I'm not racist but...

[MIdgebabe]

I guess most people accept that the statement "I am not racist but " usually comes before a very racist remark.

But I have noticed another phrase common on here

"I'm not racist, I just don't like "

Why is it similar? Because you can't really know why you don't like someone. You may think it's a rational dislike, but all the evidence is that it's actually an unconscious decision on top of which you add rationality.

All the evidence? Because BAME people know they are more likely to be disliked / police searched / lose out at interviews than white people. Because we know that people who are chosen in blind tests are not chosen if the tests are not blind, no matter how unbiased the people doing the choosing think they are.

It's really difficult, and it is hard / daft to attribute to individuals a behaviour that emerges from people on average. And most people want and try to be non-racist

But when a BAME person suspects that racism underlies something, denying that , which happens on here, or claiming "not me" seems a very racist thing to do.

@LoseLooseLucy

So if I said “the biggest scourge of my town are feral youths(majority black)” that is ok ? No it is not. That would be racist because observations of youth and subsequent mental categorising in your head which youth is feral or not feral is purely based on your internalised racial bias.

You cannot know by looking at a youth whether they are feral or not, therefore you cannot observe a majority race for feral youth.

Racism is making generalisations (negative) about a group of people. However, I dislike the term as I believe there is only one race, the human one. After that, we are dealing with ethnic/cultural groups primarily. I think this idea that we have to like everything about a group of people/accept every single cultural practice unquestioningly (or be a bad person) is pretty silly.

As a non-native in these shores, I find some UK customs downright bizarre ( eg silly things like morris dancing, cheese rolling) and not something that I would want to adopt personally. Does that mean I hate all people in the UK, even those who may not do/like those things? I can't like people generally even though I think the broader culture has quirks? Daft. As long as I am respectful of others, I still get to decide what I like/don't like about cultural practices.

Hmm it's becoming like pulling teeth this.

@FredaFrogspawn
Why can’t we admit it is human to feel a fear which is based on prejudice following something as horrific as a rape?

I agree completely. The sentiment Nicola and Moomin expressed was one born of prejudice, not racism. Both are bad but prejudice is more understandable because it is a human survival mechanism. It’s the same prejudice that makes women wary of being followed by a man down a street at night.....

DoctorAllcome I’m saying putting an irrelevant comment about race as a prefix to an opinion is racist.
Assigning all polygamy to Muslims and assuming all Muslims are polygamous (as suggested by the preceding comment) racist.

Racism is likely to lead to prejudice - racism being the belief that particular characteristics and behaviours can be attributed to certain ethnic, religious or cultural groups - leads to prejudice which is where a group is treated less favourably because of a particular characteristic that is attributed to the group rather than the individual.

But this “I haven’t experienced it so it can’t exist” attitude is utter bollocks.

I thought it was more to show that there are many Muslim men who aren't like that. Not that it doesn't happen.

“Hmm it's becoming like pulling teeth this.”

Yes it can be painful to explore your own racial bias. For me, as a minority, the focus in these discussions is always on how racism is something done to us. It’s not usually framed as something we minorities also do to others. But really no race is immune, anyone of any race can be racist. I see racism against Hispanics and whites a lot in my area.

@CherryPavlova

Yes, although the statement “I’m not racist but.......” does not specify that what follows is 100% attribution of a characteristic to a race & only that race it does seem that people read it that way.

If we put in that lovely word “majority” would it make it nonracist? I don’t think so myself but others might think so.

Say someone were to say “I’m not racist but, the majority of black youth in my town are feral”

Racist? (I vote yes)

So if I said “the biggest scourge of my town are feral youths(majority black)” that is ok ? No it is not. That would be racist

No. It was still an observation.

It would be racist to say that the biggest scourge in your town were black youths because they are feral. See the difference?

Saying which is the majority implies there is a minority of the other group, so it doesn't associate all of the first with the behaviour.
What is more difficult to assess is what % of which group is feral (for lack of better word).

It's interesting, though, because for the same behaviour, people may well indeed assign different descriptors. White boys and black boys hanging out in groups may be perceived and described differently even if the behaviour is similar. That would be racist. But I digress.

I don't like the unnecessary preface either... but am struggling to understand thread at all.

I just don't like sounds like a free speech issue.

I just don't like how Muslim cultures expect people, especially women, to cover up skin. Vitamin D deficiency is rampant in some Muslim cultures, and especially bad in Afghanistan. That's a public health disaster. Always covered up is unsuitable way to dress in many climates & restricts personal freedom as well as fitness activities. Why must Afghani women cyclists, female swimmers in Jeddah or surfers in Iran have to dress like this, especially in hot weather?

Who wants to call me racist for having that opinion. OP?

Say someone were to say “I’m not racist but, the majority of black youth in my town are feral”

Racist? (I vote yes)

As per previous post, more of a grey area, but that's because it's more difficult to perceive the total black youths unless there are statistics. And because it's still assigning a behaviour to a group. You're starting with the group to describe it. And you're not saying what the white boys are like.

It's different from saying that most feral youths are white/black. You start with the behaviour here. It can just be that the majority in behaviour follows the majority group. But it doesn't focus on one group, while ignoring the behaviour of other groups.

