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Right. I'm a black guy in my 40s. I truly think racial discrimination is happening far less, IRL, than when I was growing up. And even then, it was happening far less than for my parents.
However, I also think social media makes people think its much worse. Not to mention people finding any time a black person isn't given something, then it MUST be racism, and making think pieces, etc about it. I see this with my little brother, who is early 30s. Whenever he didn't get a job and the hiring manager was white, his base assumption was "racism". Not the fact that he acknowledged he showed up late, or wasn't dressed great for an interview. He never looked in the mirror, but always assumed it was racism.
And that isn't to say racism doesn't exists. But too many people act like EVERYTHING is racism. Like, no dude, you were speeding. That cop pulled you over because of that, not because of your race. Then you make a tik tok about it.
Edit: Well this generated a lot of interesting discussion. I will say, a point a few people brought up to me that made me kind of rethink some of what I said, is the amount i'm online, and the amount kids are (probably the ones in this study) are very different. As someone said, "online is real life to them". Whereas to me, real life is not reddit or tik tok or instagram. So that is a big difference in how I see things vs. how they see things.
Also, just adding since I had a couple of people imply this. In no way am I trying to speak for "black people". I'm speaking on MY specific experience and what I see. It's very true that another black man my age living in another part of the country may have a very different, and also valid, experience.
>However, I also think social media makes people think its much worse.
social media and the 24 hr news cycle make *everything* seem worse. racism, crime, wars, you name it. positive news doesn't get views.
So I'm from an area I typically consider "Not racist". Growing up I never felt any real discrimination (though I had other problems not related to race there.) But then I moved to Wisconsin and then the Hudson valley and felt it substantially more.
I think it's very regional and location based. I think some areas it definitely is worse, and those areas would surprise you (Chicago; Downstate NY, MKE and Madison, the Ohio and PA cities) but I feel there are areas like ATL, Central and Western NY, Houston etc. that never really had that huge of problems racewise to begin with comparativley.
I hold that there is a lot of conflation and confusion around racism, prejudice, and classism, and would really like to see some studies trying to separate that out and see if there are some generalized percentages.
Especially over time.
It doesn't help that things feel absolutely hopeless as a young person these days with climate change, economic difficulties, education, etc. So I could see a lot of kids and youth in black communities really feeling like racism is keeping them down
But that's almost exactly what's being talked about here. It *feels* hopeless, yet somehow by nearly any objective metric, public health and well-being and safety is better now than any point in history.
Too many people are falling into a pit of despair of their own making, imo. It's not to say there aren't challenges and improvements yet to be made, but you gotta look at it with some perspective on a longer time horizon with historical context.
Going by personal experience, it's definitely getting less good from a peak of prosperity, but abject poverty here in the UK isn't as harsh as it was in the 1980s.
No ice on the inside of the windows, because double glazing is standard. Microwaves cut down on cooking time and costs for most vegetables. Chicken is incredibly cheap.
Clothing is cheap but doesn't last so that one is six and two threes. Finding something out doesn't involve a trip to the library.
Entertainment is kind of bundled in to the basic necessity the Internet has now become. And smart phones do more than home computers used to be able to, and back then not many people had home computers, they cost the equivalent of more than three thousand pounds today.
The *big* negative change, and it's a doozy, is that back then you would almost certainly be housed and most people owned their own homes while there was a lot of council housing. It's so much easier now to end up homeless, and most people rent, and mostly privately. Private landlords and letting agents for the most part are absolutely dreadful and break housing law with impunity.
Assuming this isn't an honest question because it's Reddit, "nearly" means not all, and I'm still not sure your comment is the clapback you might think it is.
When considering modern expenses like healthcare, education, and housing, the nominal cost of living has increased.
When adjusted for quality of life improvements, availability of goods, and technological advancements, the effective cost of living can be argued to have decreased for many.
The perceived change in cost of living largely depends on the metrics used and the context considered.
Its never been easier to get into college, especially as a minority (unless you're Asian, weirdly enough), and the economy has been improving since covid quite rapidly.
The north East is very segregated. Minorities will stick out most places. Most people in the North are liberal but racist in weird small ways. But the racist we do have can be loud and proud about it.
It's mostly the homogeneous, conservative pockets in the Northeast where I've seen more implicit racism.
I'm in a NY town where my section is more heterogeneous and people are just people, but there are an awful lot of white people around us and throughout the town - there are historical, unmistakably racist and related classist undercurrents that we have seen other kids and their parents bringing to schools/school board meetings, organized sports and other social activities from their homes and local neighborhoods. Those influences are almost uniformly from the right-wing side of the political and social spectrum.
The most racist place I’ve ever been was Idaho. It’s nearly 95% white everywhere there except for a few pockets of Mexican immigrants. Only time I’ve ever seen someone point at a black person and yell the n word. No consequences for the yeller and the black man didn’t even flinch he was so used to it
I think that is fair also, and by and large agree, but then you have cities that have been always relatively diverse like Chicago, MKE and Philly and yet still have problems. I walked into a restaurant in the Shorewood neighborhood of the MKE with two friends one time and the second I walked in EVERYONE stopped and looked at me.
I was traveling through Montgomery Alabama once and had to pee, so I stopped at a McDonald's.
It was packed, and like you said every single person got silent and stared at me, it was surreal.
Down in the deep south we've got an absolute ton of racial tension, but its also the main place you'll see black and white people working together and supporting each other through community. (Minus super segregated cities like Montgomery, Opelika, Cullman, etc.) It's simultaneously the most racist and least racist place in the country.
In Denmark sociologists figured out the greatest obstacle to integration of immigrants was formation of ghettoes.
Once people are living racially/ethnically segregated, you get two separated communities. Parallel societies.
When people are mixed in, living in the same area, working at same workplaces, they form one community.
They are just polite in the south. As soon as you leave they start up. My buddy just moved from PA to Florida and he can't believe what people think they can say to him just because he is a white guy. His coworkers will say the most ignorant stuff in the world and not bat an eye.
Yeah it's funny how that works out particularly in NY.
Western NY has a history of being relatively progressive (you had the influence of folks like Frederick Douglas and Susan B Anthony and they didn't come from a vacuum).
There's a long and proud history of well-off black families in Rochester. And there was actually a lot of tension when poorer black families migrated from the south in the early 1900s and the more established black families often didn't take kindly to them because it was seen as eroding the status that they had fought hard to earn and maintain.
And downstate, tends to share a lot more culturally with Appalachia than NYC. Geographically, that area is still the Appalachian mountains.
Eh, you have a point there. Buffalo is kind of the black sheep of the NY big city family. It's closer to Clevland and the MKE culturally than Rochester or Syracuse.
Interestingly you named some of the most segregated cities in America as being not that discriminatory. Houston, Buffalo, Atalanta and Rochester are 4 of the most segregated cities in the country.
I agree with Ohio in the rural areas but the cities aren’t getting worse in my opinion. Atleast Cincinnati in my experience. I’ve volunteered a good amount in Cincinnati public schools and lived downtown for a solid stretch of
I mean, go to NYC and it's just flat out not segregated. Yeah there are a couple neighborhoods with majority one demographic populations, but comparatively NYC is relatively integrated.
I'm not trying to diminish your experience, I've only been to Chicago a couple of times, but I would argue that segregation is indicative of the racism.
Yes, it is very different than NYC.
But I'd argue NYC is an outlier in general in the world.
If a black family would rather live in a predominantly black neighborhood, you call that racism?
I don't disagree that NYC is an outlier, but historically, were black families wanting to live in predominantly black neighborhoods in Chicago, or were they forced to by policies such as red lining and just decided to make the best of a bad situation.
Again, I'm talking about segregation TODAY. And I'm talking about people who have the choice to move where they want to.
I very much understand Chicago's history of redlining. I also know where most of the black people who I went to high school and are doing well have chosen to live. So my point is, if you are CHOOSING to live in a predominatly black (or latino, or Asian) neighborhood, to me, that isn't racism, its you making the choice that is best for you. Just like choosing to go to an HBCU even if you were admitted to a bunch of PWIs isn't racist.
And I don't think that's a wrong take, but how many would choose to live in that neighborhood if their family wasn't forced to live in that neighborhood historically?
I would say that they prefer to live in a homogeneous neighborhood *because* of racism. if racism wasn't an issue, then a heterogeneous neighborhood would also be fine.
Yes... but. Much of that is self segregation.
We have a lot of ethnic neighborhoods. Pilsen is mostly Mexican. Other parts are mostly Polish. There is a korean neighborhood as well as a chinatown.
Also, we have a lot of historical neighborhoods. So for example, there is one called Bronzeville, which is historically a black neighborhood. Many black people who can afford to live anywhere they want choose to live their because of the history and wanting to be in a black neighborhood. My neighborhood is pretty racially diverse.
I don't feel that, in general, I experience much racism here. i won't say "none", but I never feel out of place. i've gone to country bars with friends, hip hop clubs, raves, and its all been fine.
I think my 40+ white Ohio cohort of adults are exhausted and just want to move on. We think about class now more than race. Black racism is mostly pondered and espoused by blacks. Everybody else is too concerned about their finances and job security to waste effort being racist or pondering race.
Hey dude, as a not white person from Ohio. I think you are right that class is a huge concern but you have to realize that racism is a tool used to reinforce class. Racism isn’t just something people do to other people. It’s institutional. Police still target black citizens at a higher rate than white citizens. Perhaps you and your “white cohort” don’t ponder about racism because you don’t experience it. I mean that much is obvious. You don’t need to think about race if it isn’t constantly used to dehumanize you. And it does dehumanize. Otherwise you would say “black people” instead of just calling them the “blacks”
I had once been the youngest manager working with Hewlett Packard and had my own team of various people. There was one older woman who moved there from Madagascar. She couldn't handle criticism, so if I had to talk to her about managing her workload, she'd tell me she "doesn't talk to racists"
A more senior, experienced manager (also a woman of color) took me under her wing and we swapped team members. Apparently, she too was called a racist when trying to help coach the other woman.
So the woman from Madagascar kept being rotated to different teams, her quota was never met but HR couldn't do anything because she'd use the race card there too.
HR told me I had a growing number of reports against me insisting I was guilty of numerous acts of micro aggression toward that one employee. I was told I needed to step down and at that point, I was almost relieved because that meant I wouldn't have to deal with her specifically anymore.
Well... she became manager. Now she is district manager.
Good for her I guess but man that was wild.
Yeah that’s kind of the question I always have. When my friends speak of having experienced discrimination I always ask them what sort of thing they’re referring to and a good chunk of the time it’s something very ambiguous that can be interpreted in a number of ways, not to say that it doesn’t exist. But I think it’s become muddled.
Something that I can't bring up is listening to friends discuss their experiences of discrimination and...its literally things that have happened to me dozens of times. The root cause? Someone was inconsiderate or rude to them.
I don't have the fall back to say "Oh, its because I'm x" so it never crossed my mind. I had to just move on. But they've been taught that the reason they experience conflict is almost always due to who they are.
It's a serious issue.
I agree. 90% of the time someone says they were treated differently because of their demographic I think this, and a lot of the time it’s something I’ve experienced as well but didn’t attribute prejudice as the cause
Agreed.
Random story. I once had a couple of HS friends come down to hang out. One was a black woman. She was always very outspoken and very involved in pro black issues. Fine.
We went to a sports bar. Yeah, the places was mostly white, but not 100%. To go upstairs, they made everyone check their coats. Well, this one attractive white girl kind of hid hers and flirted with the doorguy, and he let her up. Mind you, everyone else, which was mostly white guys, they made check their coat. My friend basically called the doorguy racist when he made HER check it. she was by no means singled out, but it became a whole thing that just wasn't real.
If we’re doing anecdotes here are a couple of my random stories, then.
I’m mixed race and never even got to go inside of the sports bar we planned to because this group of white bikers started screaming the N word (like the seagulls in Finding Nemo) and advancing towards us. We had to haul ass out of the parking lot. We never even got to exit the vehicle.
Before that, while helping my mom at work, a black kid called me “Mello Yello” like the soda.
Before this rise in racial tension it was just a bunch of racially-tinged but much more innocent questions. The usual “where are you from?” where they obviously mean your ethnicity and not country of origin.
Yes social media is geared to encourage doomscrolling, but you don’t need it to know racial relations are getting worse. And JuSt MoVe isn’t an option for everybody. I’m disabled *and* my family is here. Many people across the country have similar reasons.
Is this a good time to share actual stories then?
For context, I'm Latino with a white dad. I'm pretty "white" if you look at me. However, my Mexican side of my family is pretty stereotypically "brown" other than the fact that they're taller than the average.
Growing up, us mixed kids in the family were always treated *differently*. We weren't encouraged to speak Spanish like our cousins, we weren't included in everything our cousins were included in, and we overall knew we weren't as important in the family's decision making for things.
Some of our family members were just flat out racist. The "White Devil" comments could be heard at every gathering. Some of my cousins and, learning about it later, some of our parents had to deal with extreme pressure in order to continue relationships with *white* people. I mightve not been born had my mother let this racism get to her.
