[Discussion] Privilege and Racism

A place to discuss issues surrounding racism, classism and privilege.

You ain't in the tribe don't claim it. It's not some nuanced rule.

Even just posting, now that I have stepped away I realize how me mentioning my background could be looked on as trying to curry favor for the argument or add some validation. I hope it's taken as I intended.. just trying to say 1st nation heritage is so much more then just DNA.

Fwiw that’s why I brought it up here. And while I recognize Warren didn’t use it directly to further her career, I’m not sure she should have claimed heritage without hard genealogical evidence, especially since many if not most White Americans have trace elements of Native American DNA.

But I also realize DNA evidence is tricky and family lore doesn’t always match up with the truth. For example, I took a test recently and came up 20 percent Scandinavian and 2 percent North African. None of those backgrounds are represented in my recent family histories (especially the African DNA).

@ Rave - I think your comments were very helpful.

Rave wrote:

Even just posting, now that I have stepped away I realize how me mentioning my background could be looked on as trying to curry favor for the argument or add some validation. I hope it's taken as I intended.. just trying to say 1st nation heritage is so much more then just DNA.

I felt you represented your perspective in a transparent manner.

Iowa. Blank Park Zoo. 2019.

A woman referred to my son as a chimpanzee.

I told her that referring to black children as chimps or monkeys is offensive. She said she didn’t know it was on the “no no list” and wishes she didn’t know.

The child with her asked what offensive meant. I told him mean, hurtful things you shouldn’t say.

And then I had to walk away.

Edit: my son is Black. I and everyone else in this story is white.

She. Didn’t. Know...?? Seriously? I call bullsh*t. She just felt empowered to be a racist piece of sh*t, and wishes you hadn’t called her out on it. I’m sure she made a tearful Vainbook post about how her beautiful day at the zoo was ruined by someone verbally abusing her.

Literally one of the most racist things you can say and slightly plausibly claim to not know how racist it is.

Addendum: I should mention that my wife (also white) talked to someone in zoo customers management as we left. She was as frustrated and as flabbergasted as we were

I'm so sorry that your son, you, and your wife had to experience such an incident. I'm only reading about it and I'm emotionally worked up. Kudos on the handling of the situation.

I wish I had something better to add. Flabbergasted. Outraged. Nothing quite covers it.

The New York Times has put together one heck of program that re-examines the legacy of slavery in America: The 1619 Project.

It was named such because August marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved people to America. They were "20, and odd Negroes" stolen from the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista by the English privateer, White Lion which the ship's captain sold to the governor of the British colony of Virginia for food.

The project includes ten essays, a photo essay, and poems and fiction written by 16 other authors. The vast majority of the contributors are African-American.

The core of the 1619 Project was published in the August 14th edition of The New York TImes Magazine. It's also available as a free downloadable PDF from the Pulitzer Center, which is also offering reading guides and other resources for teachers.

In addition to the essays, the NYT's is also publishing a same-named, multi-episode audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Iowa. Blank Park Zoo. 2019.

A woman referred to my son as a chimpanzee.

I told her that referring to black children as chimps or monkeys is offensive. She said she didn’t know it was on the “no no list” and wishes she didn’t know.

The child with her asked what offensive meant. I told him mean, hurtful things you shouldn’t say.

And then I had to walk away.

Edit: my son is Black. I and everyone else in this story is white.

Edit 2: As requested--a picture of my family, so that we all know why this story is relevant here.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/lXHCSya.jpg7)

That's a beautiful kid with a great smile you have there.

Over the last three days.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/FM4Vq99.png)

Arise... Feels like you could make a couple bingo boards out of this.
IMAGE(https://uucsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/white-supremacy-768x510.png)

I'm not sure how colorblindness is racist. In my interpretation it is literally saying that color doesn't matter.

Also I don't get what the pyramid implies.

Nevin73 wrote:

I'm not sure how colorblindness is racist. In my interpretation it is literally saying that color doesn't matter.

