Have you ever come across the other spectrum where a person says that you sound like a black person talking like a white person but the person saying that to you is also black? Is that also racist? If your white friends singled you out, why didn't you tell them how you felt about it?
I've mentioned it to them and my friends are cool, in that, I can have these dialogues with them and the defense mechanisms don't come up and we can have a healthy conversation about it all. We don't dive into the whole "talking White or Black" thing. Hell, I've known most of these friends since elementary or high school! I just talk like "me" to them and vice versa.
It's not my friends that have said this to me--they never would. It's people that I have never met before, that I meet in the presence of these friends.
In this thread I have learned that many people don't know the difference between racial stereotyping and racism.
You are correct but sometimes, the line blurs.
Everyone and I mean everyone uses stereotyping in their everyday usage to describe things, but it does not mean they are racist. The person banned wasn't being racist but used a racial stereotype. Some racial stereotypes however can be used by a racist person to assert some superiority. Some racial stereotypes can be felt by the intended "victim" which makes them feel inferior or that they feel that other people are saying those stereotypes to make them feel inferior depending on what they want to read from the statement.
Not every manifestation of racism is blatant. Some of it is "harmless" things that we have all just allowed to seep in and be accepted but at the end of the day, it's racial in nature. Like when we believe that people (regardless of race) are "all that way". It's dangerous when we start buying into these beliefs wholesale about people.
I have come across racism many times in my life and you can tell straight away when someone is using a racial stereotype because they hate a particular race and want to assert some kind of superiority in contrast to when a racial stereotype is used that is not racist.
I have too and problem, imo, is that people view themselves against these extreme cases and say, well, that isn't me, I'm not that, therefore I'm not racist. Well, the truth is that to me, the worst racism isn't the obvious type. It's the subtle type like, walking on the other side of the street when you see someone of another race coming, changing how you talk to them when you think you need to make them more comfortable ("urbanizing" your speech), complimenting on how one speaks, shifting uncomfortably on the elevator, etc. These things aren't weighed the same as the overt stuff but it's still there.
Stereotypes in general come from many collectivist cultures. In collectivistic cultures however, there is a tendency to make greater distinctions between groups rather than individuals because of the importance attached to the relationship of the self to the group.
It also comes from non-exposure to other races and so some start to buy into those stereotypes because it's all they see in media and whatnot and so it becomes easier to just subscribe to these until proven wrong. And...
This forum for example is a collectivistic culture in a way and there are many stereotypes associated with this forums members even if the stereotypes are not accurate (stereotypes hardly ever are) but people are attracted to noticing behavioural patterns and when they see it enough there is that tendency to attribute it to a group which then becomes a stereotype. It is not usually malicious in nature, but rather used as a shortcut to describe a group as fallable as it may be.
You agree and just said it as well.
Great post.