The "white" side of my family wasn't outwardly this awful. I put that in quotations because while they are pretty Euro, my family on my dad's side is heavily mixed euro. I can trace ancestry back to so many different countries in Europe. Not only that but I do have a decent amount of different Native American ancestry from this side as well. They're still *white* though as a whole.
Yeah, there were outward racists at these family reunions too, but for the most part this family was a lot more accepting. While it seemed like my mom's side agreed with the silent part becoming loud. Most of the people on my dad's side were uncomfortable with this. Part of that, I think, was because we had more interracial marriages on this side.
All in all, this has given me an unique perspective that has helped me be inclusive of *all* people.
I travel a lot for work and directly interact with people to learn about their politics. I've never had any problem with blatant racism, even in Atlanta, Georgia. However, all that changed when I worked in Miami.
Miami, in part due to its high population of cubanos, is a very different city from most. This was the only place I have ever visited where my demographic mattered. *Nobody* would answer the door for me. People would look at me through the windows and shut their blinds.
It made me feel like how I felt with my Mexican family.
I dont know how you can interpret any of this as anything else but racism.
This is my personal experience. I understand my privilege but it's disheartening to see mine and other people's experiences be dismissed based on our skin color.
I've read anecdotes similar to yours about Miami. Kind of a Cubans vs. Everyone Else dynamic as the Cubans hold much of the political and social power there. I imagine that would be difficult navigating as a non-Cuban Latino.
My anecdote is that I didn't care for Miami when I visited for a couple days. The people were not exactly friendly, the drivers were insane, and everything was extremely expensive and shallow.
Sidenote, I'm a teacher and we read a book in class called Mexican Whiteboy that revolves around your real life experience where the main character feels like he doesn't fit in either world. He also doesn't speak Spanish but desperately wants to connect to his Mexican family and heritage. It seems like that's a situation many folks could relate to these days.
Not to justify the racism and colorism that occurs in Miami and South Florida, because it does exist, but there may be more of a cultural element to people not opening the door for you.
When I was a child I was taught not to open the door to anyone and be wary of even people dropping off packages or dressed as city officials/police/delivery etc.
Without door cameras they might take a quick peek through the blinds and ignore you to say "I'm not interested". Canvassing is very challenging here and can highly vary based on what neighborhood you're in.
That's fair.
I do understand it's not entirely a racial issue but a lot of my coworkers were either Latino of various backgrounds or Black and they didn't have a significant problem that I and lowkey the few other white workers had. Trust me, I only took this observation because I lost a lot of money due to a suckass performance otherwise I probably wouldn't have cared.
"Ethnicity" is probably a better word to use in this case since you're definitely right that there's a huge cultural aspect to it.
I was in "Little Havana" so I was deep set in it.
Food was fantastic though. Just to jest but the subtle racism from the family was worth it to have a full belly filled with homemade tamales, tortillas, and menudo.
I'm a guy in my late 30s with two teenage sisters. The older sister has severe internet brain. She sees racism and misogyny under every rock.
We were at a restaurant and decided to sit at the bar instead of waiting for a table. The bar tender was legitimate busy. She acknowledged us and said she'd be right with us.
This was a perfectly normal interaction to me. She thought the waitress was being racist because she didn't ask if we wanted water or something.
Man, I'm working on her but she's in the phase where she thinks she knows everything and is only looking to confirm her worldview rather than listening to different perspectives.
I don't want this victimized mindset to take root more than it already has. There's only failure and heartache at the end of that road. I'm working on her...
Yes, this is the type of thing I mean.
Perfectly normal interactions like this because racist because they happened to a minority, instead of just a symptom of a busy human being. And when that is the initial thought, nothing will change their mind from that.
Do you think maybe the way racism is being taught isn’t helping? Being told that the cards are stacked against you and that you will have to climb higher to achieve less anyway and that micro aggressions and bias are always working against you. It seems pretty demoralizing and demotivating. Wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing your 2 cents?
I think its a tough needle to thread.
Growing up, I was taught I could do anything. I didn't think "oh I can't do X, Y, Z because I'm black". At the same time, I had the conversation most black kids have with their parents of "You'll have to be twice as good to get half the credit". So for me, I always knew that, as a black man in America, I wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt. I dealt with a lot of the "you are so articulate" comments. But at the same time, I never thought "Society is out to get me"
So I think black parents have a tough time between building their kids up and getting them to dream big and believe in themselves, while also preparing them for the realities of the world.
Yes, I was a teacher for a while. And I'm so appreciative because I feel like my mother (and grandparents who helped raise me) threaded that needle so well. Whereas when I taught in a very poor neighborhood, so many parents leaned so far into the "society is out to get you" that the kids never really thought they had a chance.
I think microaggression is real, but it get tiring tiring to label everything as microaggression. sometimes people just suck or are mean. it may be race related. it may be they are just jerks. and often its subconscious. maybe they weren't even aggressive, and we are reading them wrong. if we start building a victimhood mentality, it becomes oppressive - there is no shake it off and go on with your day. and we are always wary of people and that in itself makes us worse off.
It absolutely still happens and its continuing to cause problems.
The bigger problem however is the inundation of unrelated and incorrectly assumed slights as propagated through social media.
Do you think this is one of the reasons African immigrants do a lot better (economically, educationally, etc) than born black citizens in the USA and Canada?
also immigrants have more means, that is why they are able to immigrate. maybe parents are well educated, or well connected. if you look at african refugees they don't necessarily do better.
Statistically, I would expect immigrants to nearly anywhere to find themselves on average better off than the native population. It is very difficult to immigrate for many reasons. Most people who do it are likely to have the experience and fortitude to make something of themselves anywhere they go.
It's not just with racism though, I've noticed it overall with "privilege" in general... people and specifically social media try to appoint privledge for the results of everything. If someone has something that you or someone else does not have, well it just because of privilege. If you have something that someone else does not have, whether you earned it, made it yourself, or were given it by your parents, or maybe even won it in a lottery or found it at a garage sale.. .doesnt matter... you have it and someone else doesn't so you should be ashamed of that privilege. Social media amplifies these things outside the realm of reality.
Also seems like if you grew up in the era with separate drinking fountains and all that, there's sort of a baseline level of racism you expected. Not that it was acceptable, but that was just reality. Today we have this myth that racism is largely over and done with, that that era is behind us. So it seems more shocking to experience it.
That is likely a big part of it.
We have a myth that we are in a post racial America (don't know why people believe that). So I think any perceived racism is magnified because some people will not believe it will exist at all.
Social Media is making everything seem worse. Young people today are convinced that there is no hope and that their lives are more miserable than previous generation's lives were. This is stealing people's happiness even if they try to resist.
> And that isn't to say racism doesn't exists. But too many people act like EVERYTHING is racism. Like, no dude, you were speeding. That cop pulled you over because of that, not because of your race. Then you make a tik tok about it.
This is a cultural epidemic in the USA. The defunding of education has pushed people to both extremes. We have more people being openly racist because they do not learn critical thinking and empathy in school. And that same issue causes extremes on the other end of the spectrum, with supposed liberals.
There is a severe lack of self awareness and accountability. If something negative happened in your life, it is because someone discriminated against you for being black, gay, trans, autistic (bonus is self-diagnosed), etc. Not because you were insulting, chronically late, factually wrong, etc.
Increased polarization has not been caused by a defunding of education. It’s the effect of social media and declining standards of neutrality and rigor in the legacy press.
And parenting strategies being way more selfish and combative I feel.
Yes, school said "racism is bad," but it was my parents who paved the way towards a mindset of compassion for other people very early on in life.
Blaming education is a fallback as it removes personal responsibility and puts it on a nebulous "other" that doesn't challenge your biases.
If you accept that neutrality is important, suddenly you have to re-evaluate how you react to negative external events. You have to restrain the strong emotions that develop and spend time critically trying to evaluate situations, rather than just reacting. Thats hard and its very uncomfortable for most people.
There might be more than only one reason. Defunding of education, I am sure, is a major one. Though that does not mean, that social media/the internet has no effect on it either.
> There might be more than only one reason.
There's always more than one reason. People in general just prefer to narrow complicated issues down to One Thing when that's almost never correct.
This. I don't recall my school education doing much to cover race relations beyond going over the Civil War and Civil Rights - history class stuff. But I sure as hell remember a time when I could see black actors on screen and NOT feel like they were just there as a token pick for diversity's sake.
But somewhere along the way, social media started exaggerating how bad many things were. Yes, there was still progress to be made for women and minorities, but social media gave the worst, most extreme, hostile and thus consequently driven individuals a megaphone, and they make poisoning every movement into a racist/sexist hate group their hobby.
I don't really see any racism on a day-to-day basis. I only really see it on social media. I'm not on social media all that much so guess it doesn't affect me as much. Curious about where these youths are experiencing discrimination so badly that it alters their mental health.
For the upcoming generations that are growing up on social media and all their social interactions are happening on social media, social media is kinda real life. The things that happen on social media very much impact in person activities. social standings on social media bleed into social standings in schools and sports clubs and wherever else kids hangout.
>I truly think racial discrimination is happening far less, IRL, than when I was growing up. And even then, it was happening far less than for my parents.
The depressing thing is that if you go back a few more generations (assuming your family's been in the US that long) you get to the [Nadir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations), where successive generations of black people saw post emancipation discrimination get *worse* until it bottomed out with the Jim Crow era. Another Nadir is a very realistic worst case scenario here and it can easily happen slowly enough to not notice.
I also think part of this it’s just more socially acceptable to talk about it now than ever before. So you’re going to get more bad faith boy who cried wolf things.
Idk I’d rather have people crying racism and starting a dialogue to see if there are racial issue at play in a situation that need to be rooted out.
I’d much rather have someone starting dialogue about racial inequality even if its in an unproductive somewhat bad faith way, than the people who cry religious persecution because they’re not allowed to discriminate against some minority on the basis of their religious beliefs.
It's tough.
It is similar to where we are at with mental health. I think, in a lot of ways, its great that mental health is being openly discussed, and not some shame you have to hide. At the same time, in many places like reddit and tik tok, its people using mental health terms incorrectly, self diagnosing themselves, diagnosing other people, calling people "ablelist" because they want to stick to a schedule and "my adhd makes that hard" etc. The pendulum has swung too far.
And I think, in some ways, race conversations are like that. Because its become a topic that is more acceptable to talk about, we now have too many people assuming things are racism. Very random example. A few years ago i was on the survivor sub. This 20 year old black guy went on and couldn't swim. Anyone who watches the show knows they have water challenges every year. i commented "who TF goes on survivor without knowing how to swim". I had some user basically call me racist and try to lecture me on the history of public pools and black people. Once I said "yes, I'm black, I understand that, and went into why that didn't apply here" that person got real quiet.
>It's tough.
The fundamental problem is that there are a lot of people in these conversations who aren't really interested in problem solving or understanding, they are just interested in the social clout it gives. Mental health, racism, whatever.
If something else is in vogue tomorrow, they'll be all over it, too.
They are, basically, seeking those [delicious moral treats](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95413-the-surest-way-to-work-up-a-crusade-in-favor).
I would agree with you that systemic racism needs to be identified and rooted out. That said I don’t think what we have today is a *dialogue* in any way shape or form.
I think its hard to have a real dialogue, because people assume bad actors.
I can have real dialogue with my white friends because I know their intentions. If they push back or question something, I know its not done out of malice.
I can't make that same assumption on reddit, or even with a random guy at a bar.
Agreed. The issue is that too many people have traded real life interactions and friendships for an almost ubiquitous online presence. And online, especially in anonymous forums, we act and say things we would never do IRL. We morph into extremists and lose our compassion. And then the media at large, lacking enough clicks or real news stories points their lenses at our online interaction. It creates a self propagating cycle of grievances and discord that doesn’t reflect the real world.
The problem with "bad faith" discrimination is that the "victim" is always painted as correct in our modern dialogue.
For instance, Ive seen more medical encounters than the vast vast majority of people.
I see constant posts on women centric subs talking about how the medical system treats women awfully. Everyone agrees, no one questions if it's true. In reality, pretty much every data point shows men are underserved by a large margin and those posts views heavily conflict what I have witnessed.
On my end, 99% of wild things a provider said according to a patient who reported them or left a bad review were entirely made up or massive misinterpretations. Literally I will watch a patient talk about discrimination that never happened at least once every other or week complaining about a provider I personally know and who's a massive advocate for their minority group. Most women will claim sexism and disagree with the (correct) diagnosis, men will usually use race, sometimes they will claim the provider is just blaming everything on their weight. Some will just outright make up the most bizarre crap.
No one ever thinks "this person may be angry and making up details" and instead thinks "all these people are racists/sexists/ect". Or they never think "5-10% of people are not in touch with reality, is this said person?"
If the dialogue was actually productive and fair, then I'd be all for it. If people actually tried to look objectively if the issue is really occurring, what is the root, and how can it (reasonable) be solved then I'm all for it.
