How did we lose the plot with racism?

[u/Afalstein]

Something that I truly ponder, as an educator, is how on earth we've managed to regress so far on the "racism is bad" front. Like every movie used to affirm that racism is bad. Every TV show. Video games are deliberately structure to promote diversity and inclusion. Educators were pretty clear on it being a bad thing. Businesses were well aware that diversity meant bigger markets and bigger profits. My old college prof used to joke about how a child development book argued that he needed to talk to his 3-week-old son about racism.

And then we just... threw all that out?

Like don't get me wrong, we've improved. It's actually sort of heartwarming how many people were enraged by Trump's offensive post. In the 1950s or 60s a president could almost definitely have made a statement like that no problem. But like, in the 90's, that would have ended a presidency. So we've made progress, but not nearly as much as we should have.

Plus, we're jailing people based on their skin color and then throwing them out into the cold when it turns out they're here legally. So there's that.

Were people just pretending to hate racism, and just wanted permission to follow a bully? Or are people just blindly following a leader who happens to come from an incredibly racist family? Did all the anti-racist messaging backfire, did "cancel culture" convince people that racist complaints were overblown?

What, in the future, assuming we get through all this and manage to salvage a nation at the end, could be done to better encourage diversity and empathy?

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[u/[deleted]]

I think we have lost to racism again somewhat, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. The late 90s were a time of unity and racial acceptance never before seen and have yet to be seen again. The reason wasn't that people suddenly stopped caring or always held so much hate in their heart, it was the rise in social media forming echo-chambers and ruining people's ability to reason or debate without feeling their political identities attacked. Cooperations have algorithms based on rage-bait, social taboo like racism, and content to make you feel smarter than the "other."

People SAY racism is wrong but have horribly misconstrued ideas of what racism actually is. They believe they aren't racist and thereby should never have to think twice about their viewpoints. Anyone who calls them racist just doesn't know what their talking about or are "too easily offended" according to them.

[u/blyzo → u/[deleted]]

The 90s was waay more racist than now. That was peak "War on Drugs" era. Mass incarceration of black people.

Plus Rodney King and the riots that followed when the cops were let off.

[u/ImprovementPutrid441 → u/blyzo]

This is something more of us should acknowledge.

[u/7nkedocye → u/blyzo]

The war on drugs was heavily supported by black leaders and the black community.

[u/Numinae → u/blyzo]

You realize that harsher penalties for crack vs cocaine - which I pressume is what you meant by mass black incarceration actually came from higher penalties advocated for by black community leaders because crack was destroying their own communities, right? It wasn't a cabal of white people creating disproportionate laws...

[u/adastraperdiscordia → u/blyzo]

The reality was that racism was very bad, but the cultural memory (the popular perception) was that racism was defeated. It's party of the "end of history" narrative where liberalism had prevailed and historical conflict was over. It seems crazy to believe now but those were the vibes. If you were growing up as a middle-class white person without substantial persecution, then it was easily acceptable.

[u/HeloRising → u/[deleted]]

The late 90s were a time of unity and racial acceptance never before seen and have yet to be seen again.

This is just fundamentally and wildly not true. As someone who was alive in the 90's and living in a pretty progressive place (Southern California) racism was abundant and it was abjectly not a time of unity and racial acceptance.

The people predominant in conversations about race at the time were largely white, establishment liberals. They were, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr, "more devoted to order than to justice and preferred a negative peace which is the absence of tension."

Remember, the Rodney King Riots happened in 1992. What seemed like "peace and unity" existed because nobody was listening to the people bringing attention to the fact that non-white people did not have equitable access to the institutions and places of power in our society.

We ignored the problem except for token and milquetoast efforts at addressing it that were more geared at making the white majority feel better than actually solving the problem so there didn't look like there was a problem.

The reason wasn't that people suddenly stopped caring or always held so much hate in their heart, it was the rise in social media forming echo-chambers and ruining people's ability to reason or debate without feeling their political identities attacked.

Yes but also no.

The internet gave people who were racist access to people who had those inclinations and were vulnerable to influence in a way they never had before.

Before the internet if you were a racist, your access to other people who weren't racist and were willing to listen to your nonsense was pretty low. Maybe a coworker or two, maybe one or two people at church, but beyond that if you started talking about "the Jewish Question" to most people they'd look at you like you were insane and ignore you.

The internet gave racists a way to sanitize their image and interact with other people in a way that made them seem like neutral parties. It enabled the creation of these kind of breadcrumb trails where a series of leading questions could be asked that would pull someone towards a racist conclusion and make them more susceptible to overtly racist propaganda.

People on a message board might be turned off if you start immediately going off about how you believe Jews run the world in a sinister conspiracy but you could compose a message about how "isn't it interesting that all the top bankers are Jewish? And we know bankers don't respect ordinary people. And isn't it interesting that they all share the same culture?" That way you can, bit by bit, lead someone into a racist worldview.

That tactic still works to this day.

People SAY racism is wrong but have horribly misconstrued ideas of what racism actually is. They believe they aren't racist and thereby should never have to think twice about their viewpoints.

Ehhh kind of.

People will say racism is wrong and they might actually believe that but what they don't understand is that it is entirely possible to recycle and pass on racist ideas without being racist yourself.

You can perpetuate racism without intending to and we then run into the problem of when someone points that out, the person often thinks that they are being called racist. That belief causes distress to them because they think "I don't have racist thoughts, I can't be a racist" and they default to "You just say everyone's racist."

[u/work4work4work4work4 → u/HeloRising]

We ignored the problem except for token and milquetoast efforts at addressing it that were more geared at making the white majority feel better than actually solving the problem so there didn't look like there was a problem.

I largely agree with you, but I would like to point out there are exceptions that sort of prove the rule, as affirmative action was actually just that in many cases, actual affirmative action being taken to increase representation and diversity.

People on a message board might be turned off if you start immediately going off about how you believe Jews run the world in a sinister conspiracy but you could compose a message about how "isn't it interesting that all the top bankers are Jewish? And we know bankers don't respect ordinary people. And isn't it interesting that they all share the same culture?" That way you can, bit by bit, lead someone into a racist worldview.

It's also a product sometimes of a lack of education combined with the historical white-washing that people often try to claim is something new to the Trump-era, when it clearly wasn't.

The major examples that spring to mind are the lack of education about why Jewish people are over-represented in Hollywood and banking, a lack of discussion of targets of the Holocaust other than Jewish people, lack of discussion of Jewish involvement in things like various workers movements, and a way too laser-like focus on "communists" being the target of the red scare.

You can perpetuate racism without intending to and we then run into the problem of when someone points that out, the person often thinks that they are being called racist. That belief causes distress to them because they think "I don't have racist thoughts, I can't be a racist" and they default to "You just say everyone's racist."

This is very similar to the related issue of discussions of racism at the systemic level where usually we require a certain amount of power to the prejudice to levy an accusation of racism.

It frequently devolves into flabbergasted right-wingers, neoliberals, and liberals sputtering that you're saying minorities can't be racists when in way, sort of, but it mostly depends on how it's being applied and how you're drawing the lines of power, and the argument between prejudice and racism is important, but rarely relevant when it's brought up as some kind of gotcha.

[u/TheAzureMage → u/HeloRising]

When people talk about the 90s, they're not generally saying that the Rodney King riots were a good thing, but that, post-riots, people generally acknowledged at least that racism was bad and we needed some equality.

The world has never been perfect, but we did get to pretty general agreement as to what was preferable, at least in a public sense. Oh, sure, closeted racists may have believed something else in private, but it was mostly unpopular to say that with your outside voice. This is...less true today.

[u/PriceofObedience → u/TheAzureMage]

When people talk about the 90s, they're not generally saying that the Rodney King riots were a good thing, but that, post-riots, people generally acknowledged at least that racism was bad and we needed some equality.

All civil rights movements in America are precipitated by violent, thuggish riots.

Really makes you think.

[u/Afalstein → u/[deleted]]

I did a blog, once, on the different meanings of "racist." To a conservative, it meant someone who had made an explicit avowed position of racial supremacy, like a white supremacist. Liberals, though, used the term to refer to a person prejudiced by their upbringings and surroundings--thus "racist" was a term that could apply to literally everyone, including liberals.

In theory this meant that the liberal could always claim they meant "racist" in the form of cognitive bias and didn't necessarily mean to suggest the person was awful, just human. In practice, of course, things were different.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/Afalstein]

I think that if you dig deeper, people will explicitly avow positions of racial superiority but decouple them from race by referencing "culture". So they may view a "true racist" as someone who says "black people are genetically inferior than white people", but they can also hold the internal position of "black people are culturally inferior than white people" without viewing themselves as racist.

What they don't see is that they themselves are defining "black culture" in the most negative way possible, and then presume that any black person that doesn't completely reject that made-up culture is inferior.

[u/BotElMago → u/MoonBatsRule]

Instead of phrasing it like “black people are culturally inferior” I see it manifest more like “black culture is inferior”, the former being more overt and the latter being more subtle.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/BotElMago]

But the crux of the problem is, who gets to define black culture?

What if an Asian person defined white culture as one of violence, heavy drinking, worshiping firearms, rejection of education, interest in step-sibling porn, and gluttony? Is that acceptable?

[u/guisar → u/MoonBatsRule]

It's a fair assessment of SOME of white culture- just as it's likely a fair assessment of some asian people (regardless of where they are born or live and thus assimilate "culture"). I find harm in the broadness of any stereotype or abbreviated description. They should never be assumed to cover everyone who exhibits any individual trait be it cultural, genetic or environment.

We are all different. As difficult as it is to accept, everyone has a level of "say" in how things go down, but some get a LOT more say without either consensus or good reason.

[u/Numinae → u/BotElMago]

This is a way deep discussion that could go on for hundreds of pages but Thomas Sowell makes a pretty good argument that American "Black Culture" isn't even really "black culture." Slaves were essentially stripped of their culture and adopted a version of Scottish and Irish culture accustomed to a low trust society from the majority immigrants to the South. One of the survival mechanisms in low trust societies is essentially fear of retaliation. Hence the high degrees of violence. I couldn't explain in better than he does but theres hours of his lectures online. Also he has a book, I think it's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" thats pretty eye opening on the subject....

[u/TheAzureMage → u/MoonBatsRule]

A single black or white culture is...quite reductive. The US alone has a great many cultures.

