Not very well at all.
And unrelated to that, but I gotta call BS on the conclusion here tbh.
What's up with that 1-12% African American population living in northern Alaska?
The most racist places in America...according to Google.
- Thread starter Sir Alemeth
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What's up with that 1-12% African American population living in northern Alaska?
oil fields
What is bombastic or confrontational about my question or posts? I'm just asking for justification on how those things are coded language for racism.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around how someone can be racist just because they choose to live in an area with lower crime and because people of a different ethnicity happen to not be able to move out of those areas of higher crime as easily. How does that constitute racism by the person living in the suburban area?
As for my agenda, I have none other than to question what I deem are misguided views on racism in this thread (and in the study in the OP). If you want my background and experience with racism, look at my last post in this thread on page 4.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
So do you see Asians, Hispanics, or blacks like once a month?
Jest Chillin
Member
Politically Blue states are Blue due to major cities. The less populated areas of these states often vote differently during elections.
It's a specific study looking for specific data. It isn't flawed. It was never looking for what you are looking for and it doesn't feign to propose a stance one way or another outside of it's very specific research purpose.
Its title is "The Most Racists Places in America". Yes, it is extremely flawed if it excludes anything beyond a very loose connection to just one type of racism of one ethnicity directed towards one other. There are so many types of racist acts, spanning all ethnicities and directed towards many others that go beyond google searching the N-word.
The appropriate title for this study would be "The Places that Google Search for the N-word the Most in America".
Jest Chillin
Member
That's the title of the article not the title of the research paper.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122963#pone.0122963.ref001
Thr article title is, like most article titles, sensational to grab your attention in hopes you'll read it.
ScatheZombie
Member
The correct response to a generalization that, while entirely accurate on a large scale population, may not apply directly to you, personally, is to acknowledge that it doesn't apply to you and move the fuck on. Your personal anecdotes are meaningless when compared to the entire population of your state.
Also, being a white male, your perception of racism against anyone other than yourself is going to be insanely skewed if not entirely non-existent. That's just the nature of being different and having different experiences. To say that because you, personally, were not racist towards your one black friend translates to no one (or even most people) is racist towards black people in your area is... well, it's a very biased and stupid thing to say. It's basically a reverse generalization, just like the one you seem to take significant offense to. It's a variation of the "I didn't see it, so it doesn't exist" argument.
Yes, you are.
It isn't. Because that isn't what the study is about.
I assume they're waiting for us to stop shooting unarmed black teens in the street and refusing to hire people named Jamaal and worshiping a symbol of slavery before they tackle the true problem of slightly rude remarks towards white people.
neogaffer1
Banned
problem is it only limits to people who search the n-word, which is odd because who actually searches for the n-word? and even then it's only measuring racism towards african americans, if it accounted for racism against hispanics i can guarantee tx/az would be dark red.
"Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality"
Area Racism. Yes, the study is inherently flawed.
Proper title: "Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Google Searching the N-word and Black Mortality"
Three facts:
1) Google searching the n-word does not guarantee the searcher is racist
2) African Americans can google the n-word
3) There are so many types of racist acts, that go beyond google searching the N-word. These include acts done by caucasians against ethnicities beyond african american and include acts done by african americans again caucasians and/or other ethnicities.
My very personal post a few posts back detail my very real experience with"black-on-white" racism against me and my family.
Jest Chillin
Member
From the excerpts posted in the OP
So, again, the information is not at all intended to be an end-all be-all on which areas of the country are more or less racist. Especially as that's not at all the intended purpose of the research. It was looking for a correlation between a specific racial slur that was Googled and higher mortality rates for the people that slur targets. It's not pretending at all to account for all Racist acts or statements and it's not stating that racism only exists from one specific race towards another specific race.
As for your personal account, it's sad that you've gone through that but your own anecdotal account has been countered by several other anecdotal accounts, which at best, makes all anecdotal accounts a wash and at worst supports that your experience happens less often.
You could argue that the articles spin on the research is misguided or misleading but not that the research itself is flawed or stupid.
When you live somewhere for 2 decades, you interact with a lot of people. You talk with them about many things, including other ethnicities. From personal experience, you can get a sense of racism levels for your area.
I've stated my POV about my original area from my personal, 20+ year experience. Do you have your own 20 year experience in this area (upstate NY, outside of Syracuse) that you can offer a different perspective? Do you have the perspective of an african american friend that can share his 20+ year experience? Do you have anything beyond a study that searched for how often the n-word was google searched?
