How did you learn what racism is?

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I was a stupid kid sometimes.

I called some black kid the N-word without understanding what it meant. He had called me white-boy. The kid punched me in the face. Other people around said I shouldn't have called him the N-word and told me why, and that it was a really mean, lousy thing to do, well beyond him calling me white-boy.

I felt so bad, that I never called anybody that again. This was about 45 years ago.

I was called Hebe a couple of times in my neighborhood. I didn't know what it meant then. Hebe, meaning Hebrew, is a slur used to insult Jews.

I was born in 1964 and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Thats how I found out.

And no, I'm not racist.

I was taught about it in primary school. However, it never really settled in my mind what it truly meant. I learnt what racism really was when I finished high school and had no need to socialize with folks who seemed to implement those racist ideals: social groups were "quite" heavily marginalized, I'd say......

Now I've come to a point where I can view people objectively in terms of race..... The first and second posters pretty much summed it up for me. It's not just about discrimination on their skin color. It also includes the stigmas as well.

I was constantantly called k*e from around 5th grade to 8th or 9th grade. I well knew it was similar to calling a black person n****r. That and varoius homophobic slurs were the main things bullies called me. Interstingly the old slur "hebe" has been reapproriated by younger Jews into "heeb" as a word of pride.

Oddly enough during recent years I sometimes got people who know that I am Jewish assuming I am smarter then I am. I would totally flub things and people think I am saying somthing profound. Now that I am non verbal some people assume I am ret*d or deaf.

I was told theoretically what it is, which made me think racist ideas were too obviously stupid to be entertained seriously by anyone.

Years later, I saw people vocally and menacingly defending those same ideas, generally as part of some good ol' rebellion against the establishment or the previous generation's values. I've never understood other people's need to rebel against reason or things like their own health as part of the process of affirming their place in the world.

I do understand that some people won't respect you unless you embrace their racism—provided you're not of one of the races or origins they're racist against, that is—or you physically fight them and win. Winning is the tough part, of course.

I would not say stupid.

Most racists were right that property values would plunge if they let blacks in their cities.

Provided they were actually right, that's a fact, and facts can't be racist.

It's also a fact that a lot of people in the world would be less hungry if they could have a plump and juicy, roasted and well seasoned limb of some young and healthy white First-World dweller for dinner. Facts are facts.

Hey, my thread's back.

That's an interesting one. We had this happen to us some years ago, only it was Muslims taking over our street knocking the prices down. We were selling our house, but not because of that. The Muslims never gave us any trouble while we were there, and we were in no hurry to leave. And we weren't accepting the price drop. We kept our asking price the same. Loads of Muslim families came to the house and one white family. The Muslims, most of them made insultingly low offers, the few that didn't made respectable but still below the asking price offers. This wasn't a negotiation. We wanted the full asking price. Then a second white family came, and paid our price. That was so satisfying.

You must not be American homeowner, or you would know this to be self-evident. You would already visited a realtor, and had this discussion.

There's no mystery. Every research shows blacks are lower in wealth, income , education.

Show naturally, replacing a wealthier, higher income, more educated group with a lower one will result in less quality, less money to spend on the neighborhood.

I own a home in a city that is 98.7% white according to wiki, and rich whites flock to this city. I expect to make hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next 20+ years.

My first home was in Detroit and a drug dealer moved next to me. That home price plunged. Cops would be out at the house all the time. He had rat problems that came in my yard. I had two break-ins. His buyers would idle at odd hours outside my house. That's lower quality living.

My year 4-6 (or 4th-6th grade, I think) primary (British for "elementary") school teacher was known for being very strict and disciplined (unlike most of my high school teachers) and was very angry about the behaviour of the kids in his class towards each other, particularly the use of the word "gay" as an insult. One day, when he was very angry, Mr. Ward gave us a lecture about prejudice, saying he hated people "judging other people by the colour of their skin. That is called racism", and the reactions of people to "a man loving a man or a woman loving a woman. That is called sexism and homophobia". That was the first time I'd ever heard of those terms.

