You're white you haven't experienced racism 4

[PatricksRum]

Continued.

My partner has a white British dad and a Malaysian mum. People tend to assume he's Chinese. We live in one of the offshore Crown dependencies. He has experienced positive racism (if that's a term) whereby people and employers assume he's studious, geeky and very intelligent. His profession fits the stereotype they assume from him.

On the other hand he's experienced unpleasant racism. Not long ago we were both in the car, two men blocked the road in front of us so we had to stop, then circled the car doing monkey actions and jeering through the windows. Unpleasant and frightening. We know roughly who they are, our community is very small and to have taken any action or made a complaint could result in our lives becoming hell for various reasons.

Not sure what the point of this post is really, think I'm just offloading and thinking out loud!

"Why do we keep using the word 'Caucasian'?
www.sapiens.org/column/race/caucasian-terminology-origin/

How was the Caucasian race created?

Here's a little real practical example of intersectionality from my day yesterday:

An Asian Dr arrived on my ward and tried to identify at a glance from a room full of strangers all in identical blue scrubs which is the consultant he has been asked to report to (ie the person in charge, getting paid the most, having the most power in that room)

Here are his real guesses in order:

1. White male junior Dr (despite this person being 10yrs younger than the others. Age clearly not the dominant factor)
2. Asian male ward manager
3. white female who is actually the consultant
4. We did not get to find out who was regarded as least likely to be the consultant but it was either the black male deputy ward manager, the Asian female nurse or the Black female nurse.

Even the real power differential isn't much different to the perceived one: the white people are the Drs, the ethnic minority men are the senior nurses, the ethnic minority women are bottom of the pile.

This is fairly representative of the organisation as a whole
If the guy went into the board room looking for the chief executive he would have found white men, white women (1 of whom is the real chief exec) and a few Asian men. Currently no Asian women although there has been one in the past. At no time ever in my 15 years here any black people at all.

On the shop floor on the wards the official stats are 60% BAME workforce so the board is not representative. I don't know how many are black rather than AME but it's a lot. Certainly it's a lot more than none.

And this is a provocative point but here goes

Say there had been an Irish traveller in my ward round how likely would the new Dr have been to identify that person as the consultant?

I reckon that the new Asian British Dr working in the UK mainland would identify them as a white male and therefore highly likely to be the consultant ie they would benefit from white privilege.

I know that in real life there is close to zero chance that an Irish traveller would have professional qualifications in healthcare but let's just imagine they did. Or maybe they just happened to be emptying the bins if you want to make it real but they are wearing the blue scrubs same as the rest (they would be by the way- it's a leveller this Covid thing)

Maybe if it was an Irish new Dr they would spot the traveller but really and truly I doubt that most people on the UK mainland would see that person as anything other than a white male.

Plan and DeRigeur

I think racism IS largely based on skin colour with some contribution from visual secondary characteristics eg hair, eyes, facial structure.

In my real example where there are a bunch of identically dressed strangers in a room, they have not spoken and you are too far away to read the name badges the average person is very easily able to identify who is black, Asian and white. If there had been any of our Chinese or Philippino nurses there that day they would have been easily classified just on looks too. Some of my Asian colleagues do have darker skin than my Jamaican colleagues but lighter than Nigerian colleagues. I have never got confused over who is black and who is Asian as other characteristics make it clear.
If I didn't have so many Philippino colleagues I might not be able to classify them but even if I can't identify a persons exact ethnicity I can probably still figure out they are in the bracket 'not white'

I'm not saying I am consciously trying to do this BTW but rather our brains unconsciously categorise people. There is possibly no harm in that as such but the next step is we start to apply generalisations and stereotypes based on the category we assigned and many of those are negative. The darker your skin sadly the more negative assumptions are applied.

I do not deny that there are light skinned black and Asian people. (Once I was looking for a guy with a typically Asian name in a room and was most surprised to find he was white, blond and has blue eyes- he was Persian). However this actually only goes to back up OPs point as those people will face less overt racism at least from strangers in the street. If they can pass as white they will in some circumstances gain white privilege. If your ethnicity is ambiguous this will prevent some of the harmful stereotypes being applied to you some of the time. My Persian colleague would easily be assumed to be the consultant as he is read by others as white male unless they see his name first.

