Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Every single poster here, including TM, has subconscious prejudices about people who are not like them.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I liked the part of Obama's speech where he reached out to conservatives by talking about being an immigrant from Kenya.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

This reminds of a story that Ralph Ellison tells in Going To The Territory (?). He was going door-to-door for some job in a miserable tenement in a black neighborhood, and he gets to one door and can hear that there's a huge argument inside that apartment. He's scared and thinks about getting out of there, but he stands and listens and realizes that it's a couple of guys who work backstage at the Met and they're arguing about opera.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

The people who go on and on about crime on NextDoor are miserable, whether they live in Michigan or California. It's better to just ignore them.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

think you whiffed here sonny.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

all these old people that have no idea how to converse politely in a chat room (hi Sidd!!!) but they are my neighbors, and yelling at other neighbors. I'd rather read the "some people don't shovel their walks" stuff than Penthouse Forum.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

True. That's why in the instant when the decision to pull the trigger is made, it's pulled.

But what brought that cop to that area, and what made him think he could treat that kid like a second class citizen, which set the stage for that horrible decision, is more complex than race.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

2. The person who's warning about burglars is the dullest fuck in the extended social scene.

I don't care that your purse was stolen from your SUV, you atrocious bore. (I kind of wish you were kidnapped. Because I know your husband, and he'd never pay the ransom.)

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

It's posts like this that drove Atticus and his fist of God away.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

You made a stupid assumption, that anyone who posited himself as racially tolerant but really was not, must be a "lib." I called you on it.

Apparently that was hard for you to take.

You've now pulled out your deadly rhetorical wet noodles of death and tried to lash me with them three times. Get over it, baby-cakes.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

no I didn't

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I'm not sure how to respond. Am I talking about blame or is that how you choose to view the issue? What difference does it make to me if you treat me like an asshole because you had a negative experience with a black person once? Why are we talking about me placing blame wrongly on you because of that? Seems like bullshit to me. You're still treating me like an asshole. You don't cut me slack for being a dick to you because a tall person punched me for no reason at some point in my life. Sure, there are some people who have negative experiences with black people and that may color their interactions with black people to a certain extent. But why is every black person held responsible as a group for the actions of someone they don't even know?

I believe (for example) that negative interactions one may have with a white teen jackass won't have the same impact on one's actions as a negative interaction with a black teen jackass because any negative stereotypes that are learned and cultivated (through all the items I listed in the post above) are reinforced with one or two small negative experiences.

But the issue isn't one of blame for me. It's one of acceptance. Will white people, generally, ever accept that they have these negative influences and, as a result, negative behavior? From what I see, it always turns into a discussion of trying to explain why certain behavior might not be attributed to latent or outright racism or how they shouldn't be blamed for stuff. If they would just accept that it exists, even if it's just an acceptance of unconscious bias, then maybe they will recognize their behavior and actually try to address it.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

tnc

eta don't understand why this site sometimes strips the capital letters

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

May I just say, I know I have all kinds of race related prejudices and biases along the way that I struggle with and try to get rid of, but the longer this discussion goes on the less I like white people. Fuckin' white people.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I'm not sure I can answer all of these questions, and you never answered my questions about whether you would cross the street or not.

I'm not even sure where you got the idea that I'm claiming that a black person did something to me personally which caused me to have fear of all black people. That simply isn't true. What is true is that I witnessed groups of young black men (boys) terrorize other people (boys) at a significantly disproportionate rate than other groups of boys (whether that's a result of institutional racism or not is not really significant through the eyes of a 15-year old boy). I saw it...my brain processed it...and likely stored that information for future use. I was never terrorized myself, mainly because I was friends with some of the black guys (and frankly was protected via that friendship).

Every black person should obviously not be held responsible for what was witnessed as a 15 year old. I know that. We all know that. But that doesn't change the effect of what was witnessed on the subconscious brain. Subconsciously, the brain recalls what was observed and immediately characterizes a similar scene as potentially dangerous. I'm not saying it's right but it's what our brains do.