Not every drug dealer or criminal is going to be black. Here in the Spokane area, with a very miniscule black population, I can honestly say that most drug dealers are white - when we were renting an apartment near the Spokane courthouse, a white dealer moved upstairs, and was soon followed by her hordes of customers, inspiring us to move out. Another white dealer lived in the house next to our rental the next time around (one of his customers was a friend's sister who later died of an overdose), but luckily enough, the police did something about it. Today, one of neighbors living in the apartment across from us is a very pleasant black lady everyone likes and trusts - goes to show you, stereotypes very often aren't true.

Step one, African Americans were living in the South, safely separated from white Northern property values.
Step two, WWII arrives, white men go to serve overseas, and Southern AAs are urged to move North to man the factories. They are concentrated into certain neighborhoods through redlining and other techniques. These neighborhoods are nonetheless right next to majority white neighborhoods, causing white people to howl.
Step Three, White flight! Get me outta here, before my property becomes worthless, my son becomes a drug addict and my daughter is raped by a black man. White people move to the suburbs.
Step Four, Civil rights legislation is passed. Jim Crow goes bye-bye. Redlining goes bye-bye (officially, anyway). Anyone in the African American community with any resources and talent follow the white people out of the city to their own suburban neighborhoods. Still segregated, but ritzy and removed from the cities.

All of this is rational and unavoidable, but the result is that the inner cities were turned into abandoned bastions of what is referred to as the "permanent underclass". It's not their fault! They are our fault. We created these neighborhoods, very deliberately. We created them for our benefit during the war, and now we must fix this problem we've created. We have to think in terms of solutions. We can no longer continue to ignore them, as we have for so many years. Education is a joke in these areas. Policing is a nightmare in these neighborhoods, and it is ridiculous to blame the police. They didn't make these neighborhoods and all they are responsible for is maintaining order, not social engineering. That's our job.

We were on vacation at Lookout Point in Tennessee ( I was 8 to 10 I think) when the little kid in front of me got his face smashed into the fountain by a big racist pr__k. My parents explained it to me later.

Did you even read my post before replying? I wonder why you feel the need to tell me I’d know your fact to be self-evident, since I didn’t deny it. I said something else. Perhaps you’re not interested in what I said, even though it addressed your previous retort defending racism, but I’m not interested in your fact, either, because it’s irrelevant—facts are facts and racism is racism, and you can always find a convenient fact to support policies that benefit some people by means of being unfair to other people. I’ve already given an example of such a fact, and it’s no less self-evident than yours. There’s nothing new in that, and it doesn’t make such policies any less unfair.



I profoundly doubt “every research” shows every single black person to be lower in wealth, income and education than every single non-black one.



It’s interesting how you talk about “replacing” people, like a farmer could talk about replacing livestock, as opposed to the people themselves moving out of their own free will and agency.



Congrats. Would you turn away a rich non-white would-be tenant?



Sounds like the plunge and the lower-quality living weren’t caused by his skin color, but because he was a criminal.

It probably wouldn’t have happened if there weren’t a war on drugs in the first place. Anyway, neighbors don’t have a right to be criminals, but they do have a right to be non-white. If prices plunge because there are a lot of white people who don’t want to live next to them due to their skin color, that’s those particular white people’s problem for being racist, as well as the problem of homeowners wanting to cater to them.

I’ve tried to address your points rationally, because I think poo flinging is a big waste of time at best, but I must insist I struggle to make sense of your post as a whole and am by no means sure to have guessed its aim correctly. It can easily read, “Look, I’m rich and I made it all myself through decades of hard work, and you’re a loser with no accomplishments to speak of, so I’ve earned the right to be racist and can’t be bothered even to read your post before scolding you. You deserve to be humiliated by my reply regardless of logic”, and I certainly can’t argue with that. I was only answering the question in the title of the thread before you addressed me.

I didn't have to learn. I've been racist ever since I was just a little sperm. After all, I am a white cis het male. That means, in addition to my racism, I am also transphobic, homophobic, and sexist.

I assume you're being sarcastic.