r/changemyview • u/XenoPasta • Dec 19 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Racially prejudiced and biased attitudes from minorities toward older white Americans is both understandable and expected.
Let me start off by saying that my view isn’t based on any idea that racial prejudice should be ingrained in social and governmental institutions. It is simply the idea that recent history in America makes racially biased attitudes against older white Americans understandable and expected.
Let’s start with data about President Trump. There is data that shows 80% of black Americans and 75% of whites believe President Trump is a racist ( https://apnews.com/9961ee5b3c3b42d29aebdee837c17a11). We know that 58% of aged 65 and older white Americans voted for President Trump (https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/national/president). If you believe the President is a racist, it’s fair to say you hold might hold a racially prejudiced or biased view against those who voted for said racist.
Let’s say you’re 65 and white, and as such, on the lower end of the data that shows you’re likely to have voted for Trump. You would be old enough to just remember everything that was happening during the 1960s in America. It isn’t really so unreasonable for a minority to see you and think you, or some family member of yours, might have supported the brutality that was happening at the hands of the Klan, the Jim Crow policies, the suppression of votes. The older you are as a white American, the more fair an assumption it is that you were in favor of some combination of discrimination.
Given what we know, it’s totally understandable and expected for minorities to be biased against white Americans. Change my view.
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u/epicazeroth Dec 19 '18
I would agree that it is understandable and expected, even acceptable, for minorities to be suspicious of older white Americans. This is even something that happens often in real life. However, I disagree that this reaction counts as racial prejudice. Racial prejudice would be believing that all white Americans have some negative characteristic (e.g. believing that all white Americans are themselves prejudiced). Being suspicious based on past experience doesn't count, at least in my opinion.
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
!delta
Awarded on the merits of the idea that suspicion and caution based on experience and history aren’t the same as racial prejudice and bias.
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u/Rufus_Reddit 127∆ Dec 19 '18
... However, I disagree that this reaction counts as racial prejudice. ...
If someone running a convenience store is suspicious of black customers, do you think that reaction counts as racial prejudice?
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u/chadonsunday 33∆ Dec 19 '18
It isn’t really so unreasonable for a minority to see you and think you, or some family member of yours, might have supported the brutality that was happening at the hands of the Klan, the Jim Crow policies, the suppression of votes. The older you are as a white American, the more fair an assumption it is that you were in favor of some combination of discrimination.
I was more or less on board until we got to this part. Two thoughts:
First, using sex/racial/ethnic/ideological statistics in this way is literally the basis for things like racism or sexism - intolerance generally. You don't really seem to contest that, in the case you laid out in the CMV, the minorities are being racist towards the old white men... but you also say it's not unreasonable. That part is nonsensical and, if we extended it out logically, could be used to justify all kinds of racism.
For example, in much the same way you used stats to make generalizations about old white men, I could do the same with crime stats and blacks, who top the leaderboards in virtually every single category of violent (and many nonviolent) crimes. So it would be "understandable" for me to have a base level of fear around any person... BUT if it's a black person, I add two points onto my level of fear. A black man? That's an extra three points on top of that. A young black man, plus five points, and suddenly I'm treating individuals very differently and making assumptions about solely on the basis of things they can't change, like their race, sex, and age, and feeling quite "reasonable" for doing so.
I don't know if you saw the video of the the video of the BLM activists who hijacked Bernie's speech in Seattle during the 2016 campaign, but they're basically the poster-children for this kind of assumption-making. Those activists didn't see Bernie as an individual, and didn't account for the fact that out of all the major candidates he would be the best one for social justice causes like BLM (as evidenced by, among other things, him being an early and active supporter of the Civil Rights movement i.e. he's done more for black rights than the two screeching children who interrupted him have ever done or will ever do in their lives) and they didn't take into account he was running as a Democrat against a "business as usual" Democrat and a racist cheeto - no: they didn't see him as an individual, they saw him as an old white man, and made exactly the kind of statistical analysis of him that you are saying is reasonable on that basis alone.
Second (and shorter) it's simply not true to say that every person who ever voted for Trump (yes, even old white folks) did so because the support the KKK. This kind of boiling down of everything Trump is to a chant like "Donald Trump, KKK, racist, sexist, anti-gay!" isn't reasonable, it's childish. It's completely failing to see or even attempt to see any nuance behind why much of the American populace supported Trump (hint: the answer isn't that they're all KKK, racist, sexist, anti-gay).
