Can white people ever experience racism?

[LittleRedCourgettes]

Following a discussion on this topic with some students, I was reading this article and am interested to hear your honest thoughts on this question.....

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/wherediddwegetttheideaathatonlyywhitepeopleecanbeeracist

I think people on this thread seem to misunderstand race (as it is defined in law). Race is primarily about culture. It’s not about skin colour or genetics. Two people may have the same skin colour indeed may look very similar but be of different races. For example a separdi Jew and an Asian person. Or a Scottish person and an English person. Or a black African and a black person from the Caribbean.

The law prohibits less favourable treatment on grounds of race. There have been many (rightly) successful actions by people of all different races for serious examples of discrimination including white people of different races.

Predictions for black children are inaccurate and under predicted year on year, compared with other groups that are inaccurate and over predicted. This is a statistical difference that is consistent year on year.

This is true but not limited to black children. The bias is seen against all working class/poorer children regardless of ethnicity. It affects black children the most because they are more likely to be working class/poor than other ethnicities. When the exams were cancelled last year and they had that even more biased algorithm do grades, part of the reason it was overturned was because it most often granted grades higher than teacher assessed for the tuition paying school children, but lower than teacher assessed for the state school children. A clear case of the class in power protecting their own.

Oh goodness! I really wish those posts weren't deleted. People need to challenge some things out in the open.

@CayrolBaaaskin
I think people on this thread seem to misunderstand race (as it is defined in law). Race is primarily about culture. It’s not about skin colour or genetics

Exactly. There is no such thing as biologically different races. Race is 90% culture and language and only 10% shared ancestry which shows up as higher rates of shared DNA within the ethnic group than outside it.

@Blackberrycream
You can see the bias in the GCSE results from last year in this chart which shows only state school pupils. There is a clear class divide between working class and the poor - using free school meals as marker of poverty.

Sorry Flaxmedow but it is true. It’s in current history books. Why else do you think Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland all speak a different language?

They do not speak a different language. The vast majority in these countries speak English

They are a different ethnicity with different ancestors.

They are not. There is no such thing as a "Celtic" ethnicity. It is not a race of people.

The term Celt was not used until the 18th century, when strong ideas around a national identity were formed. "Celt...Anglo Saxon...Viking" has been massively romanticised and exaggerated since then. Because England was the dominant culture, separatist nations then attempted a reform of what they thought was a "Celtic" culture. In other words they wanted to be different and so romanticised some kind of ancient past

And I never said that Anglo Saxons did a “large scale” replacement of “Britain” I stated correctly that the parts of Britain they conquered and colonised became known as Angle-Land, or now England

Culture and ethnicity go hand in hand. It’s ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.

No they do not and there is no difference in culture between someone who is Irish and someone who is English anyway. There might be differences because Ireland is more rural and England industrialised and so lost many rural traditions but prior to industrialisation there wasn't much difference

And your Samsung phone example is stupid beyond belief. Archaeologists know the difference between trade goods and indigenous goods in burials.

I'm talking about burial styles. Just because someone had a Roman or Anglo Saxon (Christian) style burial it does not necessarily follow that they were actually Roman or A-S. Cultural practice is not the same as ethnicity. My son listens to African American music all the time, it does not make him African Amercian, who in turn speak English but have African heritage.

There are also comments here claiming the Irish were treated differently historically for simply being Irish, this is also a distortion of the truth. That they were subject to "penal laws" was due to religion. What they fail to mention is that English Catholics, and other Nonconformists, were subject to penal laws as well

To be fair, race seems to be defined in different ways and used interchangeably to mean both physical characteristics and culture. A google search of what race means brings out these definitions of one or the other but interestingly, mainly that of physical characteristics. A few have both physical attributes and culture as the definition.

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/race

C1 [ C ]

• one of the main groups to which people are often considered to belong, based on physical characteristics that they are perceived to share such as skin colour, eye shape, etc.:

People of many different races were living side by side.

• group of people who share the same language, history, characteristics, etc.:

The British are an island race.

Also, I've searched for the difference between race and ethnicity (as people also use this interchangeably) and got:

www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-difference-between-race-and-ethnicity.html

What Is Race?
Stated simply, race is the word used to describe the physical characteristics of a person. These characteristics can include everything from skin color to eye color and facial structure to hair color. This term is physiological in nature and refers to distinct populations within the larger species. Race was once a common scientific field of study. Today, however, most scientists agree that genetic differences among races do not exist.

