Racism- alive or dead in your area?

If you’re Hispanic, you’re targeted in my new town. In my last two homes, there were a lot of people friendly with the KKK or what they stood for.

Do you think that’s always been there, or is a newly resurrected emotion?

Not much racism here though we’re quite multicultural.

@flutherother Where’s your general area or state?

Yes it is alive and I think that it will always be alive. It has some cases that people of a different race are being treated unfairly such as in law enforcement cases and job status.

I live in Texas & Texas is loaded with racist people (& far too many of them are in Law Enforcement).

I live in Maine and the population here is about 95% white. I don’t really hear any racism. Portland and Lewiston have a large Somali population, so racism might be more prevalent in those cities.

Maine did go to Obama, if that means anything.

I live in a liberal bubble in the Old South and yes, there is racism here, overt as well as systemic.

@KNOWITALL I’m in Scotland.

It’s in a coma waiting for the machine to be turned off.

In my city racism is the dirty little secret. No one talks about it but the city is extremely segregated. There is a frightening amount of gang violence and people seem to turn a blind eye to it. It is pretty awful.

Besides @Eggie, how do the rest of you feel about it, or how does it make you feel?

Sometimes when I’m with the WP people, which are everywhere as I mentioned, I get really creeped out, because if my skin happened to be another color, I’d probably be thrown dead in a local pond. These people here are dangerous and they don’t back down.

General statements like, “well, that’s what we get for allowing them foreigners to come over here and get an education, then take it home and use it against us” (true stmt I heard yesterday when we read the article), I am ashamed of my own race.

Also, I can’t help but think about the stories I heard from my Vietnamese friends, saying they’d be dead or in Rome if they weren’t allowed to come to the States, and all the black history I’ve read about atrocities and draggings. I also don’t know how to change the minds of people who were raised in a WP household, indoctrinated from birth, because rational people know racism is not a good thing.

@SuperMouse Where generally are you located?

@flutherother Thanks, what races do you have there if I may ask?

I am in the midwest in a medium sized town.

Still exists and I doubt it will ever be fully eradicated.

@SuperMouse Thanks. Yeah we actually have a section people refer to as Brown Town, which is where my mom actually lives, it’s dumb. One park where you ‘don’t go at night’ or the gangsta’s will getcha.

Due to our wide variety of people, a lot of our minority population are actually very well to-do. We have more Poor White Trash than poor minorities really.

@KNOWITALL They are from all over. Some are of Pakistani and Indian descent, some are Chinese, some are from Eastern Europe. We even have a few Americans.

@KNOWITALL there are a bunch of places like that are like that. Places that are just to violent to visit at night. What I find really interesting is that this is a city that has a good reputation as a wholesome mid western town. It is only when you spend time here that you find out the dirty little secret. It makes me sad.

Alive and well, unfortunately.

One could throw a dart at a map of the U.S. and have a good chance of landing somewhere with some good ole’ racism lol.

I live in Virginia, but haven’t been here long enough to survey.

@SuperMouse Yeah here, too. Wholesome, clean, welcoming, the Queen city of the Ozarks.
I’ve been in a few unsafe positions myself where you agree with them, or you don’t get in, I even have a horrible nasty ankle tattoo that means something bad, but I’m keeping it to remind myself of my mistake in believing the WP folks were my friends.

They gave out special awards for people of certain races. I’d consider that racism so yes.

^^ I meant to say scholarship awards.

There are three distinct technological centers in South Carolina, and I live near one of them. As a result, there is international business, little racism, a great school system, and a weaker Southern accent. If you travel into the rural areas, it’s a different story. There is less business, more racism, an awful school system, and an extremely strong Southern accent. I would like to point out, however, that racism is dying out in South Carolina, and isn’t nearly as profound as it used to be.

Hardly here. If there is any, it would be towards Native Canadians. But, really, I’ve never seen it/been around it.

I live three hours away from one of the most multicultural cities in the world. I love my country. If I had it my way, my American partner would move here instead of me moving to the U.S.

I live in West Virginia, and have heard the “N word” more frequently since I’ve lived here (the last 8 years or so) than in almost the whole rest of my life combined (when I lived in Maryland). Very much alive here, much to my dismay. Some of it will die out with the older folks, but I don’t think it will be gone within my lifetime.

@augustlan Yeah, boy the whole hornet’s nest was stirred with Obama being elected, and I heard the “n” word a lot, too. What’s difficult is knowing that children are being raised hearing that word and will probably think it’s okay to use, unless they are able to rise above their parenting. A lot of the same people are homophobic, too, very sad.

@KNOWITALL : Good point. It’s a sad irony that Obama’s election simultaneously allowed white liberal America to congratulate itself that “racism is over” while giving the hardcore racists the pretext to come out of the woodwork.