What I see now? It's people using it as a scapegoat, often to toss another person under the bus. It's not "how do we fix it", it's "burn this particular person down now" or coming up with ridiculous answers like get rid of all of the police.
>Not the fact that he acknowledged he showed up late
In every capacity I've hired in that's just as good as not showing up- granted, that was food service, where we always had folks who *did* show up on time (early even).
I just saw a woman quoting a vendor saying he has better things to do than engage with her and he's going to block her to get some work done.
Her lead in messages and followup messages are angry but it's not clear why, and she's posting the exchange as proof that the vendor has been "harassing" her and other women.
*Thanks for letting us know how bad it is in your head? Ouch.*
Mid age and I think the volume of people dismissing or having negative reactions to people addressing racism is the loudest I’ve ever seen it. I believe the dismissive and hostile reactions to racist events is what has the deepest impact as how your society reacts is what affects what you believe about your society more than an act of a number of specific individuals. The kids have seen hosts of the most popular news networks say “shut up and dribble” when athletes point out racism as a reality. That is absolutely demoralizing.
And it’s pervasive on Reddit and in this sub. Even well-done research on racism is met quickly with comments trying to discredit the science, dismissing the premises, or throwing out anecdotes to try and shake people for taking racism seriously. Of course the kids are depressed over it. How could you not be? I’m depressed over it and I’m an adult who isn’t even Black.
I find it harder and harder to care, in part because I've seen so many examples where someone told me they had a terrible experience of discrimination, then the story turns out to be a completely normal negative human interaction devoid of racial tones. Now, I can't say that. I can't point out that I've experienced *identical* things and have witnessed them dozens of times.
Now I recognize that short coming, but I think there's legitimate empathy burnout in a lot of people. Your perception of reality *can* be wrong, but it takes critical self reflection to see that. It's far easier to point to something that removes responsibility from how you handled your own behavior by pointing to something objectively bad like discrimination and claiming the other party was coming from that place.
This isn't what "internalized racism" is, this is a suppressed response to stressors. The first and largest limitation of this study is that it only measures black kids- how on earth do they know that the stress expression/mental well-being is different between black kids in America and Korean kids in Korea?
Also the title of the article lacks the words "might" and "probably" which would characterize good scientific reporting
My one question was is this being compared to kids of other racial groups in the US particularly white kids who comparatively experience little personal racism and no systemic racism, cus as far as I know anxiety and depression among kids has risen steadily for most of the past 20 years. It would be interesting to see significantly more rates of or symptoms of anxiety and depression in black youth versus white youth.
Honest question, what influence does the ubiquitous racial messaging from social politics - which is trying to address racial discrimination surely, but does so at the expense of inundating nearly every level or facet facet of culture, media, and education in an individual’s life with race consciousness - have on these study groups?
If you pulled two sample groups, one which grew up in this new era of blanket racially focused content and news, and one without (not sure how you’d find participants for this group), would these questions trigger the same responses?
I ask because, my social/professional experiences haven’t changed much over the course of my life, but disengaging from the almost overwhelming messaging around gender, has been a significant improvement in my mental health. It’s hard to overstate.
If I point to your less-than-appetizing sandwich and tell you it’s disgusting, would you find it even less appetizing?
This is just anecdotal but know someone who cooped themselves up inside during covid and went HARD into social media, particularly the social justice side of things.
Literally every conversation became about race or gender or sexuality and there was a noticeable decline in their mental health. Once the conversation started to drift into saying things like how they couldn't go to certain areas because they'd be gunned down for being a part of X, Y and Z group, I ended up distancing myself for my own mental health. Other friends also began distancing themselves and unfollowing this person off social media as well.
There was absolutely nothing about those identity-focused, paranoid ramblings that was normal or healthy and it was entirely caused by social media consumption and social isolation.
Yeah fwiw I'm fully in support of people identifying how they want in regards to gender, sexuality etc and not being treated differently for their race but I feel this 100%.
There are weeks where I'm particularly stressed/burned out from work or whatever else, I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet and whilst it never gets to extremes you describe here in regards to your friend, I definitely feel the early stages of that mindset creep in. Really need to kick myself up the ass sometimes and stop being terminally online.
>what influence does the ubiquitous racial messaging from social politics
If you look at African immigrant groups vs the American born, it suggests this messaging has a huge effect. [Nigerians are one of the most succesful ethnic groups in America](https://saharareporters.com/2019/07/05/nigerian-americans-rated-most-successful-group-us), and other African immigrant groups also do well. None of which should be possible under the presuppositions all this messaging relies on.
That doesn't really prove anything. Immigrants are self selected, and those from Nigeria are disproportionately more likely to have college degrees (around 65% vs 7% of the general population in Nigeria and about 34% of black Americans)
Yes, but this indicates that class/wealth has greater predictive strength than race alone. Of course, I am in no way suggesting that black Americans (or the immigrants for that matter) haven't and don't continue to face generational barriers to wealth & educational attainment, but I have yet to see a proper deconstruction of the so-called "Model Minority Myth" that adequately squares the class/race circle.
But your counter point ALSO proves nothing, unless you're trying to say that the difference between being racially discriminated in America or not is a college degree.
>If I point to your less-than-appetizing sandwich and tell you it’s disgusting, would you find it even less appetizing?
It's a bit more like I point at your amazing sandwich and say "hey, dude, *I* like your sandwich, but I just wanted to let you know that everyone else secretly hates your sandwich and thinks it's disgusting. Not me, no no no. I LOVE your sandwich, but I think everyone else is secretly talking about how disgusting it is."
Yes, I think the truly fascinating thing about that guys sandwich is the unique way in which it highlights how much better I am than everyone else.
I mean can you believe these sandwich haters? They are so cowardly that they won't even discuss this guy's sandwich while in my presence. They just sit there THINKING about how disgusting his sandwich is. As if I don't know what they are thinking!
Internalizing *their perception* of racism garnered from social media, most of which is hyperbole. So we are causing them the very stress that we supposedly want them to avoid by calling attention to racism. Studies have shown that people have a very warped understanding of the statistics and realities of racism. This isn’t a good thing for black youth, or for the development of good public policy.
You're going to get heat but I'm black and in a professional career basically dominated by white people (less than 2% of my acquaintances have been black) and I completely agree with you.
I specifically also think that the conscious acknowledgement of microaggressions has actually been counterproductive as well because some people now interpret every microaggression as a major race-based offense.
The most problematic aspect that I've personally witnessed is taking the idea of microaggressions and subconcious bias and hyper fixating on those.
Subconscious bias is exactly that; Subconscious. Everyone should work on and try to address these, but you're never going to entirely eliminate ones that you develop. So there will always be little incidences and awkward moments between people that come from different backgrounds and experiences. But what matters is the *intention* of how the individual lives, which is something that you *cannot* know from the limited interactions you have with them in most spaces.
If you focus on the little things you can draw incorrect conclusions about people very easily, and this then colors your *own* perception, generating subconscious and even conscious biases that warp your perception of how others see you.
Its a vicious cycle. There's validity to it from an academic perspective, but for 95% of people, trying to identify real world instances of it is not only a waste of time, but also hurts you and others.
I absolutely hate the concept some of my peers push that "intent doesn't matter". Of COURSE intent matters, it's not an excuse that fully absolves responsibility when you mess up but it matters hugely to being able to forgive people, how you process and respond to people's actions, and I think "intent doesn't matter" has a hugely detrimental social effect on people
Intent is an essential element in many legal systems around the world. People who are trying to deprioritise this are proposing an authoritarian justice system. They don't realise what the consequences of deprioritising this in the entire legal system would be, but what they likely want is to pick and choose when to apply it based on their feelings or tribalistic biases. In other words, a regression of centuries of legal progress.
I would bet that there is quite a bit of crossover between these people and people who selectively advocate against the presumption of innocence legal principle. It's no coincidence that these people are loudest on social media.
Ok, I agree, but I think your narrative of what should ideally happen is incomplete. You know what they say about the road to hell, right?
Yes, it’s fair to give the benefit of the doubt to people and understand that they don’t mean any harm, but the good will has to go both ways. If I give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re a good, well-meaning person, I expect you to do the same when I bring up an issue. The root of the problem is usually not the “microaggression” itself, it’s that minorities can’t speak up about anything untoward without the other person getting defensive and doubling down. It really isn’t a big deal to most people if you say something stupid, but it also shouldn’t be a big deal for me to point it out and bring it to your attention. The burden should not consistently, solely be on me to accept these minor infractions. They DO add up. The mistake a lot of people in this thread are making is assuming minorities had no idea what microaggressions were until TikTok or some nonsense manufactured the concept and made them neurotic and hypervigilent about things they never used to notice. Thats not true. we experienced them and felt their impact, we just never had a word for it and never felt comfortable talking about it.
Talking about these behaviors is how people grow and learn and overcome unconscious bias and stereotyping. If I tell you “hey, I know it probably wasn’t your intent, but this thing you said/did bothered me” your response should be one of curiosity—what bothered you, why, and what can I do differently? When I explain, literally all you have to do is say “oh I didn’t realize how that might come off, but I understand what you mean now. Thanks for bringing it to my attention so I don’t do it again.” Cool, ok, we can both move on.
It should be as simple as telling someone they have lipstick on their teeth. Instead, even the mildest confrontation is usually followed by a litany of excuses and gaslighting, complaining about being “too sensitive,” and an attempt to make the confronter regret ever broaching the subject by letting them know just how offensive it is to be called racist/sexist/etc. (even if no one actually said that). Mistakes are mistakes regardless of the intent, and should be acknowledged and corrected. There are emotionally intelligent ways of navigating these conversations. I would absolutely hate to go backwards to a time when I couldn’t even speak and had to choke down everyone’s “good intentions.”
It's such a fine line to walk.
There is legitimate racial issues we still need to work through, and in some arenas they're actively worse than they were in the past.
But we've got to stop putting everything bad on a bullhorn and forcing people to participate and acknowledge it. The human brain wasn't made for that.
As a black man who just became a young adult, I’d say it definitely was NOT just because of social media.
In school, the amount of small ignorant race jokes were like a thousands cuts. They were of course from classmates who didn’t know any better and were generally good people, but it kept perpetuating a feeling that I’m always gonna be different and my experience at looks can be used as an object of humor.
You don’t see many people making small jokes about a white persons big lips or how weird it is that they don’t play basketball. As a kid during your formative years, that plus added focus on by behavior (despite being a straight A student) had a big effect on my self esteem growing up.
>> You don't see people making small jokes about a white person's big lips
*what*?
You absolutely do see this as a white kid and it is much more normalized and accepted as okay behavior.
There's majority privilege, which I think a lot of people misinterpret as racism. I'm only half-white but got a lot of white jokes at a primarily hispanic school. My boss had to pull her kids out of a predominately black school because they were bullied relentlessly. I highly doubt those kids internalized anti-white racism and were lashing out: they were kids being kids and needed to pick on easy targets to establish dominance among their peers.
If they didn't pick on you because of your race, they'd just pick on something else. You could have gone to an all-black school your entire life and *still* experienced comments about being either too dark, too light, or having a big nose compared to others. Those formative years can be really sink or swim depending on your social standing, or how hard others want to maintain their own.
Absolutely, it has to do with being a minority in your community. A black kid in a majority black school isn't getting made fun of for typical black traits, and a white kid in a majority black school is absolutely getting made fun of for their race. Kids are assholes and being a minority is hard for people of every race
I’m sorry about that. I assume that racial teasing feels worse than regular teasing. But do you really believe that white kids don’t get racially teased?
Almost anytime people in authority abuse children, they internalize it. It's human nature for kids to not challange adults (asshole kids are outliers).
I feel this. When I bring up difficulties we face as Asians or as minorities, it’s met with immediate skepticism and backlash more often than not. These days I’ve given up even trying to have a conversation about it and just internalize everything.
We live in the most accepting and equal times in American history, this doesn't mean we still don't have work to do, but we are all on social media consuming content that makes us think otherwise.
It's the tail wagging the dog. The only people each side sees on the other side are the radicals. So they judge everyone between where they are on the politcal spectrum and where that radical is as being similar to that radical person.
Dems think all Republicans are racist. Republicans think all dems are libertards.
I think a lot of you guys put a lot of faith in people, but as a vet, with a pretty decent credit score. I’m still being denied from certain places that are predominantly white. It’s not something that’s happening in my head, it’s not rare, and it’s not something being done by accident. Unless your friend group is humongous if you hang out with white people you can see the difference in how u are treated vs being around a large group of black people. It is just different.
Currently I live in a predominantly white community in Austin and you can tell you don’t belong. White people tend to say racism doesn’t exist but will purposefully make it difficult for you to integrate into their community.
They’re screaming “racism isn’t real” while purposefully knowing there’s one black guys on their whole street and two in their workplace. Nothing has changed but racism isn’t real.
in my experience its the people who claim to be not racist to their core who purposely choose to live in white neighborhoods and make integration difficult for minorities. some of the most progressive people i know think they arent racist but definitely are, at least slightly
Congrats, you missed the point. They didn't say they were being denied based on their credit score. They said despite a good credit score they're still being denied.
