The most interesting response I got was about as long as a novel, but it was great to get that detail and explanation of that person's opinion. He described how we end up inherently judging people by outward appearance and race just happens to be a part of our appearance (like colors of markers), but it's more of a cautiousness rather than pure racism. It's interesting how everyone who commented on my post agreed that everyone inherently views differences and there's no real way of helping that. The question then becomes: Does that recognition of differences between races qualify as racism in and of itself or does it have to be connected to a negative emotion/prejudice?
7 comments:
This same thing happened to me. I found that the people who did have an opinion felt very strong about it and wanted people to know what their opinion was. What I noticed though, and maybe this is a fluke, the people who said no didn't have as much to say...
I think the speed at which people responded probably showed that everyone had an opinion that they probably did not have to think about too much but had already formed before hand.
Also I've mentioned this in other posts but like you said I do think there is a difference between racism and categorizing. Racism seems more negative and stagnant where categorizing is something people use in all aspects of life and are willing to change their opinion about after increased exposure.
People that say no are usually people who feel that being racist is a thing of the past. I think our generation has really moved leaps and bounds past our parents generation regarding race. People say no and not much else because it's just not a big deal.
I think that your question is the right one to ponder. If I were to do this again, I would ask people to include what they define racism as, and then see if the response was different.
Agreed, racism can be seen as a caution towards others. The only problem is they may seem that cautiousness as a form of racism.
i agree..everyone distinguishes races differently. everyone is different. but regardless, everyone is still discriminatory or prejudice. whether it's from the minorities to the majorities, or the majorities to the minorities.
I too was super surprised at how fast people were wanting to get their opinion out there!
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