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I think too many people are paranoid these days about everything. The news media paints a picture that the world is crashing around our ears (but especially so the ears of white guys and half-white guys with white fathers, specifically) when that's just not true. Media loves to prey on the insecurities of people to get ad revenue
They really are- I do attribute this to the Internet and social media. People read alot of negative information out there and fear spreads quicker now.
Also- to the White people (especially the OP)- welcome to world of minorities, where you are insulted, discriminated against and belittled constantly, not only in person but worst, BY THE MEDIA. You've got to grow thick skin, not take it personally and know that a few bad apples don't represent the majority. Also, educate people. Confront them about it in an educated way. I have.
Also, I have issues with this idea that diversity in the US is 'new.' It isn't- the national narrative teaches you that, but Chinese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Indians etc...have been here already for many, many generations and have contributed to the national culture. There are just immigrants now from many different countries now, that has changed.
To an extent, yeah. The other element of it is that (I take it) you're still in school - school isn't an accurate representation of what life is like in "the real world," especially in this day and age.
For whatever reason, radical social justice has gone pop culture - hell, even MTV has shows and little blurbs about identifying privilege and power structures and stuff like that. When I was a teen in the late 90's/early aughts, there was certainly a subculture of radical teenage activists, but they were a very small subset of people that no one really paid attention to. I went to middle school in the Seattle area and then high school in Cambridge, MA, which is about as left as it gets, and even there, the sort of stuff that people say passively now would have been deemed a bit out-there.
Teenagers tend to be more ideological and idealist regardless of their political persuasion - if you lived in the South, the same kids in Seattle who are demanding you check your privilege and telling you that hijabs are the zenith of antiwhite feminist liberation would be telling you that you're gonna go to hell cause you don't believe in Jesus enough and tell you that it's acceptable for atheists to be jailed. People are trying to sort out their identity and part of that is seeing how far they can push boundaries of being obstinate and the effect that has on their lives. Fast forward four or so years, and they'll be much more mellow - go forward another ten or fifteen and most people will barely remember being so pissed off about stuff and somewhat embarrassed by it.
The other important thing is to not let that nonsense get to you. I've lived in LA, SF, SEA, BOS, NYC, plenty of smaller towns and cities all over the West Coast and NE, and now I live in China... the average person really doesn't spend much time fretting over this stuff. No matter what they say, the young "I hate white people" activist crowd isn't the voice of the majority of POC in the Western world and most POC don't hate white people or spend all day steeped in antiwhite rhetoric by any stretch. I think that people generally get along better across racial lines than they ever have before, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from what anyone on the radical left or right says.
Also, be careful of letting your frustrations drive you into the opposite end of the social spectrum: groups like Stormfront thrive on the frustrations of young white people who are alienated by the stuff that you're going through, first by saying what seems like sensible and strong refutations against what these people say about you, but ultimately going down the rabbit hole of bigotry and separatism.
Go to just about any African country and you'll find a myriad of cultures, religions and ethnicities living side by side in most of the countries.
It's hilarious to me that white people seem to think that only western countries are diverse and multi-cultural. Go to plenty of South American countries or even some African countries. It's Asian countries that are generally the least diverse.
Thanks I think that one of the worst paradigm shifts was when the definition of racism shifted from what it is literally - a racial bias or discriminatory attitude based on race - to exclusively mean "prejudice plus power." This may or may not have worked in academic circles, but as social justice went pop, it got picked up by laypeople who misunderstood this.
Even though the academic interpretation came with a (somewhat weak, IMHO, and only-applied-defensively-and-under-duress) disclaimer that POC can still be bigots towards white people, the problem is that this has more or less been totally ignored and you have an entire subsection of people who sincerely believe that POC are not capable of racism or bigotry - that to insult white people based on their race or culture isn't offensive... but, if they are offended, then that's their problem. They seem to have discovered that they, too, can be bigots, and by god... it's fun to sit there and waste their time thinking of the most intricate ways that they can justify blaming a race of people for their problems. Just like a couple of old white guys sitting there grumbling about Mexicans taking their jobs or black people being thugs.
Irony upon ironies, it seems like a significant number of people who have started doing this are white people themselves. They seem to do it as a way of saying, "hey! I'm different from all those other white people! I'm white, but I hate white people just as much as you do! Man, do we ever suck! We're horrible! We need to shut up and disappear! See? I'm cool, right?"