Alive and sickly well in Texas.

There are so many white people living in my area it slightly startles me to go Los Angeles or San Diego and see the diversity. It turns out nearly every house that is rented or sold has gone to a growing population of Russians. Russian labels are turning up on the signs at the local stores, and foods at the grocery. There is even a new Russian Restaurant.

Little bit here—mostly in the form of assuming a certain crime must have been committed by someone of a certain race, or being wary around certain races.

It’s pretty much hidden here in the SF Bay area, but it’s there. It isn’t popular to let it show.

@PhiNotPi Really? I live in Lexington (town, not just the county) and go to school in Columbia, and I encounter racism quite often. It could be that my husband’s family is from Gaston and Swansea (no bueno), but I wouldn’t say it’s dying out here. I still very much feel that racist, country, Bible Belt culture. It’s not as bad as some other places (WV, KY, MS, AL, TN?) may be, but it’s still a totally different world in other parts of the country. I mean, South Carolina and California (San Diego, LA, and San Fran in particular) might as well be on opposite sides of the world. It still amazes me how nonchalant people act about racism. The other day, I heard someone say, “The niggers are gone. Now we can relax and have fun.” Really?! Same type of reaction when someone we know found out our new neighbors are black. “Lock your doors.” Good grief…

Yes, racism isn’t as prevalent in South Carolina as it used to be, but that can be said about pretty much every state. Poor SC is still quite a few years behind the rest of the non-Southern part of the country.

Where are these “technological centers” you speak of?

@livelaughlove21 Maybe it’s just my exposure. The average IQ of my friends is well above average.

@PhiNotPi Okaaaaay…

I wish I had the luxury to only be around my friends all day. :)

I grew up in Upstate NY and while NY is typically considered a blue state, once you get about three hours north of NYC, it quickly becomes what I refer to as the “cold south”.

While there are pockets of liberalism, growing up in a small town I knew a lot of kids who prided themselves on being “redneck”, “rebel” etc. Now, a lot of these kids had barely ventured out of the county, let alone south of the Mason-Dixon line yet still waved their Confederate flags with pride. Very strange indeed but what did a “city gal” like me ever know?

Unsurprisingly the majority of these types harbored some pretty negative attitudes toward anyone different than them. A lot of it was casual racism that was more uninhibited after they’d had a few too many Bud Lights but more than once I heard some things that I truly found appalling.

The worst that I can recall right now is once when I was about 20ish, home from college and a former friend invited this trashy girl and her idiot boyfriend to my house to smoke pot without my permission. So we’re all sitting there, and I try to make polite conversation despite being kind of miffed that they were there in the first place. The boyfriend reveals that he’s in the process of becoming a police officer for the sole reason that he wants to “curbstomp some n*ggers” and other things I’m not going to dignify by typing. Outraged, I promptly declared the party over and told them to leave my house immediately. I was really disgusted and lectured my friend for over an hour on his choice of company. I still get really annoyed when I think that they were in my house in the first place.

Now that I think about it, wasn’t even the worst thing I heard in that shithole town.

Alive and well here, I don’t think it will ever go away completely. You just can’t legislate how people think. And many non minority people who are poor themselves are resentful about the many benefits given to minorities and not available to them or their children. Which of course aids and abets the racist feelings.

An aboriginal football player was just called an “ape” by a 13 year old girl in the stands. He stopped and pointed her out to security and she was taken by the arm and removed, without a parent. She apparently was interrogated by security or police without a parent or attorney present for over 3 hours. Then her name and photo were released to the press. None of this is legal for a minor child arrested by police. Situations like this are inflammatory to both groups. But then women’s groups were protesting the fact that the government granted a visa to some yankee rapper who calls women all the usual names and advocates raping them and tying them up in the basement. So the racism situation is an interesting one, a 13 year old girl is vilified for saying ape but a black man who vilifies women is socially acceptable. To quell one is called censorship, to quell the other is stopping racism. It doesn’t seem to equate.

A prominent white supremacist leader was shot and killed in his home two blocks from where I live, but I never saw any indication of activity by his group.

I used to live in LA, and black people in certain areas hate Asians. I had one girl at McDonalds (Compton) throw my change at me. I assure you I was polite when I ordered my Big Mac. I was tempted to talk to her manager, but decided to just never go back and give them any more of my business.

I used to live in San Diego, where one part of town (Santee) had the nickname Klan-tee. I once had a Vietnam vet there tell me: “fishheads like you come over here and take our jobs…”.

I live in one of the most liberal places in the country (Eugene, Or) and it is still pretty obvious here.

