Systemic racism in the USA: Are whites "guiltier" if they had slavery in their past?

[timothyu]

It's about a person existing in a society where their culture is dominant (e.g. national holidays reflect their culture, national traditions reflect their traditions, government looks like them, and shares their cultural background and beliefs, supreme court looks like them and shares their cultural background and beliefs, hiring managers look like them and share their cultural background and beliefs.

The same would hold true if a Caucasian left the society and system they built and moved to another system and society that another race built (although American tourists seem to think the whole world should resemble home). It would not be the fault of the building race of any system if the immigrant didn't feel like they fit it. When in Rome... We are seeing examples of this today where even members of government in the US are acting as if they still are citizens of their previous homeland. No.. uh uh... bring your culture to practice at home but leave the politics behind.

 

[RDKirk]

It's about a person existing in a society where their culture is dominant (e.g. national holidays reflect their culture, national traditions reflect their traditions, government looks like them, and shares their cultural background and beliefs, supreme court looks like them and shares their cultural background and beliefs, hiring managers look like them and share their cultural background and beliefs. And given that they are intune with the system, leaders, hiring managers, they have an edge when it comes to getting jobs, and getting what they want. In fact society mostly reflects what they want but they can still lobby (just as anyone can) to sympathetic, intune ears to get even more of what they want.

That sounds like the privilege of being Latino in Texas, particularly for people in the working class. In another twenty years, it will be all but maybe the very elite of Texas.

There is no good way in the long term to defeat demographics in that respect. At least not through laws and policies. Or does Texas need a special kind of DEI that suppresses Latino privilege?

Vs a person existing in a society where their culture is a vast minority, where they have adopted the language of the majority, adopted the beliefs of the majority and the culture of the majority, but still celebrate their own culture and beliefs in private, in the shadows. where the govt don't look like them, don't understand them, just see them as non conforming, where they are assumed to be guilty, or trouble makers, where they are at odds with the ruling class and don't gel quite as well, where they have to work harder to impress, to land that job, to overcome the hiring employer's intuition on a person that they don't immediately click with. Where they haven't been able to benefit from having well off parents or well off friends and connections, to get that first job, or to buy that house. Where they are constantly doubted and looked at with suspicion.

Yeah, that's being non-Latino in Texas, all right.

And that makes my point of what is wrong with DEI as it is conceived, formulated, and practiced: It makes the foundational presumption that white people are intrinsic oppressors, born that way, and must be constantly suppressed in their inborn desire to conquer other folk.

Also men. DEI makes the same foundational presumption about men.

Those are the foundational presumptions of the Critical Race Theory and the Critical Gender Theory that are the platforms of CRT and Radical Feminism, respectively.

 

[Miles]

In recent years, I've noticed a change from individualistic and historical focus of racism, toward more 'systemic' focus. The idea is, it doesn't really matter that my husband's family was historically slave-owning, whereas mine were in regions where slavery never occurred. The focus now is, both nonetheless benefited from 'white privilege,' so it doesn't matter if one's white families had slaves or not. What matters now is, if they are allies, or at least voting Democrat in greater numbers. In that case, my husband's family is generally more progressive now, even if they have purely Southern and slave-owning roots.

Do you agree with that perspective: is it better to have a family that "currently" is overall more progressive and voting Democrat, even if that family is purely slave-owning and Southern in its past, than it is to come from a family with no slavery, even if that family is currently slightly more third-party or Republican in its voting?

I'd say neither are guilty, or maybe both are equally guilty depending on how one looks at it, but those are murky waters. Southern Democrats were historically more likely to support racial segregation than Northern Republicans, for instance, but there are lots of Racist Republicans and non-racist (or anti-racist) Democrats out there. I have no way of knowing which party has more racists in the classical sense than the other.

Political party membership often has less to do with race than positions on things like unions, the electoral college, whether the state government or the national government should have more influence, and what programs our tax dollars are spent on. The extend to which those things carry racial implications is a matter of opinion.

