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Have you ever done or said anything accidentally racist?

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Cheshire_Buddha said:
One of the GM's from another store called my store asking if I could make his cousin some food and give him a discount. His cousin comes in and I immediately grab his pizza. He goes, "How did you know I was GM's cousin?"

"You guys look alike."

They are both Asian. Face palm. Felt like an asshole.
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Generalizing/stereotyping is different from racism. To me you were just playing into a stereotype (all Asians look the same) not racism (directly stating or implying that Asians are inferior to other races).
 
Vinsanity. said:
We have two Quinn's where I work - and one time a co-worker asked which Quinn I was talking about. I said "the black one".

(the other is white)
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I am probably walking into a trap, but... I don't get this. If they had asked to identify the Quinn that was white, the response would have been "the white one". But since the Quinn that was black was asked to be identified, a characteristic of that specific Quinn was used. That seems okay to me.

There may have been more pertinent descriptions you could have used, but I don't know if you knew them well or only recognized them in passing based on appearance.
 
I only found out that the term "japseye" is...well... Jap's eye quite recently. I'd never written it down before & it just never occurred. One of those slang words I'd heard since being a little kid.
 
Servbot24 said:
I am probably walking into a trap, but... I don't get this. If they had asked to identify the Quinn that was white, the response would have been "the white one". But since the Quinn that was black was asked to be identified, a characteristic of that specific Quinn was used. That seems okay to me.

There may have been more pertinent descriptions you could have used, but I don't know if you knew them well or only recognized them in passing based on appearance.
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I think it relates to the fact that when categorizing a black person and a white person of the same name, it's "Black Quinn" and "Quinn"
 
Not really, but I'm an Indian man who married a white Canadian woman. I call her cracker all the time but it's okay. I'm her curry in a hurry :)
 
I've yet to meet an adult of any skin color who hasn't.

And that sure as heel counts me as well as I'm not. Try not to though as most people do I would hope.
 
At an outdoor restaurant, my friend was asked by a security guy behind me to take his feet off the table. He does, and his feet were covering a "do not place feet on table" sign. I say "wow, thanks obama" as it was the running joke at the time, and my friends look at me weird. I turn around and the guy was black, he just shook his head and left before I could explain.

I still feel bad about it. My friends knew what the joke was meant to be and that I didn't see him, but it sort of ruined the mood at the table.
 
Stereotyping and Racism is sometimes necessary. How else would you describe someone to a police sketch artist?

Also, is making decisions based on statistics considered racism? Example, let's say you're in a city where statistically crime distribution is 80% African American, 20% White. If I'm walking down the street, and on one side there is a sketchy looking African American, and on the other a sketchy looking White Person. Am I racist for choosing the sidewalk with the White Person? I'm making a decision based on statistics that just so happens to be about race. What then?
 
I was at a braves game last year with a few customers Instead of sitting, we decided to watch from the Chop house (outdoor bar with a decent view of the game). I got the first round from the bar, but the rest of the beer was obtained via a server who I only saw once on our second order. At the end of the game, I stopped a young black lady sporting the same hairstyle I remember seeing on our server to ask for the check. She said "oh, you want ____, I guess we all look alike, right?" My group went completely silent and she started laughing. I still get shit for it whenever I see those guys.
 
I'm sure we've all done things that are not intentionally racist, but are. I've been accused of mimicking an Asian accent when pretending to be mentally challenged. It's hard to argue that I wasn't trying to disparage one group of people, but another.

I have said racist things out of malice though. I think I was around 8 years old and playing with three of my friends. I think I felt they started picking on me so I fought back with "well at least I'm not black." They were good kids, so they just decided to go home. It's a bit ironic that I was the minority in that situation and I'd say something so racist. They forgave me, they were good, but I thought about it a lot growing older. I've apologized to them a number of times, we're talking like I've found them on fun to apologize still. I didn't know the Nword or I might have used it in that situation. It's crazy that even as young as I was when I did that, I knew that degrading someone based on skin color was a thing.
 
