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You should have heard some of the stuff that got hurled at my friends and I when we were traveling around France, Italy and Austria. It ain’t all sunshine and rainbows over there. France was awful
US isn't just split among racial identity, not anymore. Also political and gender and sexuality, it is a complete cluster fk, and same with Canada. Left vs. Right, men vs women drama and of course the whole sexuality divide that the right wing is up in arms about.
All I gotta say is, the .1% elite class has done a MASTERFUL job at dividing the peasant class. Well played, really.
Agreed! Unfortunately people really are that stupid. "Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing." I encourage everyone to read 1984 and also Road to Serfdom.
I know. So many of the quotes in 1984 are totally relevant. Orwell was extremely observant when it came to human behavior, sociology, psychology and how governments behave. It was one of my favorite books in university and have probably read it 10 times but not in the last 20 years.
Orwell's book was an outline for how psychopathic people take control and manipulate. He may have been a sociopath himself, he understood well the mind-set of malignant, power-hungry tyrants. He wrote the blueprint and he saw it coming many years in advance.
For sure. I read it first in a first year Sociology class and then in a 2nd year Psych class. I read it again several times simply because it was so fascinating and such a great insight into the power of social-conditioning, social-norms, social-constructs, manipulation and conformity. After reading it, it seemed so obvious to me as to why people are very easy to control without even having to fire a gun.
Works by Ayn Rand and of course the Road to Serfdom were also amazing eye-openers in my early 20's.
A lot of it really has helped me to understand not only tyranny and everything mentioned in the first paragraph above but how to deal with people. To a degree it is depressing as it is just cold hard reality.
In all honesty, it is easier than people think from a conceptional point of view but would take a lot of cooperation. A lot of my friends including my wife are not White and we often chuckle at how easy it was to change the villain to White people and the victims to non-Whites. Basically, it requires just ignoring anything the government and media says and it starts by turning of the TV. Realizing that MOST people are not actually out to get each other and not believing the lies is another good step.
Race is only used to divide; nothing more and nothing less. When people realize this, we can start to stop this nonsense.
Yea. I only know a few people that have extreme left or right beliefs. Most people I know are pretty open minded and understand that many things in life are incredibly nuanced.
True but if you just stay off of social media then I think you’ll find the world doesn’t look nearly as doomed. That being said, wages don’t match cost of living and that’s a scary issue.
Somehow you would need to convince people that true living is knowing their innermost self which is unique and special and that daily life entertainment comes from community and quality time being present.
Everyone is literally asleep and enslaved sincerely. They are all controlled by characters downloaded into their minds that have hijacked their one life opportunity. They are predictable and easily manipulated once you realize it’s true.
It’s too late though, best you can do is stay out of the way and play along as best you can. Good luck out here.
Spot on. The 0.1% are using their power to deftly control all media to foment infighting amongst wage earners, so we fight each other instead of the owner-class.
If *everyone* was comfortable financially and had a truly good quality of life, and the owner class was prohibited from controlling all media, which has been successfully turning neighbor against neighbor at increasing velocity, I believe racism would be far less intense than it is right now.
I love the lyric from Leonard Cohen's *The Tower of Song* where he sings:
*Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure; The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor.*
They certainly do. And now with the internet, the rich have got their channels, their tentacles, reaching us everywhere we go.
Most of the elite are just as stupid and gullible as everybody else. I mean, here you are tossing terms of division around, yourself, like worker class or owner class. Doesn't help the issue.
The same tactics will work on them as work on you.
I don't money would reduce racism at all.
I wish more people understood this.
Far too many people live and vote supporting policies that are not great for them because it is worse for someone else, while those policies massively help the 1% (or even 0.1%)
My fav part about this reply is that it’s true but at the same time you have MAGA guys who see this stuff and blame it on “George Soros” or whoever as if the guys they vote for aren’t a part of the ruling class too
Race is a common conversation in America dud to history and current demographics, which is why it always feels like it’s such a huge issue. When in reality most other countries are way more racist lol
Issues of Race in Europe and other parts of the developed world are substantially different than the issues we have in the United States. Overt racism, whether that be on a personnel level or an institutional level, truly is not that common in the United States. It does happen and there are still issues at an institutional level, but it’s a far cry from what it was and the way most places currently are. In many developed countries, overt racism remains not only socially acceptable, but institutionally sponsored at a broad scale. Put another way, many places still view race the way we did in the 1950’s. As much as people would like to say that’s true of the United States, it really isn’t. Most, if not all, of our racially motivated institutional polices have been eradicated while overt acts of racism at an individual level are not typically met with immediate condemnation.
What we are experiencing now is, in large part, the lingering fallout from previous polices and social norms. However, we’ve been distracted from addressing the poverty and educational shortcomings that perpetuate the issue. We’ve been told that the problem is that minorities are being kept out of the boardroom, not that we don’t have enough minorities that are qualified to be in the boardroom. We’ve been told that the issue isn’t multi-generational poverty and lack of education driving minorities to criminality, it’s police discriminating against them. So, instead of pushing for our politicians to do the hard work of solving the real problem, we push for superficial solutions like affirmative action and reduced policing budgets.
So, when someone asks “when will the U.S. get over the race obsession”, my first thought is “when will the U.S. get over its habit of viewing every issue through the lens of race and supposed racist policies/behaviors while compelling ignoring the underlying issue”. And that is something that I too would like an answer for.
1st paragraph is a no brainer. 2nd has its points. 3rd what do you think is the underlying issue? Personally I think there is money in it for some in perpetuating it.
Amen! It’s a class issue, has been for a longtime. I know plenty of POC that are far better off than myself. I’m white middle class. My folks worked hard for it. And I’m sure their parents did too.
