Teach me how to not be racist?

[Al B. Sure!]

or am i not racist? i generally don't think so because i got white friends, one of my ex-girlfriends was white, and come on, i'm not racist... but some things make it seem like maybe i am...

for example, Ming, only yesterday, warned me saying that my anti-white and anti-semitic postings would no longer be tolerated... i got strong preference for black over white in that black-white preference test... also, for some time now, people i know have said things along the lines of me being racist against whites or at least having this attitude that blacks and puerto ricans are incapable of doing anything wrong. i even mentioned on apolyton years ago about how, after I wrote a school essay in 8th grade, some administrators were thinking of contacting the anti-defamation league, etc. and i've also raised eye-brows from school officials when, on numerous occassions, i lost my cool in a class debate and started saying **** along the lines of "you ****ing crackers don't know ****", etc.

and i won't lie... when i would take the El and see white people on it... most of the time i was cool but sometimes, i get this strange urge to just beat the **** out of some bleached blonde white catholic school boy...

but again... white ex-girlfriend, white friends, and hell... i'm caucasion...

so am i racist? and if so, should it be a concern? and if it is a concern, what can i do to not be racist?


thanks

[Skanky Burns]

If race is an issue to you, then you are racist. It is as simple as that.

[Berzerker]

I'll go one better, I'll teach you to be moral - treat people as individuals instead of seeing them as members of a group. Once you get to that point, you can work on treating people as you want to be treated...

[Dis]

try not to see people as a certain color

It's just that easy

[Al B. Sure!]

but i dont see people as a certain color... i dont actively be thinking such and such person is such and such colour... it's just that... for example, on the train, there was these catholic school boys (all white) being loud as **** and i told someone i was with i wanted to beat the **** out of them loud ass people... then five minutes later, there was three black guys who was making a lot of noise right next to us yet i didnt say **** and the person i was with asked about that so i did come off as a hypocrite even though i never set out having this attitude of black people are automatically good so if i see dark skinned people doing bad, i dont care... just the thought of those guys being loud didnt bother me for some reason know what i'm saying?

[Drake Tungsten]

If race is an issue to you, then you are racist. It is as simple as that.

I only wish the rest of society saw it that way.

[DRoseDARs]

"Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick. The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness. Therefore he is not sick."

Chapter Seventy-One, Tao Te Ching

-- Lao Tsu --



Sometimes simple concepts have far greater implications.



EDIT: I should note that Chinese does not translate directly into English everytime. The Tao Te Ching has been translated differently by different people, so the wording may be a little cumbersome.

[Berzerker]

for example, on the train, there was these catholic school boys (all white) being loud as **** and i told someone i was with i wanted to beat the **** out of them loud ass people...

Anger management, Al. Did you ever consider asking them to tone it down?

[BustaMike]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
If race is an issue to you, then you are racist. It is as simple as that.

I could not have said it any better.

[MikeH]

Sounds like AS has a problem with class rather than race.

It's the rich kids he seems to have a problem with.

[problem_child]

Go ahead, be racist, anybody can be any kind of idiot and not enough people realise that. It will be instructive (as you well know) to show that white people are not the only ones capable of that particular trick, pissin on skin I mean.

Meanwhile the rest of us who do not persue a color-coded world view can be contemptuos of all you racists on a more equal footing. Two wrongs often make rights.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Berzerker


Anger management

funny movie

[PLATO]

King had it right. Judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. If only his followers could do that...

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Berzerker
I'll go one better, I'll teach you to be moral - treat people as individuals instead of seeing them as members of a group. Once you get to that point, you can work on treating people as you want to be treated...

This is a great start. Stereotypes are a mental shorthand that often bear no resemblence to the real world. Look beyond the stereotypes ("all cops/blacks/politicians etc are..."). Boost your awareness - the US is big on image, but it's the colour of the heart and soul that's important, not the skin.

As for that bus incident Albert - you released your tension by telling the kids to shut up. Once the tension was gone from you (you offloaded it onto the kids) then somebody else making a racket didn't trigger you to react.

Maybe making concious decisions, deciding in your mind when to intervene, and planning in advance for what to do is the way to go. Or maybe those 3 black guys would have kicked your ass anyway... I don't know, I wasn't there.

Personally I try to treat every situation differently, because every situation IS different... but that's a tough road for most people who just want to progress in life.

EDIT: Oh yeah, racism is a belief system ("ism"). For most it's not full on, but I guess nearly everyone has a little prejudice ("Pre-judging an issue on how it looks").

[gunkulator]

The only way to defeat racism is with intelligence. Your brain works all day to categorize things and natural forces. All science is based on theories that predict that the same kinds of forces will evoke the same kinds of reactions on some group. This is fine for things like gravity, electromagnetism or nuclear chemistry. Sometimes it even leads to new breakthroughs like Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

However with people, your mind is incorrectly applying this model. Every person you know well is far greater than a list of traits you can just tick off. For most of us however, we tend to know only those people belonging to one of our arbitrary categories we call family, class, race, religion, nationality, etc. Naturally your brain inductively concludes that any new person you meet from one of these categories will have the same "good" traits as others you have known. Contrarywise, those outside your known group do not have these "good" traits. Therefore in an encounter with an "outsider" we instinctively scrutinize them with the same caution mankind has always used when approaching a new and unknown situation. The Fight or Flight reflex takes over.

The good news is that humans have shown that we can rise above our base instincts. The thing that keeps our instincts in check is our intelligence. Knowing a thing demystifies that thing. If we manage to know even one person outside of our traditional groupings, the truth about all humanity becomes impossible to ignore, i.e. deep down we are all the same. It then becomes impossible to say things like "Black people are musical" or "The French can't be trusted" or "Jews steal your money" or "Muslims are terrorists."

So it's up to you Al, to either act like an intelligent, informed person or give in to animal instinct.