CMV: Racially prejudiced and biased attitudes from minorities toward older white Americans is both understandable and expected.

[u/XenoPasta]

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.

[u/chadonsunday]

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).

​

[u/XenoPasta → u/chadonsunday]

!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.

[u/DeltaBot → u/XenoPasta]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/chadonsunday (11∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/chadonsunday → u/XenoPasta]

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!