Also I don't get what the pyramid implies.

It's racist because when people claim they don't see color (which they do) it gives them a pass to "treat everyone the same" which is unfair when systematic racism exists.

I think it is meant to show there are a lot more ways to be racist than just the top stuff.

I would think a better metaphor would be an iceberg. The stuff at the top is just the "tip of the iceberg" and all the rest is still there but below what we see.

Although i guess the creator could say they meant to show how all these other forms of racism support and are the basis for the stuff at the top.

Nevin73 wrote:

I'm not sure how colorblindness is racist. In my interpretation it is literally saying that color doesn't matter.

Also I don't get what the pyramid implies.

Edit: Farleyhausered!

I think of the pyramid more like an iceberg. The top of the pyramid is the visible (socially unacceptable) part that people know to avoid.

The underwater part is the actual bulk that sustains and moves the top.

Color blindness is a form of systemic racism becausing declaring that color doesn't matter denies the reality that skin color very much does matter.

I always thought of the colorblindness part in two ways, one more positive and one less.
More positive is that a person really doesn't see color, but then also misses how that color affects others with every other interaction in society. Obviously, overly and unrealistically idealistic.

Less positive, rich and poor equally alike are not allowed to sleep under bridges. How wonderful.

NYT went there! Oh yeah.

Nash's shoulder pads were so aggressive that my wyt reflexes dialed the number before I knew what I was doing.

It's a real number (844-998-3327) and you should dial it.

Many facets of racism can appear abstract and simple to theorize, often incorrectly, for those of us on the outside looking in, whom oppose it, treat everyone as equals and with the respect they deserve. I've been told that is fine. Great even. If only the rest of the world would do the same. If only history could reflect that.

I've thus came to understand, I think, the need to provide different opportunities, and different approaches, to those whom have been disadvantaged and/or downtrodden much more severely. That can be viewed as unfair in the tight scope of a distinct moment, whilst fair in the broad scope of life up until that moment. Give a person of colour a pass by removing a hurdle where a white individual would be expected to jump that same hurdle. Be that during a job application or an interview. Schooling. Experience. Be that in an exchange that becomes heated. For survival their fight or flight works differently. Be that where authority is discarded. Distrust due to injustice.

It's difficult, impossible even, to always correctly and fairly counterbalance based on perceived and/or relayed experiences. Not every a, b, c, individual is honest. Most will be, though. Not every x, y, z, situation applies. Most often it does, though. This is where the abstract and the theorizing can fail.

Apologies if I misspoke, or stumbled with a misstep. I didn't realise I had anything to add. I caught myself before I swayed over to classism and poverty, which is where my rankles with race (and gender) equality came from. Those from wealth, from good social standing, already had an advantage over me. To then be placed further down the line based on race, based on gender. I was hot under the collar. It was eye opening to be told that's almost what it was like to be a person of colour, or a woman, before equality. They were isolated and not irreparably formative to my development. You could say I was privileged.

Anyway. I was supposed to simply share these two stories.

My Very Personal Taste of Racism Abroad
By Nicole Phillip
Oct. 23, 2018
NYTimes

"Nicole Phillip" wrote:

Up until about five years ago, I didn’t have much experience being black outside the United States.

What I mean is, with the exception of a few family vacations in the Caribbean and Mexico, I didn’t know what it might feel like to travel while black abroad.

Then I decided to spend the fall semester of my junior year abroad in Florence, Italy.

My roommates during my sophomore year had both studied in Italy and raved about their time. They gushed about the panini from a little shop around the corner from the picturesque villas that housed their study program, and regaled me with stories of fun parties and their Italian romances.

I was ready for that to be my life: fun, food and a European love story.

But I was so caught up in my excitement that I neglected a crucial difference between me, my roommates and the majority of the other students I was studying with abroad.

They were white. I, on the other hand, am an African-American woman with skin the color of dark chocolate and full lips.

