Racism

November 26, 2004 12:42 PM

Vocally, I'm anti-racism, and will confront and argue with anyone who makes racist comments. On the other hand, while I'm nervous any time I come across a stranger while alone at night, I'm more nervous when it's a black stranger. When I think about my WASP friend who is annoyingly frugal, I think 'he's so bloody cheap.' but when think about my Jewish friend who is annoyingly frugal, I think 'how typical'. How can I fight off my own unwelcome racist thoughts?
posted by anonymous to society & culture (33 comments total)

You can't really castigate yourself for involuntary thoughts. The best you can do is recognize them for what they are and don't let them dictate your actions. Sounds like you're already halfway there.
posted by jonmc at 12:59 PM on November 26, 2004

i've been helped by other people making me aware of my prejudices, but that only gets you to where you are now. after that, things just get better naturally, i think. as jonmc says.
i dunno. if there's a solution i guess i'd like to know it too.
posted by andrew cooke at 1:24 PM on November 26, 2004

This is a really tough issue, and one that I've thought a lot about. I'm with jonmc when he says you need to recognize these thoughts and not let them control you.

I led a pretty unique childhood in that I was homeschooled by fairly progressive parents and never really learned of the existance of many of these stereotypes when growing up. Later, upon getting involved in progressive community groups and anti-racist activism, I did a lot of reading debunking many of the racist stereotypes in our society. I was shocked when this reading actually seemed to cause me to make involuntary judgements about people I never would have made before. I felt horrible about this and beat myself up for it quite a bit. What an awful, perverse reaction!

The best explanation, or rationalization, I've come up with is that the human brain is too good at associative learning. Our subconscious mind is extremely gullible - It doesn't need to be given hard-and-fast proof of things in order to believe them. The power of suggestion is enough. You know, on an intellectual level, the repugnance of these thoughts even as they occur to you - but that doesn't stop them from coming.

So: don't let these feelings control you! Everyone has feelings that are better kept under wraps. Don't let them manifest themselves in your actions, and maybe, over time, they will subside.

One last story. Yesterday I was riding my bike home from work and one of my rear saddlebags fell off. It fell off just at the moment I jumped a curb, so I thought the jolt was just from the curb and didn't notice. A minute later, I was shouted down by one of the most disreputable looking characters I had ever seen. Stained, crooked teeth, tattered, dirty clothes, dirty trucker's cap, an old crumpled pack of cigarettes in one hand - and, in the other, my saddle bag! He was out of breath from running to catch up to me to return it. If he'd looked inside he would have found a laptop. If I had seen him at night, I would have crossed the road. The whole incident left me with a funny mixture of shame at my own feelings and pleasure at being the recipient kind act from a total stranger.
posted by louigi at 1:28 PM on November 26, 2004

This is a really tough issue, and one that I've thought a lot about. I'm with jonmc when he says you need to recognize these thoughts and not let them control you.

I led a pretty unique childhood in that I was homeschooled by fairly progressive parents and never really learned of the existance of many of these stereotypes when growing up. Later, upon getting involved in progressive community groups and anti-racist activism, I did a lot of reading debunking many of the racist stereotypes in our society. I was shocked when this reading actually seemed to cause me to make involuntary judgements about people I never would have made before. I felt horrible about this and beat myself up for it quite a bit. What an awful, perverse reaction!

The best explanation, or rationalization, I've come up with is that the human brain is too good at associative learning. Our subconscious mind is extremely gullible - It doesn't need to be given hard-and-fast proof of things in order to believe them. The power of suggestion is enough. You know, on an intellectual level, the repugnance of these thoughts even as they occur to you - but that doesn't stop them from coming.

So: don't let these feelings control you! Everyone has feelings that are better kept under wraps. Don't let them manifest themselves in your actions, and maybe, over time, they will subside.

