Про расизм
Саша (18 лет) написала свое видение. Начинала, как ответ на комментарий/вопросы Васи, но потом стала рассуждать в более общем смысле.
Disclaimer of sorts: I am aware that my opinions are a reflection of the media I consume, and may not be representative of facts.
I’d like to think that I’m not racist, although I imagine most people would, and so I think it’s also important to be conscious of how that may play into my explanations (am I justifying myself? Would my opinion be different if I surrounded myself with black culture?).
Racism is discrimination based on race, but it can also be described in another way: stereotyping based on race. There exist two kinds of stereotypes - the mostly true and the mostly not. The stereotype that British people love tea is probably mostly true; the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs is probably mostly not. The untrue (not representative of the majority of the population) stereotypes can be harmful and upsetting.
Overrepresentation of African Americans in violent crimes naturally leads to the association of black people with violent crime. This is a stereotype (supported by statistics, and so one of the truthful stereotypes), and pertains race, and so is racism. Just like ‘positive-discrimination’ can also be racism if it is positive discrimination on the basis of race (1), racial-profiling by police is a type of racism. Often what people label as racism and wrong is just the result of these statistics. People will act with certain prejudices and ideas based on stereotypes (it is human nature to judge a person or situation on previous information), and if these stereotypes are mostly true, can you really fault them?
The issues being protested under the guise of the BLM movement are police brutality and poverty. Both of which are prevalent issues in the US (police brutality encompasses many other opportunities for discussion: the militarisation of the police, necessity to “shoot first, ask later” as a result of everyone’s ‘right to carry’). I truly think that it is poverty, and not race, which fuels unjust police methodology. The solution is to pump money into poor areas: fund schools.
That is not to say that there is no racism in the US. The black people found hanged in Texas in the last couple of weeks are an ominous example of that. The kind of racism that cannot be brushed aside as poor taste or bad manners is undoubtedly still prominent in the US south, where many people avidly defend the confederacy and the stereotype often made is that black people are more primitive. But the BLM movement focuses its attention not on these instances (they are mentioned, but are not the source of the movement), but on city-made, mostly true racist stereotypes, and use the examples when they were untrue to justify the whole movement and discredit the necessity of stereotyping.
Other than crime/policing, the next most discussed thing is healthcare. There’s a frightening statistic about black women’s maternity death rates, and on social media that is available to me, the surface level explanation is racism. Digging a little deeper reveals that pretty much (2) every other explanation ultimately stems from socioeconomic circumstances (lower rates of attending antenatal care? The simplest explanation is to look at the distance that needs to be travelled, the availability of a woman to attend the appointments, the cost of travel). In the US, a woman’s financial situation is even more linked to the quality of her healthcare.
On a slightly different note: the majority of hate crime in US is propagated by white people. This, however, I don’t think is representative of the small racisms that occur in everyday life. I think racist attitudes towards white people occur roughly with the same frequency as those directed towards black people. Various examples come to mind, some discussed in the news (the Cambridge reader), others from comment sections on social media or overheard snippets of conversations (“typical white family”, “white people can’t dance” etc.). Of course, racism directed towards white people doesn’t tend to be as deadly as that directed towards other races, and so it is right to discuss racism towards black people more often.
________
(1) The idea of positive discrimination hits close to home at the moment, as there are various mechanisms in place to ease the way to university for the less privileged (many of which are inexplicably linked to race, although that really has nothing to do with it, and these allowances should simply be for the less privileged). There is no doubt that I am privileged - a reputable private school, secure family unit, access to both basic necessities and luxuries, (female, although it’s not clear whether that is an advantage or a disadvantage here). It is also clear that everyone should have an equal chance at education. The question is: what is fair? Is it fair that the achievements of someone who took the harder road (abstained from the influence of a poor, gang riddled neighbourhood and broken home) and completed their secondary education be directly compared to the same achievements of someone like me, for whom education is the easiest and most commonly travelled path? I think it’s not hard to conclude that isn’t fair. Does that make it fair to someone like me to have significantly higher standards (rejecting a triple A*,A student and extra qualifications on the side but accepting a double A, B student)? No, on the face of it, it feels pretty unjust. The solution is so laughably simple, and is the same as the solution to a tonne of other societal problems: pump money into secondary schools. If the playing field is level from the start, and everyone has the same quality of education, then there is no need to discriminate later on to make things ‘fair’.
(2) There exists another theory that I’ve heard, although I find it difficult to believe that this has a larger influence and/or is more common than the economics of the circumstances. This is the stigma that black women bear pain more easily, and the generational belief that their “backs don’t break” pressures black women into underemphasising their symptoms. This is one of those situations where my opinion could easily be different had I surrounded myself with black culture.