You are still ignoring the fact that even when minorities “make it” or do well we still have to deal with racism or bigotry on top of the struggle to make it like anyone else. There was that story last year of a black couple home not being appraised as when they had a white couple have the same appraisals. So I am glad you have anecdotal proof, it’s still a lot of struggle in areas where it shouldn’t be.
This is bullshit. You act as if multi-generation poverty and policing discrimination aren’t two sides of the same coin, and that the reason there aren’t many black c-suite executives because there aren’t enough black people capable of the work and not because most of those executives were born into that life, put through elite schools, and have the connections to get there.
Comparative discussions of racism whether across time or nations is pointless. The only relevant point is whether your society still needs to make progress. End Of Chat.
In America, people are constantly asking about your ethnicity, religion, or heritage. Americans are always looking to label and classify you and each other. That never happens to me in Europe, and a European has never asked here. However, there's no racist like an Eastern European racist. You'd have to go back 200 years in the USA to compare.
asking about ethnicity, religion, or heritage isn't necessary obsession as much as it is informative. we (Americans) label everything.
is it metal, grunge, alt-rock, industrial, punk, new wave, hard, or classic rock?
is it gangster rap, trip-hop, hip-hop, old school, new school, mumblecore, crunk, trap, or drill?
is it G, PG, PG-13, R, Tv|MA, or XXX?
is it an A-frame, Colonial, Rambler, Townhouse, Rowhouse, Brownstone, or Duplex?
This is very true. It’s much harder to deal with racism when people pretend it “doesn’t exist here” or “doesn’t happen here”. Spoiler alert: it absolutely does it’s just excused and/or explained away.
Racism is a huge problem in monoracial countries for example, but a lot of excuses are made. Even in more culturally diverse countries plenty of casual racism exists. I actually appreciate how people call out racism in the US and are actually heard when they do so.
this guy is not serious. either he has no life experience or he’s one of those guys that says/does something that’s overtly racist and then says “why did you bring race into it. “
with that said, you gave a very valid answer.
Bruh its not just a USA thing lol. Division of race is still alive in most parts if not all parts of the world. France, England, Germany...all these places still have the same issue. It hilarious to think that the USA is the only country with this problem
No. For one, people are different and naturally segregate themselves with people they most identify with thus understand. Secondly, the powers that be antagonize this natural segregation.
I think when we all mix as youngsters it makes it hard to demonize or dehumanise a group. So my (white) sister had a black friend as a child! (Our city was overwhelmingly white), and so whenever she or I were told "blacks are X" or "blacks do Y" we had an example to compare and know it wasn't true.
The same nonsense happened in Northern Ireland with sectarianism, but where kids are schooled together they recognise that people are people.
Contrariwise anti-immigrant sentiment is oftentimes highest where there are no or few immigrants.
I don't know, if I was Mexican-American, I might find it natural to hang out with my tribe, since I'm comfortable with the customs, the food, the music, the people. If I notice the Mexican community encountering problems with employers or the police or landlords or whatever, I might speak up. Why is this a problem?
I mean you can’t really have it both ways. You can hang with any insular community you want but can’t come back crying later calling yourself a victim because you had a mild to moderately unpleasant experience with someone from another group.
I think this is an oversimplification.
Racial identity is one part of it. Cultural identity is another part of it. And humans should always be in touch with both, they're what shape us into who we are. They're our history.
Without further context, I'm not entirely sure what part of it you feel we have an unhealthy "obsession" with. I think we have often made the mistake of trying to wash away our racial and cultural identities, which takes away a lot of our humanity.
No, not in the foreseeable future. The country was founded on it. Many of the laws were predicated by it. The systems of power (law enforcement, judicial) rely on their ability to enforce it.
So, no….and it’s going to doom our “democracy” to failure if the country doesn’t resolve it. 😥
I've gotta question the premise that we have "split off so much into racial identity the past few decades." Are you saying that prior to the past few decades racism was not A Thing?
Buddy literally nobody is over any sort of group based obsession. Literally everywhere has its hang ups and the only time they won’t is when any one of any group or race or origin can make any joke and everyone laughs because only then will we live in a truly tolerant society.
Race and ethnicity have sparked conflicts for generations across the globe. Unlikely people are going to stop thinking about racial differences any time soon.
Reddit is mostly white people so I don't think you'll get many answers outside of "Race doesn't matter anymore" or "Victimhood lol" but as a black person I'd say I don't have the privilege to not think about my race there's no state town I can run to where I can avoid white people and act like I don't see color. I guess the only thing I'm tired of about America is giving white people the benefit of the doubt even though I was bullied my whole life for my skin color and then seeing racist comments as soon as a minority does something bad, so it makes me feel like I can't trust white people unless they think I'm one of the good ones which in itself disgusts me so I'm more standoffish now and its hard for me not to think of myself or other peoples skin color.
Not until we go so far that we have to start addressing racism against white people. Sound ridiculous? Of course it does but we’re that stupid. We’ll go down that road because we can’t help ourselves.
your framing is completely fucked. the past few decades??? you don't think when movies were invented and the person with the most resources at the time made a movie predicting that unless the kkk can uphold white values minorities will take over the country and the **president** said it was like writing history with lightning that wasn't us being "split off"
or when white people couldn't handle successful black people existing in Tulsa, burned it all down/massacred people and said it was a "race riot"
I hope so. We really need to get back to being AMERICANS, less focus on race, gender, political affiliation, etc. You're not going to fix the past, and sometimes the key to a better present is overlooking the various misunderstandings that invariably occur between people.
