This is an insignificant comparison but about 10 years ago I dyed my hair light blonde after years of having dark red hair. I was absolutely astounded to find that people actually interacted with me differently. They treated me as though I suddenly more childlike and were less likely to take me seriously. About a year later re-dyed my hair brown as an experiment. The difference in people’s behavior towards me was undeniable. I don’t believe that the vast majority of people even realized that they were perceiving me in a certain way because I was a white blonde female. People treated me differently then, and that was just my hair color, so it blows my mind that some white people actually think that they aren’t treated differently because they’re white. No matter how stupid stereotypes might be, they are real, and pervasive even in seemingly intelligent liberal-minded people. If you are white, it is likely you have an advantage, period. Do all whites have the same advantages to the same degree? Of course not. But white privilege is real, and people who ignore it are likely uncomfortable with the idea that their intentions don’t match their behavior - much of their behavior is unconscious, and they don’t have as much control over their own thoughts as they wish they did. The only way to gain control, though, is to acknowledge what’s actually happening.
If there was a video of the hypothetical event you concocted I would gladly offer my commentary. Also, thanks for teaching me a new word; microaggressions. It’s funny that you think only black people can sense these minute slights.
[quote=“Geth, post:114, topic:8702”]
much of their behavior is unconscious, and they don’t have as much control over their own thoughts as they wish they did.
[/quote] It’s called habitus and it effects all of everyone’s interactions and perceptions.
A couple of years ago I was discussing stereotypes with my class of Chinese ESL students. It took me a while to convince them that some white people actually feel that hair color is a good indicator of things like intelligence and personality. Not that they weren’t racist themselves: I regularly heard them call Japanese people ‘monkeys’ and anyone darker than them ‘ugly’. Black people were considered dangerous and often lost or didn’t get jobs for bullshit reasons. When a white British ESL teacher sexually assaulted a Chinese girl in public, the main people to suffer from the backlash seemed to be the Filipinos.
Since you weren’t willing to take the 2 minutes to read the essay from someone who was actually there:
The crowd got rowdier, louder, ruder. Folks started calling out random references to his past work
…
After engaging some of the heckling politely, Chappelle had enough. “I’ve been up here a while now and I thought it was me but now I ‘m sure it’s you. There is definitely something wrong with you.” he told us. In other words, “shut up and let me perform.” Not many did. Finally, he gave up and took his cigarettes and his water and sat on stage.
…
FWIW - Chappelle made it very clear in his promotional materials that he was doing STANDUP, NOT characters from his TV show. Perhaps every single heckler was just an idiot who didn’t understand that he’d walked away from the show and those characters and there was nothing racial involved. But I have my doubts.
Yeah, except the average person will violently deny that they are anything other than completely in control of their mind, deny that there’s anything happening unconsciously, and that their perceptions are absolutely correct despite the fact that they’re based on partial information and limited experience. The average human is a poor scientist.
What’s funny is how poorly you read. I wrote that “white people have a hard time seeing (and feeling) racist microaggressions,” not that they can’t see and feel them. But since, in a de facto white supremacist society, people of color are the targets of racial microaggressions, yeah, they’re generally and obviously better at detecting them than whites are.
If the crux of your argument is what ‘white people’ or ‘black people’ do or say, you have nothing of worth to say. The assertion that people of group X do action Y is small minded and continues the divisiveness through stereotype and ignorance. A person is not a race. Their actions cannot be used to generalize the attitudes of an entire race of people.
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