Sparrow said:
This is just something I've been thinking of recently, and I wanted to know the Escapist's view toward this. I'll keep my opinion out of it so I don't affect anyone else.
So, imagine you have a friend of the same colour and sex as you. This person is a good friend, you like them alot. They donate to charity, they make jokes you find funny and they're always there for you in a pinch. They've done alot for you.
Then say, one day, you and your friend see someone of the opposite colour and start a conversation about them. Your friend is quite racist toward them, specifically stating that they don't like people of that person's colour.
I'm just curious as to how you, the Escapist public, would respond to this. Would you instantly call them out on it? Would you respect their opinion even if you don't agree with it, or alternatively, if you do agree with it? Would you try and change them? And ultimately, would it affect your friendship to the point where you would consider no longer being friends with them?
Disclaimer: Just so everyone knows, I am NOT trying to justify racism. I just don't want to put my own opinion in here incase it affects anyone's answer.
Edit: I'm not entirely sure where this use of the word "evil" has come from here. If that's what you think of when I said a "bad person", that's perfectly fine, but I'm not specifically asking if they're evil or not.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions and their flaws. As far as the scales go, your friend comes out more on the positive side of the thing.
Subcultures being what they are, the guy might not even truely be racist. Like it or not, things do get drawn along color lines. If your from an area where you have a lot of ethnic gang activity, especially when they go after you (or people like you) based on your color, it's hard to pass judgement.
Other things can influance it as well, back when I took criminal justice there was a lot of talk about the pros and cons of "racial profiling" and "police colored glasses". The bit about colored glasses is that when your an authority figure in a given area you learn to see things from a specific perspective, recognize patterns, behaviors, and tendencies. You recognize things to the point where you can no longer see what's going on like a regular person because experience lets you tell when what might seem innocent to joe blow, might be anything but... signals for people making drug deals, gang signs, etc...
I myself tend to be a bit bigoted against asians, despite growing up during "Ninja Mania" and loving kung-fu movies, oriental adventures for D&D, etc. It happened because while working for the casinos down here in Connecticut I was in a position where I spied on a lot of people, followed them, and was involved with reports and such. Probably 90% of the problems/scams/crimes in the casino were committed by Asians coming from New York and Boston (mostly the former). The gangs that wound up controlling most of the flea activity, bonus jumping, pick pocketing, and similar things were all Asian.
The thing is though that while many people consider this kind of point of view "racist", I don't think it is. To me racism is when you believe people of a given sort are inherantly familiar. Bigotry is a bit more acceptable when it comes from experience, and mostly what I'm guilty of, since I have good reasons for thinking the things that I do. However mostly I look at the Chinese culture that dominates the areas that these guys were coming in from as the source, rather than something implicit and unchangable within the ethnicity. A lot of it ironically comes from the fact that a lot of these guys who are either "mainland chinese" or raised in sub-cultural isolation wind up being racist towards other groups, and have a sense of entitlement, as well as thinking we're all stupid (and this comes from having dealt with them heavily, run security cameras, done reports, and being present during questionings with interpetors present).
Of course, I do not think I'm a good person. The guy you describe is a much better man than me. My point here is that I think there is very little true racism out there, or at least not held by the mainstream in the US. Most of what you see comes from cultural conflicts, and a system that is so far unable to address them on a large scale. Despite our understanding of sociology, so far our society has been unable to (morally mostly) isolate and identify problem sub-cultures, and deal with them specifically as a way of addressing the issues
they bring.
A good example of this for example is looking at ethnic communities, where people might have lived for 2-3 generations and yet not speak english, and live much like in the country of their forefathers, which causes a lot of problems for everyone else. However simply saying that we should ensure everyone in the US speaks english to prevent this kind of isolation meets with massive criticism. Especially when you get to questions about what you do if they refuse to learn, anything from jail time to deportation (especially touchy with people born here) meets with resistance. "It's not their fault", until their ignorance gets them in trouble, especially if their isolationism has caused them to hate everyone not like them.
Ah well, enough rambling. Such are my thoughts. Truthfully I've thought about these issues a LOT, especially once I realized I had become a bigot due to my job and pretty much went "holy cr@p, I'm not a cop, but my criminal justice instructors were right". The fact that I heavily favor globalization, and see sociology as a way of identifying and dealing with problems, as well as bringing the world together, also figures into it.
In the end I don't feel any kind of person is inherantly inferior to others, it's differing cultures that cause the problems, especially when they conflict. The thing is though that by believing everyone is more or less equal, I actually tend to get more accusations of being a "racist" simply because I feel everyone can thus be held to the same standards.
Ironically I think that people who cry out about racism the most, are actually the biggest racists. Typically because they feel that whatever group they are defending cannot do any better for whatever reason, and can actually find it offensive when people suggest that they should try. Oddly I think coddling certain people(s) holds them back.