What Is Ethnicity?
Ethnicity, on the other hand, is the word used to describe the cultural identity of a person. These identities can include language, religion, nationality, ancestry, dress, and customs. The members of a particular ethnicity tend to identify with each other based on these shared cultural traits. This term is considered anthropological in nature because it is based on learned behaviors.

Difference Between Race And Ethnicity
One example of the difference between these two terms is by examining people who share the same ethnicity. Two people can identify their ethnicity as American, yet their races may be black and white. Additionally, a person born of Asian descent who grew up in Germany may identify racially as Asian and ethnically as German.

Based on the above differentiation between race and ethnicity, I accept race as one thing and ethnicity as different instead of the way people conflate them because when some people says for example: "black people do this" and "black people think that", I just like to interject with being specific about the particular black people or culture, since not all black people have the same ethnicity, culture and statistics. I really can't stand generalization.

That said, I fully agree with what's written here.

www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history/2019/02/race-and-ethnicity-explained

Excerpt: Both race and ethnicity are social constructs used to categorize and characterize seemingly distinct populations.

There's a lot more there.

This was the findings of the largest DNA study in world (Oxford/Welcome Trust) . It studied the DNA relatedness of people across Britain and confirmed what was already known, that

"Celts Are Not A Unique Genetic Group"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31905764

Quote form the study

"A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK."

"According to the data, those of Celtic ancestry in Scotland and Cornwall are more similar to the English than they are to other Celtic groups."

"The study also describes distinct genetic differences across the UK, which reflect regional identities."

"And it shows that the invading Anglo Saxons did not wipe out the Britons of 1,500 years ago, but mixed with them"

This a better excerpt for what the article says: Race and ethnicity don't show up at the genetic level, but the concept of race still forms the human experience.

Interestingly, Race doesn't play a part in human characterization/categorization where I'm from. Ethnicity is how we differentiate between each other (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Urhobo, Fulani, etc). People from the same/ different ethnicities come in different shades, so skin colour or eye colour isn't an official form of differentiation either. For some ethnicities, you can tell just by looking at them because of facial structure.

The only time people there talk about Race is in relation to mainly US/UK-inspired topic of discussion.

Absolutely you can and it's not to do with the colour of your skin.

I lived in France until I was 14 and then I worked in several countries when I newly qualified as a Midwife/Nurse.

In rural France I suffered constant verbal abuse because I spoke with an English acsent altho it didn't help that I had "Brave" red hair. But it wasn't until I went to places like Australia and The Gulf states that I experience some really nasty and agressive attitudes towards people from the UK. Singapore was better but the only country I was sorry to leave was the US. I met some lovely people and made many friends.

So yes you can and I have been .

@PlanDeRaccordement

Predictions for black children are inaccurate and under predicted year on year, compared with other groups that are inaccurate and over predicted. This is a statistical difference that is consistent year on year.

This is true but not limited to black children. The bias is seen against all working class/poorer children regardless of ethnicity. It affects black children the most because they are more likely to be working class/poor than other ethnicities. When the exams were cancelled last year and they had that even more biased algorithm do grades, part of the reason it was overturned was because it most often granted grades higher than teacher assessed for the tuition paying school children, but lower than teacher assessed for the state school children. A clear case of the class in power protecting their own.

That is not true though. It will happen within the same school to children with similar backgrounds. It is a well studied occurrence. The algorithm last year is a whole different issue. On a normal year, what is exposed is lower expectations and assumptions made by teachers who would know the children well.

Part of the issue is, as shown in this thread, the definition of race isn't fixed. Never has been. There have been always been very different ideas of what constitutes race - and it's always included far more than just skin tone. There have definitely been talks even recently that discussed different European groups as different races, even when others discuss them as either nationalities or ethnicities. The lines between those can be blurry.

Another part is White is also not a fixed identity marker. It's changed throughout history, different people have different views on who 'really counts' and it's quite possible for some people to be read as White in some situations and read as a different race in other situations. It's not always that neat, especially in communities where there have been colourist practices resulting in lighter members more often having children together.

I'm not sure focusing on whether or not White people can experience racism has much benefit, partially because of this issue. By the Equality Act, there have been people charged and convicted with hate crimes against White people in the UK. We know of horrific cases of Kriss Donald, Ross Parker, Richard Everitt... I don't see the point in saying any of that isn't really racism or splitting what happened to them as something different.