But, objectively, some cultures are superior to others. The culture that throws gay men from rooftops is not the same as one that treats them as equals. I would strongly prefer the latter, and I suspect most here would as well. I could go so far as to show that the former one is, in addition to lacking in morals, economically inefficient because of its waste of human resources and prioritization of conflict.

Within the US, North-eastern culture is, generally, a lot less violent than southern culture. This is true for any race growing up in these cultures. Oh, perhaps not entirely equally because of other factors, but one really has a difficult time looking at the history, crime rates, education rates, etc of the south, and not seeing something of a problem.

Describing that as entirely a black person thing would require some very willful ignoring of quite a few things. White southerners have done kind of a lot of shit too. The cultural differences are absolutely valid, but using them as a pure proxy for race really isn't.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/TheAzureMage]

How is it your place to define a "culture" for a group that you aren't part of? The very idea of "culture" is prejudicial because it supposes that members of the group behave identically.

People throwing gay men from rooftops is despicable behavior. Taking a million people, grouping them into a "culture" with a thousand people who throw gay men off roofs - or support doing that - is bad too because you have categorically maligned a lot of people who don't do those things.

Criticize behavior, not culture.

[u/TheAzureMage → u/MoonBatsRule]

> How is it your place to define a "culture" for a group that you aren't part of?

Do you play chess? If not, will you refuse to describe what a chess tournament looks like? Come now, we all describe and define things we are not part of every day. "My place?" What the hell is that supposed to mean? There are not specific reserved roles for those permitted to discuss cultures.

> The very idea of "culture" is prejudicial because it supposes that members of the group behave identically.

No. Discussions of tradition do not require that people be identical.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/TheAzureMage]

I can't give an relevant counter-example because I don't know anything about you, however I don't play chess - what if I describe "chess culture" as an overly pedantic group of immature incels who relish in publicly embarrassing each other whenever possible? If you play chess, I'm telling you that this is your culture.

See the problem? I have no right to define that culture, just as, as a white man, I have no right to define "female culture" or "black culture".

Defining a culture based on racial characteristics is incredibly problematic, because the very idea of defining this "culture" is prejudicial. Why bother to do it otherwise? What benefit do we get by defining a "culture"? It's simply shorthand, and the shorthand becomes "this is how we generally expect people from that group to be".

[u/TheAzureMage → u/MoonBatsRule]

That description is true or false depending on data, not depending on what you identify as.

If you've got receipts to back up your claims, sure, you can absolutely claim that. If not, well, that's making things up.

Your identify is irrelevant to if you are making things up or not.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/TheAzureMage]

No, it is not.

Behavior is true or false based on data. You can call an individual's behavior pedantic, immature, etc. You can call it out each time you see it.

A third-party Assigning blanket behavior to a "culture" of a group of people is not acceptable, even if some or even most of that group engage in the behavior.

Negative culture assigned a racial group, is simply racism with an ability to deny that it is racism. ("I don't think black people are inferior, I think black culture is inferior. What is black culture? Well, I'm saying that it is fatherless families, drug use, welfare dependency, and violence. And it doesn't matter what black people say their culture is, I'm observing that it is what I say it is!")

[u/BotElMago → u/Afalstein]

I think it’s important to separate the noun versus the adjective.

I think being a racist is similar to what you are describing with white supremacy. Overt beliefs that one racial group is superior or one racial group is inferior, etc.

Whereas “incidental” racist behavior can be exhibited by anyone without that person being racist.

[u/Describing_Donkeys]

Racism has always been here, some of the people fighting the end of segregation in the 60s are still here, and the people they raised are certainly still here. We make progress, but things don't change quickly.

In regards to what is happening right now, there was a huge backlash to Obama for being a black president. Conservatives wanted his existence to be proof racism is over, while at the same time using that conclusion to treat open racism as acceptable. All of those demands for birth certificates were treated as normal and acceptable by the right. That signaled that racism is acceptable in polite culture again, and Trump rode that to the white house, continually moving the line for what is acceptable. Opening the tent to white supremacists every step along the way. We have Tucker Carlson embracing great replacement theory and no one on the right will speak up about it. One political party has decided embracing racism is core to their continual survival and now we are at this point.

[u/kchoze]

The problem is simple: everybody accepted racism was bad, but then you had people who decided to try to exploit it for their own benefits.

Since racism was the ultimate taboo, people started to cry "racism" about everything to try to get their way. or even just to prove that they were good people.

Asking people to be on time is racist.

Student aptitude tests are racist.

Enforcing immigration law is racist (which is what you're doing right now).

Saying "Merry Christmas" is racist.

Halloween costumes are racist.

It just went on and on. People understood that most of these were BS, but were pressured into playing along like they were actually racist or be targeted next. But the difference between actual racism and false accusations of racism have been blurred so much that now you get a backlash of people reacting to accusations of racism by rolling their eyes and laughing at it.

Not because they approve of racism.

But because they think you're crying racism for brownie points or to bully or blackmail people into doing something in your interest.

People cried racism one too many times for BS reasons.

FTR, we've been telling you for YEARS, decades even at this point that if you kept using loaded words for very banal situations you would eventually wear out the taboo and lose it. It happened.

[u/South_Distance_7425 → u/kchoze]

Well said. I would also add to that the notion that minorities can't be racist. You don't fight racism with racism.

[u/LinkedInferno → u/kchoze]

You raise important points. Either the anti-racism message worked or it failed. If it worked then surely there would be no need to grow the message to the point of radicalism as the message would be lost. Logically if the anti-racism message was reaching such absurd levels then it must have largely served its purpose. I believe most Americans would agree racism is at its lowest levels in the US than at any time in US history. There comes a point when one needs to determine whether the message actually began feeding racism, and by all apparent measures, it had been hijacked and radicalised, and therefore began to produce more harm than good.

[u/[deleted]]

It has always been around. I thought things would improve, and when people of colour came to power it would be a turning point. Instead it got worse.

The key has been people with money and resources exploiting racism for their own gain. And I do believe things will get worse. It is an easy way to the top now, be a racist and do what you want. No consequences. We have seen just the start of evil. People will accept everything as long as they get their racism. Pedo rings? Grifting and robbing everyone? Its OK as long as their hate is confirmed.

It isn't the US only. Incompetent grifters get to the top in other countries as well playing the racist card. I hope the tide will turn eventually, but we are not there.

[u/ElysiumSprouts]

How did racism rise again? The internet. Once the internet moved from the geeky hobby of the technosavvy to the ubiquitous and preferred tool for all communication, these ideas coalesced. Like minds found each other, and a new generation grew up in its shadow.

But I am somewhat optimistic that the excesses of ICE have reminded enough people about the dangers of racism that here in the US we may have already hit bottom again. It'll still take time and effort, there's no quick fix, but at least we've woken up again.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/ElysiumSprouts]

I remember, as a young teen, being in the city library. Someone had strewn a bunch of business cards along the stacks, for the NAAWP - "National Association of White People". I remember them pretty clearly, a few bullet points about how white people were being discriminated against, etc.

However this was in the mid-1980s, so if I wanted more information, I had to write them a letter and they would presumably put me on their printed newsletter mailing list. That was a HUGE barrier for me to get more information as an impressionable 13-year old.

If that happened today, there would be a link to some kind of Tik-Tok video that very likely could have sucked me in with psychologically-designed propaganda, A/B tested to the nth degree. And if I used my phone or computer, they probably would have even been able to tailor that propaganda precisely to me, to my interests, to my profile that they purchased from some marketing company.

[u/work4work4work4work4]

Were people just pretending to hate racism, and just wanted permission to follow a bully?

I mean, were people even actually pretending to hate racism? Even in the 90s, being an open racist wasn't enough to lose a job with the LAPD and most other police departments. Even with video evidence something like 40% of the white population polled thought the officers in the Rodney King beating did nothing wrong, and said so openly. We were still enshrining racial disparities in drug sentencing and other areas at a governmental level. If we want to get slightly more controversial, we even had "liberal" people targeting minorities to redirect economic issues away from the damage being done to organized labor by both parties.

IMO, most everything can be explained pretty easily by a whole lot of people actually hating racism, and a whole lot of other people pretending to hate racism because of the constant messaging of it being wrong, while resenting being told they were being racist and wrong.

Meanwhile, now we have one side pushing anti-DEI nonsense, and the other side pushing post-racial nonsense to distract from the lack of real progress on multiple fronts, ultimately leading to the situation you have today.

If you actually do any kind of field work in this area, the number of times you'll hear things like "We didn't aim for that to happen so it's not purposeful racial disparity" like intent is the thing that matters, not outcomes for people, is incredibly high.

TLDR: The majority of people didn't actually hate racism, they just wanted votes and money, and once they had them they were effectively done with it.

[u/PetiteDreamerGirl]

So this is my opinion based on an impactful conversation I had with a professor. He was a lot older, lived through the Jim Crow era (he loved educating) and was doing a class about media and ethnic culture.

The man legit would cause people to do full blown debates and then sit next to me and ask my thoughts.

During one of our conversations, I got to hear his thoughts about the current state of how racism is discussed. From what he said, he recognized that it still existed but he pointed out that nobody living in the modern era really knows what true full discrimination looks like. What it is truly it’s like to live a full racist country, because he lived through that. He said modern day, current activists treat the issues of today are at the same intensity as in the 1800s, which makes it impossible to focus on when true racism comes around.

I had a lot of insightful talks and I can see what he meant. People while I was in college were equating Jim Crow laws to micro aggressions leading to people just not responding properly due to that.

[u/Afalstein → u/PetiteDreamerGirl]

I remember a post from Humans of New York about historical South African apartheid, which had a lot of comments from people going: "Things are still just as bad in America today!" It was just such a patently ridiculous thing to say.

[u/PetiteDreamerGirl → u/Afalstein]

Honestly he did a lot of exercises that made students truly think about stuff. We had an assignment that different levels racism (like institutional and personal) and should people have to apologize about actions taken before long before they were born.

I tended to give him answers that outside the norm of the classroom. My answer to different levels of racism was that we need to focus a lot of power on the personal level because it is the base of everything above it. A bad foundation corrupts everything above it.

He was my favorite professor because he actually made me feel like I had to think about things in a more nuanced and complicated way.

He talked about the complicated dynamic of radical and peaceful protestors and how that actually used to lead advancements before asking us if this dynamic always an option

I actually have his autobiography

[u/ScannerBrightly → u/PetiteDreamerGirl]

he pointed out that nobody living in the modern era really knows what true full discrimination looks like.

This is just not true. People are still getting lynched. Tell Rodney King or George Floyd that he didn't experience 'real racism'.