I worked at a rather large place here and most of the employees were college students. Out of about 70 employees we had one black employee. I helped with hiring for a bit and we had a lot more than 1 in 70 applications from African Americans. A qualified guy that had actually worked a few years with the same company applied. When I asked why he wasn’t hired (we desperately needed people) I was told that, “One black was enough”.

Unfortunately, I would have been fired and I needed the job so I said nothing.

I live in a rich white farm town. There is IME a lot of racism toward immigrant workers. I also encounter a good bit of racism toward black people at some of the bars I go to. One of the downsides of living near pineys.

It really bothers me a lot because most of these people seem like genuinely nice and then out of no where comes these atrocious racial statements that totally catch me off guard and make me second guess what kind of person they are.

There’s plenty of racism here in Virginia—enough so that my old workplace actually had signs in the hallways reminding people not to be racist. My feeling about the problem is that I can’t see any pretext in this day and age to call racism anything but unreasonable.

Central Texas, Major university town plenty of multicultural diversity, been here almost 40 years, racism still prevailant but not as overt.

smallish city in south australia. it’s SUPER present everywhere you go.

I’d say that it’s rampant, though not in the classical march-of-the-klanguins sort of way. Lots of racist people from all walks of life, black and white alike, working class up through the academia and even local government, who all stubbornly pretend that they aren’t.
And lots of people who aren’t, but who might sometimes sound like they are..
Of course, I define racism rather broadly as the belief that people of different races are different beyond the obvious things. All of the real differences are cultural, which is another kettle of fish.

Calgary, Alberta (Canada). It’s alive but usually a quiet racism here. I have family members who are racist.
Not too long ago, someone spray-painted a giant red swastika on our neighbourhood sign (a brick wall thing at the entrance to the street). We live in a very multicultural neighbourhood. Every year, the Arian (whatever you want to call them) Nation march down town (usually during an anti-racist event/occasion). But it’s getting better every year because the police have been cracking down on hate groups the last few years. It had gotten pretty bad here for awhile. The Arian people were actually offering to pay the first month, to three months, of rent for members to move here from across our country and the USA.
My city is very multicultural (even though the rest of the country seems to think we are a bunch of rednecks and cowboys). We do have a lot of rednecks/cowboys but they are not of the majority any more. Because of the huge economic boom in our oil and gas industry and, more recently, our technology… we’ve gained tens of thousands of people from many different races and cultures. I think it’s wonderful.
I don’t think you can escape racism anywhere. It is shrinking but it’ll be a very long time before it’s non-existent, if ever.

This question reminds me of the recent American Cheerios commercial that caused outrage in so many people (last week I think?). The reason… simply because it showed an interracial family.

Most of Canada is free of overt racism but of course covert rascism is sometimes even worse because it is hidden behind other lame excuses for denying people equal access to opportunities and it it so much harder to fight. Discriminiation againsts first nations people (natives) is still quite rampant in too many places. In many places hatred of Jews is still tolerated.

It’s there, but hidden very well. No-one would dare to say anything derogatory in public. There’s some people that will put up patriotic stickers, but they are generally “keyed” or scribbled over within hours by a passing left-wing. I have never heard the n-word said out loud unless it was discussed as a banned term.

Some subtle racism in rural areas remains, especially in northeastern Germany with high unemployment. All major cities are very diverse. Our Secretary of Commerce was born in Vietnam. Our Secretary of State is openly gay. Many of our top soccer player’s parents were born in Africa, then moved to Germany and raised their children here.

I live in a small town outside of Detroit.
Although it’s not nearly as bad as it was 20 years ago (my town used to be the home of the Grand Wizard of the KKK), it still exists. I don’t think it will ever go away.
I am going to say, however, I work in retail, and to be completely honest, although they are few and far between, my African American customers are always the nicest and most polite people I deal with.
Funny story….... I went to a concert in Detroit a few years ago and was called a “white devil” by a homeless black man. I just laughed. It made me sad at the same time, however.

Thanks for all your answers!!! What a sad situation that some are still so prejudiced based on skin color and not interested in the individual beneath that skin. :(

@Plucky What a great commercial! I hadn’t seen it before. That’s just the kind of thing we need to be doing, IMHO. The more we get to know the dreaded “other”, the more we see that racism/bigotry is just plain ridiculous.

@augustlan I think change is possible through education for sure.

I’d like to see commercials with a lynching or dragging of a shadow figure, that ends up being a white kid, then saying “What legacy are you passing on to your children?”

@Plucky: I have never seen or heard of that commercial. But it almost made me cry O_O I have a soft spot for little mixed race kids. When I was growing up, my family was ostracized in our white working class neighborhood (composed of, ya know, people who didn’t used to be ‘white’—Irish and Italians) because we were mixed race. I didn’t even understand that there were other mixed race people until I was in maybe middle school.