A Southern family could have voted Democrat for the past 150 years and might now be considered progressive for it. Likewise, a Northern family could have voted Republican for the past 150 years and now be considered regressive for it. Maybe both families were more concerned with things like infrastructure, foreign wars, or environmental concerns. How people vote won't necessarily point to the answers you're looking for. It's better to get a sense of where their hearts and minds are than going by whether their great-great-great grandparents had or didn't have slaves.

 

[rjs330]

Gosh. Why that means...

I think it means that we shouldn't be judging people in the past so harshly by today's standards. And then blaming certain groups as if they are the bad guys and still hold responsibility today.

 

[rjs330]

No they are not guiltier. No one today is responsible for what their ancestors did in the past. The Germans today are not responsible for what their ancestors did in WWI or II.

The British today are not responsible for what their ancestors did to people when they conquered them during the days of the British Empire. The Italians are not responsible for how the Romans treated the Christians. African tribes are not responsible for enslaving people in Africa or for selling Africans off as slaves.

We are responsible for what we do today. And particularly for moving forward from the errors of the past and getting rid of those things we see that are wrong. If white people still had slaves then they would be responsible, but we don't.

In this country we don't have systemic racism anymore. We have laws against it. Although there are those who want to create it.

 

[RDKirk]

In this country we don't have systemic racism anymore. We have laws against it. Although there are those who want to create it.

There has been a rhetorical flim-flam in the replacement of "structural racism" for "systemic racism." We got everyone on board with dismantling structural racism--done through repeal and reversal of laws and policies that had codified racism.

It has to be admitted, however, that there are still racists in the system, hence, the coining of "systemic racism." But they are not the same, and the methods for dealing with racists in the system cannot be the same as dealing with racism that is the structure of the system.

Every way you look at the situation, the fix is in place. Whether we like the direction or not, by the time my daughter is my age, Caucasians won't be the dominant demographic in much of the nation, and the social privileges that accord naturally to the dominant demographic won't be theirs anymore. I'm not sure what it will look like, but the changes are already taking place.

Black people are whining (yes, I said whining) about having to code-switch in corporate America and speak standard English. What are they going to do in the future when code-switching in many places will be speaking Spanish? There will never be a time that code-switching of some kind won't be necessary.

And that is not a problem. We are human beings. Any normally intelligent human being should be able to function in multiple different social settings.

 

[partinobodycular]

Any normally intelligent human being should be able to function in multiple different social settings.

Uh oh, I can't even function in one... but I think I'll write this off as me simply being abnormally intelligent... yeah that's the ticket, I'm abnormally intelligent.

 

[partinobodycular]

We are responsible for what we do today. And particularly for moving forward from the errors of the past and getting rid of those things we see that are wrong. If white people still had slaves then they would be responsible, but we don't.

It's probably just me, but I find this bit to be confusing. If getting rid of those things we see that are wrong, includes the inequalities born out of slavery, then aren't you saying that we are indeed responsible for what our forebears did?

We don't need to be the direct cause of the problems in order to bear some responsibility for correcting them, otherwise who will? The next generation, or the next... or nobody.

 

[rjs330]

Uh oh, I can't even function in one... but I think I'll write this off as me simply being abnormally intelligent... yeah that's the ticket, I'm abnormally intelligent.

Man I wish I had that excuse.

 

[partinobodycular]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2024/02/14/black-farmers-racism-history-cprog-orig-af-nb.cnn

 

[rjs330]

It's probably just me, but I find this bit to be confusing. If getting rid of those things we see that are wrong, includes the inequalities born out of slavery, then aren't you saying that we are indeed responsible for what our forebears did?

We don't need to be the direct cause of the problems in order to bear some responsibility for correcting them, otherwise who will? The next generation, or the next... or nobody.

I believe I said that. We are responsible for what we do today. Not for what was done in the past by other people. Bearing responsibility for correcting things is not the same thing as being responsible for the thing that was done in the past.