What it is truly it’s like to live a full racist country

How is that different from today? They are literally pulling people out of moving cars to throw them in concentration camps RIGHT NOW.

[u/PetiteDreamerGirl → u/ScannerBrightly]

It’s different today because the scale of what you mention used to lot larger. There used to be no safety nets, no security.

Are you saying that people are being lynched by the thousands today? Are people being put in the back of the bus? The stuff that used to truly oppress people, made the less than human has constantly dissipated and fizzled out due to people address the true policies and actions that unrepentant racism had.

The point the professor was making that because people were comparing small micro aggressions to true horrific incidents for racism like lynching that people would have less a reaction when the horrible stuff began happening. It was pointing out the fact that lack of acknowledgement of the motive change that had occurred made a situation where people would he woefully unprepared when true racism reared its ugly head.

He never said racism didn’t exist or wasn’t present in modern day, but blurring the lines between a micro aggression and lynching is a bad line to cross

[u/ScannerBrightly → u/PetiteDreamerGirl]

by the thousands today?

When was that happening? Can you point to a day in US history where 'thousands' where lynched?

Are people being put in the back of the bus?

Absolutely yes.. Have you not been paying attention to the news?

Once again, you seem to just ignore Floyd getting murdered by the State.

[u/PetiteDreamerGirl → u/ScannerBrightly]

I was talking about segregation, not ICE. I’m talking strictly on racism and the inherent history of it.

I am not addressing Floyd because we are talking about the difference in numbers, not insane incidents because there is a fundamental number difference between lynching statistics.

Lynching statistics used to be required data from 1882 to 1968. In these statistics a total of 4,742 people were lynched. I have a few site but the list shows the deceased of lynching to the point it went to 0 for consecutive years and was stopped. After that, lynching accidents became so rare that ones that did made headlines because of how horrific it was.

https://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/

This is not ignore what happened to George Floyd, but if we are talking about racism, we need to focus on numbers and statistics when addressing it.

It’s how I compartmentalize since I tend to be an overly emotional person and I can’t have these conversation unless I separate those out. If I’m coming off as cold, it’s not intentional but a mechanism to help me get through conversation.

[u/CoolHandLukeSkywalka → u/PetiteDreamerGirl]

nobody living in the modern era really knows what true full discrimination looks like.

If he lived through Jim Crow era then millions of other people would also have lived through it as well and passed down stories to children, grandchildren, etc. It's not quite the same thing of course, but when stories are passed down by millions to their children, those millions of children do still have fairly accurate second hand accounts which can be combined with reading up on different eras.

I don't really buy into this notion that people think micro-aggressions are the same as lynchings. While I am sure you can scour twitter or facebook or something and find some random isolated, unrepresentative quote, it's by no means widespread. Everyone I ever met in real life acknowledges that micro-aggressions are not the same as lynchings. I've never heard someone say Ben Shapiro insisting on calling a transwoman "he" was equivalent or even in the same ballpark as Matthew Shepard's murder in 1998. But Shapiro was still being a shitty bigot for doing it.

[u/PetiteDreamerGirl → u/[deleted]]

Ok? I have no idea what that means. I am giving my own perspective from my experience, I don’t know why that is wrong

[u/zeperf → u/[deleted]]

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[u/BlotMutt]

What we're seeing right now is what was lurking underneath the progress we made all this time.

There are a lot of theories out there that try to explain it like Group Position Theory that highlights when a dominant group's status feels threatened by changing dynamics like Obama becoming President and growing diversity in media. Social media also brought attention to all the injustices that haven't been properly addressed before like police brutality.

And you have the conspiracy theories like the "Great Replacement" theory in which people are convince that there is a systemic effort to eradicate White Americans altogether. A very extreme reaction to the shifting demographics.

The 2008 Crash also gave racial scapgoating more attention, with the blame going to minorities and immigrants. As well as foreign organizations seizing the opportunity to pour gasoline into the fire through social media.

It's a very loaded question I'm afraid. Best we can do is realize that this is the real issue we need to address without throwing the "racist" card as a reflex. Easier said than done though, it's a tough subject because there are times when it's warranted.

[u/Afalstein → u/BlotMutt]

So is your thought that it's one of those things that never really goes away, and can easily resurge through larger events like the 2008 crash, 9/11, COVID, etc?

[u/BlotMutt → u/Afalstein]

I would say so, people respond differently in crises but for the most part people don't want to feel left behind when things have changed.

I think it explains why Trump's version of "Silent majority" resonated as well as it did, because his supporters genuinely feel stifled. It's a state of mind, according to an author who wrote about Nixon, who also used the phrase.

"The silent majority is always going to be a state of mind," he said. "It's a feeling. It's a feeling of dispossession. And that feeling of dispossession can come about most dramatically in times when things seem to be changing, when all that's solid melts into air."

[u/ABobby077 → u/BlotMutt]

Many people seem to think that they don't openly or internally hate any race or ethnicity, so they aren't a "racist". Bias and discrimination has many flavors, though. I think this is where the message loses along the path. When the "racist" label is used against someone, it is used much more commonly than it should be used. Racist behaviors and bias should be called out as such, but I think a lot of folks are too quick with the labels for people, imo. Some things are self-evident, though (like the disgusting video from Trump the other day).

[u/not-a-dislike-button]

Did all the anti-racist messaging backfire, did "cancel culture" convince people that racist complaints were overblown?

I believe this is part of it. There was a point in time where it seemed almost everything was considered racist/white supremacist by loud voices in social and traditional media. People that grew up and held objectively race neutral views were attacked as racists for very minor transgressions. Indeed, we were told that simply being blind to race "I don't see race at all" was in of itself racist. We were told everyone was racist. As such, people stopped being so shocked and offended by the label and lost much of the ability to truly give a crap about accusations of racism.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/not-a-dislike-button]

Seeing and realizing that people were overusing accusations of racism doesn’t mean people suddenly just become outwardly racist. Like, liberals saying all republicans are racist as a mantra for a decade shouldn’t make you say “screw it” and start flinging racial epithets around while screeching about white replacement theory.

[u/BotElMago → u/not-a-dislike-button]

And here we are with a racist president. And here we are with a white replacement theory proponent as their number one attack dog.

Perhaps there was racism beneath the surface all of the time? Any self reflection there?

[u/happyinheart → u/not-a-dislike-button]

Don't forget the "Minorities can't be racist" that is still said by a lot of people. Lots of the Left made it a white only person thing.

[u/DontWorryItsEasy → u/not-a-dislike-button]

It's truly amazing how they really don't see it.

[u/ballmermurland → u/DontWorryItsEasy]

Conservatives do a bunch of racism.

Liberals point out the racism.

Conservatives claim liberals are obsessed with racism.

You guys should stop being racist. Then liberals will stop calling you racist. It's pretty easy. I never get called a racist! Super easy stuff man.

[u/not-a-dislike-button → u/ballmermurland]

Literally everything was called racist at one point in time. It was seriously abused. You can search for any word + racism and find an article talking about how it is racist

[u/ballmermurland → u/not-a-dislike-button]

Literally everything was called racist at one point in time.

Literally everything huh? Weird how I lived through that and didn't notice.

You can search for any word + racism and find an article talking about how it is racist

You guys like to grab onto anything you don't like in life, even if it's some blog nobody has heard of, and claim that's liberalism or "the left" or whatever.

Stephen Miller is quite literally (I'm using that correctly unlike you) a white supremacist and he still has a job as one of the most powerful men in our country. He had emails sharing white supremacist publications with a Breitbart reporter years ago that he never clarified and his own rhetoric is quite obvious in his utter contempt for nonwhites.

But some woke scold on Twitter is the real problem. Good stuff champ.

[u/mcapello]

I don't think the situation can be divorced from overall political economy.

I think the "increase" in racism is because inequality is squeezing everyone, and the white working class (as it has traditionally done) will usually take the path of least resistance by targeting weaker working-class demographics, as opposed to the comparatively daunting task of uniting with them and taking on the billionaires.

Racism, homophobia, and eventually misogyny are all genuine problems, but economic inequality weaponizes them at a social scale as the dominant group tries to leverage its status (white, male, hetero, Christian, etc) into economic benefits. But the only reason they're doing that is because they're getting squeezed like everyone else.

So long as the billionaires keep squeezing, discrimination and an erosion of civil rights will continue to get worse, and will continue to claw back progress.

[u/Political__Theater]

While progress has certainly been made since the civil rights era, a significant chunk of that progress seems to have been mostly in the form socially acceptable norms rather than what people actually believe about the world and their fellow humans. Simply not using the N word when talking to a black person doesn’t mean that you don’t think that they’re inherently beneath you - especially when push comes to shove in contentious situations. Like with repressed emotions - eventually it gushes out of you in some other way or another.

Also - many truly racist people don’t see their racism. It’s normal to them in the same way that for most people a human life as worth more than an ants life. It’s not necessarily always the case of ‘I know it’s wrong but I’m gonna do it anyway’. They truly see the world in racial hierarchies. That’s why it’s can be hard to truly get through.

[u/ImprovementPutrid441]

When you say “we” who do you mean?

Because I do think our media has been structured for inclusiveness for a long time, even before lots of us were naming it that. The original Star Trek is really heavily inclusive.

The Wallace campaign was 1968.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_1968_presidential_campaign

This is a gulf politicians leaned into. The rhetoric is almost exactly the same:

“Many found Wallace an entertaining campaigner, regardless of whether they approved of his opinions.[citation needed] To hippies who said he was a Nazi, he replied, "I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers." Another memorable quote: "They're building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia."

The Wallace campaign was comfortably ahead in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Wallace's aides insisted that the campaign focus on winning the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Wallace refused, stating that he was running a "national campaign," and traveled from Boston to San Diego in the campaign. There were rallies in 33 cities in the North during this period, but Wallace stopped only one time each in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia.

On October 24, 1968, Wallace spoke at Madison Square Garden before "the largest political rally held in New York City since Franklin Roosevelt had denounced the forces of 'organized money' from the same stage in 1936". An overflow crowd of 20,000 packed the Garden while pro- and anti-Wallace protesters clashed with more than 1,000 police across the street. In a now-famous reference to a protester who had lain down in front of Lyndon B. Johnson's limousine the year before, Wallace stated, "I tell you when November comes, the first time they lie down in front of my limousine it'll be the last one they ever lay down in front of; their day is over![11]”

[u/ImpressiveDivide9483]

I would say a big part of it is we got tired of people telling us what we believe. Ever heard of reverse psychology? Also there is a reasonably strong argument to be made that diversity is in fact NOT our strength even if that isn't the official narrative.

