Some observations about our stories of racial discrimination

[EffieBlack]

A few days ago, I posted an OP asking white DUers to share their stories about being discriminated against because of their race. We got some amazing, interesting and very personal responses. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210583000

This came as a followup to an earlier OP in which I asked DUers of color to share their experiences with discrimination. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210513797

I posted some observations last night in the thread but am making it an OP for greater visibility:

First, this has been an awesome discussion. Those of you who shared stories have really educated and enlightened me and, I’m sure, many others who read them whether they said anything or not.

I commented on many of your stories. But the others I just read and thought about. Everything doesn’t need commentary.

It’s great that you persisted and stayed honest and focused, and didn’t get caught up in any of the distractions and foolishness that cropped up.

As I read your stories, I noticed a pattern - not universal, but a distinct pattern. Most of the negative experiences you had with racism and discrimination occurred on an individual basis, rather than at an institutional level. In other words, they involved encounters with individuals displaying individual, albeit often hateful, bias. That’s not to discount or diminish the experiences - they were still negative and difficult and unfair - but that’s what I saw.

This is an interesting contrast to the stories shared by minority DUers. Most our stories seemed to focus much more on instances of institutional and systemic discrimination. For example, they were more likely to involve people in positions of authority or power over us or larger institutions in society (or people backed up by such power or institutions), e.,g, police, employers, etc. Again, I’m not suggesting that one type of discrimination is worse or harder or easier or less fair or more cruel than another. Getting beaten up in a parking lot because you’re white is not less horrific, frightening or wrong than getting pulled over by a cop for driving while black. But the dynamics are different.

As I think about this distinction, it occurs to me that this might help explain some of the disconnect in our discussions.

One of the really clear sticking points seems to be that minority DUers feel that white DUers are quick to scoff at and dismiss the existence of institutional racism. They often approach our attempts to point it out as unreasonable and unfair, and an attempt to blame all white people for racism.

On the other hand, many white DUers seem to resent what they believe is a refusal of minorities to recognize that, even if they do have certain privileges, those privileges don’t prevent them from ever being discriminated against. And pointing that out doesn’t necessarily mean they’re trying to co-opt or piggyback discrimination faced by minorities.

I think that, given their own personal experiences of being victimized by personal, individual instances of discrimination and lack of experience as victims of larger, systemic racism, many whites just can’t identify with or relate to the latter as a real thing. They don’t see it because they haven’t seen it in their own lives and, therefore, don’t recognize it and don’t understand it.

By the same token, many minorities may have trouble appreciating how whites feel when their experiences a victims are shooed away as no big deal. This may be because minorities have had to deal with those individual experiences as well as the larger institutional ones and those are things we just expect and deal with on a daily basis - and the fact that they’re so common to us makes them seem like not a big deal - at least not in comparison with the bigger systemic crap we have to deal with. So we brush it off when we see it happen to other people with a “Welcome to MY world” casualness, which isn’t always fair to the people who also have to deal with it, even though they may not have to grapple with the more pervasive and sinister forms of discrimination.

So, if nothing else, I hope people will take away from this - I know I will - a better sense of where people who don’t look like us aren’t coming from. And that while it’s clear that whites and minorities are not subjected to equivalent levels and degrees of racism and discrimination - since it’s can’t be disputed that minorities have faced and will continue to face much harsher treatment - our own experiences can provide us a starting point for more empathy for people who don’t look like us.

[MineralMan]

1. White Privilege Is Real

There's no question about it. There is virtually zero institutional prejudice against Caucasians as a group. Nothing that is even close to the experience that people of color face constantly.

I don't think there is any way to argue that there is such prejudice, yet some attempt to make that argument. It's foolish in its face, and would laughable if it weren't so prevalent.

[EffieBlack]

2. Yes, it's real

And, yes, it's different than individualized instances of discrimination.

BUT I'm hoping we can find some common ground - not equivalence, but similarities - between the two to help move the conversation forward.

[EffieBlack]

3. Kick

[EffieBlack]

4. Kick

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. K&R.

This is such an important distinction.

[betsuni]

6. K&R

[EffieBlack]

7. Kick

[Ms. Toad]

8. The distinction in the nature of discrimination is one of the reasons

I chose not to share in the other thread.

I debated contributing, but didn't have the energy to do so in a constructive way. But i think it helps illustrate a distinction you have captured.