How do you know? Please explain how you are certain that I am an outlier. Your post carries no weight or basis in fact until you do.
Yes, the study is about area racism. In order to be valid, it must include black-on-white racism.
Just to clarify, they were highly racist remarks directly towards me, a "white person" and my fiancee, now wife, who is a "black person".
Thanks for brushing off my personal racist experience as "slightly rude remarks towards white people". This part of your post is very telling.
Vermillion
Banned
Lmao, this is an amazing image
darkazcura
Member
Boston levels? Notice Boston and it's surrounding areas in Massachusetts are pretty much all blue on this map? NYC is no better or worse than Boston in this type of discussion.
The Maverick
Member
Thought about moving to Arizona, now I see I was wrong.
The Maverick
Member
I feel bad for your wife.
I was generalizing, yes, and this study is sort of... meh, but my post isn't quite baseless. I was born in upstate New York, and I moved when I was 8 or 9 or so to DC, and moved back up to the area around 15.
It was culture shock, really. There were only two black kids in the entire high school, and the surrounding areas were generally devoid of minorities in general... unless you went to the inner city. Of course, everyone thought the inner city was a terrible place where crimes happened 24/7 (because the news focused on crimes in those areas quite often while ignoring crimes in other provinces), and whether the connection was made subconsciously or not, every one white just associated blacks with crime and general badness. And they were severely racist to Hispanics even without that "connection" I mentioned above. It was quite gross, honestly. And no, I didn't live in a suburb... it was quite worse in the suburbs, actually.
Are you an outlier in terms of the NY problem? I dunno, maybe, maybe not. Probably depends specifically what part of upstate NY you're from, since everyone considers every part of NY except for NYC upstate.
Are you an outlier in terms of only seeing black on white racism? Hell yes you are.
Thanks for sharing your upstate NY experience to contrast it with mine --- I think the bold part of your post is important. My area may have just been different from some others in the region.
I think my general issue with this is with the washington post article vs. the research paper.
My personal experience has been so heavily weighted and tainted with black-on-white racism that it is really frustrating when this racism is nixed from consideration in the public eye when discussing racism. Thus, an article that props this study up as proof of where the most racist people in America live is directly discounting my personal experiences with racism and neglecting such an important and terrible part of the problem of racism in present-day America.
WTH?
irfaanator
Banned
sounds about right for ohio
King Tubby
Member
If they checked for google searches of "Spic" the whole border would light up like a Christmas tree. This isn't a measure of racism in general as much as anti-black racism.
Gentleman Jack
Member
For voting fraud I was going after the often inflated perception that there's a lot of it, and that efforts to combat it adversely affect the poor, which in turn adversely affects minorities. But the blind rush to 'solve' the vanishingly small amount of fraud pretends to see it as a color-blind issue when it's anything but. Hence, anybody concerned enough with it to effect policy changes is engaging in the perpetuation of structural racism. The voter ID law push during the last set of national elections is the concrete example I was thinking of.
Those advocating for cuts to 'entitlements' like welfare, nutritional assistance, medicaid etc are doing much the same. They represent easy, nominally 'color-blind' punching bags for those seeking a scapegoat upon which to lay their economic woes, yet by no small coincidence they disproportionately affect lower-income minority communities, so stamping down on it is another boot on the throat from people pretending it's not an issue that intersects with racial divisions in the US.
In both cases it's a very indirect form of abstract racism that still does a lot of damage to minority communities and there are more examples like it up and down the country, rural and urban. I wished to outline that 'the most racist places in America' is not the best conclusion to draw from finding out that more people in the Deep South google 'nigger' than communities labeled blue, which still find ways to damage minority communities even if they aren't so superficially racist.
Bend and not Sweet Home?
Splatterpunk
Member
Uh, what? There's nothing wrong with using the term racism here, nowhere does it say that it is objective measure of all racism of all kinds, in fact in kind of implies the opposite with the rest of the title, "and black mortality." What effect would including the # of incidents in which "white boy" and "cracker" were uttered have on the black mortality rate? Maybe 100 years ago that would be relevant to the study.
There's a difference between belittling someone's experience (which I don't think that poster was doing at all) and saying that one side is a much bigger problem than the other. Being made fun of by some assholes on the corner is very obviously dwarfed by decades of systematic and institutionalized racism. Again, sorry that it happened, but until you can be legally murdered by the state for reaching for your wallet, wearing a hoody, or just asking for help.. well, don't be surprised when people see your posts as another instance of whataboutism.