One last story. Yesterday I was riding my bike home from work and one of my rear saddlebags fell off. It fell off just at the moment I jumped a curb, so I thought the jolt was just from the curb and didn't notice. A minute later, I was shouted down by one of the most disreputable looking characters I had ever seen. Stained, crooked teeth, tattered, dirty clothes, dirty trucker's cap, an old crumpled pack of cigarettes in one hand - and, in the other, my saddle bag! He was out of breath from running to catch up to me to return it. If he'd looked inside he would have found a laptop. If I had seen him at night, I would have crossed the road. The whole incident left me with a funny mixture of shame at my own feelings and pleasure at being the recipient of a kind act from a total stranger.
posted by louigi at 1:28 PM on November 26, 2004

And: shit. sorry for posting twice.
posted by louigi at 1:29 PM on November 26, 2004

Ditto on that half-way there part.
posted by Dick Paris at 1:30 PM on November 26, 2004

People have unflattering and unwelcome thoughts all the time. Ever feel like clubbing someone (of any race) over the head with a blunt object? Or look over a ledge and have an inexplicable impulse to jump off? Or have dirty thoughts about high school cheerleaders? You use your logic to compensate for those thoughts, which sounds like exactly what you are doing here.

Overcompensating is another issue, though. I was walking down a dark and deserted street in LA and saw a very menacing man walking towards me at a quick clip. He was black, and I quickly attributed my impression of him as "menacing" to latent racism. Well, he promptly mugged me.

Acknowledging that you do have assumptions about various groups of people is the first step to help you filter out the noise (unfair sterotypes) from the signal (guy, regardless of skin color, coming at me with a switchblade).
posted by 4easypayments at 1:35 PM on November 26, 2004

This reminds me of what my high school law teacher once told us, which always stuck with me:

I'm prejudiced but I don't discriminate.

Something to think about.
posted by trillion at 1:36 PM on November 26, 2004

It's really hard to control thoughts -- and it's often impossible. Our culture makes this worse, by failing to distinguish between thoughts and actions. It's hard for me to see how thoughts can be bad (caveat: I don't believe in any sort of psychic powers or the magical ability to alter the physical world through pure thought), but most of us are raised to feel that they somehow are bad.

I think you have two options: (1) forgive yourself for your thoughts and hold yourself responsible only for your actions. Or (2) take on the difficult task of actually altering your thoughts. This might be worth trying -- even if you agree that thoughts aren't, themselves, sinful -- if the thoughts cause YOU anxiety.

I've never tried to do this, so I don't have any expertise. But were I to try to do it, I would look into treatments for phobias. I may be completely on the moon about this comparison, but phobia-treatment IS about curbing, controlling or changing thoughts (and feelings).

Another thing you could try: immerse yourself in black/Jewish (whatever) culture. The more you learn about a people, the more complex they will become. Once something seems really complex, it's almost impossible to stereotype it.
posted by grumblebee at 2:31 PM on November 26, 2004

Social psychologists have been attempting to answer this question for a long time. Here's something interesting to play with: the IAT. It's a way of measuring implicit vs. explicit attitudes.

Don't feel badly -- an overwhelming majority of people denounce racism but have implicit tendencies that favor one race or another. There is a large body of research confirming this.
posted by trey at 2:42 PM on November 26, 2004

You cant just re-program the subconscious, especially when it comes to survival issues like fear and attitudes towards resources (money in your case). Controlling how you act is all that really matters.

Ever want to punch someone, even though they fully deserved it? Same thing.
posted by skallas at 3:22 PM on November 26, 2004

I was just going to mention social psychology as well--I'd check out a textbook or find a book on stereotyping and psychology or cognition. It might help you recognize what your brain is doing; if you're conscious of it, you're more able to counteract it.

One example: stereotypes are self-fulfilling. There's multiple psych studies showing that if you have a certain stereotype in your head, you're much more likely to take notice of examples you come across that encourage and "prove" that stereotype, and less likely to remember or recall examples that disprove that stereotype.
posted by gramcracker at 3:34 PM on November 26, 2004

If it's an option where you are, try living for awhile in a racially mixed neighborhood. I'm not saying go straight to the ghetto, but try to find a place where you'll be the minority. It will be a little weird at first, and you might even get some funny looks once in awhile, but after a few weeks, you'll be as taken aback as everyone else when you see another white person in your hood. Alternately, try living someplace totally white trash. You'll probably still find yourself crossing the street to avoid people sometimes, but you'll accept that fact that it's not because of their race, but because lots of people, of all different nationality and skin color just give off a kind of "Don't fuck with me" vibe, and that's what you're really reacting to in these situations.
posted by idontlikewords at 3:59 PM on November 26, 2004

I'm nervous any time I come across a stranger while alone at night, I'm more nervous when it's a black stranger.