Now, I think you're right that we have to first recognize this subconscious bias, and then have to consciously work at reversing it. I am trying, and I think I've actually been fairly successful - you may not believe that, but I'm not sure I really give a shit. Whether you believe it or not is immaterial to me.

Totally agree.

My point was that you seemed to be asserting that the only cause of the bias is "taught" by (subconsciously and consciously racist) white people. And I'm merely arguing that some of it is also learned (rightly or wrongly) by personally observing the actions of groups of young black men.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I could be wrong, and I probably should know better than to try and speak for Thurgreed, but I think his point, in part, is this. I witnessed a group of black kids picking on a group of white kids. Am I justified in saying that I learned from this that black people are more aggressive, to be feared more? I witness a group of white people beating a black man. Am I to learn from this that white people are violent and prone to criminal behavior?

It's something more than just witnessing violence that informs my beliefs. Otherwise, I should now understand that both black and white people are violent and prone to criminal behavior and therefore cannot be trusted. The two are on equal footing.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

My neighborhood association has a facebook group that my husband quits on a regular basis because of the do gooders who constantly update the world about the "suspicious people" walking up and down our streets.

Covenant House has been in our neighborhood since before most of the residents moved here (we're going through a gentrification phase right now). There have always been homeless youth and will always be homeless youth milling around. There was once a serious suggestion on the facebook page to boycott the Wendy's because the Wendy's will let the kids hang out there for awhile after they ordered their burgers and fries.

Inevitably, some new development project starts up, and my husband rejoins the facebook page to bitch about city contractors and traffic problems.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

We are the worst.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I don't think we're the worst. We've just been at it the longest and loudest.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I am very, very certain I saw a lot more violence from some of the white asshats I grew up among than any black folks I knew, whom I mostly knew through Church and my family's politics. But that doesn't mean the stereotypes didn't come into play and I didn't pick them up from somewhere. They persist even where there is experience to the contrary.

White people don't attribute violence by whites to race. A bunch of rich preppies at UVa gang rape a girl, and no one thinks white people are thugs.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

2. When I hear whites with their often enormously entitled attitudes ripping on the "entitlement classes," I'm reminded of the indefatigable power of cognitive dissonance.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm just reminded we are a nation of assholes.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Not to be a timmy, but these two sentences are redundant. Do you edit your posts?

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Probably here:

Seems like a reasonable inference.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I don't think TM needs a white knight.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I don't disagree with this. My point was that being "taught" these prejudices is not the only way we obtain them. Some are taught. Some are based on observation (with the understanding that at the time the observation is made the observer does not know that what was observed should not be assigned to an entire race - which makes sense since that little microcosm is at the time the observer's whole world).

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

First, 2.

Second, I don't think I've noticed this before, but the people who keep complaining on NextDoor about crime in my neighborhood are much more agitated about Hispanics than blacks.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

[eta: As GGG said,] The following is something important about the way the human brain works: Behavior by minorities will be attributed to the minority status, but the same behavior by majorities will not be attributed to the majority status. See Gordon Allport, The Nature Of Prejudice.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I'm just saying that I wondered if that's what you meant too.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Now you're knighting the fucking white people, too?

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

I almost put "pun intended" a la Penske but thought it would ruin the joke.

The Jews have all the money, and the whites have all the power.
 

But we don't want the Irish!

I am, I am afraid to admit, a little bit racist. To answer TM's hypo, I wouldn't cross the street to avoid a black dude in workout gear. And groups of rowdy young men of any stripe make me nervous. Add alcohol to the mix, such as coming or going to a sporting event, and I am very careful about things.

But I have to honestly admit that I'm a bit more nervous about groups of rowdy young black men than I am about groups of rowdy young white men. I ain't proud of that part of me, and it wasn't something explicitly taught to me (i.e. my folks didn't ever say "hey, Not Bobby - them black people are dangerous!" or even allude to the "bad" part of town, etc.), but I clearly picked it up. Maybe from the culture as a whole, maybe the towns and schools when I was a kid, maybe from the unspoken attitudes of my traditional working class Irish Catholic union membership machine politics family - who knows?

