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Racism

  • Thread starter altrade212
  • Start date
how do you feel with racism against african americans? i just watched "Men of Honor" GREAT movie... i really felt bad of how they used to treat african americans it was so evil, i just get real emotional when it comes to that, everytime i see vedios and hear about it, see documentries and movies i get very emotional.. i just wanted to know your views on racism (since its black history month i figured it was appropriate)..
 
Racism is one of the most pointless and counterproductive infections ever to enter the human consciousness. It derives from the wider desire some have to control other people and assume a position of power over them. Truly a human sickness.

Capslock
 
Don't even get me started!
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I think an anti-swastika tattoo suffices to express my feelings towards racism.
Very well said Capslock. Racism also includes fear of the unknown.
 
It's part of human nature (a childish part IMO) to need to feel superior to others. We base this supposed superiority on a number of superficial things such as skin color, sex, or even where the person is from. Some day we will out grow this need to feel superior or at least control it before it destroys us.
 
Slavery is the one prominent thing in the history of the South that I'm ashamed of.

I experience racism every day... my grandparents, as previously mentioned, are extremely racist and narrow-minded.... negrophobic, homophobic, redneckphobic, everything you can think of that qualifies as different from them, they're against it. Especially my grandmother. Anyway, prejudice is one of my biggest pet peeves. It REALLY pisses me off when somebody slams somebody else just because of something as simple as the color of their skin. This pretty much sums up my feelings: take a lesson from Big & Rich. Love Everybody. Amen-aaa.
 
A guy in my church made a movie about racism in South Africa. It was even filmed in South Africa. Anyway, the movie was aired nationally on PBS. It is called Final Solution. He and A.C. Green(yea the basketball player) are friends and AC helped him out. Anyway the movie is great. Here is a link about it Movie
 
FlytrapGurl gives me hope that the mentality toward race in the South is changing for the better.  I live in Hawaii, where no race is in the majority.  People of different races get along pretty well, but it's not perfect.  Part of the reason for the relative harmony is that many people are of different ancestries.  German, Hawaiian, Chinese, Portugese, Japanese, and Filipino -- and that could be the ancestry of just one person.
 
I'm not prejudice at all. I hate everybody equally the same.
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Seriously, I grew up in a somewhat racist family. Some members of my extended family, were extremely racist.
It's very true that hate is not inherited, it's taught. I was probably on my way to being racist when I was young. The school I went to was mixed white/black about 60/40. I had friends that were black. When I was in second grade I realized that blacks are people, the same as whites. I decided then that there was no way to treat them any different. From that time, I had never judged anybody by the color of their skin.
When I was 19, I went to a technical school that was like a college. We had to live in the dorms and were not allowed to leave the campus. The school was about 96% black, 2% white, 2% other. I learned a lot about the other side of racism there.
I'm sure that you've notice that I was the word black instead of African American. I never use the AA word.

If you want to talk about evil done to a people you should research how the US government tried to ethnically cleanse the Indians. Now that was wrong.

I also want to add that these emotional topics can get very heated. I can see this one getting out of control. If it even starts to turn ugly, the mods will shut it down immediately.
 
  • #10
Yes Racism is bad and needs to be addressed. What I do not understand is why we still label them as different then normal americans. Many "African-americans" families have lived here longer then my family. I call myself an American not a Germanic-Irish American. Besides the term African American is racist in itself. It is imprinted in our minds that that means the people have mcuh darker skin then say europeans (historically). I know a couple African American families who immigrated from South Africa about 40 years ago to the US. They are first generation African Americans. The funnything is their family was originally british colonists. So their skin color is the same as most Europeans (historically).
 
  • #11
oh! what a coincidence! i'm doing a paper on racism!... i searched about the KKK and stuff... darn... like I always say, people never cease to amaze me with their stupidity.
I think racism is stupid. do I need to say anything more?
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I'm sure that you've notice that I was the word black instead of African American. I never use the AA word.
lol... I also don't like saying AA. They're americans. period. why do people call whites just whites and they call blacks "african americans"? I've never heard anyone being called "european american" have you?
that makes no sense to me.
edit:... I hate repeating what others said but i hadn't seen the post :p
 
  • #12
actually.. african americans i know prefer to be called african americans more than being called black... they feel more respected when you do
 
  • #13
If you are born here you are American!I don't go around saying I'm German-American.Come on give me a break.By the way,I don't like racism!