Most POC, of course, understand that this is bull****, and think that making fun of a white person for being white makes that white person feel the same way that they'd feel if a white person started making fun of them for their race... it's a fool's game that isn't worth getting consumed with, really. It sucks when you are exposed to it every day, but at the end of the day, all these fools are every going to be capable of is sitting there blaming other people for their failures.
It's hard to come to a conclusion and say that "most people are like this" or even that "most people aren't like this. I'm black and a lot of my black friends and family, ranging from young adults to elders still hold severe racial bias and invoke the anti-white movement that you still see today.
You're using ancedotal evidence from your own personal experience to say that "most people don't act this way", which in turn translates to "most people I've encountered don't act this way." It just seems a bit silly to me to discredit what's going on now just because the people may be young. My grandfather is around 80 years old and still hates white people. From the moment he raised my father and my aunt--which began around his late 30s--, he tried invoking anti-white propaganda into them by telling them that white people are "demons" and "devils" and that "they shouldn't be trusted." My father tells me he would constantly tell this to him and his sister. And ironically my mother's parents did the same. And guess what? They still do it. And life doesn't stray that much from high school...people still cling to their own cliques in their work place and club events, and most specifically they stick to their own ethnic enclaves, like they do in high school. At mine the tables were literally divided by ethnicity. Old habits die hard. And sometimes, they don't die at all.
In the US there's a strong "us vs. them" mentality. Your interactions rely heavily on your ethnicity, hence why when people can't figure which one you are they scramble to find out in order to know how to approach you. Some areas are more racially charged than others, but at the end of the day it's still a perpetuation of identity politics. Like the video says, people tend to stick to their own ethnic enclaves, and considering the racial discrimination against, well, every minority in this country, the anti-white sentiment amongst us is prominent. It's been here for decades. I personally don't support it at all, but you can smell it in the air.
Regardless of the anti-white movement, the US is still heavily racially charged. The foundation of relationships with damn near anyone is grounded by your ethnicity, your sexuality, your religion...all superficial labels. It just makes this country unlivable. I'm up and out when I get the opportunity.
I will give my own take on this. I lived in a mostly homogenous area outside of Atlanta during the late 1990s. I stuck out being Black. The area I lived in was about 90% White. Compared to where I moved from(which was a very diverse area), the schools were not that good. I had trouble fitting in and got bullied alot. Now, that was that area. The demographics of the area has changed. It isn't as homogeneous as it once was.
When I was in my early 20s, I worked in an environment where it was mainly Hispanics there. Some I got along with. Many persons there, however, were very blatant in making racist jokes about me. I was one of two Blacks working there. Homogeneous environment. It didn't mean things would be easy.
This is what I have come up with based on my own experiences. Just because an area is homogeneous doesn't mean it will be nice and livable. It doesn't mean the schools will be great. Some diverse aren't good places to live either. In my own experiences, I've gotten used to being in the minority. That being said, whenever I hear about this fear of diversity, I sometimes shudder, mainly because of things I went through.
I will give my own take on this. I lived in a mostly homogenous area outside of Atlanta during the late 1990s. I stuck out being Black. The area I lived in was about 90% White. Compared to where I moved from(which was a very diverse area), the schools were not that good. I had trouble fitting in and got bullied alot. Now, that was that area. The demographics of the area has changed. It isn't as homogeneous as it once was.
When I was in my early 20s, I worked in an environment where it was mainly Hispanics there. Some I got along with. Many persons there, however, were very blatant in making racist jokes about me. I was one of two Blacks working there. Homogeneous environment. It didn't mean things would be easy.
This is what I have come up with based on my own experiences. Just because an area is homogeneous doesn't mean it will be nice and livable. It doesn't mean the schools will be great. Some diverse aren't good places to live either. In my own experiences, I've gotten used to being in the minority. That being said, whenever I hear about this fear of diversity, I sometimes shudder, mainly because of things I went through.
Depends. I've been in situations where it was all Black people with me(a fast food job for one). I nearly got into a fight. I had roommates that were Black(it was the college dorms). About all we had in common was being Black. They had a certain "ghetto" mentality about them. I was a nerd. We didn't get along. On the other hand, some really good friends I had in college were African and Caribbean students.
The situation where I got bullied by alot of White kids, it was in a "redneck" kind of area. It wasn't exactly that great of an area. Good place to buy a house cheap as farms were being turned into subdivisions. Contrast this with some White persons I met in college, some who I still keep in contact with today.