PeskyToaster said:
The psychological processes that lead to stereotypes, prejudice, and racism are present in everyone.
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I feel like being aware of that allows you to decide not to be racist.

I've recently had not look for that within myself during this election. Living in TN, I'm surrounded by Republicans and unfortunately a lot of Trump supporters. Many of them unfortunately (and obviously I know it's not all of them) are white. I'm surrounded by a lot of white people. At times, my defense mechanism goes up because there is a higher than normal chance that this person might be supporting everything that I hate. Sometimes I ask myself if it's worth engaging this person in conversation. Then I remember "Chazz, there is nothing about that person's skin color that makes that lesser or greater than yourself. They don't have a different type of mind than I do simply because of the color of their skin."

I really don't believe everyone is a racist. Everyone is definitely prone to stereotyping.
 
I said something quite racist when I was below the age of 10. I blame rap music, I had no idea what I was saying at the time.
 
I'm not white so no? j/k

The answer is yes around my pre-teen to early teen years, and were mostly intended for insults w/o realizing how insensitive and stupid that shit was. Oh and I used the N-word (stuff like "my nigga" and shit, where I'm from black/brown/white young people use it casually and with no bad intentions). However, I stopped using it not because I think merely using automatically makes you a racist but cause it sounds stupid and forced from me so yeah.
 
I was at a stop light yesterday and another car was stopped and the driver and passenger got out and exchanged places really quick.

I said "Ah, the old Chinese fire drill" and my co-worker said "YOU CANT SAY THAT ANYMORE! THAT'S RACIST!"

I hadn't even thought of that before. Then I wondered where the term even came from, since I hadn't ever thought of that either.

(In case you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fire_drill)

Thoughts? Is this racist?
 
One time I was having breakfast and asked someone to "pass the juice", but it actually came out as "gas the Jews". Boy was my face red, let me tell you.
 
In middle school me and my brother used to say gay/faggot as an insult when 99% of the time the situation was never remotely homosexual. Like if one of us lost in a fighting game "What the hell? Man thats gay! Dam faggot Kazuya"
 
I get drunk and play Halo at least once a week. So yeah...

I mean, I don't have a mic in so it's just yelling at the TV. I keep it to myself thankyouverymuch!
 
When I was about 14 my friends and I would make silly race jokes, we didn't really understand the harm in it then which makes me feel shitty.
 
Jonneh3003 said:
When I was about 14 my friends and I would make silly race jokes, we didn't really understand the harm in it then which makes me feel shitty.
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Same here, only to each other and it was probably wrong but we would never say anything bad, just silly banter and we grew out of it very quickly.
 
I was sitting in my college cafeteria talking to my roommate about how agile and fast our basketball team in their last few games. I remember genuinely saying,"They move like some super fast monkeys"

He looked at me in horror. Most of the basketball team was sitting behind me.

I was thinking they were genuinely moving around like agile animals...it was an unfortunate animal I picked to compare.
 
Actually, to be honest when we were kids we called the corner store up the road the "gook mart". We didn't even realize what the fuck that meant or why the hell we said it... we were like 6 to 10 at the time. I'm pretty sure it came from our backwards ass cousins and their Vietnam veteran dad.

We were just naive, funny thing is my kids are around that same age and they know all these terms and why they are bad from the damned internet. I guess that's good, that they know they are bad.. but it's crazy how much shit they know.
 
NervousXtian said:
Actually, to be honest when we were kids we called the corner store up the road the "gook mart". We didn't even realize what the fuck that meant or why the hell we said it... we were like 6 to 10 at the time. I'm pretty sure it came from our backwards ass cousins and their Vietnam veteran dad.

We were just naive, funny thing is my kids are around that same age and they know all these terms and why they are bad from the damned internet. I guess that's good, that they know they are bad.. but it's crazy how much shit they know.
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So the Internet is good for something.
 
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