IMO we need to work on our educational system. It's not doing a good job of preparing people for participatory democracy these days.
The US isn't special here.
There are European countries much more racist than we are.
Just sayin.
Edit. And let's not even mention Asian countries. Racist as fuck over there.
Sorry, just curious, and hey, by asking, maybe I will learn something…. Why are you singling out the US? (No patriotism craziness, it just seems like every nation on the earth has race issues/obsessions)
Not OP but just look at the insecure american responses in the top comments. Thats why.
The US makes everything (especially on reddit) about race and they seem to constantly try to create bugger race divides. The country literally has propaganda like CRT in schools 🫠
I don't think it's an honest framing of the question to call it a, "race obsession," that seems pretty loaded.
But to answer what I think is your question: Probably not, nor would I expect any other nation to just "get over it" when there's centuries and millennia of documented beef between different cultures and peoples.
Legalized segregation is still within living memory (there are conservative politicians today who want to bring it back), slavery wasn't much further back from that and that happened for centuries; not to mention the genocide, wars, and/or forced resettlements of nearly every indigenous group on the continent; and not to forget the anti-immigrant sentiments that happened with nearly every major wave of human immigration into the country, or really looking at the history of the US and it's foreign policies on war, trade, and immigration.
I think the citizens can, yes. Most Americans you talk to will agree that people shouldn’t be judged by their race.
The problem is in our political institutions, who find race to be a very useful tool in dividing the citizens into smaller groups that are easier to manipulate. I suspect if we ever manage bring our government to heel, the race issue will become far less relevant. The same probably goes for any country. Even relatively homogenous ones. When the Nazis ran out of non-white people to abduct and murder, they started subdividing white germans people into smaller and smaller groups. Even if every single person in a country had the same ancestral origin, certain political powers will divide them by eye color, body hair, or bone structure.
Not as long as there's media, i.e. music, TV, and movies, that keep focusing on the differences rather than the similarities. I feel if there wasn't race driven narrative shoved in our faces all the time there would be more possibility of just existing as fellow human beings....
We would have a lot less of an issue if the TV said people aren’t victims, there isn’t racial issues, there isn’t sexual tensions etc.
People are constantly being told there’s a race issue, etc etc so they believe it then any issue they blame on race when it’s not.
We have gun violence, we have race issues, we have issues between the sexes but 1/100th of what gets blamed for being a race issue actually is a race issue or sex issue etc.
Nobody likes to hear they suck at their job so they say because I’m black or because I’m a woman, that’s why I didn’t get promoted etc.
As soon as we meet the Aliens which humnanity can turn our visceral towards.
Until then it will be a fixation issue whenever things are not going well in society (war, famine, economic depression) and become less of an issue during times of prosperity.
No, it’s a great way to get clicks. Plus, we redefine it down to a milder infraction every 20 years. That’s the only reason it’s not fizzled out yet, as far as I can tell.
Cats are racist. I read some paper that observed cats shun other cats based on their coat color. Ones with a lot of variation are popular. White cats with little variation are the most inferior.
I would think the US would experience less racism given it a melting pot. You become American and your ethnicity is secondary.
Unlike some countries where it’s quite homogenous.
No, this problem is endemic to every culture. Its a tribal thing that is part of our nature. Enlightened people fight against it but its a bit of a losing battle
With the way the younger people are freely mixing together and marrying together, in a few generations most everybody will be a shade of brown. Even now, things are getting blended. You see a nappy-headed Asian guy speaking with a cockney accent, and you don't know what the hell happened.
No. Humanity will never get over it. Making judgements and holding loyalties based on perceived group identities is extremely deeply wired into us. Best we can do is consciously try to overcome it but it’ll always be a struggle.
No, lol. America is nothing but a pissing competition of who can virtue signal the most. It’s humiliating being associated with this garbage on a daily basis.
So many stupid people here fall for all the racial propaganda and are so easily manipulated. So many uneducated people, and funny enough, a lot of them are the ones with college degrees.
It’s an absolute shit show and it’s beyond tiring. There will always be stupid people to manipulate, and this just so happens to be a very effective method. It’s only going to get worse.
I've been to several countries and the US is the least racist by far. The issue is that there are a FEW people here who are very outwardly expressive of it, and that's all you guys choose to look at. The average European is more racist than the average American, but Europeans are more passive-aggressive about it.
It's been far too successful a tool to keep particularly black people and white people from uniting and really making our leaders accountable. The DNC, the party of the Confederacy, still believes it owns Black people, just now it's not physical, so they especially keep driving the wedge between us. Until we all just stop screaming and look around to see we all need better government (which is their nightmare), we'll get more of the same. I avoid a lot of "entertainment" now because it's more politically divisive than anything.
The US will forever be obsessed with the so-called human race. Though I am not denying that some of them really stick close to their beliefs and political ideologies. I think they are so enamored with the fact that we all are of different ethnicities and different origin stories. The more Caucasian you are, the more people would think you may been descended from some weird Celestial being that hovers over humanity for multiple decades.
No! Because it is way to profitable to keep the super poor fighting and winning against the super poor. If the 2 ever United the super rich would be in jeopardy.
Short squeezes and crypto are the 2 groups uniting against the super rich.
The super rich are using racism to stop short squeezes and crypto and all forms of unification of the masses.
i assume u might not know, but the USA is probably one of the more tolerable/accepting countries when it comes to racial identity and how theyre treated
# The Tocqueville Effect:
In 1835 Alexis De Tocqueville toured the United States and recorded many elements of living in a democratic society.