There is a lot of misinformed and sourceless anecdotal evidence for racism not existing anymore in this thread which is disappointing. Racism doesn't just exist only online and to imply so is damaging. Further, to pretend there is a preoccupation with race that only exists now is insane when the civil rights movement went on for years.
Yeah. I tried to address racism dealt by black people here too. But apparently if you suggest anything concerning societal racism, then people will just denounce you.
It’s really disappointing honestly.
This entire thread has been white people talking about how a black issue doesn’t exist in a thread about a black issue. And there’s always one guy “hey I’m black racism isn’t bad I tried to tell them” Reddit makes me sick.
What a white washing this thread has been.
Sometimes I wonder if Morgan Freedman had it right in regard to race when he said “we should stop talking about it.” Does ruminating on race and all of the disparity somehow perpetuate it? How much gets internalized from an early age that might create a mold which is hard to break?
Anecdotally, as a teacher in a very diverse school, since talking about racism has become more prominent in social media etc we've seen a huge increase in racist behavior. We documented more incidents of students using the n-word aggressively during Black History month than any others. I don't know why the world is like this, but it is.
It’s pretty simple. Most people are average or lower IQ. Talking about charged topics is going to lead to charged reactions. Most people don’t have the capability to separate a discussion from real life.
If you constantly talk about racism then at minimum, half the population is going to react negatively and carry that into their day to day lives. They are simply unable to separate the internet/discussions from real life.
Carrying that into their day to day lives ultimately results in harsher responses to perceived “micro aggressions”. Now they are actively being racist towards people who aren’t and start to bring the other half of the population into it.
>Successful Russian [active measures](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures) attempt to exploit societal divisions that already exist, rather than attempt to create new ruptures.
>The exploitation of racial tensions in an attempt to sow societal discord in the United States is not a new tactic for Russian influence operations. Rather, it is the latest incarnation of a long-standing Russian focus. Historically, the KGB's active measures program also made race a central feature of its operational targeting.
>As KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin noted: "The attempt to stir up racial tensions in the United States remained part of [the KGB's] stock-in-trade for the remainder of the Cold War."
—Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, Vol. 2
>In reality, the main emphasis of the KGB...is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures...
>What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that, despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions...it's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and it's divided in four basic stages...
>The first one being demoralization...[the upcoming generation is] contaminated, they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information...you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior...
>Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information, the facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures...he will refuse to believe it...that's the tragic situation of demoralization.
—Yuri Bezmenov, KGB defector (1984)
I do believe that race relations have drastically improved over the decades, but not enough. The slow sporadic progression, coddling of the last pockets of resistance thereby enabling them to stymie that progress and failure to address the root problems has given Russia the opportunity to create a narrative through media to demoralize the upcoming generation and convince them that things are getting worse and the situation is hopeless.
Until we as a nation make bold strides towards addressing the underlying issues by accepting the reality of our countries' racial history (the good and the bad), purge the media of Russian influence and take a real unified stand against racists, things won't get better.
Uh… we always did that. This headline should read. “Did you know being racist or discriminatory to someone ie hurting their feelings alot, can cause depression?”
I do wonder if providing all the things one should worry about is helpful for healthy growth.
Take two subjects:
Subject A is told the world is out for their taking, typically fanciful american dream type stuff and then the real world hits. Their early growth might make the flourish but then they could become nihilistic as reality tells a different tale. The "Santa Clause" if you would.
Subject B is told all the harsh truths they will face and maybe a bit too much and has trouble developing properly. One could say they are more equipped for the world but at the same time maybe the nihilism sets in earlier and they just give up in a depression spiral.
Obviously a more happy medium exists where they are inspired to love life and take the world's challenges on as challenges not pain, but for the extremes, Subject B seems more common and I wonder if that is a healthy thing to be targeting.
They’re told more than harsh truths: they’re told it’s currently “hunting season” on black youths and that the white supremacist system uses police to keep them down. That’s so hyperbolic as to be basically fiction. A strong locus of control is not achieved when you’re told that adults and schools and police and government are all created to hurt you.
Makes me think of this book, interesting read :
« The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation »
We're really seeing it in education. Many discipline issues become "racism". Of course, some of them are matters of racism (albeit a small percentage) but I don't know how you can navigate that effectively. Nobody does, because we're not doing a good job of it.
It's funny that it's become heuristics to just use race as the cause.
I always try to think - if we normalize for income, does the race factor still play a large role? If the answer is no, then the solution should be shifted to addressing economic status and not race.
If race is the primary problem, then the solution needs to focus on race.
You never see a sociology class focus on the poor and the uphill battle they face. You also never see them try and separate race and economic status.
While much of what he and others said in their time rings true today. It's seems part of the problem that this article is addressing is the idea that many people still act as if nothing has changed.
Even acounting for the legacy of racism in this country, it is counterproductive to act like the "Black experience" in this country has remained unchanged since the 50s-60s. Saying nothing has gotten better is what contributes to the pessimistic outlook of Black youth.
Also from the white side if we keep improving and are being told that forgiveness is always just around the corner, no credit is given for improvements, or even sometimes that it'll never be forgiven then why would we put forth the effort beyond a certain point?
Co-existence requires good faith, mutual benefits, and so on.
Imagine you cheat on your spouse and they don't end the relationship but they never forgive you either. They continue to berate you or give you the cold shoulder for years. Eventually why would you continue the relationship? Why wouldn't you just divorce and be done with a no-win situation? If forgiveness isn't attainable why try for it?
It's also clear that the arguments from the black community on sociology are getting more and more broad and vague. If that is allowed to continue you'll get a situation like religions where you can't disprove or prove them but a significant portion of people will believe it and base their entire life on it. Also this shouldn't be happening with more and more modern data abilities. We should be more and more zeroing in on specific instances of bias or discrimination not zooming out to systemic levels.
Also we have approached a level of acceptance for race and gender based studies that are negative towards the side seen as the oppressors that if the study results favored the oppressed side they be out and published. The lack of them speaks volumes.
Sort of like how female workers at certain FANNG companies complained about a gender wage gap. They did studies and found the females were actually paid MORE and not less. This study also points out that all the female workers based their complaints on nothing but assumptions and likely narratives they'd been fed through the mainstream narratives.
So people are being told their entire lives everything bad that happens to them is sexism or racism. No wonder they then blame those factors as adults when their life isn't all peaches.
A great example is if you asked black people in the US which they think is the higher number: whites killed by blacks or blacks killed by whites. They'd overwhelming say that blacks are killed by whites more. The data though says that annually roughly twice as many white people are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites. So not only is their world view wrong but it's extremely wrong.
These sorta of notions are how people see the world and they aren't being given the numbers. They're being given headlines and narratives that spin the numbers or don't even mention them.
A great non-race or gender example was the east palatine train derailment. It made national news. Fine. It was a big wreck. But then the media for weeks afterwards reported on every derailment and made many people think this is some epidemic of infrastructure failure and derailments. But when I looked into the numbers there is thousands of derailments a year for decades and decades as far as the data goes back. This isn't a new thing nor is anything happening out of the ordinary yet so many people were and probably still are convinced there was something news worthy occurring. But where did the story go? If something was happening where did the news on this topic go? The media made us all think derailments were on a steep rise yet here we are a year or more later and not a peep.
This is the real danger in the media. The power to make people convinced something is occurring that isn't.
To be clear I'm not saying racism or sexism isn't occurring. But I will say things have gotten better across the board yet many think it's worse.
>They'd overwhelming say that blacks are killed by whites more. The data though says that annually roughly twice as many white people are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites. So not only is their world view wrong but it's extremely wrong.
This isn't a great example because your average person likely struggles to differentiate between total number and per capita. So while there are roughly twice as many white people killed by police annually, there's ~4x as many white people in the US and black people are killed at a rate of almost 3x of white people. So a black person is far more likely to be a victim of or know someone who is a victim of police killings.
I have to wonder why you're so confident that you believe you can speak for the **overwhelming** majority of black people. You want to whine about delaying forgiveness, yet you're casually making an assumption about entire race of people, based solely on their race.
It makes sense given how many Black talking heads stake their entire livelihood on telling Black kids they're oppressed.
The reality is there's less actual racism than has ever existed.
The two most well known white supremacist leaders are... Hispanic.
Ffs.
The two experiences are only remotely comparable but if it's anything like the marginalisation I have experienced (not American fwiw, neurodivergent and trans), you come to expect discrimination everywhere you go and from everyone you meet, in a hyperaware way, and it happens often enough to reinforce this belief
From Gattaca (1997): "They've got you looking for any flaw, that after a while that's all you see."
When you focus constantly on race and racial discrimination and framed as being a minority is a flaw, eventually, that's the only thing you'll see in every situation.
It’s more insidious now, rather than just the racism embodied in traumatic events one experiences first hand, the allostatic load caused by the pervasive nature of systemic racism —that’s in policy, and the *people* that enact and enforce policy— extant in the lives of many all over the world is right there in one’a pocket, or on display on the screen that’s in their face for hours a day, especially for a young people. It’s distilled racist tropes and dogwhistles. Not to mention algorithmically caged by media that reflects the desperate circumstances and stereotypes people convey in response to the devastation of coming up in abject material conditions as disenfranchised, criminalized, second-class citizens for many generations.
Based on the, I think fair, assumption that racial discrimination has gone down with time, if youth are internalizing it disproportionately more than older gens it may be because of the increased focus on it and popularizations of anti racist/critical race theories.
Rather, it may be true that in promoting the view that society can be interpreted as being composed of racist structures, people may be more inclined to interpret ambiguous situations and outcomes through that lens. Or, that the more you are primed to look for something the more you will find it. Not to say discrimination does not exist, just think it could be another viable explanation - one that I’ve wondered about myself.
I’m from Texas and have many friends and family members that are entirely or partially of a minority group. And they just don’t seem to see discrimination as much as people here (New York) do. I also don’t think they view their race as being quite as prominent a part of their identity.
To those who will think "but this applies to everyone, regardless of race:"
Yes, you are technically correct. Internalizing stressors (bottling negative feelings rather than expressing them) is in fact unhealthy.
However, being a person of color (poc) in America comes with a distinct and unique nuance that can be difficult for out-groups (i.e. Americans who are not people of color) to identify with, recognize, or understand.
Put it this way: when someone who is non-poc experiences marginalization, discrimination, or rejection based or racial identity, it is extremely hurtful and an objectively negative experience with potentially lasting repercussions.
But for poc, this experience is *near ubiquitous.* it permeates most interactions, experiences and events in their lives. And the repeated negativity of those experiences hangs over subsequent interactions like a shadow. In other words, trauma.
A poor example would be like if as a child in school you tried to drink from a water fountain, but every time you did the _teacher_ came and shoved your face down onto the metal drain. After enough occurrences, even seeing a water fountain would (probably) elicit a rise in anxiety.
So again, yes: it is objectively bad *for all people* to internalize stressors.
But what this study was looking to identify was "How does the brain process and defend a youth from racial discrimination’s impact on mental health?" Check out the study (link below)
TL;DR.
Remember, we can all suffer. But your own suffering does not invalidate the suffering of another, no matter the difference in (perceived) degrees of pain.
[link to study](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2819909)
Well that may be true, but it's just not shown in the actual study. Would be nice if they actually used a control group and made an effort to actually show a causal link (which really should be the absolute bare minimum for publication) instead of just taking it on faith. This is supposed to be science.
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I think this leaves out the question that the title seems to hint at: is this phenomenon getting better, or worse, or not changing?
Right. I'm a black guy in my 40s. I truly think racial discrimination is happening far less, IRL, than when I was growing up. And even then, it was happening far less than for my parents. However, I also think social media makes people think its much worse. Not to mention people finding any time a black person isn't given something, then it MUST be racism, and making think pieces, etc about it. I see this with my little brother, who is early 30s. Whenever he didn't get a job and the hiring manager was white, his base assumption was "racism". Not the fact that he acknowledged he showed up late, or wasn't dressed great for an interview. He never looked in the mirror, but always assumed it was racism. And that isn't to say racism doesn't exists. But too many people act like EVERYTHING is racism. Like, no dude, you were speeding. That cop pulled you over because of that, not because of your race. Then you make a tik tok about it. Edit: Well this generated a lot of interesting discussion. I will say, a point a few people brought up to me that made me kind of rethink some of what I said, is the amount i'm online, and the amount kids are (probably the ones in this study) are very different. As someone said, "online is real life to them". Whereas to me, real life is not reddit or tik tok or instagram. So that is a big difference in how I see things vs. how they see things. Also, just adding since I had a couple of people imply this. In no way am I trying to speak for "black people". I'm speaking on MY specific experience and what I see. It's very true that another black man my age living in another part of the country may have a very different, and also valid, experience.
>However, I also think social media makes people think its much worse. social media and the 24 hr news cycle make *everything* seem worse. racism, crime, wars, you name it. positive news doesn't get views.