In the United States, I was aware of racism in a broad sense, but perhaps because of my age my eyes weren’t fully open to it. My mother seemed to know better, saying things to me like “take off that hoodie” when we walked into stores. When she muttered, “you don’t see how they’re looking at you,” I assumed she was bothered by my fashion choices.

After my semester in Italy, I realized what she meant.

When I arrived at the New York University campus, a 57-acre estate in Florence with lush greenery, tan stonewalls and rows of olive trees, I was captivated.

During orientation, the Italian instructors talked about customs and other important practices to take note of. What I remember most is one woman from the program telling us to be mindful that Italians can be “bold” or “politically incorrect.”

That was one way to put it. No one mentioned the possibility of racial encounters and tensions, largely aimed at the rising number of African immigrants.

Before I landed in Italy, I was unaware of the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country, a main entry point for migrants into Europe. I had not known about the hostility toward the first black government minister in Italy or the racial problems that followed talented Italian soccer players and, even years later, Daisy Osakue, a black Italian-born star athlete whose eye was injured in an egg attack.

For me, it began with passers-by on the street calling me Michelle Obama, Rihanna or Beyoncé — as though I can resemble all three — and the Italian men selling Pinocchio marionettes in the piazza near the famed cathedral, il Duomo, shouting “cioccolatta” (chocolate).

These incidents were minor compared to what happened a few weeks later. I took a trip to Cinque Terre, the five scenic villages on the rugged Ligurian coast in northwestern Italy, with about six friends.

I was in my own world on a crowded beach, sitting underneath an umbrella while the other women in my group were by the water, when I noticed an olive-skinned man in swim trunks with a beer in his hand flirting, unsuccessfully, with them. When we were getting up to leave, he approached our group — and he did not seem drunk.

I assumed he was just going to continue bantering, but before I knew it, the rejected suitor started aggressively telling my white friends in Italian-accented English to pick up their trash.

He ignored me and the only other black woman in the group as if we were invisible, but I wasn’t struck by this at the time.

After a few heated words were exchanged between them, we all started walking away. As we trudged through the deep sand, I suddenly felt a cold liquid hit the side of my body. When I turned, another splash of beer went directly to my face. The man in the swim trunks was hurling the contents of his bottle on me and the other black female — only droplets landed on the women he had argued with.

Before I could figure out a response, the other black female began yelling at him.

The rest of us stood watch for a minute until he grabbed her like a rag doll — she had such a tiny frame, his hand seemed to fully wrap around her arm. The other women did nothing, so I quickly stepped in. When I gave his arm a solid punch, he finally let her go.

I looked around and saw the sea of white faces staring on the packed beach — not a single one had made a move to help. I then locked eyes with a black man. He appeared to be an African migrant because he was selling beach gear draped from his body, much like other migrants I had seen who usually sold knickknacks or knockoff purses on the street.

We stared at each other for what felt like a full minute and his eyes seemed full of sympathy.

As my group walked away, one of the women made an observation I’ll never forget. “Did you hear that? He just called you ‘disgusting black women.’”

When I returned to the apartment where I was staying with a fair-skinned Italian woman and her biracial teenage daughter named Ami, I told her, with great emotion, what had happened. She shrugged and said in a mixture of Italian and English, “It happens to Ami,” whose father is black.

But I couldn’t shrug it off so easily.

Several weeks later, as the weather cooled enough for me to wear one of my favorite oversized sweaters and a beanie hat, I was walking along a street lined with cafes and shops in Florence, making my way down one of those impossibly narrow sidewalks, head bent over my phone.

As I passed shopkeepers setting out signs and sweeping storefronts that morning, I noticed a short middle-aged white woman with a pixie cut walking a couple feet in front of me with her purse on her shoulder. She quickly stopped and turned around. She looked at me and screamed then pressed her back against the wall. I looked around in alarm, thinking something had happened, but couldn’t figure out what.

