What Do People Get Out of Being Racists?

In my experience - people who have racist or quasi-racist ideas think that those ideas are validated either by what they see on the street or what they read about on the news. I can think of three main varieties.

1) The working class white man who grew up lower-middle class in a neighborhood that borders "the ghetto" and therefore would have a lot of experience with the crime and social dysfunction experienced in and around said ghetto. If you start out being taught a racist paradigm, and then most of your experience with the people you're supposed to hate involves crime, it's not hard to re-interpret that as a validation of what you were taught.

2) Another subtype of more recent vintage (and one I've seen up close and personal) is the upper-middle class white person raised in nice neighborhood where most of the people they meet are white. They grow up being taught glowing stories about how the country overcame racism in the 60s, and everything is better now (reinforced by the fact that the few black friends they have are themselves upper-middle-class suburbanites). These people then find themselves in their mid-20s living near the inner city, suddenly seeing what's going on there - and inevitably seeing both crime and too much anti-white hatred in the streets. This person then concludes that they were sold a bill of goods with the glossy civil rights narrative in grade school, and that in the "real world", black culture is hopelessly corrupted, anti-social, and highly racist against white people.

3) And finally, you have the white person who is not raised around black people, does not meet a lot of black people, and continues to live in a majority white area into adulthood. This person is the same person as the person in the first paragraph, except they they get their validation from what they see on TV and in the newspapers rather than what happens to them on the streets.

Most villains think they are the hero and it's worth knowing why they think that.

 

...
Or you could listen to what a reformed Neo-nazi has to say on the subject.
http://www.cracked.com/article_21614_5-things-i-learned-as-neo-nazi.html

 

There's no one real explanation of why someone decides to hate. It all depends on their environment, their experiences, who they grew up with, etc. Maybe they grew up with a racist relative? Maybe one really bad incident (or a series of really bad incidents) sparked something dark within them and it turned into hatred of a particular race/ethnicity? Or maybe they were like that guy in the article Asher posted? Maybe they grew up around violence and hatred, and being a hateful bigot was how they survived? Maybe they were once actually tolerant, but aforesaid bad incidents taught them to spare their kindness to those they feel deserve it and the rest can politely puck themselves?

The point is, there's no one single key to unlocking the 'why is this guy a racist bigot' mystery. One guy may be a bigot because life experience taught him that being tolerant and compassionate only got his ass kicked up and down the block; it was a survival trait that developed into something much, much more sinister. The other guy may be a bigot because it gives him the power rush. Then again, that third guy may be a bigot because he was raised to believe that certain minority groups were bad by those he looked up to the most.

Ironically enough, even the people who lump everyone together into one tar paint aren't all the same. They have their own reasons, some more obvious than others.

 

Very sticky subject which makes it hard to explain how you feel without coming across as racist in one way or another.

I like to pride myself on not being racist, I will talk to anyone who wants to talk to me, regardless of where that person is from or the colour of their skin but, when you find yourself in a position where you are unintentionally jobless and you go to the government for help and they say 'get lost ...' then at the next desk sits a foreigner who doesn't speak English but knows what a gas bill is, which he gives to the government advisor who says "oh thanks, we'll make sure this is paid and while you're here, hold out your hand and I will give you this weeks stash of twenty pound notes totalling £400 ..." kinda makes you want to hate that person and everyone like him.

Does this mean we are racist or does the blame lie with the government for putting other nationalities ahead of home grown hard workers.

I'm all for equality, I'm all for giving a helping hand to those who need it and to a point, diversity can only be a good thing but, if you want to live in this country, then don't you think you should abide by our laws and leave us to celebrate our own traditions and religions without protesting that we are disrespecting you?

I hovered over the 'post reply' button quite a while before deciding to post this.

 

I do not see this as a race issue particularly. Firstly I think that in the UK our borders are too open; and our welfare system is too generous. I am moving to New Zealand, and in order to get my visa I needed to rely on my MRICS qualifications, have a job lined up earning a particular salary, have a chest x-ray, HIV test, Hepatitis test, eye test... etc etc. Why? Because they want immigrants to be net contributors, not lining up in the dole queue or using finite health service resources. This seems overwhelmingly sensible to me.

My other concern is that the UK is a liberal, secular country; and as can be seen from some of the Ofsted reports on certain schools in the Midlands, some people will abuse this freedom to indoctrinate young children in the education system into their own rather fundamentalist ideologies. I like to think this has no place in the UK.

 

I think there's a bit of a mismatch between your idea of the UK as a liberal, secular country and cutecate's interest in keeping immigrants from interfering with locals' "own traditions and religions." Because, unless things in the UK are a lot different than I think, immigrants aren't trying to get in the way of anyone's private religious practices, right? I expect cutecat is referring to some sort of objections to public displays of religion?

In my mind, those objections make sense in a country that's truly liberal and secular.

 

Does NZ still have a points system? I have an uncle who moved there with his family about 20 years ago.

What would you want the UK to be? Therein lies part of the problem. You can't please all the people all the time, even all the British people. There are vast differences between different groups of white, English people in what and how much they will tolerate. From the white supremacist groups with a hint of Hitler about them, down to the man on the street who will open his arms to anyone until he is wronged. Who's right and who should we follow?