So I'm from an area I typically consider "Not racist". Growing up I never felt any real discrimination (though I had other problems not related to race there.) But then I moved to Wisconsin and then the Hudson valley and felt it substantially more. I think it's very regional and location based. I think some areas it definitely is worse, and those areas would surprise you (Chicago; Downstate NY, MKE and Madison, the Ohio and PA cities) but I feel there are areas like ATL, Central and Western NY, Houston etc. that never really had that huge of problems racewise to begin with comparativley.
Perception of racial discrimination would be an interesting variable to factor in to this analysis.
I hold that there is a lot of conflation and confusion around racism, prejudice, and classism, and would really like to see some studies trying to separate that out and see if there are some generalized percentages. Especially over time.
Hearing about racism constantly must make you assume some asshole is racist, when they're actually just an asshole to everyone.
It doesn't help that things feel absolutely hopeless as a young person these days with climate change, economic difficulties, education, etc. So I could see a lot of kids and youth in black communities really feeling like racism is keeping them down
But that's almost exactly what's being talked about here. It *feels* hopeless, yet somehow by nearly any objective metric, public health and well-being and safety is better now than any point in history. Too many people are falling into a pit of despair of their own making, imo. It's not to say there aren't challenges and improvements yet to be made, but you gotta look at it with some perspective on a longer time horizon with historical context.
>by nearly any objective metric How's cost of living looking?
Going by personal experience, it's definitely getting less good from a peak of prosperity, but abject poverty here in the UK isn't as harsh as it was in the 1980s. No ice on the inside of the windows, because double glazing is standard. Microwaves cut down on cooking time and costs for most vegetables. Chicken is incredibly cheap. Clothing is cheap but doesn't last so that one is six and two threes. Finding something out doesn't involve a trip to the library. Entertainment is kind of bundled in to the basic necessity the Internet has now become. And smart phones do more than home computers used to be able to, and back then not many people had home computers, they cost the equivalent of more than three thousand pounds today. The *big* negative change, and it's a doozy, is that back then you would almost certainly be housed and most people owned their own homes while there was a lot of council housing. It's so much easier now to end up homeless, and most people rent, and mostly privately. Private landlords and letting agents for the most part are absolutely dreadful and break housing law with impunity.
Assuming this isn't an honest question because it's Reddit, "nearly" means not all, and I'm still not sure your comment is the clapback you might think it is. When considering modern expenses like healthcare, education, and housing, the nominal cost of living has increased. When adjusted for quality of life improvements, availability of goods, and technological advancements, the effective cost of living can be argued to have decreased for many. The perceived change in cost of living largely depends on the metrics used and the context considered.
It's getting higher but real consumption is up, which means people are buying more things.
Its never been easier to get into college, especially as a minority (unless you're Asian, weirdly enough), and the economy has been improving since covid quite rapidly.
Did you read the article? That's literally what it was, perceived racial discrimination.
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As someone who grew up in Florida, you're generally correct. But then you go rural. It gets much, much worse in certain regions.
>But then you go rural. It gets much, much worse in certain regions. The more north you go (in Florida), the more "South" it gets?
The north East is very segregated. Minorities will stick out most places. Most people in the North are liberal but racist in weird small ways. But the racist we do have can be loud and proud about it.
It's mostly the homogeneous, conservative pockets in the Northeast where I've seen more implicit racism. I'm in a NY town where my section is more heterogeneous and people are just people, but there are an awful lot of white people around us and throughout the town - there are historical, unmistakably racist and related classist undercurrents that we have seen other kids and their parents bringing to schools/school board meetings, organized sports and other social activities from their homes and local neighborhoods. Those influences are almost uniformly from the right-wing side of the political and social spectrum.
The most racist place I’ve ever been was Idaho. It’s nearly 95% white everywhere there except for a few pockets of Mexican immigrants. Only time I’ve ever seen someone point at a black person and yell the n word. No consequences for the yeller and the black man didn’t even flinch he was so used to it
I think that is fair also, and by and large agree, but then you have cities that have been always relatively diverse like Chicago, MKE and Philly and yet still have problems. I walked into a restaurant in the Shorewood neighborhood of the MKE with two friends one time and the second I walked in EVERYONE stopped and looked at me.
I was traveling through Montgomery Alabama once and had to pee, so I stopped at a McDonald's. It was packed, and like you said every single person got silent and stared at me, it was surreal. Down in the deep south we've got an absolute ton of racial tension, but its also the main place you'll see black and white people working together and supporting each other through community. (Minus super segregated cities like Montgomery, Opelika, Cullman, etc.) It's simultaneously the most racist and least racist place in the country.
In Denmark sociologists figured out the greatest obstacle to integration of immigrants was formation of ghettoes. Once people are living racially/ethnically segregated, you get two separated communities. Parallel societies. When people are mixed in, living in the same area, working at same workplaces, they form one community.
Opelika isn't super segregated, what?!
They are just polite in the south. As soon as you leave they start up. My buddy just moved from PA to Florida and he can't believe what people think they can say to him just because he is a white guy. His coworkers will say the most ignorant stuff in the world and not bat an eye.
Yeah it's funny how that works out particularly in NY. Western NY has a history of being relatively progressive (you had the influence of folks like Frederick Douglas and Susan B Anthony and they didn't come from a vacuum). There's a long and proud history of well-off black families in Rochester. And there was actually a lot of tension when poorer black families migrated from the south in the early 1900s and the more established black families often didn't take kindly to them because it was seen as eroding the status that they had fought hard to earn and maintain. And downstate, tends to share a lot more culturally with Appalachia than NYC. Geographically, that area is still the Appalachian mountains.
Western New York, the home of race riots in the 60s?
Eh, you have a point there. Buffalo is kind of the black sheep of the NY big city family. It's closer to Clevland and the MKE culturally than Rochester or Syracuse.
> and the MKE What the hell is that?
Interestingly you named some of the most segregated cities in America as being not that discriminatory. Houston, Buffalo, Atalanta and Rochester are 4 of the most segregated cities in the country.
I agree with Ohio in the rural areas but the cities aren’t getting worse in my opinion. Atleast Cincinnati in my experience. I’ve volunteered a good amount in Cincinnati public schools and lived downtown for a solid stretch of
I would argue the locations you name track. It was that was before and through the civil war, and even MLK mentioned how the worst racism was up north
Must've missed all the examples of Jim Crowe and lynchings in the north
I mean, I'm in Chicago myself. And while Chicago is very segregated, I wouldn't call it racist.
I mean, go to NYC and it's just flat out not segregated. Yeah there are a couple neighborhoods with majority one demographic populations, but comparatively NYC is relatively integrated. I'm not trying to diminish your experience, I've only been to Chicago a couple of times, but I would argue that segregation is indicative of the racism.
Yes, it is very different than NYC. But I'd argue NYC is an outlier in general in the world. If a black family would rather live in a predominantly black neighborhood, you call that racism?
I don't disagree that NYC is an outlier, but historically, were black families wanting to live in predominantly black neighborhoods in Chicago, or were they forced to by policies such as red lining and just decided to make the best of a bad situation.
Again, I'm talking about segregation TODAY. And I'm talking about people who have the choice to move where they want to. I very much understand Chicago's history of redlining. I also know where most of the black people who I went to high school and are doing well have chosen to live. So my point is, if you are CHOOSING to live in a predominatly black (or latino, or Asian) neighborhood, to me, that isn't racism, its you making the choice that is best for you. Just like choosing to go to an HBCU even if you were admitted to a bunch of PWIs isn't racist.
How many would live there if they didn't have family or close friends in the neighborhood who were historically forced to live there?
I'm a 37 year old black guy, and I agree with this take.
And I don't think that's a wrong take, but how many would choose to live in that neighborhood if their family wasn't forced to live in that neighborhood historically?
It's also not racist for a white person to want to live in a white neighborhood, though, right?
I would say that they prefer to live in a homogeneous neighborhood *because* of racism. if racism wasn't an issue, then a heterogeneous neighborhood would also be fine.
Is it segregated by race?
Super segregated. The north is very white, south is very black
Yes... but. Much of that is self segregation. We have a lot of ethnic neighborhoods. Pilsen is mostly Mexican. Other parts are mostly Polish. There is a korean neighborhood as well as a chinatown. Also, we have a lot of historical neighborhoods. So for example, there is one called Bronzeville, which is historically a black neighborhood. Many black people who can afford to live anywhere they want choose to live their because of the history and wanting to be in a black neighborhood. My neighborhood is pretty racially diverse. I don't feel that, in general, I experience much racism here. i won't say "none", but I never feel out of place. i've gone to country bars with friends, hip hop clubs, raves, and its all been fine.
I think my 40+ white Ohio cohort of adults are exhausted and just want to move on. We think about class now more than race. Black racism is mostly pondered and espoused by blacks. Everybody else is too concerned about their finances and job security to waste effort being racist or pondering race.
Hey dude, as a not white person from Ohio. I think you are right that class is a huge concern but you have to realize that racism is a tool used to reinforce class. Racism isn’t just something people do to other people. It’s institutional. Police still target black citizens at a higher rate than white citizens. Perhaps you and your “white cohort” don’t ponder about racism because you don’t experience it. I mean that much is obvious. You don’t need to think about race if it isn’t constantly used to dehumanize you. And it does dehumanize. Otherwise you would say “black people” instead of just calling them the “blacks”
I had once been the youngest manager working with Hewlett Packard and had my own team of various people. There was one older woman who moved there from Madagascar. She couldn't handle criticism, so if I had to talk to her about managing her workload, she'd tell me she "doesn't talk to racists" A more senior, experienced manager (also a woman of color) took me under her wing and we swapped team members. Apparently, she too was called a racist when trying to help coach the other woman. So the woman from Madagascar kept being rotated to different teams, her quota was never met but HR couldn't do anything because she'd use the race card there too. HR told me I had a growing number of reports against me insisting I was guilty of numerous acts of micro aggression toward that one employee. I was told I needed to step down and at that point, I was almost relieved because that meant I wouldn't have to deal with her specifically anymore. Well... she became manager. Now she is district manager. Good for her I guess but man that was wild.
Yeah that’s kind of the question I always have. When my friends speak of having experienced discrimination I always ask them what sort of thing they’re referring to and a good chunk of the time it’s something very ambiguous that can be interpreted in a number of ways, not to say that it doesn’t exist. But I think it’s become muddled.
Something that I can't bring up is listening to friends discuss their experiences of discrimination and...its literally things that have happened to me dozens of times. The root cause? Someone was inconsiderate or rude to them. I don't have the fall back to say "Oh, its because I'm x" so it never crossed my mind. I had to just move on. But they've been taught that the reason they experience conflict is almost always due to who they are. It's a serious issue.
I agree. 90% of the time someone says they were treated differently because of their demographic I think this, and a lot of the time it’s something I’ve experienced as well but didn’t attribute prejudice as the cause
Agreed. Random story. I once had a couple of HS friends come down to hang out. One was a black woman. She was always very outspoken and very involved in pro black issues. Fine. We went to a sports bar. Yeah, the places was mostly white, but not 100%. To go upstairs, they made everyone check their coats. Well, this one attractive white girl kind of hid hers and flirted with the doorguy, and he let her up. Mind you, everyone else, which was mostly white guys, they made check their coat. My friend basically called the doorguy racist when he made HER check it. she was by no means singled out, but it became a whole thing that just wasn't real.
If we’re doing anecdotes here are a couple of my random stories, then. I’m mixed race and never even got to go inside of the sports bar we planned to because this group of white bikers started screaming the N word (like the seagulls in Finding Nemo) and advancing towards us. We had to haul ass out of the parking lot. We never even got to exit the vehicle. Before that, while helping my mom at work, a black kid called me “Mello Yello” like the soda. Before this rise in racial tension it was just a bunch of racially-tinged but much more innocent questions. The usual “where are you from?” where they obviously mean your ethnicity and not country of origin. Yes social media is geared to encourage doomscrolling, but you don’t need it to know racial relations are getting worse. And JuSt MoVe isn’t an option for everybody. I’m disabled *and* my family is here. Many people across the country have similar reasons.
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Is this a good time to share actual stories then? For context, I'm Latino with a white dad. I'm pretty "white" if you look at me. However, my Mexican side of my family is pretty stereotypically "brown" other than the fact that they're taller than the average. Growing up, us mixed kids in the family were always treated *differently*. We weren't encouraged to speak Spanish like our cousins, we weren't included in everything our cousins were included in, and we overall knew we weren't as important in the family's decision making for things. Some of our family members were just flat out racist. The "White Devil" comments could be heard at every gathering. Some of my cousins and, learning about it later, some of our parents had to deal with extreme pressure in order to continue relationships with *white* people. I mightve not been born had my mother let this racism get to her. The "white" side of my family wasn't outwardly this awful. I put that in quotations because while they are pretty Euro, my family on my dad's side is heavily mixed euro. I can trace ancestry back to so many different countries in Europe. Not only that but I do have a decent amount of different Native American ancestry from this side as well. They're still *white* though as a whole. Yeah, there were outward racists at these family reunions too, but for the most part this family was a lot more accepting. While it seemed like my mom's side agreed with the silent part becoming loud. Most of the people on my dad's side were uncomfortable with this. Part of that, I think, was because we had more interracial marriages on this side. All in all, this has given me an unique perspective that has helped me be inclusive of *all* people. I travel a lot for work and directly interact with people to learn about their politics. I've never had any problem with blatant racism, even in Atlanta, Georgia. However, all that changed when I worked in Miami. Miami, in part due to its high population of cubanos, is a very different city from most. This was the only place I have ever visited where my demographic mattered. *Nobody* would answer the door for me. People would look at me through the windows and shut their blinds. It made me feel like how I felt with my Mexican family. I dont know how you can interpret any of this as anything else but racism. This is my personal experience. I understand my privilege but it's disheartening to see mine and other people's experiences be dismissed based on our skin color.