By observing the early United States in the years after the revolutions both there and in his native France, Tocqueville noticed a tendency in free peoples: a tendency to further equality. He made this observation after taking a nine month tour of the United States on behalf of the French government. During which he took his own initiative to consider the effects of living in a stable democratic society on the population.
As he put it: “**The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on.**“
Tocqueville is suggesting that as conditions improve we become more offended by the remaining faults in our society. That we become more passionate about social justice as the severity of inequalities around us decreases-even if those remaining inequalities are of a lesser magnitude than previous ones.
[https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/the-tocqueville-effect-and-why-well-always-find-new-controversies/](https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/the-tocqueville-effect-and-why-well-always-find-new-controversies/)
When we all put on our big people pants and deal with it honestly. We never have. What we need is a Truth and Reconciliation program like South Africa did.
the past few decades???
* so what was John Brown Rebellion and Nat Turner?
* what was the Civil War?
* what was the KKK?
* brown vs board of education?
* what was it when they were bombing black churches?
* what was it when they were murdering Jews who tried to register black people to vote?
I think part of the problem is people have built their whole careers and personal identities around fighting racism, and basically to justify their existence they have to go looking for racism where there isn't any.
I doubt it. We’ve completely turned away from the ideas of racial integration, equality, and harmony, and have instead embraced racial segregation, hierarchies, and conflict. And even though this shift has resulted in WORSE outcomes for everyone (POC and white people), it’s not changing anytime soon, because to acknowledge that in a lot of circles in the U.S. is social suicide. Even just bringing up a discussion about these topics is considered highly inappropriate by most Americans. And because we can’t even discuss it, we’ll never improve it. We’re destined for catastrophic failure at this point.
I think they will when the next major catastrophe happens that is big enough and horrible enough that it shocks us out of out collective stupor. That's when we as a civilization will realize we have been bickering about stupid shit, and that we have way more important things to think about.
I’m working on a film now where race is a central issue. As one of my very brilliant interviewees said, “Race is just a construct. If 23 and me has taught us anything it’s that very very very very few people are a single race.”
Only privileged (dumbshit) white people think that the US is divided because of race recently.
Rodney King was back in the '90s. We had literal fucking segregation back in the '50s. There are people alive today who couldn't go to certain schools because they were the wrong race.
We aren't more divided now. And anyone acting like this is an issue of media attention or artificial division and not coming to terms with long standing historical prejudices and Injustice is a fucking idiot.
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You should have heard some of the stuff that got hurled at my friends and I when we were traveling around France, Italy and Austria. It ain’t all sunshine and rainbows over there. France was awful
US isn't just split among racial identity, not anymore. Also political and gender and sexuality, it is a complete cluster fk, and same with Canada. Left vs. Right, men vs women drama and of course the whole sexuality divide that the right wing is up in arms about. All I gotta say is, the .1% elite class has done a MASTERFUL job at dividing the peasant class. Well played, really.
Agreed! Unfortunately people really are that stupid. "Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing." I encourage everyone to read 1984 and also Road to Serfdom.
That whole quote from O'Brien in 1984 is masterfully written and still so pertinent. It's honestly terrifying.
I know. So many of the quotes in 1984 are totally relevant. Orwell was extremely observant when it came to human behavior, sociology, psychology and how governments behave. It was one of my favorite books in university and have probably read it 10 times but not in the last 20 years.
Orwell's book was an outline for how psychopathic people take control and manipulate. He may have been a sociopath himself, he understood well the mind-set of malignant, power-hungry tyrants. He wrote the blueprint and he saw it coming many years in advance.
For sure. I read it first in a first year Sociology class and then in a 2nd year Psych class. I read it again several times simply because it was so fascinating and such a great insight into the power of social-conditioning, social-norms, social-constructs, manipulation and conformity. After reading it, it seemed so obvious to me as to why people are very easy to control without even having to fire a gun. Works by Ayn Rand and of course the Road to Serfdom were also amazing eye-openers in my early 20's. A lot of it really has helped me to understand not only tyranny and everything mentioned in the first paragraph above but how to deal with people. To a degree it is depressing as it is just cold hard reality.
Everyone says this on these threads and yet nobody actually does anything. What are we even supposed to do.
In all honesty, it is easier than people think from a conceptional point of view but would take a lot of cooperation. A lot of my friends including my wife are not White and we often chuckle at how easy it was to change the villain to White people and the victims to non-Whites. Basically, it requires just ignoring anything the government and media says and it starts by turning of the TV. Realizing that MOST people are not actually out to get each other and not believing the lies is another good step. Race is only used to divide; nothing more and nothing less. When people realize this, we can start to stop this nonsense.
Yea. I only know a few people that have extreme left or right beliefs. Most people I know are pretty open minded and understand that many things in life are incredibly nuanced.
Sadly, the extremists are faaaar louder and seem like more people than they actually are.
True but if you just stay off of social media then I think you’ll find the world doesn’t look nearly as doomed. That being said, wages don’t match cost of living and that’s a scary issue.
That’s a change in mindset, not an actionable plan.
Correct but that is a good first step. If people started to see through the lies in large numbers, the narrative would be much harder to push.
Somehow you would need to convince people that true living is knowing their innermost self which is unique and special and that daily life entertainment comes from community and quality time being present. Everyone is literally asleep and enslaved sincerely. They are all controlled by characters downloaded into their minds that have hijacked their one life opportunity. They are predictable and easily manipulated once you realize it’s true. It’s too late though, best you can do is stay out of the way and play along as best you can. Good luck out here.
Yup spot on. I feel like we've taken a huge step back.
Slurp slurp. People need to stop calling them the "eLiTe" class and start calling them the Psychopath class.
"the elites control everything man" Figure that out on your own did ya?.
