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Sometimes I feel it's from both. When I mentioned my "stage" of trying to act what some people would consider "Black", I only didn't for for a short time, specifically part of my freshman year in high school. I dumped it and had to find what I liked. As for not being accepted, it is my own personal experience that the lack of acceptance has come from both Blacks and Whites. Some of the Black kids would claim that I don't act "Black enough". Some of the White kids made a joke out of me because I reminded them of "Carlton Banks". This has even happened in college. One of my friends told me that because some of the White kids couldn't understand me or the way I am, they would make fun of me(even in college). I am happy with who I am. Sometimes I get upset about things, but I never stop being me.
Yes, only ignorant people would lump me with the criminals in the African-American community or persons who act thuggish. Unfortunately, some of those people also can also decide whether or not I can get a job or might have some form of being in charge of something. I remember one person on city-data who claimed that he(or she) doesn't hire Blacks, mentioning the bad things within the African-American community. Kind of sad when there are people out there like that. I have met people of different ethnicities who do care about me, so that can be helpful.
I think one of the reasons it is difficult to detatch one's self from the negative people is because such persons get the most attention. This also goes into the stuff you mentioned about BET. The stuff that is uplifting for people like me isn't being put on TV. I think the only way to solve this is to create new shows with a new paradigm, a new message.
Here's how I "detached". Maybe you've already tried some of this.
1. Stop watching BET.
2. Start dating women who like nerds of all races. Dating and befriending women who crave your personality type is a big confidence booster. These women are easy to find in college, or on online dating sites if you're out of college.
3. Stop hanging out with people of all races who don't like who you are.
4. Move to an area that's mixed race or has intellectual blacks who don't buy into the thug culture.
5. Create your own job. This one is not as necessary since there's a minority of ignorant people who will ban all blacks from their company due to the acts of a few ignorant thugs.
Just my few cents, for what it's worth. I never have problems anymore and I'm still the same person I always was except everyone in my circle sees it as a huge asset and love that part of me. Have a good weekend and I wish you the best of luck!
Here's how I "detached". Maybe you've already tried some of this.
1. Stop watching BET.
2. Start dating women who like nerds of all races. Dating and befriending women who crave your personality type is a big confidence booster. These women are easy to find in college, or on online dating sites if you're out of college.
3. Stop hanging out with people of all races who don't like who you are.
4. Move to an area that's mixed race or has intellectual blacks who don't buy into the thug culture.
5. Create your own job. This one is not as necessary since there's a minority of ignorant people who will ban all blacks from their company due to the acts of a few ignorant thugs.
Just my few cents, for what it's worth. I never have problems anymore and I'm still the same person I always was except everyone in my circle sees it as a huge asset and love that part of me. Have a good weekend and I wish you the best of luck!
1)I don't watch BET. I don't have a taste for it.
2)The second one is very good advice. I have had a hard time finding women who like nerdy guys though. I have also never really dated either,so that is a factor too.
3)That is a given for me. I don't hang around people who don't like who I am.
4)I live in a mixed area. I live a mile from my university. I like to hang around places with mixed company.
5)That is one thing I want to do one day. I want to start a business. I am a big into geography and I want to find some use for that.
I also avoid most rap music. Some of it isn't bad, but alot of it is. I think the biggest way is for you to be you and for me to be me.
Do female African Americans experience profiling also?
This happened to me while in university in Canada and it was very shocking. I was riding my bike on the street toward a lady in a parked car and when she saw me she locked her doors. She basically looked at me and put me in a box. A jane and Finch (rough part of Toronto) box.
Being from a country with a large population of African descent it was very shocking to me as I am so used to being just "normal" or "regular" like a white American might see themselves. By "normal" I mean I would think no more of my "blackness" and its place in Trinidadian society than a white American would think of their "whiteness" or what it means to be white in America. Not saying racism doesn't exist where I live...but it is very different. Noone would ever act like that here toward a respectable looking person. But she didnt see the fact that I looked like an obvious student...she jus saw my race before she saw me. It really blew me away and gave me some insight into what it would be like to live one's entire life with that sort of thing. I'd lived a sheltered life of many vacations around the world, parents who could afford to pay high Canadian international student tuition to send me to school, been immersed in a school system where academics are revered to the point of encouraging unhealthy competition among students and she still saw me as a thug. Insane!
I just would like some input as to why is there racism? We should be nice to others because we all are human beings... Any inputs?
Sorry I haven't read through all these posts. But the shortest explanation for racism is that people want to feel superior to and dominate others. This desire to be superior to/dominate others manifests itself in a million different ways on planet Earth, racism being just one example.
it all started with the "social experiment" known as forced integration.
Excuse me? There was racism long before the "forced integration". When I hear persons such as yourself use the term "forced integration", this is what goes through my mind(all is written below).
1)Last time I checked, Black people were forced to come to the USA via the slave trade. That is about the one reason Blacks came. Slavery.
2)Blacks were the ones being forced into many situations. Black people didn't really choose to be segregated. It was forced. In fact, all of the segregation policies in the USA, Blacks didn't get a vote.
So when I hear the term "forced segregation", well, why did it have to be forced? Why couldn't the local governments let Black people have a say? Why were separate facilities not treated equal? Why were residential patterns segregated by force in many cases(and this did happen, it's called restrictive covenants)?
Racism has existed in this nation in one form or another. The way you put it, you are speaking as if racism didn't exist until "forced integration" began.
I have no data to back this up, but I think racism can trace back to basic primitive survival instincts. Small bands of early humans were very distrustful of outsiders of any kind. They had very little resources and couldn't risk sharing what they had, or worse, letting a "spy" from another group know what they had.
That same distrust of outsiders, I believe, still exists in our basic wiring. Unfortunately, the easiest method of differentiating is sight. From there, skin color and facial features are the simplest ways to tell someone that is different from what you are used to. I don't know that it is really an issue of distrusting someone because they are different in so much as it is not being able to trust someone because they aren't the same.
I have no data to back this up, but I think racism can trace back to basic primitive survival instincts. Small bands of early humans were very distrustful of outsiders of any kind. They had very little resources and couldn't risk sharing what they had, or worse, letting a "spy" from another group know what they had.
That same distrust of outsiders, I believe, still exists in our basic wiring. Unfortunately, the easiest method of differentiating is sight. From there, skin color and facial features are the simplest ways to tell someone that is different from what you are used to. I don't know that it is really an issue of distrusting someone because they are different in so much as it is not being able to trust someone because they aren't the same.
But how does that help anyone in today's world? People have used the differences to treat others badly. It is sort of like "we are the ones in charge, and if you don't look like us, we will treat you like dirt". How do the persons being targeted survive? What do they do?
Pirate, it offers absolutely no benefit in today's world, and has become just a tool of ignorance and laziness. My only point was to answer the question of why it exists. Along the same lines, when threatened, we get a rush of adrenaline and can be very physically aggressive. It was crucial to survival 5,000 years ago, today it would get you arrested. That doesn't mean that we don't have the same reaction anymore, we just need to manage it now.
I think is is also no coincidence that racism has declined as methods of communicating without visual cues have increased. With e-mail, the internet, cell phones in every purse or pocket, we are able to make judgments of who we like based on what they have to say, not how they look.
Certainly, anytime that people are exposed to people that are different for any length of time, the visual barriers become less and less significant until they are gone all together, and the content of their character becomes the defining element. The trick is getting everyone to invest that effort to get to that point and not make a snap decision. I've always believed that if you put any group of people together and give them a common goal, the insignificant differences will eventually lose all importance, no matter how ingrained the original bias may be (see "Remember the Titans").
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