Anecdotal and statistically useless: I've been mugged 4 times: 2 times by white-only gangs, once by a black gang, once by a gang with both white and black (all in Manchester, UK).

While I lived in Manchester, I would be more wary of a gang of black guys at night than I woud white guys. Why? Reputation. They had a big rep about drugs and guns. Also body language and clothing, and "otherness". As a white guy on my own in a dark alley faced by 5 black guys......well there's a contrast there....however PC we are, there is the difference in that situation - perceived grudges based on skin colour too....it doesn't add up to a cosey situation.

Before anyone knee-jerks, I'm not a racist at all - I have Indian, West Indian, Thai, Japanese (could go on) friends and family. I agree with Anon....I feel a bit wary faced with a black stranger. It would also be true (for example) if I was in Thailand and I was faced with a Thai stranger rather than a caucasian stranger (I am caucasian) so it's definitely nothing to do with black people (i.e. African descent).
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:01 PM on November 26, 2004

Being free of prejudice is active, not passive-- you can't decide you're not going to be a racist one day and leave it at that. It is an active thing you do in a million little ways.

We live in a racist, divisive world (American-centric opinion here), and we are constantly bombarded with racist messages; some subtle, some overt. If you don't actively work against that, you'll most likely slip into more racist modes of thought. It takes a lifetime of dedication to be the person it sounds like you want to be, and the work is never done.

The key words here are: active, effort, work, and dedication. I'm not saying you're not putting forth the effort (it sounds like you're doing pretty good), but if you feel like you're not where you want to be, consider thinking about what it means to you to be actively less prejudiced. Do that, and the rest will follow.
posted by samh23 at 4:18 PM on November 26, 2004

We live in a racist, divisive world (American-centric opinion here), and we are constantly bombarded with racist messages; some subtle, some overt. If you don't actively work against that, you'll most likely slip into more racist modes of thought. It takes a lifetime of dedication to be the person it sounds like you want to be, and the work is never done.

samh23, that sounds a little scary to me. It sounds like you're saying most people are inherently racist and we must regulate this deviant behaviour in ourselves. This is the thought police at work here. Look, it's less severe than that....it's about people just trusting one another, and integrating more (encouraging trust)....it's a human level thing, not learned behaviour thing with pamphlets and videos. Community!!!!
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:58 PM on November 26, 2004

samh23's comment reminds me of the mentality I faced daily while in graduate school. I was in the humanities, and thus contended endlessly with the prevailing notion that responsible, evolved people are simply racism-free and that those who harbor racist or sexist thoughts are deviants to be seen as other and despised.

This is self-loathing manifested as projection.

I admit that I feel prey to this kind of self-righteous garbage as an undergrad, but I was in my 30s by the time I entered grad school, so I knew better. I am deeply interested in the problems of racism and other bigotry, (e.g. sexism, heteronormativity, religious intolerance, etc). The position I have come to over many years is similar to jonmc's and grumblebee's. Don't fight it; be easy on yourself; don't let unproductive thoughts change your actions.

samh23, I may be overextending the parallels between what you were trying to say and rampant political correctness, so forgive my using your post as an example.

One thing that has really brought these issues to the fore in my life is relocating to S.E. Asia. I am the minority in almost every setting here--blindly admired by some, blindly despised by others, the object of racist stereotypes that manifest in behaviors toward me continually. This experience has shown me what black people in America, for example, go through, and has helped temper and assuage my racist thoughts. Real empathy comes from experience, not abstraction.
posted by squirrel at 6:07 PM on November 26, 2004

I admit that I fell prey...
posted by squirrel at 6:09 PM on November 26, 2004

Trey: Interesting test, that. I scored "moderately" biased towards European-American (despite being Australian! I guess the attitude is the same...). I don't consider myself to be racist at all - probably humanist, given that I think people in general aren't worth the trouble most of the time - but I guess we're all products of our society.

I do wonder if it provides any worthwhile insight, though. It *seems* to be measuring response time and accuracy - or, more bluntly, "did the respondent stop and think about that answer? Are they more accurate with images of their own race? How does that correlate with the good/bad 'concept' questions?"