I've been in places that were diverse, and got along well with the individuals there.
My experiences have told me that homogenous doesn't always mean good. I see people here railing against diversity. I've been in places and situations that weren't diverse. I've been in situations that were diverse. Results have varied.
Perhaps the problem is being surrounded by underclass of any race/ethnicity.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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That's my basic experience too. I'm White but had many negative relationships with lower class people in my family and at school. In a fairly diverse public school I had both positive and negative relationships with people of other races. I found people in college to be so much easier to get along with than most people in my own family.
I think a lot of the anxiety about changing demographics that many White Americans have is that they assume all Black people or Latino people are the same. They assume all Blacks are gang bangers who blare rap music in their 1985 Monte Carlo, they assume all Latinos refuse to speak English, are illegal immigrants, and deal drugs. So when you say Minority Majority America they assume that means Third World America. They discount that many working class White Americans are just as trashy as the average poor minority. The also discount that most minority Americans aren't close to those stereotypes.
I moved into a working class White neighborhood and my neighbors are just as bad as any Black neighbors I had when I lived in a mixed race gentrifying urban neighborhood. My current neighbors yell and scream at each other daily in the front yard. They recently bought two brand new Camaros (sports car) and now argue about money all the time. The dress trashy too. Although I share the same race category with them I don't feel connected to them at all. Point being I think with younger Americans race is becoming a less important (though still important) way that people self affiliate. I think education level and political / world view is becoming more important.
Last edited by censusdata; 05-31-2016 at 02:11 PM..
Depends. I've been in situations where it was all Black people with me(a fast food job for one). I nearly got into a fight. I had roommates that were Black(it was the college dorms). About all we had in common was being Black. They had a certain "ghetto" mentality about them. I was a nerd. We didn't get along. On the other hand, some really good friends I had in college were African and Caribbean students.
The situation where I got bullied by alot of White kids, it was in a "redneck" kind of area. It wasn't exactly that great of an area. Good place to buy a house cheap as farms were being turned into subdivisions. Contrast this with some White persons I met in college, some who I still keep in contact with today.
I've been in places that were diverse, and got along well with the individuals there.
My experiences have told me that homogenous doesn't always mean good. I see people here railing against diversity. I've been in places and situations that weren't diverse. I've been in situations that were diverse. Results have varied.
Perhaps the problem is being surrounded by underclass of any race/ethnicity.
Your experiences sound exactly like mine. When I lived around all Blacks in East Oakland when I was younger, I had absolutely NOTHING in common with any of them other than skin color. They were always looking to start something because I was different from them. I got along with people (all races) better in other parts of Oakland and in Berkeley.
When I moved to San Diego, I had issues with the same types of whites you did as there seemed to be a lot of them in SD at that time. In San Diego, most of my friends tend to be Mexican.
I think a lot of this has to do with your social type more than skin color. It just so happens that the two coincide frequently. However, take people of different races that have things in common, skin color becomes largely irrelevant.
That's my basic experience too. I'm White but had many negative relationships with lower class people in my family and at school. In a fairly diverse public school I had both positive and negative relationships with people of other races. I found people in college to be so much easier to get along with than most people in my own family.
I think a lot of the anxiety about changing demographics that many White Americans have is that they assume all Black people or Latino people are the same. They assume all Blacks are gang bangers who blare rap music in their 1985 Monte Carlo, they assume all Latinos refuse to speak English, are illegal immigrants, and deal drugs. So when you say Minority Majority America they assume that means Third World America. They discount that many working class White Americans are just as trashy as the average poor minority.
I moved into a working class White neighborhood and my neighbors are just as bad as any Black neighbors I had when I lived in a mixed race gentrifying urban neighborhood. My current neighbors yell and scream at each other daily in the front yard. They recently bought two brand new Camaros (sports car) and now argue about money all the time. The dress trashy too. Although I share the same race category with them I don't feel connected to them at all. Point being I think with younger Americans race is becoming a less important (though still important) way that people self affiliate. I think education level and political / world view is becoming more important.
Excellent post!
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I think that one of the worst paradigm shifts was when the definition of racism shifted from what it is literally - a racial bias or discriminatory attitude based on race - to exclusively mean "prejudice plus power." This may or may not have worked in academic circles, but as social justice went pop, it got picked up by laypeople who misunderstood this.