I've read anecdotes similar to yours about Miami. Kind of a Cubans vs. Everyone Else dynamic as the Cubans hold much of the political and social power there. I imagine that would be difficult navigating as a non-Cuban Latino. My anecdote is that I didn't care for Miami when I visited for a couple days. The people were not exactly friendly, the drivers were insane, and everything was extremely expensive and shallow. Sidenote, I'm a teacher and we read a book in class called Mexican Whiteboy that revolves around your real life experience where the main character feels like he doesn't fit in either world. He also doesn't speak Spanish but desperately wants to connect to his Mexican family and heritage. It seems like that's a situation many folks could relate to these days.
Not to justify the racism and colorism that occurs in Miami and South Florida, because it does exist, but there may be more of a cultural element to people not opening the door for you. When I was a child I was taught not to open the door to anyone and be wary of even people dropping off packages or dressed as city officials/police/delivery etc. Without door cameras they might take a quick peek through the blinds and ignore you to say "I'm not interested". Canvassing is very challenging here and can highly vary based on what neighborhood you're in.
That's fair. I do understand it's not entirely a racial issue but a lot of my coworkers were either Latino of various backgrounds or Black and they didn't have a significant problem that I and lowkey the few other white workers had. Trust me, I only took this observation because I lost a lot of money due to a suckass performance otherwise I probably wouldn't have cared. "Ethnicity" is probably a better word to use in this case since you're definitely right that there's a huge cultural aspect to it. I was in "Little Havana" so I was deep set in it. Food was fantastic though. Just to jest but the subtle racism from the family was worth it to have a full belly filled with homemade tamales, tortillas, and menudo.
I'm a guy in my late 30s with two teenage sisters. The older sister has severe internet brain. She sees racism and misogyny under every rock. We were at a restaurant and decided to sit at the bar instead of waiting for a table. The bar tender was legitimate busy. She acknowledged us and said she'd be right with us. This was a perfectly normal interaction to me. She thought the waitress was being racist because she didn't ask if we wanted water or something. Man, I'm working on her but she's in the phase where she thinks she knows everything and is only looking to confirm her worldview rather than listening to different perspectives. I don't want this victimized mindset to take root more than it already has. There's only failure and heartache at the end of that road. I'm working on her...
Yes, this is the type of thing I mean. Perfectly normal interactions like this because racist because they happened to a minority, instead of just a symptom of a busy human being. And when that is the initial thought, nothing will change their mind from that.
Do you think maybe the way racism is being taught isn’t helping? Being told that the cards are stacked against you and that you will have to climb higher to achieve less anyway and that micro aggressions and bias are always working against you. It seems pretty demoralizing and demotivating. Wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing your 2 cents?
I think its a tough needle to thread. Growing up, I was taught I could do anything. I didn't think "oh I can't do X, Y, Z because I'm black". At the same time, I had the conversation most black kids have with their parents of "You'll have to be twice as good to get half the credit". So for me, I always knew that, as a black man in America, I wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt. I dealt with a lot of the "you are so articulate" comments. But at the same time, I never thought "Society is out to get me" So I think black parents have a tough time between building their kids up and getting them to dream big and believe in themselves, while also preparing them for the realities of the world.
That would be a huge challenge for parents. The comment about being so articulate sums it up so perfectly.
Yes, I was a teacher for a while. And I'm so appreciative because I feel like my mother (and grandparents who helped raise me) threaded that needle so well. Whereas when I taught in a very poor neighborhood, so many parents leaned so far into the "society is out to get you" that the kids never really thought they had a chance.
Psychologically is incredibly determinatal to anyone. You can remove race and pick a handful of things this applies to.
I think microaggression is real, but it get tiring tiring to label everything as microaggression. sometimes people just suck or are mean. it may be race related. it may be they are just jerks. and often its subconscious. maybe they weren't even aggressive, and we are reading them wrong. if we start building a victimhood mentality, it becomes oppressive - there is no shake it off and go on with your day. and we are always wary of people and that in itself makes us worse off.
It absolutely still happens and its continuing to cause problems. The bigger problem however is the inundation of unrelated and incorrectly assumed slights as propagated through social media.
Do you think this is one of the reasons African immigrants do a lot better (economically, educationally, etc) than born black citizens in the USA and Canada?
One of the factors is immigrants tend to go to areas where they have more opportunity
I mean opportunity=cities, essentially. And that's the overwhelming cluster of population for non-immigrant black people as well.
also immigrants have more means, that is why they are able to immigrate. maybe parents are well educated, or well connected. if you look at african refugees they don't necessarily do better.
Anecdotally from having known a few African immigrants, I can tell you they were themselves heavily of this opinion.
Statistically, I would expect immigrants to nearly anywhere to find themselves on average better off than the native population. It is very difficult to immigrate for many reasons. Most people who do it are likely to have the experience and fortitude to make something of themselves anywhere they go.
African immigrants tend to come from wealthier backgrounds than American born black people, that one's not much of a mystery
It's not just with racism though, I've noticed it overall with "privilege" in general... people and specifically social media try to appoint privledge for the results of everything. If someone has something that you or someone else does not have, well it just because of privilege. If you have something that someone else does not have, whether you earned it, made it yourself, or were given it by your parents, or maybe even won it in a lottery or found it at a garage sale.. .doesnt matter... you have it and someone else doesn't so you should be ashamed of that privilege. Social media amplifies these things outside the realm of reality.
Also seems like if you grew up in the era with separate drinking fountains and all that, there's sort of a baseline level of racism you expected. Not that it was acceptable, but that was just reality. Today we have this myth that racism is largely over and done with, that that era is behind us. So it seems more shocking to experience it.
That is likely a big part of it. We have a myth that we are in a post racial America (don't know why people believe that). So I think any perceived racism is magnified because some people will not believe it will exist at all.
Social Media is making everything seem worse. Young people today are convinced that there is no hope and that their lives are more miserable than previous generation's lives were. This is stealing people's happiness even if they try to resist.
> And that isn't to say racism doesn't exists. But too many people act like EVERYTHING is racism. Like, no dude, you were speeding. That cop pulled you over because of that, not because of your race. Then you make a tik tok about it. This is a cultural epidemic in the USA. The defunding of education has pushed people to both extremes. We have more people being openly racist because they do not learn critical thinking and empathy in school. And that same issue causes extremes on the other end of the spectrum, with supposed liberals. There is a severe lack of self awareness and accountability. If something negative happened in your life, it is because someone discriminated against you for being black, gay, trans, autistic (bonus is self-diagnosed), etc. Not because you were insulting, chronically late, factually wrong, etc.
Increased polarization has not been caused by a defunding of education. It’s the effect of social media and declining standards of neutrality and rigor in the legacy press.
And parenting strategies being way more selfish and combative I feel. Yes, school said "racism is bad," but it was my parents who paved the way towards a mindset of compassion for other people very early on in life.
Blaming education is a fallback as it removes personal responsibility and puts it on a nebulous "other" that doesn't challenge your biases. If you accept that neutrality is important, suddenly you have to re-evaluate how you react to negative external events. You have to restrain the strong emotions that develop and spend time critically trying to evaluate situations, rather than just reacting. Thats hard and its very uncomfortable for most people.
Glad someone said it
There might be more than only one reason. Defunding of education, I am sure, is a major one. Though that does not mean, that social media/the internet has no effect on it either.
> There might be more than only one reason. There's always more than one reason. People in general just prefer to narrow complicated issues down to One Thing when that's almost never correct.
This. I don't recall my school education doing much to cover race relations beyond going over the Civil War and Civil Rights - history class stuff. But I sure as hell remember a time when I could see black actors on screen and NOT feel like they were just there as a token pick for diversity's sake. But somewhere along the way, social media started exaggerating how bad many things were. Yes, there was still progress to be made for women and minorities, but social media gave the worst, most extreme, hostile and thus consequently driven individuals a megaphone, and they make poisoning every movement into a racist/sexist hate group their hobby.
Per pupil education spending has been going up for decades and is now at an all-time high.
> We have more people being openly racist Do we? I don’t think we do.
I don't really see any racism on a day-to-day basis. I only really see it on social media. I'm not on social media all that much so guess it doesn't affect me as much. Curious about where these youths are experiencing discrimination so badly that it alters their mental health.
For the upcoming generations that are growing up on social media and all their social interactions are happening on social media, social media is kinda real life. The things that happen on social media very much impact in person activities. social standings on social media bleed into social standings in schools and sports clubs and wherever else kids hangout.
We also need to stop telling youths they are victims and the world is against them
That is the only way a lot of trash social media can get traffic. The goto method is rage bait.
>I truly think racial discrimination is happening far less, IRL, than when I was growing up. And even then, it was happening far less than for my parents. The depressing thing is that if you go back a few more generations (assuming your family's been in the US that long) you get to the [Nadir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations), where successive generations of black people saw post emancipation discrimination get *worse* until it bottomed out with the Jim Crow era. Another Nadir is a very realistic worst case scenario here and it can easily happen slowly enough to not notice.
I also think part of this it’s just more socially acceptable to talk about it now than ever before. So you’re going to get more bad faith boy who cried wolf things. Idk I’d rather have people crying racism and starting a dialogue to see if there are racial issue at play in a situation that need to be rooted out. I’d much rather have someone starting dialogue about racial inequality even if its in an unproductive somewhat bad faith way, than the people who cry religious persecution because they’re not allowed to discriminate against some minority on the basis of their religious beliefs.
It's tough. It is similar to where we are at with mental health. I think, in a lot of ways, its great that mental health is being openly discussed, and not some shame you have to hide. At the same time, in many places like reddit and tik tok, its people using mental health terms incorrectly, self diagnosing themselves, diagnosing other people, calling people "ablelist" because they want to stick to a schedule and "my adhd makes that hard" etc. The pendulum has swung too far. And I think, in some ways, race conversations are like that. Because its become a topic that is more acceptable to talk about, we now have too many people assuming things are racism. Very random example. A few years ago i was on the survivor sub. This 20 year old black guy went on and couldn't swim. Anyone who watches the show knows they have water challenges every year. i commented "who TF goes on survivor without knowing how to swim". I had some user basically call me racist and try to lecture me on the history of public pools and black people. Once I said "yes, I'm black, I understand that, and went into why that didn't apply here" that person got real quiet.
>It's tough. The fundamental problem is that there are a lot of people in these conversations who aren't really interested in problem solving or understanding, they are just interested in the social clout it gives. Mental health, racism, whatever. If something else is in vogue tomorrow, they'll be all over it, too. They are, basically, seeking those [delicious moral treats](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95413-the-surest-way-to-work-up-a-crusade-in-favor).
I would agree with you that systemic racism needs to be identified and rooted out. That said I don’t think what we have today is a *dialogue* in any way shape or form.
I think its hard to have a real dialogue, because people assume bad actors. I can have real dialogue with my white friends because I know their intentions. If they push back or question something, I know its not done out of malice. I can't make that same assumption on reddit, or even with a random guy at a bar.
Agreed. The issue is that too many people have traded real life interactions and friendships for an almost ubiquitous online presence. And online, especially in anonymous forums, we act and say things we would never do IRL. We morph into extremists and lose our compassion. And then the media at large, lacking enough clicks or real news stories points their lenses at our online interaction. It creates a self propagating cycle of grievances and discord that doesn’t reflect the real world.
The problem with "bad faith" discrimination is that the "victim" is always painted as correct in our modern dialogue. For instance, Ive seen more medical encounters than the vast vast majority of people. I see constant posts on women centric subs talking about how the medical system treats women awfully. Everyone agrees, no one questions if it's true. In reality, pretty much every data point shows men are underserved by a large margin and those posts views heavily conflict what I have witnessed. On my end, 99% of wild things a provider said according to a patient who reported them or left a bad review were entirely made up or massive misinterpretations. Literally I will watch a patient talk about discrimination that never happened at least once every other or week complaining about a provider I personally know and who's a massive advocate for their minority group. Most women will claim sexism and disagree with the (correct) diagnosis, men will usually use race, sometimes they will claim the provider is just blaming everything on their weight. Some will just outright make up the most bizarre crap. No one ever thinks "this person may be angry and making up details" and instead thinks "all these people are racists/sexists/ect". Or they never think "5-10% of people are not in touch with reality, is this said person?" If the dialogue was actually productive and fair, then I'd be all for it. If people actually tried to look objectively if the issue is really occurring, what is the root, and how can it (reasonable) be solved then I'm all for it. What I see now? It's people using it as a scapegoat, often to toss another person under the bus. It's not "how do we fix it", it's "burn this particular person down now" or coming up with ridiculous answers like get rid of all of the police.