She screamed again, and this time, she fled the sidewalk. At this point, I could see the shop owners staring. The woman continued to look at me and shrieked once more. When I asked “what?” she gasped as if she were both frightened and disgusted that I had the nerve to speak to her. She then shielded herself behind a parked car. I was dumbfounded. So I kept walking, trying to leave my embarrassment on the street behind me. I wish I could say that was the first time someone had avoided me on the sidewalk in this world-famous city full of international tourists and students. It was not. But it was, by far, the most blatant.

After that, I was hyper aware of the stares and comments as I traveled around the country, from the chocolate festival in Perugia to sightseeing in Milan and Venice, and visiting the Colosseum and the Vatican in Rome, even tossing coins for good luck in the Trevi Fountain there.

On my last night in Florence, I was supposed to meet a few of my friends at a bar for farewell drinks. Earlier in the evening, I had a lovely dinner with a group of Italians to whom I had been introduced by a mutual American friend. This was the first time I had truly felt accepted in Italy, and I regretted having to leave them to go to the bar.

I figured that I’d ask for directions when I got to the neighborhood because I had purposely let the money run out on my pay-as-you-go phone, just as I tried to spend the last of my euros.

In my passable Italian, I walked around trying to ask for directions in the same favorite outfit I had worn on the day the pixie-haired woman screamed on the sidewalk.

I was taken aback when a group of white men brushed past me as if I were asking for money, not the location of a popular bar.

Then a youthful, nicely dressed white couple, walking arm-in-arm, stopped abruptly as the man moved in front of the woman defensively, protectively, only to tell me he didn’t know where the bar was.

After even more attempts to get directions were ignored by passers-by, I gave up looking and went back to the apartment where I was staying that semester. The next day, I had an early flight back to the United States and I now just wanted to go to bed.

When I told N.Y.U. program officials about my first racial encounter on the beach with the beer-wielding man just after it happened, they apologized profusely and vowed to mention racial issues at future orientations. Tyra Liebmann, the university’s associate vice president of global programs, told me that after my experience, and hearing from others with similar issues, N.Y.U. held conversations with faculty and students so the university could implement ways to better prepare students from a variety of demographics for life abroad.

To my surprise, two of my black friends who had studied in Rome in another college program had a great time that same semester. One actually met her Italian fiancé there. I don’t know what made the difference in our Italian experiences. Was it a more cosmopolitan Rome? I can’t say.

My engaged friend is getting married in Lamezia Terme, a city in southern Italy. So five years later, I’m returning to the country that left a deep scar on my heart.

Whenever I go back to my childhood home in Orange County, Florida, I am not surprised when I see the Confederate flag flying on high poles, plastered on car bumpers and worn proudly on T-shirts. But it surprises me that even the Dixie flag — and all it represents — doesn’t get to me as much as the outright and physical disrespect I experienced very far from home.

There is also this contribution from the comments section.

"Greg" wrote:

I was 5 when I heard the song Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu. From that moment I wanted to visit Italy. I succeeded in 1976 when I did a semester in Rome. I was treated well, but each subsequent trip was fraught with abuse.

In 1987 in Rome I was turned away from a hotel at which I had a reservation with the words: “We have no room for you, imbecile.” I demanded to see the manager, whom I knew by name, as I had stayed in the hotel before. He recognized me, apologized, said I was welcome and explained he had instructed his staff to turn away Africans because they had caused problems.

There were other negative experiences (with waiters, ticket sales agents and guys giving me the finger as I stood alone at the bus stop), but the worst happened in Bergamo. I was walking to Standa when two plain clothes cops jumped out of a car and approached me. They asked me if I was a Negro, if I was African or American. I responded I was an American and showed them my passport. They thought it was fake, forced me into their car and took me to the station without an explanation. There I was told that I was suspected of being a purse thief. I wasn’t allowed to telephone an acquaintance, a prominent architect. Moreover, my producing traveler's checks, proof that I had money, meant nothing. I was finally let go after 5 hours when the victim showed up and chastised the cops for detaining me-I looked nothing like her assailant nor was I dressed as she had described.

My long love affair with Italy was over.

