Anti-white Prejudice - does it exist?

[sothereiwas]

2 hours ago, Emilie Jolie said:

I meant why does anti-white racial prejudice exist at all,  what's the origin of it.

Same as most other such things - fear of the other. Once people get to actually know each other, those sort of ideas tend to fade but until that happens, natural wariness of the unknown kicks in. If everyone were Chinese, we'd find some way to subdivide what was left a few different ways. Nose shape or people with curly hair. This is why allowing the idea of viewing (and treating) people in the collective rather than as individuals is so dangerous; it reinforces some really unpleasant natural human tendencies. 

[Prudence V]

20 hours ago, mark clemson said:

You don't have to take offense (not sure if you are, but the circle/square thing seems to be a bit of an attack on my intelligence?)

Apologies @mark clemson, that wasn’t intended as a slight on your (or anyone else’s) intelligence! More an indication of frustration at reading some comments (on this thread, but also on FB groups) where white people seem so desperate to show that *they’re* the real victims of racism, because someone said something mean to them back in school / they didn’t get a place in the university programme they thought they deserved, while some black kid did / they got bypassed for a promotion, while a black colleague they consider their inferior was promoted / etc. 

[Prudence V]

16 hours ago, mark clemson said:

As an example of a problem from the past: "Irish need not apply."

Irish are not all whites

That kind of prejudice affected other Europeans like Italians, too. There’ve been some studies on the historic construction of whiteness - it’s not been stable - and some popular lay publications, including one with a title like “how Italians became white”. 
 

Prejudice against the Irish (or Italians, or Greeks, or Jews) wasn’t “anti-white racism”. Those groups weren’t considered white, so they were regarded as fair game. 

[Prudence V]

17 hours ago, sothereiwas said:

I believe the idea that racism requires a power imbalance is a recent innovation designed to stifle meaningful discussion

Interesting notion. In truth, it’s more like the development of medicine - in the old days, people thought there were four humours, and that illness resulted from an imbalance (eg too much choler) and physicians would treat that by various means. These days, we understand the body much better, so doctors are far better able to diagnose and prescribe more accurately, although there are still things that are imperfectly understood. 
 

Social science is the same. In the old days, people believed some pretty whack stuff. These days, we’ve learned from studies down over the aeons, and understand things better. Not perfectly, yet - but better. 

[Prudence V]

14 hours ago, Emilie Jolie said:

I meant why does anti-white racial prejudice exist at all,  what's the origin of it.

Where I grew up, the origin was fear. And experience. White people were the ones who would kick your door down in the middle of the night, and drag your husband / wife / kid away, and you’d never see them again. White people were the ones who stuck you in a s***ty school, and made you speak their clumsy language, and beat you if you spoke your own. White people were the ones who policed your hair, your posture, your ways of being and relating. White people were just evil. Not every white person, but evil always wore a white skin. So black people grew up hating whiteness, warned their kids about whiteness, were afraid of whiteness. 

[Piddy]

"In its most simplistic definition, racism is prejudice or discrimination directed at someone of a different race – based on the belief that your own race is superior.

Taking this definition at its word, then, would suggest that it is possible for a person of any race to experience racism if someone treats them badly for this reason – even white people.

But this definition of racism leaves out one crucial element: The power structures that uphold and perpetuate racism."

"Racism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists within a hierarchical structure with power at its core. Racism only works because one group has power and other groups do not." 

"And it is white people who – historically, and in the West at least – hold the power when it comes to racial divides, thanks to centuries of Eurocentric beliefs and structures that continue to privilege and center whiteness."

 Racism as a system is supported by institutional power and historical myths about the socially constructed inferiority of certain groups; people of color.

‘It is a system which has a history spanning several centuries, a system which has become part of the very fabric of our society and, which ultimately continues to place increased worth on the lives and bodies of white people."

*Again, racism is about who holds the power (economic and political).   For 400 years whites have held that power.  So, sure it's possible if you're white to have an individual or group prejudiced against you, but so what?  Your feelings got hurt.  They have no political or economic power to commit institutionalized / systemic racism against you.*  

Gigantic difference.

 

 

 

 

 

[elaine567]

17 minutes ago, Prudence V said:

Prejudice against the Irish (or Italians, or Greeks, or Jews) wasn’t “anti-white racism”. Those groups weren’t considered white, so they were regarded as fair game. 

I am not sure about Italians, Greeks or Jews but there is nothing non-white about the Irish...
The |rish "problem" was about religion, and immigration and the fact they were often considered "less than".

[Prudence V]

3 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

the fact they were often considered "less than".

That’s the basis of it, yes. “Whiteness” was constructed in a way so as to exclude them, because they were considered inferior. It had nothing to do with actual skin colour. 