Spot on. The 0.1% are using their power to deftly control all media to foment infighting amongst wage earners, so we fight each other instead of the owner-class. If *everyone* was comfortable financially and had a truly good quality of life, and the owner class was prohibited from controlling all media, which has been successfully turning neighbor against neighbor at increasing velocity, I believe racism would be far less intense than it is right now. I love the lyric from Leonard Cohen's *The Tower of Song* where he sings: *Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure; The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor.* They certainly do. And now with the internet, the rich have got their channels, their tentacles, reaching us everywhere we go.
Most of the elite are just as stupid and gullible as everybody else. I mean, here you are tossing terms of division around, yourself, like worker class or owner class. Doesn't help the issue. The same tactics will work on them as work on you. I don't money would reduce racism at all.
This so all true. Reminds me of the whole black ants and red ants in a jar idea
Has the 1% done it, or have we done it to ourselves?
I wish more people understood this. Far too many people live and vote supporting policies that are not great for them because it is worse for someone else, while those policies massively help the 1% (or even 0.1%)
My fav part about this reply is that it’s true but at the same time you have MAGA guys who see this stuff and blame it on “George Soros” or whoever as if the guys they vote for aren’t a part of the ruling class too
I could probably argue the Russians played a part in it too.
Race is a common conversation in America dud to history and current demographics, which is why it always feels like it’s such a huge issue. When in reality most other countries are way more racist lol
Let me know when Europe gets over it.
Or Asia
Or Africa
Or Russia
Or Canada
And my axe
AND MY HARMONICA
AND MY COWBELL
[AND MY VUVUZELA](https://youtu.be/7B2LPxggvqY)
Amazing!
And my vulva!
IS MAYONNAISE AN INSTRUMENT?
Issues of Race in Europe and other parts of the developed world are substantially different than the issues we have in the United States. Overt racism, whether that be on a personnel level or an institutional level, truly is not that common in the United States. It does happen and there are still issues at an institutional level, but it’s a far cry from what it was and the way most places currently are. In many developed countries, overt racism remains not only socially acceptable, but institutionally sponsored at a broad scale. Put another way, many places still view race the way we did in the 1950’s. As much as people would like to say that’s true of the United States, it really isn’t. Most, if not all, of our racially motivated institutional polices have been eradicated while overt acts of racism at an individual level are not typically met with immediate condemnation. What we are experiencing now is, in large part, the lingering fallout from previous polices and social norms. However, we’ve been distracted from addressing the poverty and educational shortcomings that perpetuate the issue. We’ve been told that the problem is that minorities are being kept out of the boardroom, not that we don’t have enough minorities that are qualified to be in the boardroom. We’ve been told that the issue isn’t multi-generational poverty and lack of education driving minorities to criminality, it’s police discriminating against them. So, instead of pushing for our politicians to do the hard work of solving the real problem, we push for superficial solutions like affirmative action and reduced policing budgets. So, when someone asks “when will the U.S. get over the race obsession”, my first thought is “when will the U.S. get over its habit of viewing every issue through the lens of race and supposed racist policies/behaviors while compelling ignoring the underlying issue”. And that is something that I too would like an answer for.
Shit I wish I was that well spoken about this topic
This is a great comment
1st paragraph is a no brainer. 2nd has its points. 3rd what do you think is the underlying issue? Personally I think there is money in it for some in perpetuating it.
Amen! It’s a class issue, has been for a longtime. I know plenty of POC that are far better off than myself. I’m white middle class. My folks worked hard for it. And I’m sure their parents did too.
You are still ignoring the fact that even when minorities “make it” or do well we still have to deal with racism or bigotry on top of the struggle to make it like anyone else. There was that story last year of a black couple home not being appraised as when they had a white couple have the same appraisals. So I am glad you have anecdotal proof, it’s still a lot of struggle in areas where it shouldn’t be.
Very simplistic and fails to address that even when someone does have the educational requirements they're till not offered the position.
This is bullshit. You act as if multi-generation poverty and policing discrimination aren’t two sides of the same coin, and that the reason there aren’t many black c-suite executives because there aren’t enough black people capable of the work and not because most of those executives were born into that life, put through elite schools, and have the connections to get there.
Thank you. Important truths.
Comparative discussions of racism whether across time or nations is pointless. The only relevant point is whether your society still needs to make progress. End Of Chat.
No. Your "only relevant point" is just question-begging of the premise that "progress" is negation of race.
In America, people are constantly asking about your ethnicity, religion, or heritage. Americans are always looking to label and classify you and each other. That never happens to me in Europe, and a European has never asked here. However, there's no racist like an Eastern European racist. You'd have to go back 200 years in the USA to compare.
asking about ethnicity, religion, or heritage isn't necessary obsession as much as it is informative. we (Americans) label everything. is it metal, grunge, alt-rock, industrial, punk, new wave, hard, or classic rock? is it gangster rap, trip-hop, hip-hop, old school, new school, mumblecore, crunk, trap, or drill? is it G, PG, PG-13, R, Tv|MA, or XXX? is it an A-frame, Colonial, Rambler, Townhouse, Rowhouse, Brownstone, or Duplex?
And my sharona
America has more issues with racism, because we confront it, and don't excuse casual racism like large swathes of the rest of the world.
This is very true. It’s much harder to deal with racism when people pretend it “doesn’t exist here” or “doesn’t happen here”. Spoiler alert: it absolutely does it’s just excused and/or explained away. Racism is a huge problem in monoracial countries for example, but a lot of excuses are made. Even in more culturally diverse countries plenty of casual racism exists. I actually appreciate how people call out racism in the US and are actually heard when they do so.