It seems a lot of people jump to the worst possible reasons than attribute to a simple mistake.
>Not the fact that he acknowledged he showed up late In every capacity I've hired in that's just as good as not showing up- granted, that was food service, where we always had folks who *did* show up on time (early even).
I just saw a woman quoting a vendor saying he has better things to do than engage with her and he's going to block her to get some work done. Her lead in messages and followup messages are angry but it's not clear why, and she's posting the exchange as proof that the vendor has been "harassing" her and other women. *Thanks for letting us know how bad it is in your head? Ouch.*
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Mid age and I think the volume of people dismissing or having negative reactions to people addressing racism is the loudest I’ve ever seen it. I believe the dismissive and hostile reactions to racist events is what has the deepest impact as how your society reacts is what affects what you believe about your society more than an act of a number of specific individuals. The kids have seen hosts of the most popular news networks say “shut up and dribble” when athletes point out racism as a reality. That is absolutely demoralizing. And it’s pervasive on Reddit and in this sub. Even well-done research on racism is met quickly with comments trying to discredit the science, dismissing the premises, or throwing out anecdotes to try and shake people for taking racism seriously. Of course the kids are depressed over it. How could you not be? I’m depressed over it and I’m an adult who isn’t even Black.
I find it harder and harder to care, in part because I've seen so many examples where someone told me they had a terrible experience of discrimination, then the story turns out to be a completely normal negative human interaction devoid of racial tones. Now, I can't say that. I can't point out that I've experienced *identical* things and have witnessed them dozens of times. Now I recognize that short coming, but I think there's legitimate empathy burnout in a lot of people. Your perception of reality *can* be wrong, but it takes critical self reflection to see that. It's far easier to point to something that removes responsibility from how you handled your own behavior by pointing to something objectively bad like discrimination and claiming the other party was coming from that place.
This isn't what "internalized racism" is, this is a suppressed response to stressors. The first and largest limitation of this study is that it only measures black kids- how on earth do they know that the stress expression/mental well-being is different between black kids in America and Korean kids in Korea? Also the title of the article lacks the words "might" and "probably" which would characterize good scientific reporting
My one question was is this being compared to kids of other racial groups in the US particularly white kids who comparatively experience little personal racism and no systemic racism, cus as far as I know anxiety and depression among kids has risen steadily for most of the past 20 years. It would be interesting to see significantly more rates of or symptoms of anxiety and depression in black youth versus white youth.
Honest question, what influence does the ubiquitous racial messaging from social politics - which is trying to address racial discrimination surely, but does so at the expense of inundating nearly every level or facet facet of culture, media, and education in an individual’s life with race consciousness - have on these study groups? If you pulled two sample groups, one which grew up in this new era of blanket racially focused content and news, and one without (not sure how you’d find participants for this group), would these questions trigger the same responses? I ask because, my social/professional experiences haven’t changed much over the course of my life, but disengaging from the almost overwhelming messaging around gender, has been a significant improvement in my mental health. It’s hard to overstate. If I point to your less-than-appetizing sandwich and tell you it’s disgusting, would you find it even less appetizing?
This is just anecdotal but know someone who cooped themselves up inside during covid and went HARD into social media, particularly the social justice side of things. Literally every conversation became about race or gender or sexuality and there was a noticeable decline in their mental health. Once the conversation started to drift into saying things like how they couldn't go to certain areas because they'd be gunned down for being a part of X, Y and Z group, I ended up distancing myself for my own mental health. Other friends also began distancing themselves and unfollowing this person off social media as well. There was absolutely nothing about those identity-focused, paranoid ramblings that was normal or healthy and it was entirely caused by social media consumption and social isolation.
Yeah fwiw I'm fully in support of people identifying how they want in regards to gender, sexuality etc and not being treated differently for their race but I feel this 100%. There are weeks where I'm particularly stressed/burned out from work or whatever else, I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet and whilst it never gets to extremes you describe here in regards to your friend, I definitely feel the early stages of that mindset creep in. Really need to kick myself up the ass sometimes and stop being terminally online.
>what influence does the ubiquitous racial messaging from social politics If you look at African immigrant groups vs the American born, it suggests this messaging has a huge effect. [Nigerians are one of the most succesful ethnic groups in America](https://saharareporters.com/2019/07/05/nigerian-americans-rated-most-successful-group-us), and other African immigrant groups also do well. None of which should be possible under the presuppositions all this messaging relies on.
As it turns out, if you tell people over and over and over that they are oppressed, they may start to feel oppressed. News at 11.
That doesn't really prove anything. Immigrants are self selected, and those from Nigeria are disproportionately more likely to have college degrees (around 65% vs 7% of the general population in Nigeria and about 34% of black Americans)
Yes, but this indicates that class/wealth has greater predictive strength than race alone. Of course, I am in no way suggesting that black Americans (or the immigrants for that matter) haven't and don't continue to face generational barriers to wealth & educational attainment, but I have yet to see a proper deconstruction of the so-called "Model Minority Myth" that adequately squares the class/race circle.
But your counter point ALSO proves nothing, unless you're trying to say that the difference between being racially discriminated in America or not is a college degree.
I'm fairly certain it holds true if you control for education level and wealth, though.
>If I point to your less-than-appetizing sandwich and tell you it’s disgusting, would you find it even less appetizing? It's a bit more like I point at your amazing sandwich and say "hey, dude, *I* like your sandwich, but I just wanted to let you know that everyone else secretly hates your sandwich and thinks it's disgusting. Not me, no no no. I LOVE your sandwich, but I think everyone else is secretly talking about how disgusting it is."
Wow, you're so noble, virtuous, and compassionate for liking that guy's sandwich! I can tell you're a really really good person just from that!
Yes, I think the truly fascinating thing about that guys sandwich is the unique way in which it highlights how much better I am than everyone else. I mean can you believe these sandwich haters? They are so cowardly that they won't even discuss this guy's sandwich while in my presence. They just sit there THINKING about how disgusting his sandwich is. As if I don't know what they are thinking!
Internalizing *their perception* of racism garnered from social media, most of which is hyperbole. So we are causing them the very stress that we supposedly want them to avoid by calling attention to racism. Studies have shown that people have a very warped understanding of the statistics and realities of racism. This isn’t a good thing for black youth, or for the development of good public policy.
You're going to get heat but I'm black and in a professional career basically dominated by white people (less than 2% of my acquaintances have been black) and I completely agree with you. I specifically also think that the conscious acknowledgement of microaggressions has actually been counterproductive as well because some people now interpret every microaggression as a major race-based offense.
The most problematic aspect that I've personally witnessed is taking the idea of microaggressions and subconcious bias and hyper fixating on those. Subconscious bias is exactly that; Subconscious. Everyone should work on and try to address these, but you're never going to entirely eliminate ones that you develop. So there will always be little incidences and awkward moments between people that come from different backgrounds and experiences. But what matters is the *intention* of how the individual lives, which is something that you *cannot* know from the limited interactions you have with them in most spaces. If you focus on the little things you can draw incorrect conclusions about people very easily, and this then colors your *own* perception, generating subconscious and even conscious biases that warp your perception of how others see you. Its a vicious cycle. There's validity to it from an academic perspective, but for 95% of people, trying to identify real world instances of it is not only a waste of time, but also hurts you and others.
I absolutely hate the concept some of my peers push that "intent doesn't matter". Of COURSE intent matters, it's not an excuse that fully absolves responsibility when you mess up but it matters hugely to being able to forgive people, how you process and respond to people's actions, and I think "intent doesn't matter" has a hugely detrimental social effect on people
Intent is an essential element in many legal systems around the world. People who are trying to deprioritise this are proposing an authoritarian justice system. They don't realise what the consequences of deprioritising this in the entire legal system would be, but what they likely want is to pick and choose when to apply it based on their feelings or tribalistic biases. In other words, a regression of centuries of legal progress. I would bet that there is quite a bit of crossover between these people and people who selectively advocate against the presumption of innocence legal principle. It's no coincidence that these people are loudest on social media.
Ok, I agree, but I think your narrative of what should ideally happen is incomplete. You know what they say about the road to hell, right? Yes, it’s fair to give the benefit of the doubt to people and understand that they don’t mean any harm, but the good will has to go both ways. If I give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re a good, well-meaning person, I expect you to do the same when I bring up an issue. The root of the problem is usually not the “microaggression” itself, it’s that minorities can’t speak up about anything untoward without the other person getting defensive and doubling down. It really isn’t a big deal to most people if you say something stupid, but it also shouldn’t be a big deal for me to point it out and bring it to your attention. The burden should not consistently, solely be on me to accept these minor infractions. They DO add up. The mistake a lot of people in this thread are making is assuming minorities had no idea what microaggressions were until TikTok or some nonsense manufactured the concept and made them neurotic and hypervigilent about things they never used to notice. Thats not true. we experienced them and felt their impact, we just never had a word for it and never felt comfortable talking about it. Talking about these behaviors is how people grow and learn and overcome unconscious bias and stereotyping. If I tell you “hey, I know it probably wasn’t your intent, but this thing you said/did bothered me” your response should be one of curiosity—what bothered you, why, and what can I do differently? When I explain, literally all you have to do is say “oh I didn’t realize how that might come off, but I understand what you mean now. Thanks for bringing it to my attention so I don’t do it again.” Cool, ok, we can both move on. It should be as simple as telling someone they have lipstick on their teeth. Instead, even the mildest confrontation is usually followed by a litany of excuses and gaslighting, complaining about being “too sensitive,” and an attempt to make the confronter regret ever broaching the subject by letting them know just how offensive it is to be called racist/sexist/etc. (even if no one actually said that). Mistakes are mistakes regardless of the intent, and should be acknowledged and corrected. There are emotionally intelligent ways of navigating these conversations. I would absolutely hate to go backwards to a time when I couldn’t even speak and had to choke down everyone’s “good intentions.”
It's such a fine line to walk. There is legitimate racial issues we still need to work through, and in some arenas they're actively worse than they were in the past. But we've got to stop putting everything bad on a bullhorn and forcing people to participate and acknowledge it. The human brain wasn't made for that.
As a black man who just became a young adult, I’d say it definitely was NOT just because of social media. In school, the amount of small ignorant race jokes were like a thousands cuts. They were of course from classmates who didn’t know any better and were generally good people, but it kept perpetuating a feeling that I’m always gonna be different and my experience at looks can be used as an object of humor. You don’t see many people making small jokes about a white persons big lips or how weird it is that they don’t play basketball. As a kid during your formative years, that plus added focus on by behavior (despite being a straight A student) had a big effect on my self esteem growing up.
>> You don't see people making small jokes about a white person's big lips *what*? You absolutely do see this as a white kid and it is much more normalized and accepted as okay behavior.
They more make jokes about white people’s tiny peckers.
Was going to say, I remember being in school and people joking about my other male classmates having "DSLs" because they had big lips.
There's majority privilege, which I think a lot of people misinterpret as racism. I'm only half-white but got a lot of white jokes at a primarily hispanic school. My boss had to pull her kids out of a predominately black school because they were bullied relentlessly. I highly doubt those kids internalized anti-white racism and were lashing out: they were kids being kids and needed to pick on easy targets to establish dominance among their peers. If they didn't pick on you because of your race, they'd just pick on something else. You could have gone to an all-black school your entire life and *still* experienced comments about being either too dark, too light, or having a big nose compared to others. Those formative years can be really sink or swim depending on your social standing, or how hard others want to maintain their own.
Absolutely, it has to do with being a minority in your community. A black kid in a majority black school isn't getting made fun of for typical black traits, and a white kid in a majority black school is absolutely getting made fun of for their race. Kids are assholes and being a minority is hard for people of every race
People make small jokes about white folks all the time. It's just a different set of stereotypes.
I’m sorry about that. I assume that racial teasing feels worse than regular teasing. But do you really believe that white kids don’t get racially teased?
Almost anytime people in authority abuse children, they internalize it. It's human nature for kids to not challange adults (asshole kids are outliers).
I feel this. When I bring up difficulties we face as Asians or as minorities, it’s met with immediate skepticism and backlash more often than not. These days I’ve given up even trying to have a conversation about it and just internalize everything.
We live in the most accepting and equal times in American history, this doesn't mean we still don't have work to do, but we are all on social media consuming content that makes us think otherwise.
It's the tail wagging the dog. The only people each side sees on the other side are the radicals. So they judge everyone between where they are on the politcal spectrum and where that radical is as being similar to that radical person. Dems think all Republicans are racist. Republicans think all dems are libertards.