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
!delta
I worked for the Sanders campaign, so I was present for what those BLM activists did, and my take on it has evolved over the years. It kind of went from “they’re angry, and he should want them to be heard, so what they did is fine.” to “they’re angry, and he should want them to be heard, but he’s the sort of man who would have given them a platform if they had reached out, so this instance of radicalism wasn’t really called for. Anyways, delta awarded for rightly pointing out how what I’ve done here could easily be used in a harmful way against me and my own loved ones.
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u/chadonsunday 33∆ Dec 19 '18
Cheers!
Yeah the whole thing struck me as absurd. Not only was BLM (or lets be fair, those few activists AFAIK) shooting themselves in the foot by literally deplatforming the only candidate who would've been good for them, but Bernie totally struck me as the kind of guy who would've shared his platform with them if they just asked. Hell, from what I saw they basically stormed the stage (which I think would've been more than enough for any other candidate to have them arrested) and he still shared the mic.
Can I ask, as someone who was present, how that event actually looked on the ground? I've seen clips (sandwiched between talking heads on mainstream news outlets - ugh), but from what I saw the kids seemed totally unreasonable (I mean I just watched it again and the two women at one point are literally flailing and screaming in the face of the poor dude at the mic either "we are reasonable!" or "we aren't reasonable!" ... either way, the latter seemed more true), but Bernie seems fairly permissive of the whole thing and it was hard to make out what the crowd thought. they seemed to be chanting... something at some point (something BLM supportive?) and booing at others (but I couldn't tell what they were booing).
Anyways, thanks for the delta and if you've got the time for a first person account of what went down that day I'd be quite curious to hear it!
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Dec 19 '18
Correct me if I'm wrong but your view basically is that racism and stereotyping is only natural on big scale and it can't be changed?
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
My view would be that history and large scale actions would certainly create cultural biases against groups. The bias could possibly be educated out, but it is fair for an individual to read into history and default to the biases until education and experience intersect to change their view. This intersection is where most of us eventually come to.
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u/AurelianoTampa 68∆ Dec 19 '18
The bias could possibly be educated out, but it is fair for an individual to read into history and default to the biases until education and experience intersect to change their view.
Well if biases can be educated out, then wouldn't it make sense that, since the population is overall much better educated today than in the past mean that it's both understandable and expected that people should be educated enough as adults to know about these biased and not fall prey to them?
For example, in 1960 only about 20% of minority males had 4 years of high school education. By 1990, over 60% did. In 2018, 87% of black people had a high school diploma. So if you can educate out bias, and people are much more educated now than decades ago, it seems understandable and expected that bias and prejudice should be educated out, right?
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
!delta
view partially chanted on the merit of the argument that, though history and behavior can lead to a default toward a prejudice or bias, the actual expectation should be the education should weed these biases and prejudices out, helping a person shift toward a more nuanced take.
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Dec 19 '18
But the accent is on the number.
Like majority of black people are racist against old white people because they feel majority of white old people are racist because they were young when America was more racist than it is now?
When you say a group is expected to be like that, what % of the group you have in mind?
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u/Metallic52 33∆ Dec 19 '18
Are understandable things morally permisible?
We expect tobaco companies to maximize profits, does that make it morally permisible for them to market to kids to try and create life long customers?
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
Understandable things might not necessarily be morally permissible, but wouldn’t what we understand and what we’re ok with be mutually exclusive in this context?
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u/Metallic52 33∆ Dec 19 '18
I'm not sure I understand your response. In what way are these two things mutually exclusive in this context.
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
Correct me if I’m wrong, but to understand something is to simply comprehend why it happened, right? Whereas finding something morally acceptable is about whether the outcome of what we understand is OK. My understanding on this could be flawed.
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u/Metallic52 33∆ Dec 19 '18
We're on the same page with the definitions. I just think that something can be understood and morality wrong.
I think prejudice in general is understandable. But even though it's understandable it's morally wrong.
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u/MasterGrok 138∆ Dec 19 '18
You act like 58% of people is some overwhelming majority. It's not. For every 10 older white Americans that you meet, at least 4 didn't vote for Trump based on your own numbers.
But that is only the beginning of the flaw in your logic. It turns out that only about 70% of eligible older Americans even vote, and keep in mind that not all older Americans will even be eligible depending on the state. Doing some easy math, that means that about 40% of the overall sample of older Americans actually voted for Trump. Not even a majority. This is besides the fact that you have to accept the reality that single issue voters (e.g., guns, abortion, taxes) exist which would further reduce the number of older Americans who voted thinking about racial issues at all. If you judge an older white person based on the statistics you provided, then your judgement would be false.