While I have experienced very real violence directed at me because I am white - violence that still impacts my life more than 4 decades later (albeit no longer on a daily basis) - it is not the same as the systemic discrimination that blacks and other minorities experience every day.

I talk very freely about having been raped, but I rarely mention the race of the person who raped me. It is even more rare that I mention that I was not, by chance, raped by a black man - but targeted because I was white. As a general rule, I see more harm than good in contributing to perpetuating the ugly stereotype about black men by sharing that I had the unfortunate and rare experience of encountering one who happened to fit it.

My experiences, and most of those shared in the previous thread, were the result of conscious decisions by an individual aggessor to act against the victim on the basis of race. If you challenged the person who raped me, he would not hesitate to tell you that he targeted me because I am white (I know that because he told the police just that with respect to me - and the other half-dozen white women he also raped).

On the other hand, at least as to the daily insults experienced by blacks - few, if any, whites are consciously unaware that we treat blacks differently, and many would deny it if it was pointed out to us. In contrast, because our experience of targeted negative acts directed at us is that the actors are aware of what they are doing, we look for that same awareness in those acting negatively toward blacks, and can't identify it. So it must not be happening.

[EffieBlack]

10. I'm so sorry this happened to you.

[Ms. Toad]

12. Thank you. n/t

[ismnotwasm]

9. I hope so

What I’m seeing more of, uunfortunately is a focus on, and rejection of, the relatively mild discomfort of a term like Wypipo. Completely missing the point. In any conversation I have with my fellow white people, I see immediate defensiveness when it comes to race.

There are small victories. Recently, I was at a restaurant with some relatives —a kind of mildly trendy place, in a fairly trendy, and very liberal, very white, neighborhood. I mentioned this, and then dryly asserted that all the whiteness made me uncomfortable (it didn’t, kinda annoyed me though) My youngest daughter looked at me and said, “Thats white privilege, saying you are uncomfortable around white people”

I was so proud. Because even though it was half a joke, it’s a joke I “get” to make. It’s pretentious and silly as well. She saw right through the bullshit of it, as well as the privilege of it. Not a great example, but all of my children are at least aware that discussions can be had without defensiveness. Working on the grandchildren early as well.

Here at DU, I guess what we never know, is what’s on the other side of a key board. Not talking about trolls, but what causes the blind spots we as white people have, and ALL of us, myself included have blind spots when it comes to whiteness and race

[struggle4progress]

11. People aren't taught history, Effie. They aren't taught to think critically

about how social groups produce and reproduce their mythologies and mass-consciousness. And there are always deliberate efforts to keep people ill-informed and chaotic in their thinking

When newcomers wanted the land here, they were pleased to discover that it was possessed by "ignorant savages" who needed to be pushed off it, so that the newcomers could make "wiser use" of it

When plantation holders learned that slaves wouldn't work without some being beaten as examples, America discovered the "problem" of "lazy n*****s." When chain-gangs rented from prisons replaced slaves, America discovered a new "problem": the abundance of "black criminals" who desperately "needed" to be arrested so they could be jailed and then put to work cheaply.

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. I think the only two examples I can think of whites being "systematically" "discriminatined" against

can offer some insights for whites to what blacks routinely have faced since slavery was abolished. And I used quotation marks in the subject line intentionally because it is NOT the same thing. They are, "forced busing" and Affirmative Action programs. I supported both of these governmental policies, whether court mandated or legislatively initiated. They both are/were mandated social remedies to partially counter the effects of horrific ingrained and often government sanctioned and/or mandated wholesale discrimination of whole races of people over multiple generations. But because individual whites sometimes experienced a loss of choice, varying degrees of inconvenience (at times significant) and in some cases a loss of individual opportunity as a result of those programs, they often triggered off massive instances of white "backlash".

Yet the vast majority of whites lived in passive acceptance (if not outright approval) of laws and practices that restricted for a century or longer which races could live in which neighborhoods (either through neighborhood association bylaws, redlining, or violent intimidation) which schools they could attend, and even which occupations they could pursue (through membership restrictions for Trade Guilds etc.). But when their own white child could no longer attend the nearest neighborhood school due to integration mandates (which only rarely forced whites to be bused away from their own neighborhoods), or when it was possible that a black child might win admission to some school before a white child with similar qualifications because of the color of his/her skin, THEN some whites were ready to be up in arms over "discrimination".

[EffieBlack]

14. You are so right.

I love how you lay this out so clearly!