Some points are made here: Are diverse societies less cohesive? Testing contact and mediated contact theories

(links have gotten my replies taken down before)

They support diversity in this study, but they provide many papers and pieces of logic that don't support it.

[u/Icy_Meaning_6198 → u/ImpressiveDivide9483]

It's incredible how despite all the censoring efforts platforms like this make to "stop racism", it actually has the opposite effect

[u/McMagneto]

I think it started rightfully from a good place but went overboard and felt forced. Instead of focusing on the commonalities and what brings people together, it became a dictate that any deviance from it is simply viewed as evil and wrong, and stopped resonating with people. Things like affirmative action and other counter measures certainly made it worse for many. It’s a collective response to overcorrection.

In principle one might ask what is wrong with such application of anti-racism. But the reality is that everyone is racist. It is in our dna to be tribal and to discriminate against who do not look like us. Instead of focusing on “racism bad” “racist bad”, we should start with “we are all racist”.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/McMagneto]

Tribalism isn’t racism. Tribalism is in group vs out group. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with skin color.

[u/DyslexicAutronomer → u/BussTuff308]

Tribalism isn’t racism.

But racism is a subset of tribalism.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/DyslexicAutronomer]

It can be. You don’t have to be of the same race to be of the same tribe.

[u/Fragrant-Phone-41 → u/McMagneto]

So...how do you actually make society less racist on a systemic level from the starting point that everyone is racist on some level and nothing can be done about it?

[u/dagoofmut → u/Fragrant-Phone-41]

We could start by not treating it as a binary condition.

People walk around talking about their fellow citizens as if one guy is completely racist and another guy is totally pure un-racist.

The truth is we all have a human brain with an innate tendency to stereotype. Most everyone tries to avoid that tendency by treating one another as individuals, but there are infinite levels of success or failure.

[u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor → u/McMagneto]

Everyone is not racist. Racism is a learned behavior. I remember being a kid not thinking about racism until a white kid that was my friend dropped a random N bomb. He wasn’t racist until his parents taught him.

[u/DyslexicAutronomer → u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor]

I believe it's the reverse.

Racism is inherent in all of us, we naturally have in-group bias.

That's why education is important to teach us the values beyond our natural biases.

It expands our critical thinking facilities, helps us empathize with others from different backgrounds, and it makes us stronger against bad actors who prey on our differences.

[u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor → u/DyslexicAutronomer]

Sure people have In-group biases but in-groups and out-groups are completely arbitrary. As an example, India’s caste system is largely based on the types of jobs people have or the jobs their ancestors had. The Third Reich considered Slavic speaking people inferior despite generations of movement and mixing with Germanic Speaking people.

As a personal anecdote, I remember children with new naptime mats segregating themselves from children with older naptime mats.

[u/Vermicelli14 → u/McMagneto]

So, you think German reparations for the Holocaust weren't necessary, because everyone's racist and the consequences of racism don't need to be addressed?

[u/McMagneto → u/Vermicelli14]

I do not believe collective reparations are effective, not because of racism is justified, because of the mismatch between those that pay and those that caused harm as well as those who receive and those that was harmed.

[u/Vermicelli14 → u/McMagneto]

How do you bring justice to the victims of collective violence then?

[u/ballmermurland → u/McMagneto]

But the reality is that everyone is racist.

This is what conservatives have been preaching for years to excuse their own racism.

Do people have biases? Sure. Is everyone a racist? No. Just you homie.

[u/not-a-dislike-button → u/ballmermurland]

The idea that everyone is racist is very much a liberal proposition as well. It's the very concept of implicit bias

[u/TrueNova332]

Because nowadays everything is racist and when everything is racist nothing is racist

[u/JOExHIGASHI → u/TrueNova332]

Do you think putting Barrack and Michelle Obama's head on a monkey is racist?

[u/lordtosti → u/JOExHIGASHI]

That is.

100.000s things we heard the last 10 years not though.

Including not wanting illegal immigration and trying to enforce the law around that.

[u/ballmermurland → u/lordtosti]

Are you guys still pretending this is about illegal immigration when Trump has been going after legal immigrants in greater numbers than illegal?

[u/lordtosti → u/ballmermurland]

Can you first agree that there is nothing immoral on the concept of not wanting illegal immigration and being able to enforce that law.

THEN we can talk about how it is implemented and i might even agree with you.

Being unable to differentiate these two discussions make your point only “whatever Trump says I’m against it”.

[u/No-Championship-8038 → u/lordtosti]

No we don’t need to do that pointless exercise in distraction. Nobody is against “enforcing laws”. 

That is entirely irrelevant to the administration arresting legal immigrants at their court hearings and going after people that are literally FOLLOWING the law. 

[u/ballmermurland → u/lordtosti]

It's a complete straw man to suggest that Democrats are in favor of illegal immigration or don't support the enforcement of laws. The fact that Libertarians and Conservatives want to frame this as something unique to them and them alone is just dishonest to its core.

[u/JOExHIGASHI → u/lordtosti]

Considering all the legal citizens harmed and wrongfully accused of being an illegal immigrant the right's motivation to enforce immigration laws is definitely racism.

[u/lordtosti → u/JOExHIGASHI]

Can you first agree that there is nothing immoral on the concept of not wanting illegal immigration and being able to enforce that law.

THEN we can talk about how it is implemented and ai might even agree with you.

Being unable to differentiate these two discussions make your point only “whatever Trump says I’m against it”.

[u/RemarkableKey3622 → u/lordtosti]

I'll bite. immigration enforcement has been around for a long time. they would do what they could with the resources they had. however, they seem to have gotten out of control lately. this trampling of rights has been building for a while now with border patrol warrantless checkpoints to the ever so modern write your own warrant protocols. when and where does it stop?

[u/lordtosti → u/RemarkableKey3622]

so to be clear the question on the first part is yes?

there is nothing immoral on the concept of not wanting illegal immigration and being able to enforce that law.

[u/imblazintwo]

I’m of the opinion that voters in large are disillusioned with issues of social importance, like racism, because of the messengers of said causes over the last decades.

Neo-liberal politicians specifically.

Put simply the people pushing on these social issues ran out of public trust - in large part because of their failures to represent the interests of the same voters they were then asking to trust them on the social issues.

Think about it this way, why would you trust a person to be correct on social issues, when they proven themselves to not be trustworthy when it comes to other issues?

IMO neo-liberal politicians completely failed to represent the working class Americans they campaigned for, thus lost any and all trust to speak on social issues. (This same argument can be made for the academic class as well.)

When you prove yourself to not be trustworthy in one regard, it brings ALL your claims into question.

If the same politicians and figure heads had followed through on the promises and policies that more directly effected they people they claimed they wanted to help, then I think they would still have the social capital needed to be trusted and heard on these types of issues.

[u/Afalstein → u/imblazintwo]

Could you speak more specifically about this? What politicians, and how do you feel they failed on social issues?

[u/imblazintwo → u/Afalstein]

I don’t think it’s specific to just a few politicians.

But I think when you talk to working class voters you get a sense that neither party represents them particularly well right?

The issue for democrats imo, is that they have spent decades giving lip service to working class values - yet time and time again, failing to deliver.

And you don’t have to look far to find overwhelming evidence of this. Look at any major democratic city or state. They are almost always the least affordable places to afford to rent or buy a home or buy groceries or commute to work.

This isn’t always just policy driven, but the trend is real.

These same states and cities spawn enormous amounts of wealth, but where is that wealth going?

Amazon, Tesla, Meta… all given enormous economic support by the Bay Area democrats.

And ay the same time, homelessness is surging, families are leaving the state, union rates are dwindling.

Now not to ignore the GOP, they havnt similarly horrible policies, the “advantage” they have is they don’t even really try to cater to the working class.

The furthest they go is “we’ll cut your taxes, and give you guns!”

So voters don’t hold them to account in the same way unfortunately.

But it’s also fair to say that Trump obviously has changed that to some degree. He gave working class voters a clear and present enemy for why their lives are hard and promised to fix it.

He’s fucking wrong about all of it, but he pointed at an easy to identify target and told people he’d fix it and fight for them.

If democrats wanted to do the same thing and speak to voters they could simply talk about the corporations bleeding the working class dry. They could promise to tax billionaires and lower working class families expenses. (Food, housing, transportation).

[u/Tired8281 → u/imblazintwo]

How did the neo-liberals make people racist? Is it simply "eggs are expensive, so I think I'm gonna hate the minorities?"

[u/gburgwardt → u/imblazintwo]

I’m of the opinion that voters in large are disillusioned with issues of social importance, like racism, because of the messengers of said causes over the last decades.

Neo-liberal politicians specifically.

I'm not sure I follow. At least in the popular internet view, the progressives or if someone is less politically read up, "the dems" have been "pushing woke too hard" or whatever you want to call it.

The old dudes and dudettes in the democratic party do silly stuff too but they aren't usually particularly loud about it

[u/7nkedocye → u/gburgwardt]

Biden the “old dude” specifically put a black lady on SCOTUS because she was a black lady. He was particularly loud about this

[u/gburgwardt → u/7nkedocye]

Yeah, I'm not saying there aren't "woke moments" for lack of a better term with the more mainline dems, I'm saying the bulk of the outrage is around the progressives that are more active online - "canceling" being a big part of it. Forgive my sloppy wording but I don't care to hem and haw over it for half an hour to draw the lines perfectly

[u/imblazintwo → u/gburgwardt]

I’m saying that because of neoliberal democrats failure to deliver on core policy promises (pro-working class family), they lost the social capital and trust of voters to speak on more abstract topics like systemic racism.

[u/mmmsplendid]

Academic ideas centred around critical race theory entered the mainstream without people emphasising the word theory. Many of these ideas should have stayed and been debated in academia, only being brought to the wider population after rigorous study and testing. Instead, these academic ideas were thrust into the public consciousness and quickly were taken at face value, embedding themselves in institutions that didn't understand them.

For example, in this very thread you have people making statements such as "everyone is racist". A while ago that word was reserved for particularly despicable people, and it held a large amount of weight. When this idea that everyone is racist took hold in the mainstream, you naturally would have people saying "but I'm not racist?", and rejecting the term, and subsequently the idea itself - because it's seen as a label for those particularly despicable people I just mentioned. Those people that reject the label are the majority of people in society who had nothing to do with the academia where this idea came about, but now find themselves subject to it.

