Herja has asked whether or not white Americans are concerned about being or being about to become a minority. The answer is: as far as I can see, they aren't.
The thing is, white Americans are not a minority, nor are about to become one anytime soon. They are about 75% of population, and are projected to drop slightly by 2042. The projection says that by 2042 the non-Hispanic whites will drop under 50% of the total population, but "non-Hispanic whites" are a rather artificial category.
To put it really bluntly, whites are usually concerned about blacks (more specifically about not being a minority anywhere where blacks are a majority) and the black population is not rising in any significant numbers. The Asian population is rising really fast, but I've never met anyone who'd be concerned about that. Lots of people are concerned about Hispanic immigration in the sense of it being a lot of poorly educated people who don't speak English; very few people regard English-speaking US-educated Hispanics as any kind of a threat.
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Friday, December 04, 2009
And now for some statistics
Decided to check out the statistics on crime vs. race in the US cities. While doing so picked up some interesting trivia, and added more stuff to the table (nativity, language, education, median household income and poverty rate).
There are 34 cities with more than half a million population in the US. One of them, Chicago, still hasn't learned to calculate its crime rate, so I didn't include it.
I was not sure whether to count hispanics separately, as used to be traditional, or together with whatever race they actually are, so I did both, like the US Census Bureau. The population data come from the American Community Survey, which is a survey they do to complement the data between the censuses. For one city, Louisville, I had to make up the numbers of non-hispanic whites, because it wasn't available, but it was easy and correct to about one percentage point, because they don't really have almost any hispanics there.
The crime data are FBI's for 2007. The numbers are crime rates for 100000 people.
The table is sortable.
I'll write more comments later, but here are the first few:
- The first thing that surprised me was how few people claim to be of two or more races, in comparison with what you see in the streets. Except in Honolulu, where they don't seem to care.
- I'd known that there is a negative correlation between the number of hispanics and the violent crime rate, but I didn't realize it was that strong.
- The correlation between the percentage of people below the poverty line and violent crime is not nearly as strong as I expected.
- Some things are kind of obvious: the positive correlation between number of blacks and crime is well known, and the negative correlation between the number of immigrants and crime rates is understandable too: you come to the US, you wanna move somewhere nice, as opposed to Detroit. Some things are quite interesting, though: for example Louisville is much poorer than Boston, much blacker, and very much less educated, yet much safer. El Paso is a very poor, very hispanic and very safe city.
- It's interesting that the cities with a non-hispanic white majority tend towards the middle of the table when ranked by safety.
There are 34 cities with more than half a million population in the US. One of them, Chicago, still hasn't learned to calculate its crime rate, so I didn't include it.
I was not sure whether to count hispanics separately, as used to be traditional, or together with whatever race they actually are, so I did both, like the US Census Bureau. The population data come from the American Community Survey, which is a survey they do to complement the data between the censuses. For one city, Louisville, I had to make up the numbers of non-hispanic whites, because it wasn't available, but it was easy and correct to about one percentage point, because they don't really have almost any hispanics there.
The crime data are FBI's for 2007. The numbers are crime rates for 100000 people.
The table is sortable.
I'll write more comments later, but here are the first few:
- The first thing that surprised me was how few people claim to be of two or more races, in comparison with what you see in the streets. Except in Honolulu, where they don't seem to care.
- I'd known that there is a negative correlation between the number of hispanics and the violent crime rate, but I didn't realize it was that strong.
- The correlation between the percentage of people below the poverty line and violent crime is not nearly as strong as I expected.
- Some things are kind of obvious: the positive correlation between number of blacks and crime is well known, and the negative correlation between the number of immigrants and crime rates is understandable too: you come to the US, you wanna move somewhere nice, as opposed to Detroit. Some things are quite interesting, though: for example Louisville is much poorer than Boston, much blacker, and very much less educated, yet much safer. El Paso is a very poor, very hispanic and very safe city.
- It's interesting that the cities with a non-hispanic white majority tend towards the middle of the table when ranked by safety.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
It's called race, stupid
A little while ago I read a YLE article about how racism is hard on bicultural children.
The basic point is that people easily assume that bicultural children are not Finnish, even if they have lived all their lives in Finland, and sometimes speak English to them.
I certainly don't doubt that this is the case. I could dispute whether this is a manifestation of racism or just an educated guess on the part of the person making the assumption - this depends on whether you define all the assumptions on the basis of race as racist, on how justified the assumption is in a particular case (an area with a lot of non-white Finnish-speaking children vs. an area that doesn't have any), and on how insistent the person making the assumption is in their mistaken ways - but my point isn't about that. It's about the gross misuse of the term "bicultural", and indeed of the term "culture".