Jerry
 
  • #14
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]FlytrapGurl gives me hope that the mentality toward race in the South is changing for the better.

The south today is not the same as it was 50 years ago. I think I have a unique point of view on this. I was born and raised in the south. I am now living in Ohio. I have seen racism there as well as here. From my point of view there is a big difference. I have met more racist people in Ohio than in NC. In the south there are some people that are very vocal about their hate. In Ohio, it seems that people more quite about it.
I have a theory about this. When you look for something, you'll find it more easy than if you were not looking. Because of past events in the south, there is more focus there. How many times have you seen a tv show go to a all white northern town? But that doesn't mean they are none. The town I live in now has one black family, but you never hear anything about it. But Oprah did a show in (I think) Georgia that was about an all white town. One thing that has advanced the south was desegregation of the schools. All the public schools by law have to mixed. This brought kids together before they were old enough to hate. I have some problems with desegregation. Like forced busing, but it was had some effect.
Most people think most people in the south smoke, but from my experiences, it seems there are way more smokers in the north that the south.
I'm not saying that racism is not a big problem, it is. But to believe that it only, or mostly occurs in the south is same as believe stereotypes.
 
  • #15
Hey good topic (racism) about a bad thing (racism). The fight for equality is not over unfortunately.
Living in the great white north I'm plenty accustomed to all the  epithets. And now, since my dad's neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN is the largest Somalian community in the united states (as stated by Aaron Brown, CNN) there is a large deal of racism aganst these hardworking folks both from whites AND african americans! At least everyone can get together in hating the "dirty rag heads, magic carpet riders, terroroists, sand nig------"....All common phrases you hear shouted or see scrawled on walls around here lately in his neighborhood.

BTW The morons running that defunct white power label Panzerfaust Records from St. Paul, MN at least made a big joke of them and their little movement by running a nazi label and then, not being "full blooded" white ha ha ha.....!

All this explains why my best friends are my Nepenthes and my cat! Because humans suck!
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A closed mind is an empty mind
-Col. Potter, MASH 4077th
 
  • #16
Racism? Whats this? I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know what that word means, but whatever it means I sure will not use it because I don't believe in it.
 
  • #17
I don't get why people even bother to let arbitrary physical characteristics play any part whatsoever in their identity. Personally I would consider even saying "I'm proud to be (insert race)" silly and, dare I say, racist by definition.

racism -- n. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

If you ask me, racism can't go away when people still believe that race is even worth noticing... positively or negatively. I have blue eyes. I've never once thought of myself a Blue-Eyed American. Who cares?

I guess it all comes down to the fact that the world is a big, cold, scary place, and people need to find "communities" to join in order to feel like they belong somewhere. Unfortunately so many of them pick communities based on the most superficial and meaningless of similarities, merely because they seem to be the most immediately obvious.

And then there's the whole "ingroup/outgroup bias" thing we learned about in that other thread.
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  • #18
It's kinda weird classifying yourself... I mean people that were born here are called american not european american or something like that (like its been said). When people ask me what are you its kinda hard to say... first off my response would be Dominican, because i was born in the Dominican Republic, even though my father has a spaniard/italian (european) ancestry, which then leads me to european, but that doesn't seem to fit because well i'm not from europe even though half my ancestors are. Which leads me to american. which would be dumb because the person will say "duh i know you're american we are in america", so im expected to name some other foreign country like italy or germany or something...

I think next time i'll save all the trouble and just say "i'm human"
 
  • #19
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Amateur_Expert @ Feb. 11 2005,8:52)]actually.. african americans i know prefer to be called african americans more than being called black... they feel more respected when you do
It seems that every generation of black Americans have wanted to be called something different than the one before. There's a long list of titles that were once acceptable, that are now derogatory. Does anybody know what NAACP stands for? That's one of the major problem I have with being political correct. Everything offends somebody.

Africa is the cradle of all humans. Every person alive can be traced back to a single woman from Africa. So if you think about it I'm African American too. We all are.

Why can we all be just Americans?
 
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