I have woken up early still thinking a lot about all this
That's good I guess

Here's my final likely thoroughly controversial point

We agree that Jews, Roma, Irish travellers and Albanians amongst other 'white' ethnic minorities were and are subject to persecution

But here's a point no-one is making
Who is persecuting them?
It's not ever black people is it?Universally in all these examples it is white people because white people have the power. Another poster pointed out that these people are regarded as 'inferior white people' and hence they are persecuted by those who view themselves as superior.

Someone else (earrings I think) said that for many years there were no (or very, very few) black people in Ireland to be discriminated against. I don't think there were a whole lot of black people in Nazi Germany either.

It is a horrible thing but it seems to be a nasty part of humans in general that we define ourselves by our place in the hierarchy and we often seem to need to do others down so we can feel better. I think it's called the 'will to power' (just googled that was Nietchze apparently)

Black people are easy to discriminate against because they are easily identifiable by physical features so can be lumped into one group on sight. Some other ethnicity minorities you need to bring in religion, dress, customs speech to be able to identify but black people you can always see.

Is it too much of a reach to say that if there are no black people available to occupy the lowest spot then some white people will be defined as inferior so that they can have it?

Even black on black violence fits into this idea. Black people can't assert dominance over white people but sometimes they might try to assert it over one another. If you live in poverty with few life chances then your ways of asserting dominance are going to tend towards aggression rather than more subtle forms of intellectual power.

I am not trying to make out these are my original ideas BTW. I think I have been dimly aware of them before hence recalling the phrase will to power but only now am I rethinking and applying them.

Interesting real life example @WokeUpSmeltTheCoffee and I agree with its demonstration of white privilege. On the topic of the workplace I’d be interested to get people’s thoughts on the following.

I work in TV (factual programming) which is largely a very white industry. I’ve spent a decade working for two of the main UK broadcasters. When I was in my early 20s and trying to get into this enormously competitive sector, I remember being unable to apply for certain roles because they were available only to BAME applicants. Naively, and I’m extremely ashamed to admit it now, I thought it was racist against white people. Over the years it became clear to me how under represented BAME people were in TV, both in terms of production and content we see on screen, and therefore how urgent these schemes really are. You don’t need an education to work in TV but people benefit hugely from contacts - which those with poorer opportunities are less likely to have.

Now here’s the thing. It’s years later and, until literally about two weeks ago, I thought how great it is that TV is becoming so diverse. But then I realised that while there are now many Asian and ethnic minority men and women in senior, high paid roles (which is fantastic, don’t get me wrong) I am yet to still think of a single black person in a real position of power within the industry.

So my question is this. Would it be beneficial to have certain schemes and roles open only to black people rather than BAME? Would it help or be more divisive?

These opportunities urgently need to be created, especially within the media (IMO) which impacts everything we read and watch. But is there a risk that by doing so, black applicants will feel burdened with feelings or accusations that they only landed the job because they’re black? It’s genuinely an area that concerns and interests me in terms of how we can move this forward.

Is it too much of a reach to say that if there are no black people available to occupy the lowest spot then some white people will be defined as inferior so that they can have it?

Hugely uncomfortable thought and I think you are probably right.

I'm Irish and sent this thread to two of my (settled) Traveller friends last night because I had no idea what the big secret was about how they apparently look.

I grew up next door to one of the families.

Do you know what both of them responded with? "Inbred" and it's really fucking offensive. Is that the response posters were hiding from OP?

I never once looked at my neighbors or their family/relatives and thought they looked different.

Sorry Woke and Blursula for derailing your conversation.

I just woke up and read the messages from both of my mates and had to post. I am bloody mortified that I asked them now.

Blursula I'd say there should be specifically black only opportunities

It is a problem with the coverall BAME term that in many ways black people do have it worse than Asian and other ethnic minorities.

Eg it is only black people who are dying disproportionately in police custody. I'd say that's because of specific racist stereotypes that black people are violent and criminal that are not applied to Asian people.

Asian and Chinese kids outperform white kids academically and there are loads of them going to Oxbridge vs almost no black students. Quoting BAME stats obscures that. I'd say that this is again because of specific racist stereotypes that black people are stupid.

People resist +ve action seeing it as unfair and failing to see that it is only righting a wrong, levelling the playing field. They don't like their advantage to be taken away.

I think black people get told they are only there because of positive discrimination anyway whatever they do so they may as well actually have the benefit of it being true.

The only way anything will really change is to get black people into positions of power and them it will self perpetuate and encourage others and the positive action won't be needed any more.