 

The trouble with the UK is where it's placed in the world. Right at the centre between the rest of Europe and the Americas in the west. Hypothetically, if we were to trade physical places with NZ, then it would be NZ with all the immigration problems regardless of their entry system.

 

Amusingly, what will happen is this. There will be a white, middle-class individual working for a local council; the sort of person that is so achingly PC that they almost go full-circle back to plain offensive. They will come up with an idea that a Christmas festival excludes minorities, so without consulting anyone they will change the name to "Winter Festival".

A newspaper like the Daily Mail or Express (which are better used as toilet paper) will pick up on the story and announce on its front page "Immigrants Destroy Christmas"; people believe this when in fact no such thing happened.

The same shit happens with Europe all the time.

 

Yeah, it happens here, too. It's silly. Not a reason to resent immigrants, though, is it?

 

Sadly, for many people it is.

 

OK, there are certain countries where things that you do publicly, (things that are ok here,) would be frowned upon to the point of you getting arrested. These countries would also have no hesitation in arresting, publicly flogging and killing me off if I were to travel there and tell them that their whole religious outlook was wrong and that they actually should be following me and praying to my God.. Yet, certain groups of people come into Britain and expect us to not only allow them to change our rules and our beliefs, but then follow them in their way of life, consigning our own to the wayside.

There is a shop near me that has a massive, huge Christmas window display every year. And have done for years. This year, their display was nothing to do with Christmas. At all.

Allegedly, (and I stress allegedly but I can believe it) they had been told that they were not allowed to do a Christmas themed display because it offended certain groups of the community.

 

so, the government, council workers and newspapers (another reason why I don't read dailies) are to be blamed for racism.

 

Okay, but just because some other countries are horrible doesn't mean that we have a right to be horrible too, does it? I mean, are you supporting their attitudes? I assume not, so... how are they relevant?

And, honestly, are you having a lot of trouble with people coming to Britain and expecting you to "follow them in their way of life"? Can you give me an example of this happening?

 

I mentioned the issue with schools in the Midlands area earlier. Several of them were shut and other's had to go through remedial measures because they were being used for the teaching of fundamentalist Islam.

I want to see equality. No one group should impose their beliefs on, or curtail the rights of, another.

As an example, in the UK there is legislation in place ensuring gender equality, and equality regardless of your sexual orientation... but there is an exemption, and that is for organised religions. Why? Since when were they above the law?

 

I just went and read up on that (well, Wikipedia. Close enough). Yikes. I hadn't heard about that.

So, yeah, that's totally out of line and I can see why it would be scary. I don't think the actions of a few fundamentalists should tar the rest of the immigrant community, but I can see how it would definitely contribute to resentment and fear. What a mess.

 

Every day we hear of people wanting to bring their laws to our country. Killing innocent British people to prove their point. On the flip side, I don't agree with sending our troops to countries we have no business being in. I'm not saying they should come here and not themselves live by their ways. I'm saying they shouldn't expect us to change our personal ways and beliefs to accommodate them.

 

And that's why I wasn't going to post on this thread. No one has the answers.

 

No one does. Hatred to the point of bigotry is pretty much illogical. I mean, it basically means you hate everyone of a certain group due to arbitrary reasons, or because of what a small percentage that don't make up the whole did to you.

 

Yep. Ergo there will never be an end to racism.

 

To be fair, I like to believe we're slowly evolving ourselves out of racism. Don't forget, the ideas we now find morally repugnant were thought as OK just a century ago. Humans can change, it'll just take a long time.

 

I'm not sure that's the conclusion I'd draw.

You're saying that because something is irrational, it's also impossible to eliminate? We used to believe the Earth was the centre of the universe, but we got over that. We can get over racism, too.

 

A very long time but you also have to look at what racism actually is. I have an example for you. I have a friend who is a dinnerlady. She works in a school where there are children of all faiths. On the pudding menu for one of the days is jelly. Now, I'm not sure if you know this, but jelly contains gelatin which is a pork product which means that any vegetarians or muslim children can't have the jelly. Now, At the school, there are a number of muslim children who practice the faith and cannot have the jelly but there are also around the same amount of muslim children who come from families not practicing the faith or from mixed race families not practicing the faith and so they can eat whatever they want.

So, if my friend asks every single muslim child that comes through the door "are you vegetarian, can you have gelatin?" is she being racist for singling out all the muslim children?
If she errs on the side of caution and refuses to serve jelly to all the muslim children, (to save herself the possibility of being prosecuted if she gets it wrong) is she being racist?
And what about the non-muslim children, is she being racist to them for not asking them the vegetarian question in the first place?

There are groups of people out there who interpret racism differently, if you put the above to a poll of enough people, each scenario will get a 'yes' answer from someone.

 

We (humans) also used to believe that the earth was flat. How long did it take us to get it right?

I don't think we will see an end to racism, in my lifetime.

 

Actually we knew it was round very early. Certainly the Ancient Greeks new it, and probably significantly earlier than that. Just look at the horizon- it is curved, or the shadow of the earth on the moon during an eclipse.

In my school textbook there was the old tale that Christopher Columbus was warned off his journey by the church because he would sail off the edge of the world. This was a lie. The church new the earth was round and had accurate measurements of its circumference; they warned Christopher Columbus that he would run out of supplies and die. They would have been right if he hadn't hit an unknown continent first. Conclusion; BS is even written in school textbooks.

But in terms of racism, eventually we will all be a light shade of brown.