Maybe that is a good way to measure latent / unrealised bias - I'm no expert on measurement methodology or analysis of such things. But it seems to me that any meaningful results would be buried so far down in the statistical noise that only the extreme outliers would be accurate.

Anonymous : anybody who stops to think about these things for long enough will have those feelings / doubts. It's just a manifestation of everyday social anxiety and guilt. Don't lose any sleep over it. Be good to people by default, and only think bad thoughts about people who have acted to deserve it.

Oh, and I believe "Mothra" is the term us newbies should utter instead of a Slashdottian "FP!"
posted by Pinback at 7:39 PM on November 26, 2004

I wasn't trying to say that everyone is inherently racist (I believe the opposite). Rather, in a world with a lot of hate, it can be easy to allow yourself to become closed-minded if you are lazy or complicit.

I don't think an idle thought is anything to get too concerned about in that regard. But, if you feel you're slipping into something you don't believe in, do something about it-- whether it involves getting up from your chair, or deep contemplation, or as SpacedCadet was saying, community. I bet it gives you a new perspective to work with.

I also don't feel that anyone can be totally free of any sort of prejudice-- it's human nature to learn to distinguish between us vs. them. Which is all the more reason to take an active interest in exploring where your own prejudices are (or are moving to).

Squirrel: I'm not down with the self-righteous garbage you described (I have big problems with the same crowd), but I appreciate your comments. No harm, no foul.
posted by samh23 at 8:14 PM on November 26, 2004

I think it's important not to put knee-jerk censors on your internal thoughts. After all, they are the last bastion between you and unthinking unreason.

That said, knee-jerk racism probably isn't very rational or thoughtful. When I was 11 or so, I ran across the word 'casuistry' in a dictionary. I didn't know anything about the law or legal practice, so I took the definition, which was roughly "judging things on a case-by-case basis" rather literally. I was quite impressed by it - it sounded to me like a good idea.

It's always appeared to me that a healthy dose of casuistry in a person's thinking, reasoning life is quite helpful and useful in avoiding fallacies, especially unreasonable generalizations like, for example, "everyone with a dark skin tone is ."
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:33 PM on November 26, 2004

I don't know. When cutting through a ghetto at 2am, I don't stop at red lights.
posted by orange clock at 8:20 AM on November 27, 2004

I get mad when I see someone living up to their stereotype. It's almost as though I want people to go out of their way to convince me my stereotypes are inaccurate. (And I hold those stereotypes beside the fact that I don't identify strongly with any particular ethnic or racial group as I am of very mixed ancestry.)

For example, when I see someone driving ineptly I pray that they aren't Asian because I don't want to think that Asians are bad drivers and I don't want anyone else to think that. I'm disappointed when a black person is charged with street crime, when I see a white guy dance like a retard, etc. Don't help the rest of us be prejudiced.

I realize that I'm being unreasonable. It's my (and other's) responsibility to try not to discriminate or at least not act on our prejudices, but I find it difficult for me not to think this way.
posted by TimeFactor at 8:44 AM on November 27, 2004

orange clock: Is that about race, or about the seediness of the area? Because there are high-crime "white" neighborhoods I have avoided both here and abroad.
posted by availablelight at 8:51 AM on November 27, 2004

I don't recall having racist/prejudiced thoughts before I moved to NYC. Living in the city, I found myself absorbing all sorts of attitudes I never would have thought could get into my brain. It was upsetting for a while, but eventually I decided it was basically a meaningless response to the environment I found myself in, like my rage at car alarms. As long as it didn't affect my conscious thought processes or (worse yet) my actions, I wasn't going to beat myself up about it. (I'm hoping that my recent move out of the city will cause a lot of it to evaporate.) Anyway, I would suggest you take the same attitude; trying to control your own thoughts can lead to obsession, repression, and other undesirable results.
posted by languagehat at 9:22 AM on November 27, 2004

I don't recall having racist/prejudiced thoughts before I moved to NYC.