I know a number of Finnish people who grew up in bicultural families: Finnish-German, Finnish-English, Finnish-American, Finnish-Polish, etc. So far I have never observed strangers trying to speak English to them on the assumption that they must be not Finnish. I wonder why is that. Could it be because - gasp - they look like they are Finnish? Like, they look northern- or central-European?
The whole point of the article is about race, pure and simple. It's about people who are Finnish but don't look like that. And it's not about any controversial race topic, either. It's about race in the sense in which everybody not totally divorced from reality knows it exists: that the people with genetic heritage in different parts of the world tend to look different.
It's kind of funny that the author uses the words racism and racist quite easily, but avoids the word race completely.
The other rather mystical thing is that the author is writing about this as a problem affecting specifically biracial (or rather, as she says, "bicultural") children, although almost all the problems that she has mentioned - except the adoption assumption - would affect any non-white children growing up in Finland, as well as the darker varieties of white. Makes one wonder whether she herself considers monoracial non-white children growing up in Finland Finnish.
(To the more ethnically-oriented folks reading this: yes, I am aware that the word "Finnish" has an ethnic meaning as well, and that in that sense monoracial non-white children are not Finnish. I am using the word "Finnish" here in the sense of "carrier of Finnish culture", which one can obviously be regardless of race and ethnic origin.)
I wouldn't bitch about one badly written article that much, but it seems to me that more and more people, regardless of their political positions on race and/or immigration, have started using the word "culture" as a substitute for "race". It's not. Race is that thing you are born with. Culture is that thing that you learn when you are little, and learn more when you are bigger, and you can choose to learn other ones later, or not.
The basic point is that people easily assume that bicultural children are not Finnish, even if they have lived all their lives in Finland, and sometimes speak English to them.
I certainly don't doubt that this is the case. I could dispute whether this is a manifestation of racism or just an educated guess on the part of the person making the assumption - this depends on whether you define all the assumptions on the basis of race as racist, on how justified the assumption is in a particular case (an area with a lot of non-white Finnish-speaking children vs. an area that doesn't have any), and on how insistent the person making the assumption is in their mistaken ways - but my point isn't about that. It's about the gross misuse of the term "bicultural", and indeed of the term "culture".
I know a number of Finnish people who grew up in bicultural families: Finnish-German, Finnish-English, Finnish-American, Finnish-Polish, etc. So far I have never observed strangers trying to speak English to them on the assumption that they must be not Finnish. I wonder why is that. Could it be because - gasp - they look like they are Finnish? Like, they look northern- or central-European?
The whole point of the article is about race, pure and simple. It's about people who are Finnish but don't look like that. And it's not about any controversial race topic, either. It's about race in the sense in which everybody not totally divorced from reality knows it exists: that the people with genetic heritage in different parts of the world tend to look different.
It's kind of funny that the author uses the words racism and racist quite easily, but avoids the word race completely.
The other rather mystical thing is that the author is writing about this as a problem affecting specifically biracial (or rather, as she says, "bicultural") children, although almost all the problems that she has mentioned - except the adoption assumption - would affect any non-white children growing up in Finland, as well as the darker varieties of white. Makes one wonder whether she herself considers monoracial non-white children growing up in Finland Finnish.
(To the more ethnically-oriented folks reading this: yes, I am aware that the word "Finnish" has an ethnic meaning as well, and that in that sense monoracial non-white children are not Finnish. I am using the word "Finnish" here in the sense of "carrier of Finnish culture", which one can obviously be regardless of race and ethnic origin.)
I wouldn't bitch about one badly written article that much, but it seems to me that more and more people, regardless of their political positions on race and/or immigration, have started using the word "culture" as a substitute for "race". It's not. Race is that thing you are born with. Culture is that thing that you learn when you are little, and learn more when you are bigger, and you can choose to learn other ones later, or not.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
A teaching moment
The Gates-Crowley scandal has pretty much come to an end. A call to the police about the possible burglary in progress, the police's attempt to check it out, the resident freaking out and yelling at the police, his arrest - ill-advised or not - the president's comments - ill-advised or not, etc. Our peacemaker-in-chief managed to reconcile the professor and the officer with the help of a sufficient amount of beer. The nation had its teaching moment.
What exactly did we learn? Not being an officer of law, a professor of African-American studies or a president, but just a simple American woman with a computer and Net access, I have followed the story of the woman who called the possible burglary in, and learned the following things:
- don't ever mention the race of a possible suspect to a 911 dispatcher, even if they are asking about it. To be on the safe side, don't mention the sex, either. Or the species. Or the number. "N beings are trying to break down the door." Or, to be on a safer side, just don't call the police when you see somebody breaking into somewhere,
- if you have exercised bad judgment and called the police, record the call yourself, so that you can have immediately available proof that you have not in fact mentioned race or anything else that might possibly describe the suspect,
- if the suspected burglar turns out to be a sufficiently privileged person, retain an attorney.