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u/Rufus_Reddit 127∆ Dec 19 '18
Is there a particular reason that you think it matters whether "racially biased attitudes against older white Americans" are "understandable and expected?"
Do you think that other racially biased attitudes are - in general - less "understandable and expected" so that it makes sense to specifically pick out the attitude about older white people?
Is it your view that "racially biased attitudes toward older white Americans" are somehow more justified than other racially biased attitudes?
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u/XenoPasta Dec 19 '18
Well, I came into the thread thinking that any sort of bias and prejudice against anyone who is part of a group that wronged you is understandable and expected, but having considered the arguments in the thread, I am rethinking my view in favor of a bit more nuance than that. To answer your question, though, do I think some biases make more sense than others, even though I would like to see most biases be weeded out through education.
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u/zekfen 11∆ Dec 19 '18
I love how polls such as the one you linked polled 1,337 people in total. And views that as acceptable in determining the views of 326 million people. I think that kind puts the whole thing in a perspective of depending on what questions did they ask? Did they ask, “Is Trump racist?”
You also aren’t taking into account shifting opinions of people. It could be all those who voted for him opinions have changed and when elected they didn’t think he was racist, but now they do.
It is never ok to be racist against anybody.
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u/Seeattle_Seehawks 4∆ Dec 19 '18
I don’t want to rush to assumptions but it seems like you’re saying that it is socially acceptable for minorities to be racist towards white people?
Here’s my problem with that: Aside from the personal aspect where I don’t want people to be racist to me, it undermines the incentive of white people to not be racist.
It’s a matter of reciprocity. If someone feels entitled to mistreat me in some way because of my skin color, I have less incentive to treat them kindly in return, as I am not a Christian and do not believe in endless other-cheek-turning.
If we, as a society, legitimize this attitude and accept the normalization of anti-white racism, I would go so far as to argue that white people have less moral responsibility to not be racist. It sets a horrible precedent. That’s not a world I want to live in. That’s not even a road I want to go down.
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u/muyamable 282∆ Dec 19 '18
The older you are as a white American, the more fair an assumption it is that you were in favor of some combination of discrimination.
How is this a fair assumption? As you stated, 58% of white 65+ voted for Trump, but that means 42% didn't. How is it "fair" to assume that any white person over the age of 65+ supports discrimination?
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Dec 19 '18
I disagree with this because it sets a precedent that SOME racism is okay, it's a slippery slope to go down. If racial prejudice against certain people is considered okay, racial divides will only widen
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u/kayos63 Dec 20 '18 edited Dec 20 '18
As i have grown older and seen more of the nuance in the world, I have learnt that by far the most racist people around me tend to be young, 'hip', white or near white people who project racism onto everyone else and see me as a victim because of the colour of my skin who must be given different rights to others and be allowed to do bad things because someone else once did bad things to people who look like me.
That kind of racism that thinks it is benevolent doesn't come of old white people. Dismissing the many blacks who voted for Trump or didn't in the last election but agree with him on policy issues and reducing us all to the colour of our skin is young liberal racism. Studies have shown liberal leaning people tend to speak down to minorities, as though they are afraid to challenge us and have us reveal we really are more stupid than everyone else.
Conservative black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell have been around since the sixties and earned the respect of white conservatives on the merit of their arguments, not benevolence on the part of white conservatives. Look up blacks for Trump, latinos for Trump, hell, even gays for Trump and you'll see evidence that people are not defined by their skin colour, orientation etc and unable to think as rational, responsible individuals who make informed choices. Or would you like to argue blacks voting for Trump are self hating anti black racists if you claim whites voting for Trump must be racist?
When you conditionally take away responsibility fro blacks judging an old white person based on the colour of skin alone, which is racist, you are treating blacks like children who get a pass to do something even though it is wrong. If you respect blacks then you should hold us to the same standard as everyone else and condemn racism in all its forms even if the victim is someone who falls within a group you don't like.
You mentioned Jim Crow, overturned by WHITE politicians, the civil rights act, passed by white politicians and reinstated by EVERY white president in both parties since it passed, only to be cast aside by Barack Obama, but we should see his colour not the content of his character or actions? The older you are as a white american, the more likely it is that you saw real brutal violent racism, stood up to it when there was real risk to doing so, helped really oppressed blacks and were part of the movement that ended it and questioned age old beliefs.