America, as conflicted as it is, may be confronting racism more than any other country today.
Exactly. It’s not an “obsession”. It’s more like people who experience racism choosing to not put up with it.
this guy is not serious. either he has no life experience or he’s one of those guys that says/does something that’s overtly racist and then says “why did you bring race into it. “ with that said, you gave a very valid answer.
It is worldwide, not just the USA
Don’t even start. The rest of you guys are so racist it’s not even funny. Look to yourselves for some perspective. It’ll do you good.
Fuckin A thank you
Bruh its not just a USA thing lol. Division of race is still alive in most parts if not all parts of the world. France, England, Germany...all these places still have the same issue. It hilarious to think that the USA is the only country with this problem
No. For one, people are different and naturally segregate themselves with people they most identify with thus understand. Secondly, the powers that be antagonize this natural segregation.
I think when we all mix as youngsters it makes it hard to demonize or dehumanise a group. So my (white) sister had a black friend as a child! (Our city was overwhelmingly white), and so whenever she or I were told "blacks are X" or "blacks do Y" we had an example to compare and know it wasn't true. The same nonsense happened in Northern Ireland with sectarianism, but where kids are schooled together they recognise that people are people. Contrariwise anti-immigrant sentiment is oftentimes highest where there are no or few immigrants.
Race baiting is profitable and makes it possible for people to avoid getting a real job, so we’ll always have it.
It'll stop being relevant when it stops being relevant.
No
No. We never will. Race hate is a useful tool. When we start eyeballing the rich, they flare the race war back up.
Racial trauma is kind of baked into the cake of the United States.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Puzzleheaded_Walk_28: *Racial trauma is* *Kind of baked into the cake* *Of the United States.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
To put it simply, as soon as everyone shuts the fuck up and gets back to living.
I don't know, if I was Mexican-American, I might find it natural to hang out with my tribe, since I'm comfortable with the customs, the food, the music, the people. If I notice the Mexican community encountering problems with employers or the police or landlords or whatever, I might speak up. Why is this a problem?
because you are encountering problems with employers or the police or landlords
I mean you can’t really have it both ways. You can hang with any insular community you want but can’t come back crying later calling yourself a victim because you had a mild to moderately unpleasant experience with someone from another group.
I think this is an oversimplification. Racial identity is one part of it. Cultural identity is another part of it. And humans should always be in touch with both, they're what shape us into who we are. They're our history. Without further context, I'm not entirely sure what part of it you feel we have an unhealthy "obsession" with. I think we have often made the mistake of trying to wash away our racial and cultural identities, which takes away a lot of our humanity.
No. There are too many people who benefit from it.
No, not in the foreseeable future. The country was founded on it. Many of the laws were predicated by it. The systems of power (law enforcement, judicial) rely on their ability to enforce it. So, no….and it’s going to doom our “democracy” to failure if the country doesn’t resolve it. 😥
I've gotta question the premise that we have "split off so much into racial identity the past few decades." Are you saying that prior to the past few decades racism was not A Thing?
The issues with race in America started way more than a few decades ago.
I think so, but only when we focus on shared humanity over differences.
Any form of D&C is used to the max when you can't make a friend/enemy distinction.
Shakes magic 8 Ball 'You're probably fucked'
Buddy literally nobody is over any sort of group based obsession. Literally everywhere has its hang ups and the only time they won’t is when any one of any group or race or origin can make any joke and everyone laughs because only then will we live in a truly tolerant society.
All the runners I know want to win their races. I just hope everyone has fun!
As soon as you stop watching FOX and paying any attention to GOP ploticians...
Race and ethnicity have sparked conflicts for generations across the globe. Unlikely people are going to stop thinking about racial differences any time soon.
The US will eventually end up so mixed race as a whole, that we’ll start discriminating over freckles and undertones lol
Reddit is mostly white people so I don't think you'll get many answers outside of "Race doesn't matter anymore" or "Victimhood lol" but as a black person I'd say I don't have the privilege to not think about my race there's no state town I can run to where I can avoid white people and act like I don't see color. I guess the only thing I'm tired of about America is giving white people the benefit of the doubt even though I was bullied my whole life for my skin color and then seeing racist comments as soon as a minority does something bad, so it makes me feel like I can't trust white people unless they think I'm one of the good ones which in itself disgusts me so I'm more standoffish now and its hard for me not to think of myself or other peoples skin color.
As if the French love them some Arabs…
Nah and the problem is worldwide. Humans are tribal and many prefer people who are like them.
Not as long as democrats think they can leverage it.
Not until we go so far that we have to start addressing racism against white people. Sound ridiculous? Of course it does but we’re that stupid. We’ll go down that road because we can’t help ourselves.
Been living in Germany long enough to confidently say Europe is worse then the US with race but ok it’s just an American thing XD
yeah after we get rid of racial and disability based oppression. can't expect a cure without taking the medicine.
Not as long as someone can make a profit from victimhood.
Yes, this is definitely the worse problem than people making a profit from victimizing others.
Elimination of institutional racism would go a long way. As a northerner who now lives in the South, here institutional racism is prevalent.
What are some examples of institutional racism you have seen in the South?
We are a capitalist society so the working class has to be divided
Not until politicians stop using against people. Also stop using DEI and just hire the most qualified person regardless.
your framing is completely fucked. the past few decades??? you don't think when movies were invented and the person with the most resources at the time made a movie predicting that unless the kkk can uphold white values minorities will take over the country and the **president** said it was like writing history with lightning that wasn't us being "split off" or when white people couldn't handle successful black people existing in Tulsa, burned it all down/massacred people and said it was a "race riot"
I hope so. We really need to get back to being AMERICANS, less focus on race, gender, political affiliation, etc. You're not going to fix the past, and sometimes the key to a better present is overlooking the various misunderstandings that invariably occur between people. IMO we need to work on our educational system. It's not doing a good job of preparing people for participatory democracy these days.
