Do you consider yourself a racist?

Sassycakes

Sassycakes

SF VIP
Location
Pennsylvania
I was lucky enough to be born into a family that believed all people are created equal. Both of my parents had friends of all different races. A few days ago my oldest grandson got engaged. I am thrilled and I love the girl he got engaged to no matter what her race is, I love her. Some of my so-called friends don't like the idea. They think my grandson is too good for her. He works in a hospital doing research for Lou Gehrig's disease. The hospital paid for his master's degree and wants to pay for him to become a Doctor.I am so excited and it doesn't matter to me what others think. Do you have a problem with mixed races getting marrried ?
 

No, I never have had a problem with it and I'm surprised that some people still do. I think intermarriage is the answer to a lot of race problems. If everyone has a few different races in their extended families they soon learn to know that we're all really the same.
 

I'm just remembering a woman I knew a few years ago. Her white daughter married a black man and she just wasn't happy about it. Then her first grandchild, a beautiful little brown-skinned girl was born and it was love at first sight for grandma, all the last bits of racism left her heart in one magic moment.
 
Della said:
I'm just remembering a woman I knew a few years ago. Her white daughter married a black man and she just wasn't happy about it. Then her first grandchild, a beautiful little brown-skinned girl was born and it was love at first sight for grandma, all the last bits of racism left her heart in one magic moment.
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That is often the case, the kids make a difference, heal the hearts.
 
As humanity continues to "evolve", I can see the day....centuries from now...when there is basically one "race". Interracial marriages are becoming more commonplace, and eventually will result in most people being a common "ethnicity". That, and a move towards a common language could erase many of the "differences" that seem to have such negative effects on our societies.
 
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Like @Sassycakes, i was raised to see us as one race: Human. We just come in a wide variety of packaging: shapes, sizes, colors. One of the first people to hold me as infant was Grace McDaniels, the Black woman billed by Circus as 'The Mule Faced Lady'. My first year of life we lived in The Giant's Camp, a trailer park where many of the side show people stayed in the off season. Even after we moved we usually stopped to visit with our friends there on way to or from shopping in Tampa.

That set the tone for my whole life. I decide how i think/feel about people based on their personal behaviors, not what others who share demographic descriptors with them do.
 
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Don M. said:
As humanity continues to "evolve", I can see the day....centuries from now...when there is basically one "race". Interracial marriages are becoming more commonplace, and eventually will result on most people being a common "ethnicity". That, and a move towards a common language could erase many of the "differences" that seem to have such negative effects on our societies.
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I do sometimes stereotype by race and don't like myself much when I do. Also have been on the receiving end of that and it feels frustratingly unfair. It's a common human failing (and not just limited to race but any 'other' group) and I hope acknowledging it and owning it honestly is as much a key to combating it as I think it is.

As for looking at a person and disliking them without knowing them because they're from a different race ...no. Treasuring friends regardless of their differences ....Yes!
 
AnnieA said:
I do sometimes stereotype by race and don't like myself much when I do. Also have been on the receiving end of that and it feels frustratingly unfair. It's a common human failing (and not just limited to race but any 'other' group) and I hope acknowledging it and owning it honestly is as much a key to combating it as I think it is.

As for looking at a person and disliking them without knowing them because they're from a different race ...no. Treasuring friends regardless of their differences ....Yes!
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Me too..I too have been on the receiving end of racist remarks... simply by dint of being from a different country to the one where I live now..and having that accent of the country of my birth .. and even to this day over 40 years on I still occasionally get comments which the 'abuser' thinks is amusing.. but in fact is racist under the guise of a joke..or they'll make an attempt at a very poor imitation of my accent....and I'm supposed to always laugh it off or at the very least ignore it..

Not based on skin colour but just as hurtful all the same...
 
I attended a lecture several years ago where the speaker made the distinction between racism and discrimination. His argument made a lot of sense to me. The term racism has become so politically charged that using the term to describe someone immediately ends productive discussion. On the other hand, discrimination is an emotion that most people will agree is an internal emotion that is very difficult to avoid. It is when someone ACTS on their discrimination that it can become racism. He proposed this distinction as a way to improve, even enable, what is otherwise difficult to address in open discussion.
Having said that, if you believe that you do not discriminate, take the Implicit Test of Racial Bias, developed by Harvard University. Personally, I found it to be revealing of feelings that I did not acknowledge before taking the test. It is a good first step in understanding ourselves.
 
SmoothSeas said:
based on simple Mendelian genetics, I believe, that in not too many dim and distant generations from now, we'll all be a delightful shade of brown...
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I don't think so, because even though some genes are dominant, all of them would still be randomly mixed and so combos of recessive genes would happen. Like a friend of mine that had no redheaded parents/siblings and her husband didn't either, but one of their kids had red hair. Or like the blond Arabs in Israel that have old crusader genes popping out. I visited one family in Jericho where the kids were all different shades.
 
Yes, I am a racist. Not that I'm going to haul off and belt. some guy just because he's black. I'm a pussycat. But unfortunately, I do have biases, which I believe most harbor. I don't think I'm alone. You see a black on TV discussing some complex topic, and he's not speaking "street". And that image doesn't correspond to the image of blacks in your head. It's the same thing when any crime is committed, and the phrase "two black guys did it" is so believable. It's when someone mentions a "bad neighborhood", what race do you assume lives there? Overt racism was rampant in our childhood, and early adulthood, just because civil rights laws were enacted in the 60s, you can't erase the vestiges of racism. There is a physical difference between a white person, and a black person, I think we still have a lot of work to only see a "person."
 
Don M. said:
As humanity continues to "evolve", I can see the day....centuries from now...when there is basically one "race". Interracial marriages are becoming more commonplace, and eventually will result on most people being a common "ethnicity". That, and a move towards a common language could erase many of the "differences" that seem to have such negative effects on our societies.
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Personally, I dread that happening. I think the different races make the world a more interesting place. I think it's important for people to keep their own culture alive. If all countries and all people were the same....what a boring place the world would be.
 
The way your question is phrased, no one will answer "Yes," whether they are racist or not. It's like asking, "Do you consider yourself a moron?
I've found that the more racist someone is, they less likely they are to admit it.
Both of my parents were racists. But, as I've posted previously, my parents taught me what type of person NOT to be by their bad example.
One fact that has no exceptions: Racism is pure ignorance - whether it involves religion or color.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Yes, I am a racist. Not that I'm going to haul off and belt. some guy just because he's black. I'm a pussycat. But unfortunately, I do have biases, which I believe most harbor. I don't think I'm alone. You see a black on TV discussing some complex topic, and he's not speaking "street". And that image doesn't correspond to the image of blacks in your head. It's the same thing when any crime is committed, and the phrase "two black guys did it" is so believable. It's when someone mentions a "bad neighborhood", what race do you assume lives there? Overt racism was rampant in our childhood, and early adulthood, just because civil rights laws were enacted in the 60s, you can't erase the vestiges of racism. There is a physical difference between a white person, and a black person, I think we still have a lot of work to only see a "person."
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Just because something is "Rampant" doesn't mean you are forced to be a part of it.
Intelligent people pick & choose what they want to be a part of.
 
Islander said:
Having said that, if you believe that you do not discriminate, take the Implicit Test of Racial Bias, developed by Harvard University. Personally, I found it to be revealing of feelings that I did not acknowledge before taking the test. It is a good first step in understanding ourselves.
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Just took this test. Very interesting - thank you for bringing it to our attention.
 
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