[elaine567]

Similar to the perception of Eastern Europeans in the UK today.
White but because they are often employed in poorly paid menial jobs, they are seen by some as "less than"...
The Irish are mainly better accepted generally, but there are flash points in places like Glasgow and Liverpool.

[Emilie Jolie]

15 hours ago, major_merrick said:

Prejudice of any kind starts with flawed people.

Sometimes yes, prejudice is at individual level, but not always as @Prudence V's experience shows.

This is why it's helpful to distinguish between prejudice and racism, as is a system of beliefs revolving around the idea that different races have certain traits that make them superior or inferior to other races. 

Ergo it is difficult to talk about anti-white racism on a systemic level, yet some people may display prejudice against white people.

To take it further, whites aren't an unknown entity, they make the majority of the population in many western countries, they mostly still hold the power of institutional agencies and are very visible in society, so obviously prejudice isn't based on fear of the unknown.

Every prejudice is triggered by specific characteristics; it would be interesting to know what hides behind anti-white prejudice specifically in white-majority countries, since they are not a minority or a marginalised group.

I've actually just finished reading an academic article published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences entitled

Majority No More? The Influence of Neighborhood Racial Diversity and Salient National Population Changes on Whites’ Perceptions of Racial Discrimination

(Ref Maureen A. Craig, Jennifer A. Richeson, August 2018, 4 (5) 141-157, for those interested). 

According to the authors, 

Quote

increasing racial diversity, real or perceived, local or national, can elicit identity-relevant concerns among white Americans, including perceived vulnerability to racial discrimination.

 So according to that study, racial diversity is seen as a threat to 'whiteness'.

Which seems nuts to me, yet I can see how this can fuel a neverending negative circle of prejudices, whether real or perceived.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Emilie Jolie

[sothereiwas]

14 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

Similar to the perception of Eastern Europeans in the UK today.
White but because they are often employed in poorly paid menial jobs, they are seen by some as "less than"...
The Irish are mainly better accepted generally, but there are flash points in places like Glasgow and Liverpool.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with "whiteness" as such, it's about being different, other. This comes from acceptance of the idea that it's OK and reasonable to treat people as a collective rather than individuals. Once that's OK, it's not Dennis who raped your daughter, it's that Irish so-and-so who did it, and from there it's a short step to blaming all sorts of things on "those people". It's not those people, it never was those people. It was (allegedly) Dennis. If not stopped, it's relatively easy for bad actors to then leverage basic human tendencies coupled with this view of groups in the collective as a way to divide people and gather a base of power from some of those arbitrarily created groups. The motive isn't really hard to see.  

The first and most basic step is to make it unacceptable to divide people into groups based on arbitrary attributes. We are all individuals, and we all should be viewed as such. Since doing so undermines a lot of the foundations of power for certain groups or points of view, there is significant resistance to doing so. 

[amaysngrace]

46 minutes ago, Piddy said:

*Again, racism is about who holds the power (economic and political).   For 400 years whites have held that power.  

 

I’m not sure who your source was for all the opinion you’ve posted but do they say racism ended in January 2009 then when our Commander in Chief was Obama? 

[elaine567]

23 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

The Irish are mainly better accepted generally, but there are flash points in places like Glasgow and Liverpool.

I forgot to mention the Irish travellers, white Gypsies, who it seems are generally OK to hate...
SMH 

[introverted1]

3 hours ago, elaine567 said:

I am not sure about Italians, Greeks or Jews but there is nothing non-white about the Irish...
The |rish "problem" was about religion, and immigration and the fact they were often considered "less than".

Ditto for Italians.  My family lived it.

[introverted1]

I think there is much to be said for the "otherness" theory.  As a kid, my family lived in Geneva and I attended the International School.  Because the UN was in Geneva, you can imagine what a diverse group we were.  We aligned into groups, but our groups were based on nationality, not race.  So all the American kids were tightly intertwined (regardless of color or religion), ditto the Persians, English, French, Finnish, etc., etc.  There is something inherent in human nature to seek out and bond with what is familiar, even though that can change with context.  Had I gone to school in the US, I imagine that the groupings might have been different.

[Emilie Jolie]

The grouping thing is more about sameness than otherness though, and sticking to your tribe, I guess. As long as you don't view others with suspicion and you eventually learn more about other groups and mix together, sticking to those who are like you initially makes some sense.

When there is no mixing at all or when groups ostracise each other, that's a problem.

People on this thread are saying whites, a majority group who still hold most of the institutional power, are being discriminated against for being white. I don't doubt it, yet I'm interested in digging deeper than just 'flawed humanity'.

38 minutes ago, introverted1 said:

I think there is much to be said for the "otherness" theory

What kind of 'otherness' does whiteness invoke, though? Power? (I love Geneva, by the way!).

[introverted1]

16 minutes ago, Emilie Jolie said:

What kind of 'otherness' does whiteness invoke, though? Power? (I love Geneva, by the way!).