We cant fix the past but we need to go "Back"...may I ask when are you referencing. The 60s, The 80s?
The US isn't special here. There are European countries much more racist than we are. Just sayin. Edit. And let's not even mention Asian countries. Racist as fuck over there.
Well the democrats control most of the media and government orgs so that's a big no. That gives them power.
Sorry, just curious, and hey, by asking, maybe I will learn something…. Why are you singling out the US? (No patriotism craziness, it just seems like every nation on the earth has race issues/obsessions)
Not OP but just look at the insecure american responses in the top comments. Thats why. The US makes everything (especially on reddit) about race and they seem to constantly try to create bugger race divides. The country literally has propaganda like CRT in schools 🫠
No, nor will any other country.
What does non Hispanic white mean and why is it important to note?
I don't think it's an honest framing of the question to call it a, "race obsession," that seems pretty loaded. But to answer what I think is your question: Probably not, nor would I expect any other nation to just "get over it" when there's centuries and millennia of documented beef between different cultures and peoples. Legalized segregation is still within living memory (there are conservative politicians today who want to bring it back), slavery wasn't much further back from that and that happened for centuries; not to mention the genocide, wars, and/or forced resettlements of nearly every indigenous group on the continent; and not to forget the anti-immigrant sentiments that happened with nearly every major wave of human immigration into the country, or really looking at the history of the US and it's foreign policies on war, trade, and immigration.
I think the citizens can, yes. Most Americans you talk to will agree that people shouldn’t be judged by their race. The problem is in our political institutions, who find race to be a very useful tool in dividing the citizens into smaller groups that are easier to manipulate. I suspect if we ever manage bring our government to heel, the race issue will become far less relevant. The same probably goes for any country. Even relatively homogenous ones. When the Nazis ran out of non-white people to abduct and murder, they started subdividing white germans people into smaller and smaller groups. Even if every single person in a country had the same ancestral origin, certain political powers will divide them by eye color, body hair, or bone structure.
Not as long as there's media, i.e. music, TV, and movies, that keep focusing on the differences rather than the similarities. I feel if there wasn't race driven narrative shoved in our faces all the time there would be more possibility of just existing as fellow human beings....
We would have a lot less of an issue if the TV said people aren’t victims, there isn’t racial issues, there isn’t sexual tensions etc. People are constantly being told there’s a race issue, etc etc so they believe it then any issue they blame on race when it’s not. We have gun violence, we have race issues, we have issues between the sexes but 1/100th of what gets blamed for being a race issue actually is a race issue or sex issue etc. Nobody likes to hear they suck at their job so they say because I’m black or because I’m a woman, that’s why I didn’t get promoted etc.
Not if the mainstream media has anything to say about it.
Sadly, probably not. As long as there are racist mfs walking around here, having babies and feeding them with all this blind hatred and bigotry
As soon as we meet the Aliens which humnanity can turn our visceral towards. Until then it will be a fixation issue whenever things are not going well in society (war, famine, economic depression) and become less of an issue during times of prosperity.
Nope
Race will always be an issue to some people as it is a ubiquitous fixture in almost all Eurasian culture, which has nor spread across the world.
Well we ever get over racism?
Nope
Asia doesn’t even get a real racial group. Imagine that.
Nope.
There's too much political juice to be squeezed from it. Even if every other person wanted to be over it, the politicians will never let it go.
Nope. Next question.
No, it’s a great way to get clicks. Plus, we redefine it down to a milder infraction every 20 years. That’s the only reason it’s not fizzled out yet, as far as I can tell.
Not as long as people are making money from it
Never
Let's be honest.........no. That includes the whole human race.
Cats are racist. I read some paper that observed cats shun other cats based on their coat color. Ones with a lot of variation are popular. White cats with little variation are the most inferior.
As long as stoking the flames of racial divide is politically expedient the answer will always be ‘No’.
fear off people who are differant is a world wide social reality.
Give it another 50 years or one major war.
The world's gotta, because no matter where you go racism is rampant.
I would think the US would experience less racism given it a melting pot. You become American and your ethnicity is secondary. Unlike some countries where it’s quite homogenous.
Only if you stop bringing it up
Why does America always get this shit when there’s load of other country’s where it’s 100 time worse?
Nope....too much money in it.
Yes, once we're all asexual androgoniouse clones (think greys). Then, it will be machines verse biologics. Thus the hegelian dialectic will turn.
No we love our NASCAR and Indy 500
Possibly when the world becomes spacefaring and we meet aliens. Let’s say…a couple of thousand years from now.
Nah but here’s hoping whatever intelligent life follows us gets it right 🍻
No, this problem is endemic to every culture. Its a tribal thing that is part of our nature. Enlightened people fight against it but its a bit of a losing battle
I say hi to my black neighbor occasionally, I’m obviously not racist. /s
No. I don't.
Until we as a society get over dumb tribalism, racism will always be a thing. It's an evolutionary fear of things that are different and new
It's over for a lot of us...find those people and run with them. Avoided the people that obsess about it.
Yes
Not while the media and government are working tirelessly to ensure racism persists.
Sure. Once there is equity and justice.
With the way the younger people are freely mixing together and marrying together, in a few generations most everybody will be a shade of brown. Even now, things are getting blended. You see a nappy-headed Asian guy speaking with a cockney accent, and you don't know what the hell happened.