I didn't have slaves and neither did my ancestors. I'm not responsible for it. I certainly can step forward and say we need to correct that and not let it continue because we as a society has grown beyond that. Our culture came to the realization we should not do that to another human being. But EVERYONE is responsible for moving forward. Including the Africans who had slaves and sold them. They are as guilty as anyone else. And as far as I know they have.
What we should be doing is noting any issues that still exist and dealing with them. And we have as a society. There is no slavery and there is no systemic racism.

Now we can continue to to work on ending individual racism, but unfortunately there still are those today that wish to reinstall systemic racism. It's a shame.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The results of this thematic analysis showed that critical care clinicians missed opportunities to acknowledge emotions and value the knowledge of Black caregivers compared with White caregivers. These findings may inform future clinician-level interventions aimed at promoting equitable shared decision-making.

https://watermark.silverchair.com/jamainternal_ashana_2024_oi_230108_1707518715.49092.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA04wggNKBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggM7MIIDNwIBADCCAzAGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMyw-P0OFfb_5Lk8-1AgEQgIIDAWwOSlmghrteRJ7J6ih3UAX_6K8ml3LtwATUJo8yfdVSiOcYsX7Wrno0-_WjFnh1a8TUlZfvncuhQWHMnuUs4wBiNrhULuwQCfkizQRgbcyBGxkLM3Rc5VotufFT_tnaPhjNUi7RLIyf30Gj5W_Ufgo8FwlvCevAwGF01w_CPbZipckQ-V1K1AXKJ3El2dh-jfIcnZNfzcxe7Z4nX6NGRpCLTz09tGuz-3UbYbps-sbFFSrDN_iCbNe42jIZTLDtAWbVZHCn6gVhT2a6kz45GmWa2onSV_Ss7uE56Sn4yqGlxSlZpmqHeW4-TXFOWfy9PUSV9oEK7vjqNOHMo6VPwuyc9Do7CRVegfM0RGJBo2GPLrSHSuO0IHiNJBtrnfOenFdEXYYiiZAJt9miplG1_ETf0OTvEcr19Oj3z__bZryh71RfcnfFYo8XbdZgyTt0z-Pk5vf1PRHjDqDJ6nXYOiDgHFWwDDkH1Um_DEaz6fcV13mASrQtaHV1PxvNyAtgpUh_ycoPn8RO-Tp-OlWq5WJyInURwkXYtYw6h19uoXoRX2NZbuEQRkD10nn0Ke2r8wYOBPiyWrxXk4Yt69dZ0Yq8tt42dvgde15tzpUbivbrhxsdIfnXu4-ZiJ5iMO5bJBNCZGzcvCrFyepFm0_XrA1KNmKRA9i8Scsvczha_8MbWOMc4W4RYRGzgK0_5O9TWvn-ivlPROZVAT8BbxR9jMy8zrQCqu_lo361Rkllw4ymjyRhFnciiOukWaxr-_VXYKA7eT0g5f_Ny1e4d7nD-K0PhSey-HYyV-57UuSdmsCGF891APuS0dFjI_VB5sw9CRmYSAgFSmAy412j9ZVUoGiP_4GW0FY6ZUx21HOawEMcdFa0h6d5_6YP5ygDRC2vNDaJUYX0f0nVjIpWiN7FMqMagLqlqbxo2aflX-kexMsxHg229vfm2lToluVyfm7pM8KV79n1oBqt9fUm3rl_5m_ExpGd6FwWVCMz4dD3G2Rmm24ArVPdI8KxDcpgCbNdCC0

 

[FredVB]

Our culture came to the realization we should not do that to another human being. But EVERYONE is responsible for moving forward. Including the Africans who had slaves and sold them. They are as guilty as anyone else. And as far as I know they have.
What we should be doing is noting any issues that still exist and dealing with them. And we have as a society. There is no slavery and there is no systemic racism.

