort of crazy charmed life or you have had your head up your ass for your entire life.
You simply cannot get it through your head that it's not an insult, put down, or even moral judgment. It's an aspect of our culture that we need to recognize and accept if we even have any hope of eradicating it. Insisting otherwise is doing the opposite.
*ETA: Relatively recently, there was a racial incident of some type (can't remember what, thus squishy language) at our high school. He commented on Facebook about an article about it that he did not experience any of that when we were in school, which was heartening.
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Is American society racist? Yes.
Does that make every American necessarily racist? No.
Can you get around this? No. Because to do so you would have to prove every American is racist. What about the word "impossible" do you not grasp?
Your anecdotes are illustrative, but on what basis do you conclude we can extrapolate your experience to ALL Americans?
And the really dipshit thing about this conversation is I'm giving you an out. All you have to say is that some percentage of people are not racist. Which is a fact. I've said it now a dozen times -- this is an argument of degree. You're using some nebulous definition, and a very tenuous theory that culture around one makes him a racist regardless of his own thoughts or actions, to push this absolute theory.
Axioms are hard to assert. You're pushing a dubious theory like its gravity. And what's really strange is, I agree with you that we live in a racist system. You pretty much make the case that needs to be made right there, and yet you insist on saying what's indefensible: All Americans are racist. I'm baffled.