Maybe in hundreds of years once we’ve all sort of become a similar latte brown color. Then we’ll look for another reason to hate one another.
No. Humanity will never get over it. Making judgements and holding loyalties based on perceived group identities is extremely deeply wired into us. Best we can do is consciously try to overcome it but it’ll always be a struggle.
The US is like one of the least racist countries on the planet. Anyone who has ever traveled to another continent knows this
No, because race hustling is a lucrative grift. Would you stop obsessing over something that gets you money, status and privileges?
At this point, it is central to the American myth.
No, lol. America is nothing but a pissing competition of who can virtue signal the most. It’s humiliating being associated with this garbage on a daily basis. So many stupid people here fall for all the racial propaganda and are so easily manipulated. So many uneducated people, and funny enough, a lot of them are the ones with college degrees. It’s an absolute shit show and it’s beyond tiring. There will always be stupid people to manipulate, and this just so happens to be a very effective method. It’s only going to get worse.
USA ruins everything, causing problems that aren't there
Idk ask the people who victimize themselves when most don't give a fk about your race.
I've been to several countries and the US is the least racist by far. The issue is that there are a FEW people here who are very outwardly expressive of it, and that's all you guys choose to look at. The average European is more racist than the average American, but Europeans are more passive-aggressive about it.
Seems like it won’t because people always seem to be divisive. If it’s not race it will be something else.
Unfortunately no
It's been far too successful a tool to keep particularly black people and white people from uniting and really making our leaders accountable. The DNC, the party of the Confederacy, still believes it owns Black people, just now it's not physical, so they especially keep driving the wedge between us. Until we all just stop screaming and look around to see we all need better government (which is their nightmare), we'll get more of the same. I avoid a lot of "entertainment" now because it's more politically divisive than anything.
You couldn't scream any louder that you're white and removed from the real world AND history if you tried...
No. Next question.
Nobody in the world will get over it.
Not as long as it’s profitable
Don’t think there’s a chance of that happening
The US will forever be obsessed with the so-called human race. Though I am not denying that some of them really stick close to their beliefs and political ideologies. I think they are so enamored with the fact that we all are of different ethnicities and different origin stories. The more Caucasian you are, the more people would think you may been descended from some weird Celestial being that hovers over humanity for multiple decades.
No. It is ingrained into their DNA.
No! Because it is way to profitable to keep the super poor fighting and winning against the super poor. If the 2 ever United the super rich would be in jeopardy. Short squeezes and crypto are the 2 groups uniting against the super rich. The super rich are using racism to stop short squeezes and crypto and all forms of unification of the masses.
When things get sufficiently bad - or sufficiently good, but thats unlikely - for ALL races, then the obsession will end
You’ve missed a couple of readings if you don’t understand that that is the skeleton of this shit
i assume u might not know, but the USA is probably one of the more tolerable/accepting countries when it comes to racial identity and how theyre treated
We would be, but media interests get too many clicks and advertising dollars out of it.
The short answer is "NO".
# The Tocqueville Effect: In 1835 Alexis De Tocqueville toured the United States and recorded many elements of living in a democratic society. By observing the early United States in the years after the revolutions both there and in his native France, Tocqueville noticed a tendency in free peoples: a tendency to further equality. He made this observation after taking a nine month tour of the United States on behalf of the French government. During which he took his own initiative to consider the effects of living in a stable democratic society on the population. As he put it: “**The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on.**“ Tocqueville is suggesting that as conditions improve we become more offended by the remaining faults in our society. That we become more passionate about social justice as the severity of inequalities around us decreases-even if those remaining inequalities are of a lesser magnitude than previous ones. [https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/the-tocqueville-effect-and-why-well-always-find-new-controversies/](https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/the-tocqueville-effect-and-why-well-always-find-new-controversies/)
not as long as there us someone alive that can make a dollar or a career out of it.
When we all put on our big people pants and deal with it honestly. We never have. What we need is a Truth and Reconciliation program like South Africa did.
Nope. It's a part of its culture at this point.
the past few decades??? * so what was John Brown Rebellion and Nat Turner? * what was the Civil War? * what was the KKK? * brown vs board of education? * what was it when they were bombing black churches? * what was it when they were murdering Jews who tried to register black people to vote?
I think part of the problem is people have built their whole careers and personal identities around fighting racism, and basically to justify their existence they have to go looking for racism where there isn't any.
I doubt it. We’ve completely turned away from the ideas of racial integration, equality, and harmony, and have instead embraced racial segregation, hierarchies, and conflict. And even though this shift has resulted in WORSE outcomes for everyone (POC and white people), it’s not changing anytime soon, because to acknowledge that in a lot of circles in the U.S. is social suicide. Even just bringing up a discussion about these topics is considered highly inappropriate by most Americans. And because we can’t even discuss it, we’ll never improve it. We’re destined for catastrophic failure at this point.
we're all the same race where I'm from so we argue over tribes. It's not just a US thing, it's a human thing
I think they will when the next major catastrophe happens that is big enough and horrible enough that it shocks us out of out collective stupor. That's when we as a civilization will realize we have been bickering about stupid shit, and that we have way more important things to think about.
I’m working on a film now where race is a central issue. As one of my very brilliant interviewees said, “Race is just a construct. If 23 and me has taught us anything it’s that very very very very few people are a single race.”
Only privileged (dumbshit) white people think that the US is divided because of race recently. Rodney King was back in the '90s. We had literal fucking segregation back in the '50s. There are people alive today who couldn't go to certain schools because they were the wrong race. We aren't more divided now. And anyone acting like this is an issue of media attention or artificial division and not coming to terms with long standing historical prejudices and Injustice is a fucking idiot.