Anyhoo, I try to at least act like I've never used the n-word, or the s-word, or the k-word. And I try to pretend that I'm not a little bit racist. But by reminding myself that I am that way, and that while I may not be able to control the initial reaction, I can control what I do or say after that initial reaction --- that keeps me from hating myself too much.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Bullshit. I absolutely answered it. If I speak in general terms, you can assume it includes me. But let me make it clearer. If I saw a group of teenagers or adults who looked like they are out for trouble or dressed to convey that look, I may very well cross the street. But I make absolutely no distinction based on the color of their skin.

Maybe we are getting off track because I used the term "you." I only inserted you because that's the example (out of tons of examples) that you chose.

Look, I don't appreciate the fact that you have seized on this one example as somehow being dispositive of your point. Are you being unreasonable for crossing the street because you think a group of young black men look dangerous based on your personal experience? No. I tried to get you to apply a reasonable thought process to the issue by tweaking the hypothetical (hell, I even used me in a hypothetical), but you refuse to bite, so maybe you don't want to have a discussion about actions that aren't so clear cut reasonable. [eta: I missed your most recent response when I wrote this.]

Correct. And I think there are a lot of other sources that add to the fear that your subconscious brain recalls. Your first reaction was to say, "Why do you blame people for having that?" Not an uncommon reaction. Whenever I want to talk about the existence of that feeling in white people, they bend over backwards to try to explain it away (find any reason why it might not be a racist reaction, accuse me of being oversensitive, get defensive about being blamed or labeled). It feels like I have to be protective of some white dude's feelings when I react to that person doing something offensive to me because they have been programmed (personal experience or not) to fear me. How is that a thing?

Ha. I believe you are and probably have been working on it, without ever having the delight of meeting me. Hell, I wouldn't waste my time discussing this at all if I thought you (or anyone else on this board) didn't care about trying to improve on that front. I think that I have spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about this stuff and am more sensitive to it in other people and in myself than most people, but I work on it every day too. There isn't a person in the world who shouldn't be.

Also, I don't quite understand your little speech about whether you give a shit if I believe you or not. If you're trying to make the point that it's something you value independent of what I say, yeah. I figured. Not sure what it adds to the conversation otherwise.

I understand your point. I'm not sure you're grasping all of mine. When I say white people are taught, I am including all of the things (and more) I listed in my previous post. Hell, black people spend all their lives fighting a lot of that programming as well and often wind up losing and hating themselves, their features, darker skin tones, etc.

But you put so much emphasis on your personal experience example that you seem to be unwilling to acknowledge other factors that may have also shaped "your" actions. If from birth, every cop show has a terrifying black thug as the worst of criminals and the news focuses on inner city drug crime but ignores meth-related crime outside of cities, and people internalize the fear created by that bullshit, maybe when people see a black kid in a hoodie walking in the middle of the day in their super nice neighborhood, they think he's about to commit a crime based on many things, including if they've seen a young black kid commit one in the past. In fact, what I would like you to see is how that fear--cultivated, maybe, by personal experience of a particular variety--extends to treatment of black people doing every day shit completely unrelated to your very specific example.

TM

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Missed this post (not at work). I think everything you said in this post is reasonable and consistent with what I just posted.

TM

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Agreed.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I get that you're trying to lighten the mood, but the more I talk about this stuff with white people the better I feel. It's a real change just over the course of my own insignificant life from when I used to want to hear what people thought and to have a legitimate discussion.

The only way people change their minds on stuff like this is to actually think about it and discuss it with people who have different experiences and perspectives.

TM

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Pointergate seems kind of relevant to this discussion.

Re: Cue the villagers with pitch... ah... automatic weapons
 

Hmmm. Somebody should find a way to make that point a part of the conversation. If only there was some way to turn that into the foundation of an incredibly transparent metaphor.

Re: The Jews have all the money, and the whites have all the power.
 

Not Well Put