I understand what you mean now, but I still feel it is wrong to label as racists all those who advocate for crackdown on voter fraud and on cuts to or stricter rules on entitlements just because these issues tend to affect certain ethnicities more than others.
Many people who fight these fights are not just pretending to be color blind ---- they really are. They are merely focusing on the "content of the character" of the issue at hand and how it will affect the nation as a whole as opposed to focusing on how the issue affects a particular ethnicity or group of people with a particular skin color. They may be misguided on the issue (e.g. voter fraud being a negligible issue), but their motives and morality behind their stance is not based on any racist origins. Labeling them as racists in this case is wrong and maybe racist in and of itself, IMO.
Gentleman Jack
Member
For starters, I never labeled anybody in particular racist, and I agree that people with good intentions can yield policy with disgustingly racist outcomes.
But in what way is anything you think I said racist?
sir_kevith
Member
You seriously don't see how you're a statistical outlier in this? How would you go about making a study that would account for your uncommon personal experience? You experience black on white racism because you're white and interact with the blacks more often than most. If anything it should give you a better understanding of what black people go through but instead you make this shit all about yourself.
"But the blind rush to 'solve' the vanishingly small amount of fraud pretends to see it as a color-blind issue when it's anything but. Hence, anybody concerned enough with it to effect policy changes is engaging in the perpetuation of structural racism."
"They represent easy, nominally 'color-blind' punching bags for those seeking a scapegoat upon which to lay their economic woes, yet by no small coincidence they disproportionately affect lower-income minority communities, so stamping down on it is another boot on the throat from people pretending it's not an issue that intersects with racial divisions in the US.
In both cases it's a very indirect form of abstract racism....."
It's the emphasis on people pretending to ignore an issue. Maybe racism is the wrong word for us both to use. Racism is defined as "having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another", so maybe this doesn't apply to what I said as well as it not applying to what you're describing as abstract racism.
Belief in strict voter fraud rules and entitlement reforms certainly does not need to originate or even perpetuate the idea that one race is superior to another, even if those reforms may end up disproportionately negatively affecting those of a certain ethnicity.
Nice neighborhoods can often be pretty mixed. White/Black/Hispanis/Asian/ etc.
It's the poor neighborhoods that are almost always minorities.
See, the key is in your bolded part above. My experience offers a small glimpse at a very important part of the problem that is hardly discussed at all or focused on by the media. There is a very serious, deep-seated discriminatory POV that not all, but enough of the African American community harbors towards caucasians that is just as damaging to race relations and the improvement of conditions of their own race as the institutionalized white-on-black racism that exists.
I say discriminatory vs racist because it may not be a POV that blacks are superior to whites, but it is a POV of disrespect and animosity to whites in a highly damaging and discriminatory way. It furthers hatred and distrust between people and it prevents people from looking past skin color to the real person inside.
Casual and mocking use of the term "cracker" and "white boy/person" can be easily dismissed in this day and age, but IMO terms like that are as damaging as the N-word.
I'm a statistical outlier in the sense of there being an extremely low % of black-white couples in the nation, so yes, I am experiencing something that most people do not get to normally experience.
I don't interact with a large # of African Americans that much more than caucasians -- only my immediate family. The discriminatory issues we've run into have occurred while walking in predominantly city settings, with high %s of African Americans in the area.
Nobody may have died during these instances, but the disrespect and animosity behind these instances are of the sort of mindset that have indeed led to the serious injury and deaths of many people in recent years. It is inherently harmful to the cause of racial harmony and should be called out just as harshly as any other sort of discriminatory act done by other ethnicities.
ScatheZombie
Member
I was legitimately going to respond to your other post ... but then I read this and realized that would be a lost cause.
Dude. Holy fucking shit. If you honestly believe mockingly being called a 'white boy' is even in the same galaxy as the overwhelming systemic racial history of the N-word, there is no point in arguing with you. Because you are insane.
So you choose to be immature, dismissive and vulgar instead of posting a rational reply?
sir_kevith
Member
You're clearly over sensitive and your views are even more dismissive in my opinion.
This is a serious and deeply personal issue to me, yes, but I don't see how my posts could come across as "over sensitive" or dismissive. What have I posted that is dismissive? I'm merely bringing an alternate view and experience to the discussion.
I mean, the study already excluded racism against every other race or ethnicity other than black, so I'm not sure why you're arguing that it has to include racism against whites? I mean, perhaps the study should have been titled "The most racist places against Blacks in America"? Would that have been better? Because that's clearly what the study, flawed though its methodology and underlying assumptions may be, was going for.