Glenda I agree it's a horrible way for anyone to be described

It's just basically hugely offensive without being at all informative though. I still don't know what 'inbred' would actually look like.
I'm not asking to have it explained
I just think it goes to show that a minority will sadly be defined by how a racist person sees them.

A racist world defines Meghan Markle and Barack Obama as black although they are genetically just as white as they are black but they can't choose to be white (I'm sure they don't want to be but they don't get the choice). Racists are happy to tell Antonio Banderas he is Hispanic and he doesn't get to choose to be a white European even if he thinks he is.

The people doing the choosing are white and are excluding all these people from the most powerful category based on appearance.

@WokeUpSmeltTheCoffee Agreed. The term BAME makes me uncomfortable and masks the imbalance of opportunities within these groups by lumping them all together as one - when as you say stats show Asian and Chinese kids do better academically. If they continued BAME only schemes perhaps they should ensure they have an equal proportion of B, A and ME employees - what I’ve seen would definitely suggest this isn’t the case.

@WokeUpSmeltTheCoffee - you are right in that much of the abhorrent racist treatment and oppression is at the hands of white people over the centuries. It’s just unspeakable. I do beg to ask you to consider though that this cannot be used as a blanket statement. I have witnessed racism in Dubai ( a hideous place to which I will never return) by Emiratis towards Asians and it’s awful. That’s not to say you are wrong in that it is majority white throughout the world but it does occur within other racial groups .

But worzel aren't the Emiratis still whiter than the Asians they are oppressing? To my mind it still fits within the structure that the darker your skin the more oppressed you will be.

Also to add in Dubai and other UAE countries whites are definitely not at the top of the hierarchy. It’s Emiratis every time

They aren’t white though. Many of the emiratis are fairly dark and often darker than the phillipinos they abuse

Thought provoking post at 06:22 WokeUp.

I feel that the repetition on the threads about other white ethnic groups is trying to distract from the point that all of this persecution is perpetrated by whites.

There is much talk of things “done to them” but not much about the do-ers. Eg “They have poor outcomes” “They are ridiculed” and I think we have to start examining how the system is set up by white people or be transparent “white people ridicule them”.

Siameasy it was you who first mentioned it upthread and made me think about it so thank you

If we can't apparently agree with OP that only black people are oppressed by systemic racism then can we not agree at least that it is white people doing the oppressing (even of other white minorities)?

If we are not willing to own that (and I already see some what about points being made) then what is that all about?

Worzel I would say that UAE is like the reverse of Nazi Germany or Ireland in the 60s. As there are no (or hardly any) white people to be in the superior position other non-white people are free to rise up and oppress the darker people.

Plus the obvious additional factor in UAE is oil wealth which cuts across racial factors

So just the same as poor white people are more oppressed than wealthy black people but less than poor black people.

I would recommend some of Akala’s talks on You Tube. I find him really engaging-he talks about African history. The point being that black history has been whitewashed from the start to paint Black people as inferior and therefore whites were easily able to justify the slave trade and all subsequent persecution. I must say we were taught zilch in school and the point is made that this isn’t “their” history it is “ours”.

I hope I don't offend anyone with this. I'm just writing down some thoughts and experiences. I'm very sorry for what has happened throughout history, some people are evil.

I'm white. I've lived all across the globe due to my father's work. I've definitely experienced racism throughout my life. I've come to the conclusion that there are just shitty people in every race, in every colour, in every religion.... But there's also the most amazing people in each race, religion, gender, colour....
I live in Australia at the moment. I've seen indigenous Australians getting treated appallingly by others (black, white, Chinese). I've also seen - and experienced - it the other way too. A few weeks ago while pushing my six week old daughter in her pram after her immunisations, minding my own business, I got a glass bottle chucked at my head full of urine by an indigenous woman who called me an ignorant white who*e. Ironically, I've spent the last few years advocating for indigenous Australians, especially women, to have access to free legal advice and seek assistance when experiencing domestic violence.

I've experienced racism in Harlem, NY, when I was told to get off the subway because I don't belong there. I was with my (at the time) black boyfriend and his mum. When they tried to stick up for me, they turned on them too.
Take away race, gender, religious views and everything else which can define a person, you're left with just a human. Some are shitty and some are nice.

I know, I'm not a delinquent. I wasn't referring to the protests. I was answering the thread question "you're white so you haven't experienced racism".