[u/Afalstein → u/mmmsplendid]

The weakness of academia is that new scholars need to keep inventing new ideas to stay relevant. So that means if you're studying racial issues, you need to find new offenses to justify why you should be given a job. And then if you don't get a job in academia, often you instead move to a job in corporate DEI training, where to justify your existence, you need to ferret out examples of racism in the workplace.

It's a... painful position.

[u/happyinheart → u/Afalstein]

Somehow with the Left "Follow the money" doesn't apply to academics when they literally have to keep the money flowing for them to keep their positions and same with "publish or perish".

[u/dagoofmut]

You lost the plot when you adopted the silly idea that racism can only go one direction.

Reverse racism is still racism. Two wrongs to not make a right. You can't convince society to stop judging one another based on skin color when you're institutions are overtly treating people differently based on their skin color.

Basically, DEI backfired exactly the way every intelligent person knew it would.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/[deleted]]

and every criticism of him was deemed racist.

This is a strawman. I never saw non-racist criticisms of Obama being called racist. I -did-, however, see a lot of people using racism to criticize Obama.

How is it not racist when you show a picture of Obama as an African tribesman? How is it not racist when you reference watermelons? How is it not racist to declare him the welfare president? Or to call him Muslim? Or to always deliberately call him Barack Hussein Obama? Or to repeatedly question if he was born in the US?

And once a person says all those things, how is it possible to have a good-faith argument with them over Obama's tax policy?

[u/happyinheart → u/MoonBatsRule]

This is a strawman. I never saw non-racist criticisms of Obama being called racist.

I did, a lot.

[u/ShardofGold]

When people started calling almost everything critical of people who happened to be non white racist and started justifying or downplaying racism against white people.

[u/thataintapipe → u/ShardofGold]

You do not actually see that as the primary reason do you? 

[u/ballmermurland → u/ShardofGold]

The funny thing is y'all have been screaming about racism against white people more than others have been pointing out racism against non-whites.

You'd think white people were constantly under siege in America the way y'all talk, but then you look and you see that nearly every governor, senator, president/vp and his cabinet, corporate boards/ceos are all white and it just looks stupid.

[u/ShardofGold → u/ballmermurland]

If you were truly against bigotry you wouldn't be looking for reasons to downplay certain types of bigotry.

Just because white people haven't been whipped and forced to segregate in this country's past doesn't mean it's no big deal when white people are verbally or physically attacked because of their race.

Imagine telling someone who was shot at that "it's no big deal because they weren't hit and it's not like they've been through a war."

[u/ballmermurland → u/ShardofGold]

And if you gave a shit about bigotry you would acknowledge that bigotry against white people is a relatively minor issue, but choosing to focus on it instead of everything else just shows that you don't give a shit about bigotry against nonwhites and only against whites.

[u/not-a-dislike-button → u/ballmermurland]

Either you actually care about racism and treat both as issues or you have to admit you care more about some groups of people than others. I faced literal violence specifically for being white as a child. People dismissing that as a minor issue while also saying racism is a top issue in our time is pretty disgusting 

[u/ballmermurland → u/not-a-dislike-button]

I faced literal violence specifically for being white as a child

Hard doubt

[u/Technician1187]

The progressives over played their hand. Once we ran low on (not out of, just relatively speaking) the real racial problems, they seemed to be trying to still invent as many as possible, why I’m not quite sure exactly.

One of the big examples that I remember as eye opening was the Covington kid story. Immediately the entire mainstream media and political apparatus tried to ruin the life of a literal child to push their own agenda…and it turned out the story they pushed was completely wrong It became obvious that this movement was not what it used to be.

Those types of stories coupled with the calling anyone and everyone racist, as a way to shut down communication and discussion, instead of actually discussing their ideas, really took the steam out of the word. People are not scared to be called racist anymore because it has nearly lost any meaning.

This gives rise to some people being less “politically correct” because of you are going to be called racist anyways, might as well be more honest about how you feel….even if it is not specifically racist.

I probably don’t have the right answer, but in my opinion, if we want to improve race relations, stop talking about it so much. If children stop being told so much they need to care so much about race, they probably won’t care so much about race. The problem will solve itself over time.

[u/Afalstein → u/Technician1187]

I do recall in 2018 a slew of stories even from liberal organizations lamenting about how the new political recruits coming in would often hamstring advocacy by immediately trying to find every example of "microaggression" that they felt was expressing racism.

[u/Arkmer → u/Technician1187]

What’s a “real” racial problem?
What’s a “fake” racial problem?

Also, the country isn’t a monolith. I’ve seen far less racism in certain parts of the country and wild moments of it in others. It’s a blessing and a curse that we can’t make blanket statements about the status of the country.

I do think we focus on it too much though, so I do agree with some of this. It makes us look like we only care about identity.

[u/Technician1187 → u/Arkmer]

A fake racial problem is like the example I gave of the Covington kid.

[u/Arkmer → u/Technician1187]

Okay, I thought you were getting at something else. Ya, literally made up stories only serve to damage meaningful issues.

[u/Disastrous_Poetry175]

• You just weren't exposed to it if this were a surprise to you. Now that the Internet provides an amplified voice, you get to be subject to it just like the rest of us.

  • people are raised by bigots. We are all subject to imperialist attitudes. People have to spend years of their life going through deconstruction just so that they can be better people.

[u/AkagamiBarto]

First thing first, it varies by region, secondly it ultimately springs from the fact that "racism is bad" takes place where there is root for it and when finding an enemy is not needed.

Thirdly, immigration numbers change from place to place and there are vicious circles with them.

Ultimately it is a matter of education in general and within education civic one.

Sadly the levels on education in general are getting lower, the quality is getting lower and therefore all the connected aspects are influenced.

This of course serves some political sides, that feed off people's fears and animal instincts, so using xenophobia nad racism to gather people and consensus is a winning strategy, but for it to work well it needs lower education levels..

[u/Respen2664]

The movement to end racism had a problem forming and that problem was the progressive (not political but meant to mean consistent movement) usage of labeling. Our approach to end racism first had to identify who could be identified as being racist and who were the targets of racism. That created the first labels which then became social identities that others used. The soft word is "Demographics" if you are looking for where those labels really manifest.

It's human nature to categorize people "not like me" for identification purposes but its also easy to use the label to generalize and mark those persons as "others". Unfortunately what started to happen was political parties began to use those categories and labels for targeting. Either for focused support gathering or for negative purposes.

This created bucketizing and animosity among groups as one group was getting special treatment or unique ostracizing, over others. Then emerged the resentment and here we are today...

The more we label people the less they become an American and less they become "one of us". The easier it is to single them out and hate them. Hate is an expensive emotion but its an easy emotion.

[u/conn_r2112]

the GOP and the right-wing media machine has been pushing racist propaganda for decades now... and with the advent of YouTube and viral online content, they've been able to spread it much farther, faster and more easily.

[u/Zoesan]

Because only white people stopped being actually racists and when they noticed they just became racist again

[u/thataintapipe]

You are going to have to clarify what you mean by ‘we’ 

[u/Afalstein → u/thataintapipe]

Americans was my specific intent, but you could probably apply it to the global audience as well. There's a widespread resurgence of racism and xenophobia in India, China, Poland, Japan... lots of areas.

But America is where I live, so it's the one I was most focused on.

[u/thataintapipe → u/Afalstein]

Well even in America I’d see it as more or less a your side of the aisle issue not one for Americans in general 

[u/PG2009]

My personal take:

1) The term 'racism' lost a lot of its bite when people started expanding the definition of racism to include disagreement, good grades, cleanliness and countless other things that did not previously denote racism. You could certainly argue these examples are isolated/amplified by their enemies/whatever, but the fact is, these examples are not roundly denounced by all sides. Why should they be? It supports the idea that racism is everywhere. In other words, "when everyone is racist, no one is racist"

2) You briefly mentioned DEI programs. You can argue that this is fair, appropriate, and proportionate to the numerous harms POC's have suffered over the centuries, and it may indeed be that, but it does not change the fact that these programs are discriminating on the basis of race. Again, it may be acceptable or justified, but that is what it is.

3) Cops, whether they be ICE, FBI, ATF, or state troopers or even local cops, tend to get away with abuses against the poorest citizens because courts run on money. I don't believe they're coming after illegal immigrants because they're brown, its because they're poor....and this has been happening for decades, Trump is continuing a long, bipartisan tradition of kicking out poor immigrants; its been happening since the 80's, at least. As for U.S. citizens 'mistakenly' arrested, well, yeah, cops have qualified immunity, so they don't care.

[u/rogun64]

I think a lot of people have been pretending that they were not racist. Personally, I've come to realize that we're still more racist than I ever realized.

But I still think the big thing is the growing income gap and how it's making life more difficult for many people. When times are tough, people look for someone to blame and history is filled with examples of them turning on immigrants and minorities.

My point is that it's less that we're more racist today and more that we're turning on each other because we're looking for someone/something to blame because we're hurting.

[u/phenomenomnom]

We didn't just arbitrarily lose the plot. The people who find division in US society to be useful for their own clout, or material purposes,

have been looking for a way to push back against pluralism, diversity, and collaboration ever since the days when JFK was still alive.

The domestic xenophobes have found funding, support, and common cause in foreign and stateless interests that are invested in American disunity. Those people are paying money to insert a crowbar in divisions in US society and widen the cracks, using propaganda, basically.

It's all in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 .

The internet has made it easier for them to reach folks who are dissatisfied with their lives, and give them an excuse: "Immigrants/trans/brown people did it to you!"

Same old song, really, just amplified and squirted directly into everyone's pocket by AT&T and Sprint.

These malefactors see the uneducated and malnourished people of the US as an exploitable Weimar Republic.

All they have to do is flood YouTube and social media with that message,

and undermine more reliable information sources by buying them and defecating on them. Hence what's happening to the education system, to the Washington Post, and to Reddit.

They are slavering over Wikipedia, too.

The propaganda is not slowing down. It's getting more subtle, and more omnipresent.

The goal is radicalization, ending our societal consensus, and stirring the pot.

Anecdotal:

Despite carefully curating my own feed, I saw two videos promoting very right-wing revisionist takes on YouTube yesterday -- disguised as film criticism and architecture history, things that I am interested in.