@bookish1 When you post thing’s about your childhood, you always touch my heart. hugs

@bookish1 Aww. Wish you’d lived in my hometown…you’d have had plenty of company, and probably plenty of friends, too. <3

I live in the Tampa area in FL now. I don’t feel racism around me at all, but I am just here two months. I was living in the south and there were more racist remarks by people, that’s for sure, but I really really believe there is more xenaphobia and prejudice than actual racism.

I grew up where @augustlan did and it was fairly diverse. Growing up I felt like everyone was just one of the many. I feel like that again here in FL even though where I live is fairly white, I don’t know the actual stats. There are plenty of people from many national origins sprinkled in.

Here in Spain in my area, about 95% of the population are racist, but they are not really serious about it.

For example, if a black guy, one of the street vendors from Africa walks past, one of my Spanish friend may make a comment about “fucking immigrant niggers coming over relentlessly” or some other racial nonsense.

However, if the same friend meets up with the same black guy at the club later that day, and they get talking, they will end up buying each other drinks and being friendly.

People here are quite racist, but they are very casual about it. It is almost the case that they are just idiots rather than actually racist, idiots who say dumb racist things that they don’t even really believe or feel passionate about.

@poisonedantidote So is that really racism?

I’ve experienced racism from many different angles. When I was in the Midwest in an area that was not very diverse, most of what I encountered was white people making comments against “foreigners” and Muslims, etc. Once I moved to a large urban area, I saw racism from other races and to be honest, to a degree I had never experienced in the Midwest.

I had a friend, originally from Vietnam, who was gay and every week his mother (now living in Texas) would call and beg him to date a girl and basically not be gay. EVERY WEEK! His father was a minister and so they believed he was breaking God’s law, so it was a big deal to them. Anyway, Christmas comes and he announces that he is bringing home a girl, but that she is just a friend. His mom, of course, goes crazy and starts bugging him about how this could be the girl for him and how if he tried, maybe he could fall in love with her, etc. Anyway, when the door opens and they see that the girl is black, his mom says in Vietnamese, “I didn’t know she was black – stay away from her. She’s not for you.” Just a story to show that racism is a part of every culture and that the us/then culture if just human nature. Easiest to base on something you can see like race, but if that’s not available (think Great Britain – Irish vs. English, etc.), people will find other ways.

Race, gender, nationality, religion, disability and age are spokes on the umbrella of discrimination. It’s unfortunate that it still exists. Personally, I don’t understand it.

To answer the question though, I live in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, and have for the past 20 years. The only inkling of racism that has been witnessed is that the population is almost 50% black and 50% white. I have yet to see an interracial couple, except one. They moved from the north to Memphis. This just doesn’t seem right.

Sadly, very much alive and in so many ways. Institutional racism in terms of government policy towards refugees. Individual racist and sexist pigs yelling at other people on the bus and on the train. Thank goodness in the last case people stood up to the woman. It’s a disgrace.

@Pied_Pfeffer In Memphis I rarely saw friends let alone couples who were from different races, actually more soecifically black and white. I knew only two women who were very close friends where one was black and was white. The black girl was not originally from Memphis, but she was from the south. I almost never saw black and white people socialize together unless it was work related. Maybe closer in to Memphis they did, I was even further out in the burbs than you. In our car club there were a few black people, but they didn’t come out to many of the functions so none of us became friends really outside of the club with them.

I say specifically black and white at the top, because if we spread it out to ethnicities, my Mexican husband had plenty of white friends in Memphis. His national origin was a non-issue in my opinion.

In Asia there is racism. South vietnamese vs north, the darker the skin the lower the class. Same with blacks.

@RocketGuy I know what you mean RE: the Blacks vs. Asian thing. I used to ride the Chinatown bus between NYC and Albany about once a month. It was a Chinese immigrant owned company but most of the clientele were low-income African Americans since the tickets were mostly in the $15—$20 range compared to the $50+ Amtrak tickets. I saw some pretty bad behavior on that bus line and I hate to say it but many of the passengers were pretty unsocialized (frankly, ghetto TBH) needed to learn some basic respect for others before they were unleashed to the public.

One of the more memorable racially-charged incidents I recall was when this young mother had her toddler son sleeping in the seat next to her. The bus had sold out pretty quickly that weekend and a young Asian guy respectfully asked her if he could sit next to her since there were no other seats available. She lit into him with a vitriolic diatribe about his “kinda people needed to stop crowdin’ up dah bus” and some other nonsense about “squinty-eyed ch*nks” and some other racial epithets I believe. It was pretty hardcore.

Another time a large black woman called me a “f*ckin’ skinny cracker bitch” when I asked if I could sit next to her and I definitely gave her a piece of my mind since I was in no mood for her bullsh*t.

TL;DR – Anyone can be a racist, no matter what color they are.