Disclaimer of sorts: I am aware that my opinions are a reflection of the media I consume, and may not be representative of facts.
I’d like to think that I’m not racist, although I imagine most people would, and so I think it’s also important to be conscious of how that may play into my explanations (am I justifying myself? Would my opinion be different if I surrounded myself with black culture?).
Racism is discrimination based on race, but it can also be described in another way: stereotyping based on race. There exist two kinds of stereotypes - the mostly true and the mostly not. The stereotype that British people love tea is probably mostly true; the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs is probably mostly not. The untrue (not representative of the majority of the population) stereotypes can be harmful and upsetting.
Overrepresentation of African Americans in violent crimes naturally leads to the association of black people with violent crime. This is a stereotype (supported by statistics, and so one of the truthful stereotypes), and pertains race, and so is racism. Just like ‘positive-discrimination’ can also be racism if it is positive discrimination on the basis of race (1), racial-profiling by police is a type of racism. Often what people label as racism and wrong is just the result of these statistics. People will act with certain prejudices and ideas based on stereotypes (it is human nature to judge a person or situation on previous information), and if these stereotypes are mostly true, can you really fault them?
The issues being protested under the guise of the BLM movement are police brutality and poverty. Both of which are prevalent issues in the US (police brutality encompasses many other opportunities for discussion: the militarisation of the police, necessity to “shoot first, ask later” as a result of everyone’s ‘right to carry’). I truly think that it is poverty, and not race, which fuels unjust police methodology. The solution is to pump money into poor areas: fund schools.
That is not to say that there is no racism in the US. The black people found hanged in Texas in the last couple of weeks are an ominous example of that. The kind of racism that cannot be brushed aside as poor taste or bad manners is undoubtedly still prominent in the US south, where many people avidly defend the confederacy and the stereotype often made is that black people are more primitive. But the BLM movement focuses its attention not on these instances (they are mentioned, but are not the source of the movement), but on city-made, mostly true racist stereotypes, and use the examples when they were untrue to justify the whole movement and discredit the necessity of stereotyping.
Other than crime/policing, the next most discussed thing is healthcare. There’s a frightening statistic about black women’s maternity death rates, and on social media that is available to me, the surface level explanation is racism. Digging a little deeper reveals that pretty much (2) every other explanation ultimately stems from socioeconomic circumstances (lower rates of attending antenatal care? The simplest explanation is to look at the distance that needs to be travelled, the availability of a woman to attend the appointments, the cost of travel). In the US, a woman’s financial situation is even more linked to the quality of her healthcare.
On a slightly different note: the majority of hate crime in US is propagated by white people. This, however, I don’t think is representative of the small racisms that occur in everyday life. I think racist attitudes towards white people occur roughly with the same frequency as those directed towards black people. Various examples come to mind, some discussed in the news (the Cambridge reader), others from comment sections on social media or overheard snippets of conversations (“typical white family”, “white people can’t dance” etc.). Of course, racism directed towards white people doesn’t tend to be as deadly as that directed towards other races, and so it is right to discuss racism towards black people more often.
________
(1) The idea of positive discrimination hits close to home at the moment, as there are various mechanisms in place to ease the way to university for the less privileged (many of which are inexplicably linked to race, although that really has nothing to do with it, and these allowances should simply be for the less privileged). There is no doubt that I am privileged - a reputable private school, secure family unit, access to both basic necessities and luxuries, (female, although it’s not clear whether that is an advantage or a disadvantage here). It is also clear that everyone should have an equal chance at education. The question is: what is fair? Is it fair that the achievements of someone who took the harder road (abstained from the influence of a poor, gang riddled neighbourhood and broken home) and completed their secondary education be directly compared to the same achievements of someone like me, for whom education is the easiest and most commonly travelled path? I think it’s not hard to conclude that isn’t fair. Does that make it fair to someone like me to have significantly higher standards (rejecting a triple A*,A student and extra qualifications on the side but accepting a double A, B student)? No, on the face of it, it feels pretty unjust. The solution is so laughably simple, and is the same as the solution to a tonne of other societal problems: pump money into secondary schools. If the playing field is level from the start, and everyone has the same quality of education, then there is no need to discriminate later on to make things ‘fair’.
(2) There exists another theory that I’ve heard, although I find it difficult to believe that this has a larger influence and/or is more common than the economics of the circumstances. This is the stigma that black women bear pain more easily, and the generational belief that their “backs don’t break” pressures black women into underemphasising their symptoms. This is one of those situations where my opinion could easily be different had I surrounded myself with black culture.