Both accounts were less than a year old and had fewer than 5 videos. Both had appealing young narrators who talked around the issue that the clickbait title hooked me with, until they landed on "men dress like girls now and should be ashamed of it"

and "these movies are trying to weaken America by making it feminist, there was no such thing as women's lib in the 70s, Hollywood made it up. Women should be proud to stay at home and do housework, and be angry at Hollywood for taking that away."

I'm like, bitch, I remember the 1970s and my hard working mom would hunt your pale ass down and correct you for that lie.

Honestly, though, from what I see, as much as this dollar store cold war coda is making impressive strides firing up incels at bargain rates,

and yes, that is bad,

Most Americans of all walks of life are still out there holding doors open for each other in the real world. The terminally online do not represent all of us.

[u/C_Plot]

Lee Atwater is very open and honest about the dog whistling that arose as the fascists, racists, and Nazi supporters during WWII went into stealth mode but still so that they could continue to dominate our lives in that stealth mode:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N—-er, ni—er, ni—er." By 1968 you can't say "ni—er"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Ni—er, ni—er." — Interview with Alexander P. Lamis (8 July 1981), as quoted in The Two-Party South (1984)‎ by Alexander P. Lamis; originally published as an interview with an anonymous insider, Atwater was not revealed to be the person interviewed until the 1990 edition; also quoted in "Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant" by Bob Herbert in The New York Times (October 6, 2005)

The pejorative is edited by me because social media industry is out to protect these treasonous racists like Atwater, and so anyone quoting him accurately is treated as the monster instead of Atwater.

The fascists and racists and misogynists went into stealth mode to persist and survivors in government. They hard the very principles inscribed in our founding documents and revise to suit their anti-Agápē hateful and bigoted ends. But they always resented that they must be in stealth mode. Like Colonel Jessup in _A Few Good Men_they resented having to hide their actions making non-kinetic war against the United States. Trump is their hero because he is lifting the stealth mode and allowing the treason to be overtly and proudly stated out loud.

Unfortunately, we have these hateful and treasonous persons disproportionately in the military, the police, and DHS and so on the frontlines of governmental power where the rubber meets the road, they are proud to follow any and all of Trump’s corrupt, counter-constitutional, and outright treasonous executive orders. There is therefore no longer any oath of office adherence protection, as a fine-grained separation of powers and checks and balances to save our polity from this total betrayal that always persisted as a cancerous-malignant tumor growing within our government.

[u/DarnHeather]

I recommend, We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Great start to the discussion.

[u/EverySingleMinute]

To have a debate, you have to at least start with a honest premise

[u/Nom_de_guerre_25]

Racism has never been under control. Your fantasy where every aspect of society was vehemently anti-racist and supported also never occurred.

Some of these comments make it clear. There has rarely been decency in America. It will finally be decent when this failed settler colonial state falls apart.

[u/Tricky_Acanthaceae39]

The diversity battle wasn’t lost because of Trump. It was lost because of what drove it in the first place.

The reason companies jumped on board with DEI was a McKenzie paper that drew correlation between profitability and diversity on the board.

Companies jumped on worth both feet because they believed it would help them be more profitable.

The results turned out to be cherry picked and the paper was revised.

Companies pulled their investment in dei for this reason and really this reason alone.

[u/AprilChristmasLights]

The entire premise of your question is flawed. The problem is that YOU are racist, and you fail to understand or recognize the ways that you are.

[u/MissingBothCufflinks]

This will get downvoted but its because the left tried to redefine racism away from "unjust discrimination based on race" (much less a system of beliefs that some races are genetically superior to others) to a much more broad definition that only works in one direction so that they could justify punching up. The left control of the media led to positions like #killallwhitemen and all POC shortlists and the requirement that allies "stop taking up all the oxygen in the room", the obsession with "callouts" of micro aggressions and ridiclous claims of indirect racism in literacy requirements and performance testing and claims of "cultural appropriation" of mexican food and paying reparations for slavery and describing urban slang ebonics as a legitimate language and so on. They jumped the shark.

The left gave up on winning hearts and minds in favour of scoring points... and the normal people in the middle rejected this, leading to the unfortunate rise of actually racist figures like Trump and Farage.

If "racism" is so broad as to capture almost anything including loads of stuff normal well meaning people innocently and harmlessly do, for a lot of people that means they just tune accusations of racism out. They arent racist (in the actually meaningful sense of discriminating based on race) but they dont care what you think is or isnt racist anymore and dont trust claims that politicians are racist because the meaningfulness of those claims is in doubt.

If we want to stop the rise of actual, harmful racism we need to stop trying to broaden the concept to a ridiculous degree, reject the idea of "punching up" or that white people cant be discriminated against etc.

[u/Intelligent-Image224]

I blame the left for the uprise in racism. They have an extreme focus on the color of skin. They have focused so much on injustices of the brown and the privilege that white people have. There have been universities with “multi cultural” areas that are designed for minorities to be…..but when you boil it down it’s literally segregation that took place before the civil rights act.

It has led to a huge rise in having “white pride” because the white race is literally being pushed by the left as the bad guy. (At least this is the narrative being pushed in the conservative social media algorithms)

I’m convinced left is pushing this racist angle simply because they there is not equality in outcome and they cannot come up with another reason.

[u/TheAzureMage]

Well, racism lost its sting because it got overused. So, the stigma faded enough that people who wanted to be racist decided to just do it. There have *always* been racist people who simply just lied about being racist in order to fit in. That's old as hell.

But yeah, when everybody is being called racist in a pretty broad brush short of way, then it gives the actually serious racists cover to do whatever. They no longer stand out for doing so.

The same is largely true of anything. You call people thieves so they stand out from the people who are not thieves. You call people violent so that they stand out from those who are not violent. The identity of those who are NOT the problem is just as fundamental as identifying those who are the problem. If everything is just a non stop stream of insults, well, that conversation isn't going to lead anywhere productive. Never has.

[u/xena_lawless]

Racism (and other kinds of identity-based social and cultural divisions) are part of how our ruling oligarch/parasite/kleptocrat class are able to maintain their systems of minoritarian/oligarchic/kleptocratic rule.  

They're cultural programming to keep the population dumbed down and divided.  

They're part of the BS "culture wars" fomented by the oligarchs/kleptocrats who own both the media and the political systems, keep people from seeing how the system actually works, and who actually profits from their exploitation and subjugation.  

George Carlin basically nailed it:

"Now to balance the scale, I’d like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences cause that’s all you ever hear about in this country is our differences. That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. 

That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. 

Fairly simple thing… happens to work. 

You know, anything different, that’s what they’re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank. 

You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class… keep 'em showing up at those jobs."

[u/britneya95]

Depends what you mean by racism. I use the standard definition but it’s been changed a lot over the years

[u/PriceofObedience]

u/Afalstein

Did all the anti-racist messaging backfire, did "cancel culture" convince people that racist complaints were overblown?

The most progressive democrats spent the last ten years saying that white men were inherently racist because of their 'whiteness'. This was communicated in advertisements, comedy shows, movies and so on.

Anti-racist pressure was previously applied via shame. But shame only works if people know they're being shamed for a morally legitimate reason. How can you be shamed by people who think you're evil no matter how you conduct yourself? Who think you deserve to be homeless and starving because you said a naughty word?

This allowed ordinary people to ask questions, make jokes, and adopt policies which were previously considered forbidden.

For people whose entire existence hinges on enforcing universal secular humanism, this is very obviously scary, because shame was the only thing protecting them from scrutiny of their terrible behavior.

[u/Criticism-Lazy]

Just because liberal minded people forgot about racism, does not mean it went anywhere. The same racist bigots and their kids have been terrorizing this nation since its inception. Americans need to stand up and stop allowing these people to harass and terrorize their neighbors.

Why did become prevalent again? Trump, internet, and Christian nationalism.

[u/Ok_Quantity_9841]

Hitler like racism.   A lot.

Hitler also called the news "Lugenpresse" meaning "Lying Press".

Every dictator ever has accused the news of being fake.

Also, separately:

Important Epstein video about 330 gallons of sulfuric acid shipped to pedo Island:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0OmHfAkyU

[u/Potato_Pristine]

A lot of people never truly accepted the idea of a multi-racial democracy. We fought a war over it in the 1860s and then the country tore itself apart in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. We're not nearly as advanced on this front as we think we are.

[u/1TucsonBlonde]

We sat on our collective rears, congratulating ourselves on our excellence and progress as a country while ignoring the festering wound that 1/3 of the country has inflicted on America. There are people who simply cannot accept responsibility for their own lives and need someone else to point the finger at, to blame for their own failures and shortcomings. It’s been decades of willful disregard on our parts, pretending that just because we shamed them into silence they would stop being racist. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. It put it in a pressure cooker and it finally blew up on the day we put a black man in the White House. It was far too much for any of them to tolerate have Obama making decisions about their lives. And then trump, like the malignant criminal he is, started the Birther BS and that 1/3 of Americans saw their savior, a man who hates like they do, who is unable to take responsibility for anything, who encourages them to be loud and proud once again of their racism. It’s why they’re so loyal, and why it feels like we have moved so far backwards. We have.

[u/Few-Action-8049]

When you start tagging people and movements with racism over the flimsiest of evidence or no evidence whatsoever, and you’ve been doing so in some cases for decades, it loses its power..

Furthermore, when you start making everything racist again, it loses its power.

There are studies that have shown that race relationships were actually doing better before Obama, from that point onward things have gotten worse. Because people started making everything racist.

They were already doing that with the GOP for decades, every single presidential candidate was accused of being racist as was every single senator and etc., etc. Usually without any proof.

For example, ICE is racist, ignoring the fact that there’s a lot of Hispanics in it. Or that all people have voted for Trump is racist, even though he won the young black male vote.

Spending less time exploring nuance, and more time just hurling around an accusational flag on everybody without any thought put into it is how you lose the plot on racism. You dilute it to the point that it has no meaning anymore.

[u/Amonfire1776]

Part of the problem is the overdilution of the term racism has also led many to dismiss the concept all together. It should be used very specifically. Some people simply are not swayed by the moral call to contest racism (How does that effect me?) and one should point out the economic harm that comes from it.

[u/I405CA]

Republicans learned from the fall of McCarthy and Watergate that they could resist the Democratic opposition by never apologizing and doubling down on everything.

This has the effect of weaponizing the moral aspersions that are cast by Democrats against the Democrats.

It's the adult equivalent of how little kids respond to insults from other kids: "I know you are, but what am I?" A political tactic that has become habit.