The only thing I can see of going on about how White people can't really experience racism is that it fuels far-right people that things are being hidden & downplayed and it fuels far-left men particularly to kick down at White women. It doesn't actually make anyone more conscious of deeply rooted structural racism in society or open conversations about race issues in society. It's much like research into White privilege which has shown that teaching it doesn't make White people nicer to anyone, it just seems to make them crueler to other White people. The theories of racism that means White people can't experience it may have academic merit in dividing up different types of oppression particularly in White majority societies, but in real world practice, it does fuck all of benefit and academia needs to get out of its ass about theoretical purity when that happens.

There is room for discussing the types of racial abuse and violence against White people discussed in this thread, and discuss data on teacher bias against race (and other demographics), on the differences in health care outcomes, on the differences in the amount of racial violence experienced and digging into the differences in violence that is carried out by the state vs what is carried out by what is largely groups of radicalized young men (some of which end up working for the state, but that's a whole other topic). I think if we move away from the broad brush of who can and who can't and into what should we be looking into improve to reduce suffering and what can we test in doing that, a lot more could be done.

[quote Nets888]@AgeLikeWine,

"Yes. I have been called ‘gweilo’ to my face in Hong Kong".

"Gweilo" basically means "English man" in Chinese. There is nothing racism about that.[/quote]
It absolutely is a racist term. It means, literally, 'ghostly man'. And in Chinese, 'ghostly' can be used as a curse or an insult.

And from Wiki:

an increasingly common view is that the term is unacceptable in a modern context. The word is not permitted to be used in Hong Kong media due to the offensive nature of the term

@BiBabbles
The discussion feeds into extremes.
It either seems to about negating the sustained racism some groups experience. People are on the whole not having equivalent experiences.
On the other hand, denial that it can affect anyone feeds into BNP type anger and there are some terrible individual instances that are undeniable.
I am surprised that some still seem to be unaware of differences in health care and education and outcomes in the judicial system .Those are pretty massive issues . A bit like All Lives Matter, it does seem like if black people speak up, there is an immediate counter reaction. It is hard not to wonder why.

@BiBabbles.
I was agreeing by the way !

Yes. I’ve experienced racist abuse from two black women in the street.
They were specifically criticising me for something about my appearance which is not a “white person trait” (in their opinion), (in reality it is not a trait exclusive to black people!)
They were saying that I’m not allowed to look the way I do. That’s racism.

Ok.
It’s not great but really....if that is the sum of it.

Have a look at this, we are white.

It's France, Italy, UK, Hungary, Romania.

@Blackberrycream
That is not true though. It will happen within the same school to children with similar backgrounds. It is a well studied occurrence.

Well, my perspective is admittedly that of an French outsider. But did you see the chart I posted? It showed the teacher assigned grades from 2020 (not the algorithm grades) which would have been their predicted grades if the exams had not been cancelled. The chart breaks it down for students by race and free school meal (poor) status.

If you look at it the ones with the lowest teacher assigned grades were the white FSM children, second lowest were the mixed FSM children, middle were black FSM children, then other and Asian at the top.

Class has a much bigger impact on teacher predicted and assigned grades than ethnicity. This is absolutely true. I’ll post it again for you to see. And here is link to full report
www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/gcse-results-attainment-8-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest

That's interesting plan. Thanks for posting.

The issue is not low predictions. The issue is inaccurate low predictions.
Unfortunately there is positive correlation between class and attainment . White working class boys do very badly on the whole. Obviously that is an issue that needs to be addressed but it is a separate issue.
It is under predictions compared to actual achieved grades by race that shows positive correlation above any other group,.
It is really important I think that this is not obfuscated. Last year’s data is irrelevant in this context as they didn’t take the exam. There is no achieved data to use as comparison

@Flaxmeadow

They [Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Cornish]do not speak a different language. The vast majority in these countries speak English

But they have their own indigenous languages. There is Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish dialects of Gaelic. Just because the majority speak the language of colonisers doesn’t mean they’re the same ethnicity. Surely you can understand that much.

They are not. There is no such thing as a "Celtic" ethnicity. It is not a race of people.

Have to agree to disagree. There are definitely ethnic groups existing today descended from Celtic tribes as much as today’s Scandinavians are recognised as a a distinct ethnic group. And race includes different ethnicities.