Well, (and this is not a dig at languagehat, merely an observation of society in general), it's only when we're rubbing elbows with the "other" that our egalitarianism is tested. There's plenty of people who say "I just love _____ people." and I wanna say "Well, sure you do, you don't know any."
posted by jonmc at 4:13 PM on November 27, 2004

I second idontlikewords. I learned so much when younger living in a group house with people of different races. While I never considered myself prejudiced, I gained vision by being permitted to look at the world through their eyes. Granted, these people were also relatively affluent college students like myself, but still. . .people simply tend to fear the unknown. I even had a little deal with a friend of mine - if I took him out somewhere and he was the only black person in evidence, then he'd take me somewhere where I was the only white person. I've bought my modest yet very lovely to me house in a neighborhood where I'm in the definite racial minority. I was just at the corner grocery where everybody knows my face, if not my name, and I couldn't be more pleased. So yeah, immersion therapy. Perhaps take an ethnic dance or cooking class or volunteer. . .
posted by rainbaby at 4:44 PM on November 27, 2004

I still maintain that Americans are much more classist than racist. You say you'd be wary of a black stranger at night. Take this scenario then: on one side of the street is a black stranger listening to an iPod and wearing nicely pressed clothes from The Gap. On the other side is a white stranger with torn jeans and an unwashed face. Who are you more wary of now?
posted by 4easypayments at 5:52 PM on November 27, 2004

rainbaby & 4easypayments, That's definitely what I had in mind with my "don't go straight to the ghetto" remark. The great thing about my neighborhood now is that it's ethnically mixed but very stable. Seriously, most of my neighbors have their shit way more together than me (families, gardens, etc.) and that's really what helps me keep all the stereotypes under control. It's also helped me get over the whole "The suburbs are the only good place to raise kids" prejudice that I used to have, too. =)
posted by idontlikewords at 8:07 PM on November 27, 2004

There's a study I'm too lazy to look up that showed that homogenous and biracial neighborhoods had the highest levels of ethnic tension, and multiracial ones, no one race predominating, the lowest.

TimeFactor: One thing to take into account is that driving in most parts of asia is far more different from driving in the U.S. than driving in (say) Europe is. An american driver in japan is just as fucked as a japanese driver here. (I'm not encouraging the stereotype -- most asian-americans aren't 1st generation immigrants -- but it has perhaps a grain of truth in overcaution rather than incompetence.)
posted by Tlogmer at 11:43 PM on November 27, 2004

One thing that has really brought these issues to the fore in my life is relocating to S.E. Asia. I am the minority in almost every setting here--blindly admired by some, blindly despised by others, the object of racist stereotypes that manifest in behaviors toward me continually. This experience has shown me what black people in America, for example, go through, and has helped temper and assuage my racist thoughts. Real empathy comes from experience, not abstraction.

curious. since moving to chile i've become much less tolerant of chileans/south americans.

on the one hand, it's difficult living in a different culture, and easy to get angry when you're tired and frustrated.

on the other, it's simply cataloguing the ways in which people are different. it's a sad fact of life that things that make me happy about being here affect me much less than things that drive me mad. so while there are - of course - good points, it's the bad points about being here that i can list without effort.

is this prejudice? to what extent is it justified to judge a random chilean in the street from my previous experiences? if i were a perfectly logical machine, i think it would be ok. but the danger is that, as Tlogmer points out, we build mountains out of molehills, exaggerating small details into inappropriate generalisation. this has certainly happened to me.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:40 AM on November 28, 2004

jon: a reasonable inference, but in fact I had lived in many ethnically diverse places before, most recently New Haven, and yet somehow there was never the all-encompassing atmosphere of concentration on difference that there is in NYC. Not knocking the city we both love, but I've never seen anyplace so obsessive about cataloguing people.
posted by languagehat at 3:11 PM on November 28, 2004

Tlogmer: I think the stereotype of Asians in particular being bad drivers is wrong. I may have not made that clear enough in my post. I picked that stereotype as my example because it's widespread, relatively innocuous, and it doesn't particularly bother me although I'm part Asian so I assumed it wouldn't bother anyone else. The point I was trying to make is that I cannot help but feel that anyone who is unfairly tainted by an inaccurate stereotype has to be especially careful not to live up to the stereotype. So, for example, Asians are not all bad drivers but when an Asian drives badly it perpetuates that stereotype. That's unfair of me to feel that way; I'm holding the victim to a higher standard than the victimizer; I can't seem to help it, though.
posted by TimeFactor at 4:02 PM on November 28, 2004