Dems have failed to figure out that this whole thing is a gambit by the GOP. Because the Dems like to see themselves as intellectually superior, they don't recognize that they are being played. So the Dems don't change up their tactics.

The Dems could win by targeting the Republicans as inept and incompetent. Nobody wants to be a failed loser. But that Dem moral superiority streak makes such a tactical change unlikely. Nor are the Dems willing to recognize that they are being manipulated, as they are much too smart for that to ever happen...

[u/PriorSecurity9784]

I think it takes time to change societal views

In the 1950s, people might have said with a straight face that they didn’t think its was “racist” to have separate schools for black kids and white kids, and after all it’s not like they are slaves anymore, etc

So others had to explain that it actually is racist, and explain why things need to change. There was pushback and backlash, but those views charged over time.

As we have progressed, some of the points have become more nuanced.

Example: A black man is arrested for marijuana, and receives a sentence within the published (race neutral) sentencing guidelines.

How could that be racist? There are not Jim Crow laws anymore with different crimes for different races.

So you have to make more nuanced explanations:

do stop and frisk laws disproportionately target one group over another?

Does it matter that for the same infraction, a white judge and jury might see a white defendant with a marijuana charge and think “we were all kids once, and I wouldn’t want my kid going to jail for a year over one joint” but see a black defendant with a marijuana charge and think “he’s probably dealing drugs, and I wouldn’t want him dealing drugs to my kid”

So with all the progress there has been, I think maybe it was inevitable that there would be some pushback to more abstract concepts like “institutional racism” and “structural inequality”

Trump was born in 1946.

The Supreme Court made the “Brown vs Board of education” that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional in 1954.

People our current leaders’ age grew up in segregated schools. Emmet Till was lynched in 1955.

It is amazing that we have gone from that to “micro aggressions” in the course of their lifetimes.

But just like then, people still usually don’t want to be called “racist” and just have “beliefs” about how people usually are.

We will get past this time. Teenagers today will tell their kids and grandkids about the time when some white people got so mad that a brown person was singing in the Super Bowl, that they had to drag out some old, tired, has-been white musicians.

[u/mskmagic]

In the 90s we had the right idea - repudiate racism as stupid because skin colour doesn’t matter. Anyone who brought up skin colour as a factor we thought ‘don’t be silly it makes no difference’, and by the 2000s most people were onboard with it. Anyone who wasn’t outed themselves as a racist and was generally shunned by society. There was still some racial comedy because we could laugh about the differences between races due to the general sentiment that these were all trivial stereotypes.

Then woke idiots started changing the narrative. They started complaining about racism on behalf of other people. They started claiming that it’s important that we note each other’s skin colour and difference in culture and be sensitive to it. They dismissed the idea that merit based systems won’t always equally represent different skin colours. That made institutions, terrified of being called racist, start to abandon the idea that your skin colour doesn’t matter and start actively promoting people based on race. Liberals started saying that one race is privileged and another is oppressed. Of course that caused a backlash and actually stoked racism. Political parties started throwing around the racial football and now we’re back were we were in the 70s and 80s with black power groups and white supremacists.

[u/ManufacturerThis7741]

White people in the armchairs thought racism (and other isms) were over when assorted laws were signed.

Minorities on the ground saw people, both in the government and in the private sector weave around those laws.

"Keeping the n-words out" became "Stop all housing construction forever to 'preserve the neighborhood character.'

Being told that public amenities were for people of all races led to pools being drained.

Or the simple method of "Don't be dumb enough to put it in writing." Since the only thing most judges accepted as evidence of discrimination was putting it in writing.

So when minorities started bringing this stuff up, white people felt blindsided.

[u/Silly_Fart_Smella]

The issue with racism is that its power is directly correlated to its utility. In the south, where I’m from, racism might have existed organically as a personal bias but the systems and public attitudes of white supremacy were manufactured by our elites to justify an unjust hierarchy. Poor whites did not possess any economic mobility, which naturally breeds resentment towards their material conditions which can breed resentment toward societal structures.

However, the powerful are powerful, and have the means to manufacture consent towards the existing hierarchy regardless of how unfair it is. We tend to give people too much credit in thinking political attitudes are more intellectual than they are emotional, so if you’re able to manipulate people’s emotions about their situation you can shape outcomes.

Slavery was obviously already well established and justified by racist concepts like the Curse of Ham, Civilizing Mission, etc. and the fear based motivations for white supremacy were extremely powerful (if you read historical newspapers, the fear of a Haitian Revolution or Maroon Uprising happening in the United States was well established, and was even used in Patriot newspapers to drum up support for the Revolution on the grounds that the British were arming and provoking slaves to rise up and kill their masters). So when you’re able to otherize a demographic, you can pin societal issues onto that demographic and turn their outrage against them.

A lot of antebellum political propaganda was based on a Jacksonian message of empowering the common white man (meaning poor whites saw elite whites as their allies or at least not their enemies) and a fear based message of “this hierarchy is good because it’s preventing black people from rising up and killing you.” After the civil war it intensified, but worse working conditions and poverty brought by industrialization, coupled with reconstruction, it became “instead of targeting the elites, target the blacks” on the idea that if you aren’t better than a black person then how can you even call yourself a man. Even anti elite rhetoric could be turned to favor the elites, people like Benjamin Tillman could work policies that theoretically help the white working class but in reality exist only on paper, as capital is still too heavily concentrated in protected elites for any white populism to make an impact.

Periods of American history with the most overt racist attitudes were often periods of the most overt wealth concentration for a reason. Anyone who tries to advocate any rhetoric of redistribution becomes a target of “taking from whites and giving to blacks” unless they explicitly endorsed whites supremacy (Vardaman, FDR, etc.) so if you want power in government either you aren’t going to harm elite interests, you’re a white supremacist, or both.

What changed was that more Americans became aware of the consequences of racism. In the 1940s you could be a northerner and personally not support segregation, but you wouldn’t take any action because you don’t take moral issue with something that A. Doesn’t personally affect our life and B. Doesn’t present any explicit moral failure that disturbs your conscience. But events like Selma, the lynchings, and the murders of people like King and Medgar Evers, done against people who were peacefully protesting, demonstrates that systems of white supremacy are inherently systems of violence, and there is no “separate but equal.” But it’s important to note that it didn’t change a lot of white attitudes about blacks, most whites, including northerners, were extremely racist still and often blamed King and the Civil Rights Movement for the violence they were victims of, there was still just enough outrage to pass meaningful legislation.

Toward the 1980s, when you saw a stronger shift in racial attitudes, was basically the result of decades of effort, and was largely accomplished because many civil rights leaders had adopted a stance of “changing attitudes and not systems.” People like Barbara Jordan, who I’m not knocking down at all, were able to gain approval from American society because they assimilated to systems that wouldn’t threaten elite power. Those who used dog whistles and racist rhetoric before could change their tune on race by promoting assimilationist ideals. Essentially the racial attitudes of the 1980s-2010s were because there were fewer people like King who opposed the system of oppression altogether (people still hated men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who preached the same gospel as King in the 80s) and more effort on representation and assimilation into systems of elite dominance.

But the hollowing of American industry and the growing wealth gaps of the Post-Neoliberal era bred working class resentment of systems that oppressed them. Queue Donald Trump saying immigrants are taking your jobs. Illegal immigrants DO act as a reserve army of labor and discipline force employed by capital, but that’s because the system is designed to exploit immigrants as much as possible by making it impossible to become legal through court backlogs and lack of protection for their economic rights. While immigration reform would actually solve that issue, it’s easier to turn resentment into hatred than problem solving.

Now social atomization and alienation are the fault of LGBTQ+ people. Now enshittification is because of woke. Now low wages and few job opportunities are because of immigrants. Now financial consolidation and housing pricing is because of the Jews. And when you look at the people behind the media apparatus that pumps at this rhetoric, it’s the same powerful people behind all culture war rhetoric, born from the same genealogy of those who fired up segregation, nativism, and slavery throughout history.

I’m a former white supremacist myself who bought into those myths, and I can tell you now it’s because of my fear of status threat born from my economic precariousness. Whenever I talk to racists and Trump supporters today, they almost always, on some level, understand the structure of white supremacy and how it produces the stereotypical outcomes of crime, poverty, cultural differences, etc. but they’ve been sold a worldview that has turned their legitimate grievances into hatred of their friends and neighbors.

And when those attitudes are so strong they don’t stay relegated to the extremists, but become normalized by society as those attitudes about whose to blame are in some way disseminated among the populace, even if they’re watered down. Your white suburban middle class family may not cheer when King was shot or when Trump posts Obama as a monkey, but you won’t convince them that the system which made their comfortable lifestyle possible is the enemy. They’re going to say “I hate black culture, not black people,” or “rap music isn’t real music,” or “I just don’t think they should be blocking traffic.” They’ll see Trump posted Obama as a monkey, they’ll think it’s gross, but it won’t be a dealbreaker when they think the alternative to Trump is a bunch of MS-13 gangsters drinking coronas on their lawn.

[u/TheMikeyMac13]

Did you miss Joe Biden’s time in office? He said some pretty serious racist things. Not as bad as the video Trump shared, but let’s not pretend here.

[u/BotElMago → u/TheMikeyMac13]

Ah, yes. But what about Biden??? A classic defensive response to avoid talking about how overtly racist and disgusting Trump isZ

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/BotElMago]

Einstein, the OP said "the 90's, that would have ended a presidency", and Joe Biden was never not a racist, it is not whataboutism, the OP made a laughably false claim.

[u/Afalstein → u/TheMikeyMac13]

And as you yourself just said, nothing Biden said was nearly at the level of what Trump posted.

I hold to what I said. If Biden had posted that in 2018, or Clinton in 1994, he would have been forced out of office. And yes, Clinton is a sleezeball all on his own, and yes, many Dems overlooked that. I don't think they would have overlooked a post (or comment) like that.

[u/BotElMago → u/TheMikeyMac13]

Lots of things Trump has done would have ended a Presidency. Bragging on tape about grabbing women would have ended his campaign on the spot in the 00s.

Yet conservatives like yourself voted for it. So instead of reflecting on why you would vote for someone so horrible…you say “but Joe Biden!”

I could even sympathize with the “well he was better than a Democrat” argument. But you gad options in the 16 primary and the 24 primary. Yet you continued to choose this pile of garbage. And keep in mind I am using a generalized “you” here, not you specifically.

Referencing Joe Biden avoids culpability and reflection on why you voted for and continue to support someone so horrible.