You're so rankled DoctorAllcome, unclench a little

@silentpool
Racism is making generalisations (negative) about a group of people

Yes. Great post. That is exactly how racism manifests itself. First come the negative beliefs about the group, then come the racist generalizations based on those beliefs.

It can also work the other way too...which is the supremacy side of racism. Where you see racist positive generalizations too like “Asians are the best at math” or “white people have the highest IQs”

Why must Afghani women cyclists, female swimmers in Jeddah or surfers in Iran have to dress like this, especially in hot weather?

Who wants to call me racist for having that opinion. OP?

I'd say nobody because you're not assigning behaviour to a race. You're disagreeing with policies of specific countries. Like we could disagree with the old one child policy in China or abortion ban in Ireland.
Jeddah is a city, btw. And I can't see the problem with surfers wearing full body suit. I thought many did anyway.

Anything preceded by the words I’m not racist but ...is going to be racist.
It’s highly unlikely that the majority any group are feral. It’s seeing a few black/white/ Asian lads running riot and saying it’s the majority of black/ white/Asian lads.
In terms of Rotherham, it would be reasonable to say the five men charged with child sex offences were Pakistani. That’s factual information. It’s racist to suggest all Pakistani men abuse children.

It’s really not that difficult.

@lweji
Got it. I don’t agree with you btw. Because if the make up of feral youths or criminals or murderers follows proportional representation of majority/minority people, then why mention the race of the majority? Why not just say “biggest scourge is feral youth.”?
To my mind, race is only mentioned to deliberately plant the seed of association in the reader’s mind a generalization that feral youth = race x.

But, that’s fine that you have a different perspective. It’s why we are having this discussion. Maybe it’s partially a language difference between US and UK?

@CherryPavlova
In terms of Rotherham, it would be reasonable to say the five men charged with child sex offences were Pakistani. That’s factual information. It’s racist to suggest all Pakistani men abuse children.

Yes, facts based on verified statistics cannot be racist. Completely agree.

To my mind, race is only mentioned to deliberately plant the seed of association in the reader’s mind a generalization that feral youth = race x.

That is very true. And it's usually applied to non-white groups. Only when the "feral youths" or whatever behaviour are non whites.
However, in the sentence that originated this discussion, I think it was more to dispell those stereotypes.

As an example, I've recently seen an FB post about how a woman had been, supposedly, followed by three men. If they had been white, the colour of their skin would never be mentioned. But it was repeated that they were, in short, brown. IMO the aim of the post was to cause distrust about non white men. Nothing happened.
If I posted a reply saying that most of the men who had ever followed me were white, it would be with the aim of destroying a racist stereotype, not racism against white men.

@lljkk
Yes, the burkini. Cyclists and surfers have to wear them in Iran. I would agree with lwejjii that this is not racism to be for or against the covering of women’s bodies.

But it is interesting that when France banned the burkini on beaches and the burka that they were accused of racism fuelled religious intolerance. I think too didn’t your PM Johnson get into trouble & accuses of racism for trying to ban the burka in the U.K.? He said something about a woman in a burka on CCTV is like a letterbox you can’t ID her or him(a guy can wear one) for public safety reasons.

Most muslim cultures don’t require even a loose headscarf. The abaya / burkha / tight headscarf is a Wahabbist / Aghan (burkha as always been an afghan tradition even when it was a Hindu country) that was exported to the Islamic world after 9-11 as a way for young muslims to reclaim their identity in face of abuse and racism (Burkha is a . Before then it was rare to see anyone from Pakistan / India / Bangladesh wearing black let alone a full head to toe covering.

"Yes, facts based on verified statistics cannot be racist. Completely agree."

Not really. The statistics themselves can be borne of racism e.g. make up of prison population. Disproportionately consisting of BAME people because there are more likely to be stopped, tried and found guilty by prejudiced police, courts and juries but people use these stats to back up their racist view that BAME people are criminally minded.

Oh the irony of a post pointing out a racist phrase has descended into a cesspit of racism with Muslims being the target here.

I think it was more to dispell those stereotypes.

Yes, that could be the intention. However, can’t dispel stereotypes by pre-emptively putting out new ones. I’d rather see generic statements with no racial generalization based on subjective observation. But, I acknowledge this is a grey area.

If the generalization is reporting facts and statistics...like 16% of homicides are committed by race x....that is completely different and not racist.

It's all about how observations or statistics are used, yes.
Like saying that women don't like science or power because there are fewer women than men in science or in positions of power.

In the previous example, we can make the observation that most feral youths are black/white, but if the overall population is mostly black/white, it would tell us very little about group associations. It might be useful if you want to set up a program to reduce ferality (), though. But unacceptable if you use it to target one group in a stop and search program.

Verified statistics are racist. For example in the 70s-80s when apparently white people didn’t have to worry about HIV / AIDs as it was a ‘black’ disease. Or in the 90s when apparently white British people thought British Indo-Pakistani women didn’t get breast cancer because they married young and breastfed - but the truth was they were more likely to get aggressive forms and less likely to go into hospital and often died with the complications of untreated breast cancer on their death certificates.