A few pages in, after getting the link the the study itself, I clarified that it was the Washington Post article (i.e. the thing that 99% of people who discover this study will read) that was wrong, being titled "The Most Racist Places in America". The study itself has its limitations defined clearly, though its basis on the n-word search is still a big stretch, IMO.
From my long-time experience (10+ years), having lived in 6 different areas (urban, suburban and rural) of the south, mid-atlantic and northeast, the most racist or discriminatory places in America, especially for a caucasian/African American couple, are the urban centers with large African American populations (major cities east-coast cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore).
Gentleman Jack
Member
The debate never happens without the angle of the racial socioeconomic divide in 2015. If people who participate in the debate over topics that intersect strongly with it insist that race has nothing to do with it, their innocence is feigned at best and hides malicious intent at worst. The pro-voice of Voter ID laws comprises both the true believers who have bought into the narrative that voter fraud is a huge problem that costs us our very democracy and out and out racists whose endgame is to disenfranchise the black vote. I'm sorry if you feel bad for the true believers getting called out for a perpetuation of structural racism but...
...this is a bullshit deflection. If you want something that yields a racist result, then you're content and comfortable in a racist society.
Yea I would say St. Louis is clearly above average. Terrible how bad we are in this city
From my prior post:
"There is a very serious, deep-seated discriminatory POV that not all, but enough of the African American community harbors towards caucasians that is just as damaging to race relations and the improvement of conditions of their own race as the institutionalized white-on-black racism that exists.
I say discriminatory vs racist because it may not be a POV that blacks are superior to whites, but it is a POV of disrespect and animosity to whites in a highly damaging and discriminatory way. It furthers hatred and distrust between people and it prevents people from looking past skin color to the real person inside.
Casual and mocking use of the term "cracker" and "white boy/person" can be easily dismissed in this day and age, but IMO terms like that are as damaging as the N-word."
Call me insane and dismiss my experience, but perhaps someday you will experience something similar and understand.
Having a 10 year old African American boy in central Philly jeeringly ask my fiancee "why are you holding hands with that cracker?" is, in this day and age, just as ignorant and harmful as a townsperson in the 1800s asking a caucasian why they are holding hands with that N----. It is just as disrespectful and hate-filled. We just haven't reached the point where the general populace understands that yet, because interracial dating/marriage is still relatively small %-wise, even though it has risen significantly in recent years.
I think it's more or a correlation of population demographics than anything else. People in Montana, Nebraska etc might not be inherently less racist, it's just they don't have the Atlanta/Philly/Detroit type areas to reinforce negative stereotypes. "Out of sight, out of mind" as they say.
Splatterpunk
Member
I don't really get what you're saying here, that if some blacks weren't so mean race relations would be better? Couldn't this just as easily be turned around to say that if whites didn't continually enable, support, or just outright deny the existence of a system that oppresses them then they wouldn't have any reason to disrespect whites? That's if I agree with your assertion that there's a deep seated animosity towards whites, which I don't. What you encountered was some bored dudes looking for an easy target to fuck with. Either way saying "just be nicer to each other" ain't really gonna cut it. And frankly, neither is "both sides have stuff they need to work on," because personally I find that mentality much more damaging as to tends to minimize the fact one side is way, way out of proportion, leading to statements like:
on which, we're gonna have to agree to disagree. Yeah white boy is insulting and probably even emasculating, and you're obviously still upset about it, but no way does it come close to the utterly dehumanizing effect of the word nigger.
..except that a black person in the 1800s (or 1900s) could attacked, beaten, lynched, and then posed with for a postcard and not a single thing would be done about it. Does that really compare with a child and a homeless person for your examples of widespread hate-filled discrimination?
You keep bringing up the fact that you're in a interracial relationship, but in this case it just kinda seems like the black friend defense-frankly to me it sounds like you're still speaking from a place of ignorance. I'm curious, have you ever talked at length with your SO about any of this? Or the extended family? They obviously wouldn't like people on the street calling you cracker, but I mean, do you think she, or they, would entirely agree with all you've said?
ScatheZombie
Member
You really shouldn't assume people who disagree with your insanity have never had your experiences. I've lived all over the US, from south Philly to Tampa to Chicago to Arizona to California. My college roommates were a guy from Iran, a Nigerian immigrant and a black kid from Brooklyn. My first two jobs were doing manual labor with illegal Mexican immigrants. I've been called everything you've said and worse. Much, much worse.