The term Celt was not used until the 18th century, when strong ideas around a national identity were formed. "Celt...Anglo Saxon...Viking" has been massively romanticised and exaggerated since then. Because England was the dominant culture, separatist nations then attempted a reform of what they thought was a "Celtic" culture. In other words they wanted to be different and so romanticised some kind of ancient past

Yes the name Celt is a modern term to describe the tribes that lived in Western Europe when the Romans invaded. This is because they went by tribal names and all that was recorded name wise are what the Romans called them (the Pictii), not what they called themselves. The Celts had no written tradition, only oral through their druids and barfs. Which the conquering Romans massacred methodically. Separating these tribes from their own history and identity. But the fact that recent historians call these peoples Celts doesn’t mean they never existed and never had shared culture or ethnicity. It certainly doesn’t mean that the Britons in Britain from 500 BC to 500 AD were the same people as the invading Anglo Saxons. And how could they be? Different language, different cultures, different ancestors, different religion.

I said: “Culture and ethnicity go hand in hand. It’s ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.”

No they do not and there is no difference in culture between someone who is Irish and someone who is English anyway. There might be differences because Ireland is more rural and England industrialised and so lost many rural traditions but prior to industrialisation there wasn't much difference

Sorry but I disagree that there is no difference in culture between Irish and English. I am sure some Irish and English posters would be happy to explain that they are not identical carbon copies. It ridiculous for you to say that given the fact the English attempted to genocide the Irish not once but twice in the past 400yrs.

I'm talking about burial styles. Just because someone had a Roman or Anglo Saxon (Christian) style burial it does not necessarily follow that they were actually Roman or A-S. Cultural practice is not the same as ethnicity. My son listens to African American music all the time, it does not make him African Amercian, who in turn speak English but have African heritage.

You’ve lost me here because an Anglo Saxon style burial is not Christian style at all. Look up Sutton Hoo. That’s an Anglo Saxon burial. And the archaeologists do know the difference between a burial that is Anglo Saxon or Briton or Roman or medieval and would not be led astray by the presence of goods gotten through trade from other cultures.

There are also comments here claiming the Irish were treated differently historically for simply being Irish, this is also a distortion of the truth. That they were subject to "penal laws" was due to religion. What they fail to mention is that English Catholics, and other Nonconformists, were subject to penal laws as well

Not exactly. Religious intolerance did exist. So Irish catholics were treated worse than the Irish Protestants, but similarly all Irish were treated worse than all English regardless of religion. It’s just not true that ethnicity played no part in how the Irish were treated by the English.

@Blackberrycream

The issue is not low predictions. The issue is inaccurate low predictions. Unfortunately there is positive correlation between class and attainment . White working class boys do very badly on the whole. Obviously that is an issue that needs to be addressed but it is a separate issue. It is under predictions compared to actual achieved grades by race that shows positive correlation above any other group,. It is really important I think that this is not obfuscated. Last year’s data is irrelevant in this context as they didn’t take the exam. There is no achieved data to use as comparison

@Blackberrycream I have found this study from 2016 because I’m looking for specifically what you mean...so pre2020 data. Perhaps you have more recent study? Anyway, this author states: Here we can see that, among all ethnic groups, Asian and Black applicants are more likely to be severely over-predicted. White applicants are most likely of all groups to be accurate (though at similar levels to black students) and are also most likely to be slightly over-predicted. Finally, I can also examine whether girls are more likely to have their grades over-predicted than boys. The results (not shown here) reveal no apparent difference in their rates of grade accuracy.

As can be seen, high ability applicants (defined here as those with 14 A-level points or more – equivalent to AAB or more at A-level) do tend to be more likely to be under- predicted than the average applicant, with 21% of AAB applicants having their points score under-predicted, versus 8.5% of all applicants. Among these AAB applicants, applicants from the most disadvantaged group are slightly more likely to have their grades under-predicted than those from the least disadvantaged groups (23.7% vs 20.3%) suggesting there is some evidence that high ability disadvantaged students are particularly likely to fall into the category of being under-predicted. Of course, as is widely known (eg Chowdry et al, 2013), only a small number of disadvantaged young people fall into the high-attainment category – as can be seen in the lower half of Table 2. Nevertheless, it can be seen that under-prediction affects some 2,700 high-ability disadvantaged students.

www.ucu.org.uk/media/8409/Predicted-grades-accuracy-and-impact-Dec-16/pdf/Predicted_grades_report_Dec2016.pdf