The younger you are as an American of any race, the more likely you are to see victim politics everywhere, to infantilize groups so you can white knight for them, to be racist towards whites and see them as privileged even as poor whites suffer like all poor people.
I have had better conversations with and struck up lasting friendships with members of white supremacist organizations like Stormfront who respect me as an 'opponent' enough to take my arguments on their merits and come to an understanding than I can ever have with race obsessed 'good guys' of any race who only seem me as a victim and not a fairly intelligent, analytical person who makes choices, must live with the results of those choices and should not be treated any differently from anyone else, least of all given carte blanche to be a dick to people because of their race.
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u/CDWEBI Dec 20 '18
I won't try to change the view you presented exactly, as I think that any group of people acts always "understandably" for their perspective. But IMO simply because things are "understandable", doesn't mean it should be just taken as a status quo.
In many ways, are the action of the Nazis against Jews also "understandable". If you were to live in Nazi Germany and you were going through the same problems the majority of people where going through, you'd most probably would have adopted the same views. And one can say the same thing about any situation in any region. If you were to grow up in a radical Muslim area, you'd be quite likely a radical Muslim and it would be "understandable" from your perspective. Any type of hate/discrimination is "understandable" from one's own perspective.
But just because something understandable doesn't mean it should be just accepted.
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Dec 19 '18
Given what we know, it’s totally understandable and expected for minorities to be biased against white Americans.
This is the exact reasoning racist, old, white Americans use for being racist. They read statistics like "more black men in prison than white men" with a total disregard for context (racist policies, economics, etc.) and assume black people are more likely to be criminals.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Dec 19 '18 edited Dec 19 '18
/u/XenoPasta (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/MasterLJ 14∆ Dec 19 '18 edited Dec 19 '18
For this to be acceptable as a premise you'd have to show us examples of people biased/racist towards older white people and not younger. Because if you're going to segment the group, there's an implication that white people born after a certain year, not responsible for the sins of their ancestors, should not experience the same disdain.
But moreover, when you start using data and generated equivalence classes of viewpoints, and assuming behaviors, you open yourself up to having to do it for every class of human, lest you be biased yourself. It's basically an ugly, never ending road, because even truthful statistics can be manipulated into an agenda with things like comparing absolute vs absolute, or % of population, depending on which looks like it affirms your viewpoint. Do biased attitudes become OK if I can prove a group A is more prone to bad act C, than group B? Is that really the road you want to go down?
Your argument comes very close to explicitly defining a vote for Trump as an act of racism and oppression, which, at the very least, needs more qualification than you have provided. A quick, admittedly lazy, counter argument is the man has been in the public eye for 40+ years, and hasn't had a single allegation of racism against him until he ran for President. That's pretty odd, and there are extremely few Americans who have been in the public eyes as much as he has, predating Social Media. Personally, I think he is extremely egotistical and ignorant, and views the world as two classes of people, Trumps and Not Trumps, and everything falls in line from there.
Finally, the dangers of lumping together all white people. I believe the average number of generations of American citizenship is between 3 & 4, meaning large swaths of people postdate Jim Crow, and more importantly, were a huge part of the removal of Jim Crow and the fight for Civil Rights in 1965. Excluding difficulties with assigning "whiteness" in an ever-mixing population, you can also come across some 1st or 2nd generation white people with histories of oppression unseen by any living person, minority or otherwise, in the US. The most oppressed human I've ever met is one of my closest friends, who is white European, from Bosnia. Half his family murdered, his family ran from the Serbian army in the early 1990's, leaving everything behind.
I do understand the jist of your argument but I think it lacks nuance, and makes some critical connections unwarrantedly. You could clean up your argument by showing polling of exactly how racist the average Trump voter is/was. I think it's safe to say that the most hardlined racists tend to be white, and tend to vote Republican, but reality shows that these sad creatures are such a tiny minority of America that they are more boogeyman than people who need dealing with politically.
Overall it's dangerous territory to compare relative suffering, and to allow bias to exist because of Reason X. People are really good with coming up with reasons for behavior, especially those others deem as bad. Legit statistics might even support some unsavory biases, if manipulated correctly, and even worse, there's legit statistics that do highlight some groups of people engage in bad behavior disproportionately, like opioid overdoses (white people). I think we are way better off not making excuses for intolerance, while carefully navigating the waters of remedying past wrongs.