Unfortunately there is still, which continues, though not at all just like before, with the state fully condoning it. More need to combat it. Racism and slavery tend to continue, while we always have a culture of exploitation, and you all are affected by it.

Prevalence of modern slavery is among the lowest of countries in the Americas, yet the estimated total number of people living in modern slavery is the highest of all countries in the region. Vulnerability is largely driven by discrimination towards migrants and minority groups, irregular migration and organised crime along the US-Mexico border, poverty, and the use of state-imposed forced labour within the prison system.

Modern slavery in United States | Walk Free

The 2023 Global Slavery Index country study for the United States.

www.walkfree.org

 

[RDKirk]

Unfortunately there is still, which continues, though not at all just like before, with the state fully condoning it. More need to combat it. Racism and slavery tend to continue, while we always have a culture of exploitation, and you all are affected by it.

There's no race-based slavery in the US. There is no known structural racism. Certainly there is racism in the overall American system because there are human beings in the overall system. But where there is racial impact, that is a matter of dominant demographics, such as Hispanic systemic racism in Texas and Asian systemic racism in Hawaii, both of which I've observed at the working-class level.

Beyond the effect of dominant demographics, racism in the US is a combination of the "classical" racism of the Jim Crow era that is dwindling with Boomers (the last generation inculcated as children with that kind of racism) and "reactionary" racism in younger generations spurred by images and experiences with what we call "rachet" (wretched) urban behavior.

If we American descendants of slavery were and could be seen as the kind of community displayed by the movie "Hidden Figures" (which is how I was raised), there would be little reactionary racism, and we could almost mark "the end of racism" by the epoch of the demise of the Boomer Generation.

 

[FredVB]

There's no race-based slavery in the US. There is no known structural racism. Certainly there is racism in the overall American system because there are human beings in the overall system. But where there is racial impact, that is a matter of dominant demographics, such as Hispanic systemic racism in Texas and Asian systemic racism in Hawaii, both of which I've observed at the working-class level.

Beyond the effect of dominant demographics, racism in the US is a combination of the "classical" racism of the Jim Crow era that is dwindling with Boomers (the last generation inculcated as children with that kind of racism) and "reactionary" racism in younger generations spurred by images and experiences with what we call "rachet" (wretched) urban behavior.

If we American descendants of slavery were and could be seen as the kind of community displayed by the movie "Hidden Figures" (which is how I was raised), there would be little reactionary racism, and we could almost mark "the end of racism" by the epoch of the demise of the Boomer Generation.

Racism is continuing very well. It is not all on "boomers". You can't throw the racist label at me. I am of that generation and a lot was done to fight racism, there was awareness, there was activism, and there was education, and I had hope even by a time decades ago racism would be so diminished. It is not. Evidence of it continuing keeps popping up. And slavery is real, even if not legally sanctioned, and if white people make slaves of Mexicans crossing the border that is still race based slavery. Your own generation has responsibility to deal with it, own up to that, your generation is not off the hook.

 

[RDKirk]

Racism is continuing very well. It is not all on "boomers". You can't throw the racist label at me. I am of that generation and a lot was done to fight racism, there was awareness, there was activism, and there was education, and I had hope even by a time decades ago racism would be so diminished. It is not. Evidence of it continuing keeps popping up. And slavery is real, even if not legally sanctioned, and if white people make slaves of Mexicans crossing the border that is still race based slavery. Your own generation has responsibility to deal with it, own up to that, your generation is not off the hook.

I'm a Boomer. I very well remember segregation. I was in middle school before I ever met a white person...I'd never spoken to a white person before then. I'd never been on a playground with a white child, or a school, or in a swimming pool or a movie theater with a white child until I was a teenager. They had their own pools and theaters and playgrounds...we saw them from a distance. We were warned not to interact with them (Emmett Till and others were still fresh in our parents' minds). We were taught that being in the presence of a white person was like being in the presence of a grizzly bear...you move slowly and talk quietly and leave the vicinity as quickly as possible.