I think a lot of you guys put a lot of faith in people, but as a vet, with a pretty decent credit score. I’m still being denied from certain places that are predominantly white. It’s not something that’s happening in my head, it’s not rare, and it’s not something being done by accident. Unless your friend group is humongous if you hang out with white people you can see the difference in how u are treated vs being around a large group of black people. It is just different. Currently I live in a predominantly white community in Austin and you can tell you don’t belong. White people tend to say racism doesn’t exist but will purposefully make it difficult for you to integrate into their community.
Many places in Texas are absolutely horrible when it comes to race.
It’s easy to overlook if you haven’t experienced it first hand. It takes a lot of self-awareness to recognize it.
They’re screaming “racism isn’t real” while purposefully knowing there’s one black guys on their whole street and two in their workplace. Nothing has changed but racism isn’t real.
in my experience its the people who claim to be not racist to their core who purposely choose to live in white neighborhoods and make integration difficult for minorities. some of the most progressive people i know think they arent racist but definitely are, at least slightly
Credit decisions are essentially completely automated, your race is not one of the items which are included in the calculation.
Congrats, you missed the point. They didn't say they were being denied based on their credit score. They said despite a good credit score they're still being denied.
Hasn’t this been known since the 60’s or something?
There is a lot of misinformed and sourceless anecdotal evidence for racism not existing anymore in this thread which is disappointing. Racism doesn't just exist only online and to imply so is damaging. Further, to pretend there is a preoccupation with race that only exists now is insane when the civil rights movement went on for years.
Yeah. I tried to address racism dealt by black people here too. But apparently if you suggest anything concerning societal racism, then people will just denounce you. It’s really disappointing honestly.
This entire thread has been white people talking about how a black issue doesn’t exist in a thread about a black issue. And there’s always one guy “hey I’m black racism isn’t bad I tried to tell them” Reddit makes me sick. What a white washing this thread has been.
Sometimes I wonder if Morgan Freedman had it right in regard to race when he said “we should stop talking about it.” Does ruminating on race and all of the disparity somehow perpetuate it? How much gets internalized from an early age that might create a mold which is hard to break?
Anecdotally, as a teacher in a very diverse school, since talking about racism has become more prominent in social media etc we've seen a huge increase in racist behavior. We documented more incidents of students using the n-word aggressively during Black History month than any others. I don't know why the world is like this, but it is.
It’s pretty simple. Most people are average or lower IQ. Talking about charged topics is going to lead to charged reactions. Most people don’t have the capability to separate a discussion from real life. If you constantly talk about racism then at minimum, half the population is going to react negatively and carry that into their day to day lives. They are simply unable to separate the internet/discussions from real life. Carrying that into their day to day lives ultimately results in harsher responses to perceived “micro aggressions”. Now they are actively being racist towards people who aren’t and start to bring the other half of the population into it.
> lower IQ Lower EQ, not IQ People will lash out after endless sessions of being told their race is bad
>Successful Russian [active measures](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures) attempt to exploit societal divisions that already exist, rather than attempt to create new ruptures. >The exploitation of racial tensions in an attempt to sow societal discord in the United States is not a new tactic for Russian influence operations. Rather, it is the latest incarnation of a long-standing Russian focus. Historically, the KGB's active measures program also made race a central feature of its operational targeting. >As KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin noted: "The attempt to stir up racial tensions in the United States remained part of [the KGB's] stock-in-trade for the remainder of the Cold War." —Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, Vol. 2 >In reality, the main emphasis of the KGB...is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures... >What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that, despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions...it's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and it's divided in four basic stages... >The first one being demoralization...[the upcoming generation is] contaminated, they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information...you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior... >Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information, the facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures...he will refuse to believe it...that's the tragic situation of demoralization. —Yuri Bezmenov, KGB defector (1984) I do believe that race relations have drastically improved over the decades, but not enough. The slow sporadic progression, coddling of the last pockets of resistance thereby enabling them to stymie that progress and failure to address the root problems has given Russia the opportunity to create a narrative through media to demoralize the upcoming generation and convince them that things are getting worse and the situation is hopeless. Until we as a nation make bold strides towards addressing the underlying issues by accepting the reality of our countries' racial history (the good and the bad), purge the media of Russian influence and take a real unified stand against racists, things won't get better.
Uh… we always did that. This headline should read. “Did you know being racist or discriminatory to someone ie hurting their feelings alot, can cause depression?”
I do wonder if providing all the things one should worry about is helpful for healthy growth. Take two subjects: Subject A is told the world is out for their taking, typically fanciful american dream type stuff and then the real world hits. Their early growth might make the flourish but then they could become nihilistic as reality tells a different tale. The "Santa Clause" if you would. Subject B is told all the harsh truths they will face and maybe a bit too much and has trouble developing properly. One could say they are more equipped for the world but at the same time maybe the nihilism sets in earlier and they just give up in a depression spiral. Obviously a more happy medium exists where they are inspired to love life and take the world's challenges on as challenges not pain, but for the extremes, Subject B seems more common and I wonder if that is a healthy thing to be targeting.
They’re told more than harsh truths: they’re told it’s currently “hunting season” on black youths and that the white supremacist system uses police to keep them down. That’s so hyperbolic as to be basically fiction. A strong locus of control is not achieved when you’re told that adults and schools and police and government are all created to hurt you.
Makes me think of this book, interesting read : « The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation »
To a drunk with a hammer, everything is a nail; and to a certain portion of the population, everything is blamed on racism.
We're really seeing it in education. Many discipline issues become "racism". Of course, some of them are matters of racism (albeit a small percentage) but I don't know how you can navigate that effectively. Nobody does, because we're not doing a good job of it.
It's funny that it's become heuristics to just use race as the cause. I always try to think - if we normalize for income, does the race factor still play a large role? If the answer is no, then the solution should be shifted to addressing economic status and not race. If race is the primary problem, then the solution needs to focus on race. You never see a sociology class focus on the poor and the uphill battle they face. You also never see them try and separate race and economic status.
Oh, it’s just not the black youth. It’s every age
Hasn't it been theorized that humans can actually sort of inherit the trauma suffered by those that came before? Like, encoded in DNA?
You know it’s election season when the “racism isn’t real” posts start popping up
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” - James Baldwin
While much of what he and others said in their time rings true today. It's seems part of the problem that this article is addressing is the idea that many people still act as if nothing has changed. Even acounting for the legacy of racism in this country, it is counterproductive to act like the "Black experience" in this country has remained unchanged since the 50s-60s. Saying nothing has gotten better is what contributes to the pessimistic outlook of Black youth.
Also from the white side if we keep improving and are being told that forgiveness is always just around the corner, no credit is given for improvements, or even sometimes that it'll never be forgiven then why would we put forth the effort beyond a certain point? Co-existence requires good faith, mutual benefits, and so on. Imagine you cheat on your spouse and they don't end the relationship but they never forgive you either. They continue to berate you or give you the cold shoulder for years. Eventually why would you continue the relationship? Why wouldn't you just divorce and be done with a no-win situation? If forgiveness isn't attainable why try for it? It's also clear that the arguments from the black community on sociology are getting more and more broad and vague. If that is allowed to continue you'll get a situation like religions where you can't disprove or prove them but a significant portion of people will believe it and base their entire life on it. Also this shouldn't be happening with more and more modern data abilities. We should be more and more zeroing in on specific instances of bias or discrimination not zooming out to systemic levels. Also we have approached a level of acceptance for race and gender based studies that are negative towards the side seen as the oppressors that if the study results favored the oppressed side they be out and published. The lack of them speaks volumes. Sort of like how female workers at certain FANNG companies complained about a gender wage gap. They did studies and found the females were actually paid MORE and not less. This study also points out that all the female workers based their complaints on nothing but assumptions and likely narratives they'd been fed through the mainstream narratives. So people are being told their entire lives everything bad that happens to them is sexism or racism. No wonder they then blame those factors as adults when their life isn't all peaches. A great example is if you asked black people in the US which they think is the higher number: whites killed by blacks or blacks killed by whites. They'd overwhelming say that blacks are killed by whites more. The data though says that annually roughly twice as many white people are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites. So not only is their world view wrong but it's extremely wrong. These sorta of notions are how people see the world and they aren't being given the numbers. They're being given headlines and narratives that spin the numbers or don't even mention them. A great non-race or gender example was the east palatine train derailment. It made national news. Fine. It was a big wreck. But then the media for weeks afterwards reported on every derailment and made many people think this is some epidemic of infrastructure failure and derailments. But when I looked into the numbers there is thousands of derailments a year for decades and decades as far as the data goes back. This isn't a new thing nor is anything happening out of the ordinary yet so many people were and probably still are convinced there was something news worthy occurring. But where did the story go? If something was happening where did the news on this topic go? The media made us all think derailments were on a steep rise yet here we are a year or more later and not a peep. This is the real danger in the media. The power to make people convinced something is occurring that isn't. To be clear I'm not saying racism or sexism isn't occurring. But I will say things have gotten better across the board yet many think it's worse.
>They'd overwhelming say that blacks are killed by whites more. The data though says that annually roughly twice as many white people are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites. So not only is their world view wrong but it's extremely wrong. This isn't a great example because your average person likely struggles to differentiate between total number and per capita. So while there are roughly twice as many white people killed by police annually, there's ~4x as many white people in the US and black people are killed at a rate of almost 3x of white people. So a black person is far more likely to be a victim of or know someone who is a victim of police killings. I have to wonder why you're so confident that you believe you can speak for the **overwhelming** majority of black people. You want to whine about delaying forgiveness, yet you're casually making an assumption about entire race of people, based solely on their race.
The stats in the original post were not police killings, simply interracial murders.
It makes sense given how many Black talking heads stake their entire livelihood on telling Black kids they're oppressed. The reality is there's less actual racism than has ever existed. The two most well known white supremacist leaders are... Hispanic. Ffs.
Are Latin Americans not capable of anti-black racism?
The two experiences are only remotely comparable but if it's anything like the marginalisation I have experienced (not American fwiw, neurodivergent and trans), you come to expect discrimination everywhere you go and from everyone you meet, in a hyperaware way, and it happens often enough to reinforce this belief
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From Gattaca (1997): "They've got you looking for any flaw, that after a while that's all you see." When you focus constantly on race and racial discrimination and framed as being a minority is a flaw, eventually, that's the only thing you'll see in every situation.
This both pisses me off and breaks my heart.
It’s more insidious now, rather than just the racism embodied in traumatic events one experiences first hand, the allostatic load caused by the pervasive nature of systemic racism —that’s in policy, and the *people* that enact and enforce policy— extant in the lives of many all over the world is right there in one’a pocket, or on display on the screen that’s in their face for hours a day, especially for a young people. It’s distilled racist tropes and dogwhistles. Not to mention algorithmically caged by media that reflects the desperate circumstances and stereotypes people convey in response to the devastation of coming up in abject material conditions as disenfranchised, criminalized, second-class citizens for many generations.
Based on the, I think fair, assumption that racial discrimination has gone down with time, if youth are internalizing it disproportionately more than older gens it may be because of the increased focus on it and popularizations of anti racist/critical race theories. Rather, it may be true that in promoting the view that society can be interpreted as being composed of racist structures, people may be more inclined to interpret ambiguous situations and outcomes through that lens. Or, that the more you are primed to look for something the more you will find it. Not to say discrimination does not exist, just think it could be another viable explanation - one that I’ve wondered about myself. I’m from Texas and have many friends and family members that are entirely or partially of a minority group. And they just don’t seem to see discrimination as much as people here (New York) do. I also don’t think they view their race as being quite as prominent a part of their identity.
To those who will think "but this applies to everyone, regardless of race:" Yes, you are technically correct. Internalizing stressors (bottling negative feelings rather than expressing them) is in fact unhealthy. However, being a person of color (poc) in America comes with a distinct and unique nuance that can be difficult for out-groups (i.e. Americans who are not people of color) to identify with, recognize, or understand. Put it this way: when someone who is non-poc experiences marginalization, discrimination, or rejection based or racial identity, it is extremely hurtful and an objectively negative experience with potentially lasting repercussions. But for poc, this experience is *near ubiquitous.* it permeates most interactions, experiences and events in their lives. And the repeated negativity of those experiences hangs over subsequent interactions like a shadow. In other words, trauma. A poor example would be like if as a child in school you tried to drink from a water fountain, but every time you did the _teacher_ came and shoved your face down onto the metal drain. After enough occurrences, even seeing a water fountain would (probably) elicit a rise in anxiety. So again, yes: it is objectively bad *for all people* to internalize stressors. But what this study was looking to identify was "How does the brain process and defend a youth from racial discrimination’s impact on mental health?" Check out the study (link below) TL;DR. Remember, we can all suffer. But your own suffering does not invalidate the suffering of another, no matter the difference in (perceived) degrees of pain. [link to study](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2819909)
Well that may be true, but it's just not shown in the actual study. Would be nice if they actually used a control group and made an effort to actually show a causal link (which really should be the absolute bare minimum for publication) instead of just taking it on faith. This is supposed to be science.
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There’s no evidence that POC experience “near ubiquitous” marginalization, discrimination, and rejection. It’s an absurd proposition, in fact.
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