Is it racist?

[Bakari]

Because my grandparents remember their grandparents.
It wasn't that long ago.

Time is not the question, paternity is.  It's Homer's old question again, as well as the material for many folk songs that are variations on this one: http://www.songlyrics.com/debra-cowan/johnny-be-fair-trad-lyrics/  According to some studies (with DNA testing), as many as 30% of children of married couples weren't fathered by the husband.  That's just human nature, and might even have been more common a couple of generations ago, when a woman who found herself pregnant outside of marriage pretty much had to accept any man who was willing.

Who said anything about paternity?  The family traces the Maternity line back to American slavery.  Hell, all the good stories (on both sides of the family, in fact) were about the women.  I don't even know the names of the husbands of Lily Lemons or Chaya ((two of) my great great great grandmothers)

Than you could very well be mulatto-- or whatever the hell the old-timey racist name for that level of mixing would be, if any of those slave-matrons had had bastard children sired on them by overseers (and lord knows that happened entirely too often!). Not that I'm challenging your self-idenfitication as 'black' by any means. 'tis a very slippery thing, though, this racial business.

My point is, that wouldn't matter.  Even if half of my maternal ancestors had a kid with someone other than another African descendant, it would still leave me with more than 50% African DNA.  Which makes me technically unqualified for the mulatto designation.  I am, however, unquestionably mixed.  My mother's mother was Jewish Ukrainian.  And there are rumors of possible Polish, Irish, and Native American mixed in there somewhere along the lines, although I have less confidence about those.

[wepner]

My real answer is too long for a forum comment: http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2013/01/RapeAndFeminismPage1.html
Perhaps my gender means I have no credibility, but I am generally of the opinion that that opinion is the fallacy of ad hominem, and that ideas should be judged on their merit, not on who says them

I definitely didn't mean to say you had no credibility because of your gender, but I am never sure what the proper reaction is to the fact that white dudes are generally a lot more confident in the fairness of society than various minority groups. That might be oversimplifying it but it definitely seems like racial minorities think racism is a bigger problem than white people and women tend to feel that sexism is a bigger problem than men.
Hardly scientific but still amusing:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/racism-is-already-half-non-existent-daily-show-tries-to-heal-americas-racial-wounds%E2%80%A6/

I feel like the disparity in the numbers itself is proof that "something" is wrong, but I'm not sure what that "something" is... Like if there were drastically different satisfaction levels between two people in a marriage wouldn't that sort of automatically mean that "something" was wrong in the marriage? I don't know maybe that's a terrible analogy I'm curious if you've noticed the same thing and if you have an explanation for it.


BTW I read the article you linked to, it was really thought provoking. I guess my opinion is/was pretty similar to yours, but its still nice to read a well thought out, bold article on such a complicated issue.

[Jamesqf]

...I am never sure what the proper reaction is to the fact that white dudes are generally a lot more confident in the fairness of society than various minority groups. That might be oversimplifying it but it definitely seems like racial minorities think racism is a bigger problem than white people and women tend to feel that sexism is a bigger problem than men.

Perhaps much of this is nothing more than the easy availability of (and cultural indoctrination towards) excuses.  That is, if your minority person fails at something, s/he can always blame racism, which is much easier than accepting one's own shortcomings.  Not only that, the "I was a victim of racism" attitude will likely win a good bit of sympathy.  The white dude does not have that option, except for blaming it on affirmative action.

[Bakari]

That might be oversimplifying it but it definitely seems like racial minorities think racism is a bigger problem than white people and women tend to feel that sexism is a bigger problem than men.

Of course it is a bit oversimplified - I've lived being a black person in poor, high crime, but diverse areas all my life, and traveled to many other parts of the country which allowed me to compare different places, and most white people I talk to think racism is a bigger problem than I do.  Just came back from a friend's house, where her boyfriend insisted something was sexist (the "Blurred Lines" video) which she thought wasn't.

But aside from that, I think the largest part is because human minds don't naturally work scientifically.  People give far more weight to personal experience than to statistics.  People notice and remember grand dramatic things more than small continuous ones.  People notice things that confirm what they believe and ignore things that conflict.  And people find ways to see what they were expecting.

If you have been told your entire life that cops target people like yourself, then when you get pulled over for going only 5mph over the limit, you see it as an example that confirms what you expected, while if you haven't been told that, you think the cop must be filling his quota.  The reality is both are wrong - there is no secret unofficial speed above the limit that cops are suppose to ignore.  The legal limit is actually limit.  If you get pulled over for driving 5mph over the limit, its because you are breaking the law.
If you have been told your entire life that racism is everywhere, then if no one comes to help you in the store, they are ignoring you because you are Black.  If someone DOES come to help you, it isn't because they actually want to help you, its because they want to keep an eye on you because you might steal.  If you believe you can accurately determine other people's motivation by intuition, and that your personal interpretations of your expressions reflect society at large, then when you see what you are looking for, it means that racism must be everywhere.

I'm not saying that there isn't real racism.  The objective evidence says there is.  I wrote about that here: http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2013/04/race-whites-still-winning.html
What I am saying is that individual people stating their subjective experiences is not evidence either way.  Of course everyone thinks whatever their own personal issues are are the most important issues, because humans are naturally self-centered.  Gay people think homophobia is the biggest problem, and fat people think sizeism is the most significant, and the unemployed think employment is.  Poor people are focused on welfare, and rich people care about taxes.  What would we expect other than minorities thinking racism is a bigger problem, and women thinking sexism is a bigger problem?  Wouldn't it be kind of odd if that wasn't the case?

[Jamesqf]

If you have been told your entire life that cops target people like yourself...

And if you're told that cops do this sort of thing to young black guys because of racial profiling, yet you as a poor young white guy have had exactly the same experiences at the hands of cops...  Well, perhaps you discount the racism bit, and come to understand that the vast majority of cops only respect two colors, blue and green, and that the talk of racism is just to divide the rest of us against ourselves.