The Art of Listening

[Bengalzona]

(07-31-2019, 12:19 AM)Dill Wrote: Agree here, especially with the bolded.

Let me advance the discussion a notch. I am a white person too. People of color/blacks/African-Americans have also sought to correct my views on the proper labels over the years, and on what counts on racism as well.  So this doesn't only happen to people who become Trump supporters. Also, I spent part of my adolescence growing up on an Indian reservation where I was always called "white boy." Sometimes I was physically attacked. I was never especially offended, never took it personally, even where offense was intended, because of the powerlessness of the non-whites so addressing me. I never thought of this as reverse racism, or its partner, "racism plain and simple."

But I am not all confused about this, wondering what I am supposed to call "them," those non-white minorities.  "They" are a mixture of different outlooks and ideologies, just like us. So that guy calling me out for saying "African-American," or the other guy insisting I say "blacks," or someone totally different years later in a different state who wants me to say "people of color,"--I don't see these all as speaking for their "race."  I don't see a unified problem confronting my "race." 

Sometimes this sort of "correction" comes from young folks who have been watching online videos or reading excerpts of Malcom X in a HS class.  No doubt there are some people who see this as an easy way to gain some kind of momentary moral leverage.  I am comfortable reducing the leverage by raising the issue of 1st-world privilege (which benefits ALL Americans, regardless of color) if it looks like the discussion might be worth it, or asking them for the rationale for the correction.

So far, though, nothing in my experience of inter-racial discussion/conflict has led me to think there is a problem here worth my vote. I don't see a threat, personal or national. "They" are not taking over. So I am curious as to how this minimal friction begins to define the experience of so many white Americans, gets channeled into the kind of national ground swell which brought a grifter into the presidency. 

We often talk about people's political choices as if they come from some deeply private, mysterious place wholly unique to each individual. But I think that such choices are largely constructed within a world view depending on friends, family, schooling, and selected information sources. Some such sources work actively to connect the dots for people, to link their otherwise minimal frictions with other races to more serious economic/political issues.(Check out the thread "Iraq Veteran Fired Due To Skin Color" for illustration of this will to amplify.)

Dino and a number of other white boys on this thread also don't get all bent out of shape over "unfairness" to whites.  Why do some whiteys break one way, some another?  This is a question which generally interests me. Why the urgency to reverse charges of racism when Trump and other whites are accused of it, arguably for legitimate reasons? To separate questions of racism from questions of power? To defend by finding "real racism" in those who challenge racism and the like?

What do you think of the difference between 'casual racism' and 'formal racism'?