Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
Originally posted by: konakona
Still, I stand by my opinion you dont know how it feels unless you been there.
Please explain how it's necessary to "know how it feels" in order to know whether it's happening.
I'll be the first to admit that as a kid with German/Scottish heritage growing up in Ohio I never personally experienced discrimination when I was little. However, one of my best friends through high school and college was Pakistani. I didn't need to know how it felt to see the very obvious discrimination against him. Especially after 9/11, but it was not the greatest even before then.
This whole idea that whites are necessarily completely oblivious to racism is ridiculous. I'll agree that most of us have no idea what it feels like, but that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether we can see it occurring.
ZV
"Completely" is not what I implied anywhere. You may know conceptually what it is, and if it was one of your friends even share it to a certain degree. Yet that obviously would not amount to what you would have felt first hand. Besides, the main point was that it is human nature to be drastically less concerned about things that do not directly affect him or her (or at least not nearly as much). I sympathize for the starving kids in Africa, but it will never be the same as going through cycles of starvation myself. Accordingly, it is quite unlikely that I would become as sensitive about this whole starvation issue altogether. At least that is one valuable lesson I learned from my 2 years of experience in the military - don't be a spokesperson for the group that you don't belong - for better or worse, your perspective almost necessarily changes if you are on the other side of the fence. Having a different outlook or scope of interest definitely affects what you notice consciously and subconsciously.
I totally agree with your follow-up statement on morons being everywhere. Racism is all about ignorance, or unwillingness to accept the simple fact that we are human after all. Having lived in a neighborhood that is known to be a ghetto in the past, it was uncommon to see a bunch of African American kids mutter things like "F*** chinese, F*** japanese" at us time to time (gladly I am neither). I have been through enough of worse crap to just ignore such innocuous insults. Racism definitely is not just white on others thing, sorry if it looked like I implied that. The point though, it is less likely for a white person, belonging to the majority group in power, to be affected by and thus concerned with racial struggle as much
as another person from minority group - especially in a predominantly white rural setting. Not sure how big or liberal Springfield is supposed to be though, so merely asking a question didn't sound like a such sinister act to me.
BTW, whenever I get a chance to discuss racism with my friends at home, I tell them the way they have it in the US is probably about as good as it gets with so many different races in the mix. I could name several countries with much worse race relations from my first hand experience.
Cdubneeddeal, you should have phrased it better and asked them whether they feel racism is more upfront and felt in that town; "afraid" is just inviting all sorts of insults from everyone. No one likes being called a racist, and if you come across as pointing finger at people, there is bound to be some angry crowd. Makes me wonder though, just what made your friend mention that KKK HQ thing? Was it all in jest? Did she tell you to keep that in mind?
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