My wife and I can tell similar stories about traveling in the South as children, our parents having to be exceedingly cautious about where they stopped. My father would get out first at a gas station or restaurant to see if we'd be served. Sometimes we could enter. Sometimes he'd get back in the car and say we had to find another place. My wife's father chose to do his driving at night when he'd have the least chance of running into any white people on the highway (him, a wife, and three daughters...his risk was high).

By the 70s I had thought that the Boomer generation would be the first integrated generation. I had thought that for a long time. My mind got changed after Obama's election. For a short time after that, I thought times had changed even more quickly than I'd hoped.

But then I saw white Boomers reacting in like their mothers had been slapped. People I'd known for 30 years--people I though were racially cool--changed before my eyes like werewolves. Not all, of course. But I saw that the segregation that had been very carefully and fully inculcated into us by all of American society, from schoolbooks to television, was still in there.

A few years ago, my wife and I were driving through an "old money" area of Dallas. We saw a young black man in a jogging suit jogging on the sidewalk. I said, "Huh." My wife said, "Huh." We realized that the young black man in that neighborhood had caught both our attentions, and we talked about that for a moment. That young man was not in a place we would have expected him to be, and we'd both noticed it. We were pleased to see him in that neighborhood, and that pleasure in itself meant the programming of our early childhoods was still down there. We realized that for both of us, down deep, that there was still a concept of where "they" should be and where "we" should be, even though we consciously railed against it.

I realized the Boomer generation is not the first integrated generation, we're just the last segregated generation.

 

[Bradskii]

A player for the team I support was banned for 8 games this week for saying to an opposing player 'xxxx off, monkey' (the game was played in Las Vegas actually as a means to 'spread the word' about rugby league to the US). The opposing player's background is 'Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander descent.' Clear racism, you'd think. But the player banned is Samoan. And his defence was that casual slurs were common amongst players of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

To be honest, I thought the player on the saving end was Tongan. Which made me think - can someone from Samoa racially villify someone from Tonga? I assumed it would be the same as two black guys referring to each other using the N word. Like me calling another white guy 'Whitey'.

 

[timothyu]

So who took offense. Some white person?

 

[RDKirk]

A player for the team I support was banned for 8 games this week for saying to an opposing player 'xxxx off, monkey' (the game was played in Las Vegas actually as a means to 'spread the word' about rugby league to the US). The opposing player's background is 'Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander descent.' Clear racism, you'd think. But the player banned is Samoan. And his defence was that casual slurs were common amongst players of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

To be honest, I thought the player on the saving end was Tongan. Which made me think - can someone from Samoa racially villify someone from Tonga? I assumed it would be the same as two black guys referring to each other using the N word. Like me calling another white guy 'Whitey'.

They're from different nations, so that complicates the matter. If an African called a black American the N-word on a sports court, there would still be hands thrown. Maybe a moment of incredulousness at first, but I'd wager hands would still be thrown.

However, when I was in Hawaii, I did hear slurs thrown casually between Asian ethnic groups with nothing thought of it, even on radio. It was a laughing matter, a joke. However, when an Asian or native Hawaiian used the word "haole" on a Caucasian, it was neither casual nor funny. That's the only place I've seen Caucasians' feelings actually hurt over a racial slur.

 

[Bradskii]

However, when an Asian or native Hawaiian used the word "haole" on a Caucasian, it was neither casual nor funny. That's the only place I've seen Caucasians' feelings actually hurt over a racial slur.

I worked in Hong Kong. The equivalent term there was gwei-lo. Whether it was a slur depended on context. But if you were in a bar late at night and some locals were chatting and you picked up the word followed by a group snigger, then you kinda knew how it was being used.

A friend of mine, early hours of one morning, low class joint in an area off the tourist track, took umbrage. He was a big dude. Stood and glowered at the group. Whole place went quiet. If there had been a piano player he would have stopped playing. We were the only non locals in there. I was thinking - this is definitely not good. But there was just some macho posturing and eventually Neil sat back down.