And it absolutely pales in comparison to the shit I've seen those same people have to deal with every damn day. Name calling and random catcalls and insults are the least of their worries.
And the crux of it is, their prejudice and rudeness towards you isn't born from a ignorant hatred of skin color. It's born from a very real frustration in living in what is basically a white man's world. Every day. So no, racism towards minorities from white people is nothing like racism towards white people from minorities. It isn't born from the same place, it doesn't have the same history, and it isn't remotely to the same magnitude or executed to the same systemic degree.
To claim otherwise is extremely ignorant and selfish of you.
First off, no it isn't. In the 1800s, that black person would have been attacked, beaten, lynched and killed. And no one would have a done a thing about it. The kid talking trash isn't threatening your life on a daily basis. You do not live in fear of literally being murdered for dating someone of a different skin color or having a different skin color yourself.
He probably does. By someone with your skin tone wearing a badge. Today.
The reason I (and most others in the thread) are so dismissive of you, is your point comes across like a whiny child who doesn't understand the reality of the world around them. You seem to be throwing a tantrum because some random strangers made some snide comments to you a handful of times that were racially charged. And no one cared. Why does no one care!? Because in the grand scheme of things, everything you said is extremely tame and is, in no way, a comparison to the racism and harassment minorities face on a daily basis.
Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
These are relative. All of the blue places have plenty of racists, the red places just have more per capita.Awkward... Texas is more blue.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I actually know racists who moved to AZ to be somewhere more accepting of their beliefs. (and because they couldn't afford CA, being the temporarily embarrassed millionaires they are)
No, I strongly disagree that I just got unlucky and met a few "bored dudes" looking for an easy target. Would those comments have been made if I had been the same color as my fiancee? Of course not.
Except in this day and age, there are examples every year of killings and beatings that occur while these hateful, disrespectful labels such as "cracker" and "white boy/girl" are tossed around. I google searched for just 1 minute and found a couple from 2014 --- both from Cleveland, funny enough (maybe that is why they are one of the most racist areas of America?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU7YgZQCzPk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frYDKPFhK54
and a part of a book, "Experiencing Racism: Exploring Discrimination through the Eyes of College Students":
https://books.google.com/books?id=7mHhQjkVC6EC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=white+cracker+day+was+not+the+only+day&source=bl&ots=v5zb0JERVs&sig=5lYj2ov4eE4QzLWmipEtVOqL218&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMI7f7sj_zvxgIVQ5ANCh1IQQf-#v=onepage&q=white%20cracker%20day%20was%20not%20the%20only%20day&f=false
White Cracker Day ----- I guess that is a thing at many school and perpetuates to this day. Google it.
I could spend all night coming up with examples, but will leave that to you on your own time if you would like proof.
There may not be lynching explicitly happening, but as I said, it is just as disrespectful and hate-filled as the N-word in this day and age.
The bolded part above really bothers me --- I won't entertain it further.
Yes, yes I have spoken at great lengths with my wife about this. For many years. While I can't experience the things that she has experienced, we do understand each other and agree that there are significant issues "on both sides", with the things that I am pointing out in this thread being a very serious one that is for the most part ignored and/or given a free pass.
Chezzymann
Member
To the people surprised at Texas, I think you'll find that the major cities here (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio) dont really fit into the Texas stereotype very well. Its mostly the rural areas that the stereotype comes from.
Anecdotal but I grew up in NC and then moved to Utah in my late 20s. I experienced a lot of casual, tongue in cheek racism that didn't really bother me in NC, especially around/after 9/11. Utah though, woooooo, I learned what real hardcore racism was. They don't like browns here, at all. Businesses treat you differently, neighbors don't wave back, and forget about calling the police for anything.
Look up the links I posted above and then google search for the countless occurrences over the past decade of beatings and killings that have occurred while these "extremely tame" "snide comments" such as cracker and white boy were spewed out hatefully. You are so dismissive of these comments and completely ignore the violence and deep-seated hatred (or at least disrespect) that goes hand in hand with these sayings.
Is it really ignorant and selfish of me to speak out against the many instances of random, hate/'ignorant-filled violence being committed by black youths on whites, regardless of where that hatred was borne from? Am I really an ignorant, tantrum throwing child just because I speak out against this? How is the twinge of fear felt when my wife and I are surround by ~7 or 8 black teenagers in Baltimore a few years ago and they start asking my wife how she's doing and how this white boy is treating her any different from a black boy walking down the street in the Old South? There are plenty of recent examples of such events ending with the "white boy" breathing out of a ventilator and fighting for his life.
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