Usually I'm not a big fan of "Country X is more racist than country Y", but yeah Italy is pretty f*cking racist. Our best soccer striker Romelu Lukaku encountered a lot of racism when growing up in Belgium. Because he was always taller and stronger than his age group peers, there were a lot of sideline racists asking whether he forged his passport etc.

But now playing at Inter (Milan), when the opponent's team's fans made monkey noises at him and Lukaku (rightfully) condemned the club and the Italian football association for not acting swifter, HIS OWN supporters at Inter shushed him to "take it as a compliment, it just means they think you're good".

Even in Belgium, normally a huge fan of below-the-sealevel-iceberg racism, this was uh... frowned upon.

Those stories are heartbreaking.

Cis, white, straight male, here, living in a staunchly republican state, looking for some help. I’ve been having several discussions lately about racism with people who actually seem open to revisiting their views on the topic. Entering the conversation, they’re convinced racism isn’t actually a “thing” anymore, and if there is racism, it’s against the whites. I’m able to throw enough examples to explain away “reverse racism” and to prove racism still exists, and to draw some parallels to what I understand about the black-experience in America (as best I can as an onlooker), and it feels like I can get the conversation to the cusp, but then I just don’t have whatever it is to actually change their minds the rest of the way.

Mind you, these are close friends who are open minded in the conversation, mostly just believing as they are because they’ve never had direct reason to challenge or examine their beliefs or they just accept Fox News talking points spouted by their family because that’s what’s there.

So, basically what I’m asking is for some help finding resources beyond my own bubble to better understand the breath, depth, and pervasiveness of racism in the US so the next time I have one of these conversations, I have better tools and a more informed understanding.

The long and short of it is that my life interaction is fairly homogenous and GWJ has really become my doorway to seeing far broader then the small sphere of my day to day life, and while I’ve examined and evaluated and changed my old faulty and wrong views, I now want to help some of those I care about to do the same. Particularly right now. But I feel ill-equipped to do so.

Antichulius wrote:

Cis, white, straight male, here, living in a staunchly republican state, looking for some help. I’ve been having several discussions lately about racism with people who actually seem open to revisiting their views on the topic. Entering the conversation, they’re convinced racism isn’t actually a “thing” anymore, and if there is racism, it’s against the whites. I’m able to throw enough examples to explain away “reverse racism” and to prove racism still exists, and to draw some parallels to what I understand about the black-experience in America (as best I can as an onlooker), and it feels like I can get the conversation to the cusp, but then I just don’t have whatever it is to actually change their minds the rest of the way.

Mind you, these are close friends who are open minded in the conversation, mostly just believing as they are because they’ve never had direct reason to challenge or examine their beliefs or they just accept Fox News talking points spouted by their family because that’s what’s there.

So, basically what I’m asking is for some help finding resources beyond my own bubble to better understand the breath, depth, and pervasiveness of racism in the US so the next time I have one of these conversations, I have better tools and a more informed understanding.

The long and short of it is that my life interaction is fairly homogenous and GWJ has really become my doorway to seeing far broader then the small sphere of my day to day life, and while I’ve examined and evaluated and changed my old faulty and wrong views, I now want to help some of those I care about to do the same. Particularly right now. But I feel ill-equipped to do so.

I'm in a similar place with the added bonus of being just outside the Twin Cities.
There was more sympathy early in the week, but now using the riots to double down in their existing opinions.
I just don't know how to try to bring people to understanding at this point.

Make sure they understand that the riots are being supplemented by white supremacists coming from out of town. And, if past experience in other parts of the country holds true, the police themselves may be running false flag operations to make the protestors look worse.

Yeah it is common tactic to infiltrate a group and incite violence in order to justify a attack on people.

Yeah, the more confirmed reports of outside agitators has, sort of, made me feel better as it makes it easier to explain to people.

I think it is important to get them to differentiate between "I experienced a racist act" and "I experienced racism."

A racist statement: All white people want to have black people as slaves.
Racism - The experience of all non-white people in the US.