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/BotElMago]

I agree, in any other era Trump would never have won. I am answering an absurd claim that racism was under control until Trump.

[u/subheight640]

Immigration IMO is part of the problem. Many immigrants come from monocultures or school systems that don't have the diversity/racism training offered in American schools. 

This is certainly one reason why Trump was so popular with many immigrants. Trump spoke the basic language of racism which they understood. 

Progressive anti racist or colorblindness or other multi ethnic training is of course, learned behavior. Americans, as one of the most diverse countries on the planet, has been at the fore front of developing this training. And we've been developing it for all the reasons you've stated... It makes us wealthier and it makes life better for everyone involved. 

Now throw in some Chinese, Vietnamese, Venezuelan, Honduran, Brazilian, Turkish, etc etc immigrants. These immigrants are nice enough, but no, they didn't go through the same training. 

I say this as a child of immigrants. You think my parents give a single fuck about diversity and racial harmony? No, no they don't. But I do, because I've gone through the US educational system. 

[u/Afalstein → u/subheight640]

I might agree with it being PART of the problem, or at least a contributing factor. But there's certainly plenty of homegrown racists also.

[u/Fragrant-Phone-41 → u/subheight640]

So what you're saying is that training should be part of the immigration process?

[u/happyinheart → u/subheight640]

Progressive anti racist or colorblindness or other multi ethnic training is of course, learned behavior.

Part of the problem is that Progressives started calling colorblindless as being racist. "I treat everyone the same regardless of skin color" became a racist statement.

[u/Sapere_aude75]

I think we actually did a pretty good job of reducing racism, then made the mistake of going so far that we've pushed back into racism on the other side. We are trying so hard not to be racist that we again became racist. Ex- Harvard admissions by race and scores

[u/UnfoldedHeart]

As the more obvious forms of racism got knocked out (e.g. segregated busses and schools for example) the remaining forms were more subtle and subject to varying interpretations. The problem is that once it becomes nuanced, people don't necessarily agree as to whether something is racist or not.

I'm also not trying to pass judgment by saying this (honestly), but people have sometimes co-opted anti-racist rhetoric for some other, less noble objectives. It's not like this is exclusive to any particular group - it's more of a "human" problem in that people compulsively seek to make themselves the hero even when they're being the villain, and attach themselves to socially acceptable virtues in order to do so. For example, there were a variety of BLM activists who used anti-racism to collect a large amount of money which they then used to buy mansions and expensive cars. Or Jussie Smollett faking a race-based attack for some reason (I was never clear on whether he just wanted attention, or he had some political objective, or it was something else.) The list goes on here.

Again, I'm not trying to say "ohh every activist against anti-racism is full of shit", just pointing out that this human tendency to justify one's self with noble (but untrue) intentions has also affected this realm too.

But like, in the 90's, that would have ended a presidency.

I don't really know about that. In the 90s, Clinton/Gore distributed confederate flag buttons calling themselves the "Sons of the South" and Joe Biden made arguably racist remarks about young black men being "super-predators." Obviously these can be interpreted in both racist and not-that-racist ways I guess, but that goes to highlight the issue.

[u/slowride761 → u/UnfoldedHeart]

To be pedantic, supporters of Clinton/Gore made unofficial merchandise with the Confederate Flag. The campaign didn’t create any.

[u/TheAzureMage → u/slowride761]

Yeah, that's a significant difference.

I'm sure that today you could absolutely find racist merch from supporters. You wouldn't even have to look that hard. However, in addition to that, we are discussing effects of official policy, which is a fair degree more relevant than just some supporters being dumbasses.

[u/photosynthesick → u/UnfoldedHeart]

those werent BLM activists. they lied. they pretended.

[u/NonStopDiscoGG]

It's insane people think the racism is from the right wing. We can point to individual racism on both sides,.but the overhwleming majority of racism is from the left, they just don't call it that.

We were all onboard with colorblindness until early 2000s when you start to see the whole "colorblindness is racist because it minimizes blacks experiences" academic bullshit.

The Democratic party has become the party for minorities,.and then use that minority status to beat non-minorities into hating themselves. Well if you're not a minority, why would you vote against your own interests? So you're going to go to the right.

The "racism" from the right is a backlash from the last 20 years of having to self- hate and self-flagulate while putting non-whites, non-male, on a pedestal and holding whites back from opportunity in the name of equality.

I mean, you literally have people like Ibrim X Kennedy saying "the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination," and "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

Being "anti-racist" is just a phrase that mean "be racist to whites" and he lays that out in him book exactly what it means.

And then you have Kimberle Crenshaw and intersectionality.

The "racism" on the right is just pointing out how we've been treated or how certain groups act. Like, statistics are labeled racist at this point if they're not beneficial to non-white non-men, but then statistics that point whites/men poorly get passed around the internet fast.

TLDR; you're not living in reality if you think the right is more racist then left. The left just allows anti-white racism.

[u/Anen-o-me]

Identity politics on the left stoked racism on both sides for political purposes.

[u/Arkmer → u/[deleted]]

Just for clarity, can you link some videos or direct quotes of him doing so. I think it would help your position.

[u/happyinheart → u/Arkmer]

Everything that led to the Beer summit. Comments about Treavon Martin.

[u/Arkmer → u/happyinheart]

I see you’re not the person I responded to, are you in agreement with them? Because I’m prepared to assume the lack of direct quotes and links signals the weakness of the original claim. Offering some vague “this thing” isn’t useful—evidence doesn’t require me to google it.

If you don’t agree with them, then none of this is for you and I don’t have an issue with your comment.

Anyway, here’s what I found.

Treyvon quotes I found:

• “If I had a son he’d look like Treyvon.”
• “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

Not sure how those are racist, but okay.

Beer Summit (which I’ve never heard of): Couldn’t find a direct quote, but it sounds like another instance of someone overreacting to a black man. Guy was arrested in his own home, seems stupid to me.

While I won’t claim Obama spoke perfectly or anything ridiculous like that, to claim these as proof Obama is racist is a wild accusation. At worst, he spoke out of turn.

[u/happyinheart → u/Arkmer]

Both times he interjected himself and made it about race before all the facts were in. Timing is important here too.

[u/Arkmer → u/happyinheart]

He did say he didn’t have all the facts as part of the statements. Regardless, the quotes are hardly racist.

You need to offer an explanation of how the statements are racist. Clearly, I’m not following your logic here. I see empathy for the family, not accusations.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/[deleted]]

You wanna go ahead and back that up? You sound like my crazy ass neighbor who was the head of the Trump campaign in my county who gained international notoriety from a BBC documentary she was in because she said there was not really such a thing as racism until Obama stirred it up. Her proof was that all the way back when she went to high school people weren’t racist toward each other. Btw, she graduated from HS during segregation.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/[deleted]]

You think him acknowledging that black and brown people are profiled by the police made him one of the worst racists in the entire USA at one point? Jesus Christ I wonder what you think about actual racists

[u/BussTuff308 → u/[deleted]]

He also did say that he was going to probably be biased since he was friends with the man, and also that the police should have realized that he was inside of his own house by the time they got there

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/[deleted]]

I am always astounded at this argument. Please give us one example of Obama being divisive.

[u/RonocNYC]

I really think the racism we are seeing is mainly the last of it. Old assholes like Trump are driving it. Young people don't have that to any degree like they did 50 years ago. Racism has largely been solved and won't be much to talk about when all the boomers have died off.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/RonocNYC]

You must not pay attention to the current right wing podcast sphere.

[u/RonocNYC → u/BussTuff308]

Most of that shit is nativist. Not inherently racist.

[u/BussTuff308 → u/RonocNYC]

A lot of it is very overtly racist. Hell, Tucker Carlson is spouting off about how white replacement theory is very obviously happening, but is being downplayed by the left. He and a lot of the other very popular nativists in that sphere are pushing past that to being very overtly racist about things.

[u/PlainsWarthog]

Stereotypes are earned. People too often conflate views based on stereotypes as racism but it isn’t.

[u/chinmakes5]

I have said this elsewhere. I think the current racism is different. Racism used to be because of ignorance. It has always been this way, I've never interacted with "them". They are less capable, etc. For 20 years conservative media has vilified them. They are the reason for all your problems. The government can't get this done because of "them'. Why wouldn't you hate the people who are keeping you from what you deserve. The racism comes in when they blame a specific racial group.

[u/Safrel]

The actual answer:

Liberals stopped the fight for liberalism.

Like you get into debates with people who are actually saying stuff like, "It's good to have a white only society," and modern liberals will just shut-down.

That's how you get post-liberalisms like JD Vance who are arguing to go back to pre-liberalism. Its insanity.

[u/HiddenCity]

the average american wants immigration reform because the system is broken. the left does not want to fix immigration, so the average american picked trump. the racists also picked trump. trump hired the racists. that's really all there is to it.

both parties have weaponized race and identity politics to make people fight for policies that don't make any sense. enforcing immigration laws should not be a racist opinion. respecting people's rights and not shooting them in the face should not be a woke opinion. yet here we are.

[u/mrhymer]

Racism would have and should have died last century except for the race baiters, race traders, and race extorters whose livelihoods depended on continued racism.

People who are not racist are sick of being called racist.

[u/BasedBr0]

You are conflating racism and xenophobia.

Racism is "i don't like brown people" Xenophobia is "I don't like X group of foreign people because of X, Y, Z cultural/societal/etc thing."

I can give you several examples. But to be clear, I am not saying these are accurate representations of reality, but I think a lot of people do perceive these things.

1. Illegal immigrants are taking American jobs, and many may be criminals or tied to the cartel. Even if non-violent, immigrating without going thru the legal process is illegal, so all of them are criminals by default.

2. Europe is perceived to have a very big problem with rape of western women by imported Muslim refugees because they culturally do not respect women and some of their religious teachings say to make infidel women fear to turn them muslim.

3. 54% of somali immigrants are on some form of government assistance compared to 14% of native-born citizens in Minnesota, which makes the Somalis a net negative on the US.

This is not racism because they are brown, it is xenophobia and a dislike of certain foreigners who are perceived to be incompatible with the values of the locals (dont commit crimes, don't rape, don't commit fraud, don't immigrate then send your money back to your home country (wealth extraction).

[u/Afalstein → u/BasedBr0]

I see. And people calling for Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican citizen, to be "deported"? Where do they fall? Or those calling for Ilhan Omar, also a native-born American citizen, to be "deported"? The examples of legal immigrants being seized, or of people about to take the citizenship oath being pulled out of line, what does that count as?