Once Again, this Chris Rock quote provides useful Substitute black for any non-white male person in America. I don't think America is anywhere near ready to confront it's history. I do think that there is a growing population among the group directly responsible for this environment that are ready. You could say that black people made progress, but to say black people have made progress would mean that black people deserved to be segregated...The reality is that white people have gotten less crazy. My father didn't suddenly deserve to eat with people because he deserved it. The people who were denying him his rights got less crazy.
I think "confronting history" is very difficult, because any specific individual can look at himself and say, "I never owned slaves," or "I didn't keep a black person out of college." It's not difficult to make a leap from there to not seeing oneself as culpable in any way, even though we're all part of a long historic contingency that is supragenerational. If I'm rich and you're poor it's much more pleasant for me to think that I'm rich because I went to college and worked my way into a good job. To analyze why I had that chance in the first place is to subvert my own sense of self, because in some sense, we're both historical accidents. Luck, for better or for worse, is a bigger part of our lives than we like to suppose.
I honestly the the entire thought of valuing your accomplishments are a moot point unless you as a person worked for them. It isn't a case of "I am rich", it isn't a case of "I got good grades". It's a case of "I worked hard for what I got and am proud of it". A person who simply looks at the world and says "you are poor therefore you have not accomplished anything with your life" isn't looking at what that person has managed to accomplish. It may have been a range where, without that person's effort, they could be in a far worse situations, but with the effort they stay afloat. A person can look at themselves, having never put their mind and effort to things, and be proud of where they are, despite having never done anything to deserve it. I know I have always felt this way about school, up until I met a point where I felt I was going to do bad, and I was going to do badly, but studied my ass off and managed to get a decent grade. I am a thousand times more proud of that B than I would be with an A I got from a class that was easy. Much in the same way, we can look at someone who is poor and still say they have put themselves there, if you are fully aware of that person's upbringing and background. You are entirely able to look at someone who is an alcoholic on the street and say "that person could have done better". However, when you apply the same to someone barely managing to hold onto their dead end job, you are putting down someone who works ten times harder for their lives than you have. That's where things fail. We should value people for their accomplishments in context, and should value their ethics on that also. Not based on their accomplishments as an absolute. Bill Gates is someone who deserved every cent he has made, despite the fact he started off well. Someone who was born to a rich family and simply became a multi-millionaire and kept the company they inherited afloat, however, accomplished little of praise.
Sounds about right. If you are slapping yourself on the back over how swell you treat black folks you are probably the kind of person who doesn't see that our society is has a festering wound of vicious discrimination. If you haven't done anything to bring about real change you should really just feel ashamed of the culture you live in (I know I do). I think a good deal of millennial pride in how enlightened they are is rooted in the soccer trophy phenomenon. Be all proud that you aren't a bigot when all you did was show up and act just like everyone ever acted while nothing actually changed.
I think it's the "well I treat black people well, what are they complaining about?" thing were you are too busy being tolerant to actually listen to people telling you that "Yes mike, we love you but ehh... maybe stop calling us the n-word? I know you mean well and you are a wonderful person but that is quite offensive?" I say this as someone who is a VERY white Swedish girl who had no problems with discrimination when she lived in Wisconsin by the way - the only thing that happened to me was that i but SWEDISH when they asked for race/nationality. Because I'm not Caucasian - that term refers to people from eastern Europe and not girls who look like WASPs but with a TINY bit of Sami blood. (The Sami are the native people of Scandinavia they live in the northmost part and have a wonderful Raindeer tending tradition and an AMAZING language. I have Sami ancestors but of the "married an white dude/woman kind." I would love to learn the language, but I'm not pretending that the fact that I have relatives that were Sami affects me in any negative way (though I do have health issues that are very common among them and MAYBE AB blood. There is a 50/50 chance that its that or A) the only way it affects me is that I have an amazing bone structure. It is an issue I struggle with a lot because I REALLY don't want to be racist and I do know that I say racist things sometimes. I think the key is listening.
I don't know really, I'm sorry for rambling but I have a lot of thoughts on the issue.
All this crap about Millennials being X or Y or Z is going to fall flat as time passes forwards. People never understand that a lot of the values a group holds also tends to correspond to their age and situations. Liberals now when we are all in college, Republicans when we are all managers and see the effects laws have on our businesses. Give it thirty years, and the republican party will adopt all the talking points today, such as gay marriage, and absorb/turn all the people who currently vote Democrat for that exact reason. As to the race issues, I am not too sure you can say if Millennials are better or worse. Yes, you may say "they rate the same on these tests", but those tests are much more based on subconscious and similar reactions where the person isn't actively aware of their decisions. A generation that states and wants to have an open mind about race is going to be far more receptive to enforcing positive change in the area.
The article simultaneously points out that white millenials are no less tolerant than their parents while also observing that they're a vanishing breed. Imagine this sentence written in 1945: Think about that for a minute - the author is casually dismissing the fact that sometime in the next 30 years, white people will no longer be a majority. That, right there, is the majority of the bugshittery over on Fox News - the fact that your grandkids are going to be outnumbered by "those people." Yet this article pretty much sweeps it under the rug to nit-pick study methodology. Know what's great for tolerance? Necessity. If every Starbuck's is full of interracial and same-sex couples, you've got two choices: get used to interracial and same-sex couples or stop going to Starbuck's. And when you substitute "everywhere" for "Starbuck's" you either chill out or move to Sandpoint.The fact of the matter is that millennials who are white — that is, members of the group that has always had the most regressive racial beliefs, and who will constitute a majority of U.S. voters for at least another couple of decades — are, on key questions involving race, no more open-minded than their parents.
Racially tolerant, sure. Religiously tolerant... I dunno. After the recent attacks in Paris Twitter, Reddit, and internet forums in general are ripe with "All Muslims are bad" type sentiment. I realize, yes, it's "just the internet", but it's prevalent on a frighteningly large scale. I've seen more flat out hate for an entire population of a billion+ people of a certain faith than I ever have in my life. It's scary. White male kid goes on a shooting rampage and kills a bunch of kids in a school, "Oh we need more education and mental health services in this country". Couple Muslim people do it, and "Islam promotes violence! Muslims really need to get their shit together." Sure millenials are okay with black people. Great. That was a civil rights bridge that was crossed decades ago. But we're facing an entirely new battle of tolerance, and right now it's a religious one with Muslims. There is a shockinly large movement of "Islamaphobia" sweeping social media and the internet in general and it's honestly disturbing.he younger generation is more racially tolerant than their elders.
How does this stack up against other countries? How well would Hubski do? I think it would be fun and interesting to survey us.