I think every group is threatened by and possibly wants dominance over other groups, regardless what forms the group. Look at warring tribes within Africa, which are committed to each other's annihilation in spite of a shared race. Or look at Northern Ireland, which for many years was embroiled in "discrimination against the Irish nationalist minority by the dominant unionist majority." Racism against other Asians is a well-documented problem in South Korea, where just over 44% of the population said they would not want a foreigner as a neighbor in the World Values Survey. Otherness seems to lead to ostracism and can take the form of racism when the other is of a different race, but even when race is the same, there can be problems. Witness the trials of Haitian blacks who emigrated to the US and were ostracised by American blacks. It seems obvious that anti-white racism exists because it's just one more manifestation of the same pattern of human behavior.  Of course, if you only define racism = systemic racism, then yes, in the US, non-whites don't have the power to impose systemic racism on whites.  But that doesn't preclude the desire to do so. I suspect humans are wired to want to be the majority and to favor their own.  I don't think any one race has the corner on loving acceptance of others, nor its opposite.

[mark clemson]

Seems like there can be prejudice against whites (whether for their race or their specific heritage/characteristics) anywhere.

There can be racism (by the broader definition Piddy and Prudence V, and of course many others in the world, use) against whites only in places they are a minority, I suppose such as arab or east asian nations. (Note: I'm not saying there IS racism against whites in the places, only that there could be.)

[Cookiesandough]

I don't know. I could be wrong, but separating racial prejudice and racism seems like a bit of a tautology to me. If a person is experiencing negative treatment because of prejudice  skin color, that is racism to me. And that happens to white people all the time.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Cookiesandough

[Emilie Jolie]

54 minutes ago, introverted1 said:

  I don't think any one race has the corner on loving acceptance of others, nor its opposite.

I agree. I wasn't making any point in that way. I'm not looking at comparing and contrasting types of racism or racial prejudice; I'm specifically looking at anti-white racial prejudice and what may be the root cause of it.

Minorities 'wanting to gain power' is based on nothing as a claim, imo, other than a dash of paranoia.

 Sharing 'power', ie having equal rights, seems to be more on target, imo.

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Emilie Jolie

[Emilie Jolie]

32 minutes ago, Cookiesandough said:

I don't know. I could be wrong, but separating racial prejudice and racism seems like a bit of a tautology to me. If a person is experiencing negative treatment because of prejudice  skin color, that is racism to me. And that happens to white people all the time.

They don't mean the same thing, so I don't know it can be a tautology...

Individuals are prejudiced, a whole system is racist.

A racist system made of people who thinks their race is better than yours can be perfectly nice to your face; they just think your race will always be inferior, and will make sure the society you both live in doesn't give you the same rights, for no other reason than your skin colour or race. It affects every aspect of your life and that of those who look like you (education, employment opportunities,...).

A prejudiced individual will not like you or what you represent, based on the colour of your skin; it affects you emotionally.

[sothereiwas]

6 minutes ago, Emilie Jolie said:

Individuals are prejudiced, a whole system is racist.

I'm not sure decades of dictionaries support that assertion. The top definitions a casual search turns up all actually use the word prejudiced when defining racist. For instance:

"prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group ...."

That seems to be logically applicable to a person to me. 

[Emilie Jolie]

Yeah, I noticed this thing where people get super hung up on a definition, as opposed to discussing the whys and the hows. 

Here, the first random definition I found since that seems to matter to you:

the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

 

What happens when enough people in power believe the above? It becomes institution.

So maybe perceived anti-white sentiments are all about white people being scared of losing their power over minorities, mixed with fear as what may happen to them if they become a minority, because they know their history, they know how they've been treating mimorities and they are scared of the boomerang effect.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Emilie Jolie

[sothereiwas]

5 minutes ago, Emilie Jolie said:

What happens when enough people in power believe the above?

It becomes popular. To be an institution, it has to be policy. People have beliefs, institutions do not. The case of an institution would be where an explicit or provable implicit policy implements racial discrimination within that institution. This is illegal and if it's real, there is money to be made via law. But you're right, the exact word is only important insofar as agreeing on terms and definitions allows us to remove ambiguities in meaning later in a discussion. Using already defined meanings certainly seems like a reasonable first step. Barring that we have to invent our own brand new language, or we encourage ambiguity. 

[Emilie Jolie]

This circular argument about definitions only helps skirt around the issue.

When enough racists get into power and enact their beliefs in the institutions they have power over, it becomes a system. This is why there is a thing called institutionalised / systemic racism that I haven't just made up all by myself. Americans will know full well what that is, seeing as they had that in place by law still 50 years ago.

 

So maybe white people who feel victimised by non-white minorities fear one day there will be Jim Crow laws against them? 

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Emilie Jolie