What exactly did we learn? Not being an officer of law, a professor of African-American studies or a president, but just a simple American woman with a computer and Net access, I have followed the story of the woman who called the possible burglary in, and learned the following things:
- don't ever mention the race of a possible suspect to a 911 dispatcher, even if they are asking about it. To be on the safe side, don't mention the sex, either. Or the species. Or the number. "N beings are trying to break down the door." Or, to be on a safer side, just don't call the police when you see somebody breaking into somewhere,
- if you have exercised bad judgment and called the police, record the call yourself, so that you can have immediately available proof that you have not in fact mentioned race or anything else that might possibly describe the suspect,
- if the suspected burglar turns out to be a sufficiently privileged person, retain an attorney.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Oh my God! The racist police came to check on a break-in! You bastards!
When I was young and my parents bought their first home the police came over a few times to check on a possible burglary in progress. The reason was a malfunctioning alarm system. They came over, asked a few questions and left. Everything was very civil. After a few times we disconnected the alarm system altogether.
Later, in their new home, this happened again, this time due to an overly concerned neighbor. The last time she called the police was when my parents ordered an air conditioning system delivered. They weren't even home, and the police came and somehow managed to figure out that the workers delivering the air conditioner were not in fact burglars.
Happens all the time, really. Happens to the white, the black, the Asians and the Hispanic, and probably the Native Americans. Surely happens to the blacks more often than to everyone else, but usually everyone, including the black people, manages to sort it out with the police perfectly well.
It really takes a professor of African-American studies at Harvard University to fuck it up.
Henry Louis Gates was trying to force his own front door for some prefectly good reason, which was not, however, ovbious to a casual observer. A neighbor called in a possible burglary, which is not an unreasonable assumption to make if somebody you don't recognize is trying to break into a house. By the time the police arrived Gates and his driver already got through the back door and managed to force the front door.
At this point the cop usually says "hi, I am investigating a report on a possible burglary" or something along those lines, the owner/resident says "oh, my name is whatever and I live here", papers are checked if the police finds it necessary, both say "oops" and the cop leaves.
"I live here" is the right answer. "Why, because I am a black man in America" is the wrong answer, and so is "you have no idea who you are messing with". He is not messing with anyone, he is doing his job, which, among other things, includes investigating burglaries in progress. Whether or not the neighbor would have called it in if those were two white men forcing the front door is something you can speculate about in your African-American studies class, but for the sake of all our front doors I certainly hope she would've.
You especially don't follow the officer outside and keep screaming at them. This is what gets you arrested for being disorderly, which is exactly what happened to Gates.
Now the incident has made the national news, the mayor has apologized, the charges have been dropped, the officer has refused to apologize and he-who-cannot-be-called-chimp-in-chief has also criticized the police.
One thing is not entirely clear: what does Gates want the police to do if there is an actual burglary in progress? Come there, see if the burglars are African-American and decide that asking them about anything would be an undue act of racial profiling?
Later, in their new home, this happened again, this time due to an overly concerned neighbor. The last time she called the police was when my parents ordered an air conditioning system delivered. They weren't even home, and the police came and somehow managed to figure out that the workers delivering the air conditioner were not in fact burglars.
Happens all the time, really. Happens to the white, the black, the Asians and the Hispanic, and probably the Native Americans. Surely happens to the blacks more often than to everyone else, but usually everyone, including the black people, manages to sort it out with the police perfectly well.
It really takes a professor of African-American studies at Harvard University to fuck it up.
Henry Louis Gates was trying to force his own front door for some prefectly good reason, which was not, however, ovbious to a casual observer. A neighbor called in a possible burglary, which is not an unreasonable assumption to make if somebody you don't recognize is trying to break into a house. By the time the police arrived Gates and his driver already got through the back door and managed to force the front door.
At this point the cop usually says "hi, I am investigating a report on a possible burglary" or something along those lines, the owner/resident says "oh, my name is whatever and I live here", papers are checked if the police finds it necessary, both say "oops" and the cop leaves.
"I live here" is the right answer. "Why, because I am a black man in America" is the wrong answer, and so is "you have no idea who you are messing with". He is not messing with anyone, he is doing his job, which, among other things, includes investigating burglaries in progress. Whether or not the neighbor would have called it in if those were two white men forcing the front door is something you can speculate about in your African-American studies class, but for the sake of all our front doors I certainly hope she would've.
You especially don't follow the officer outside and keep screaming at them. This is what gets you arrested for being disorderly, which is exactly what happened to Gates.
Now the incident has made the national news, the mayor has apologized, the charges have been dropped, the officer has refused to apologize and he-who-cannot-be-called-chimp-in-chief has also criticized the police.
One thing is not entirely clear: what does Gates want the police to do if there is an actual burglary in progress? Come there, see if the burglars are African-American and decide that asking them about anything would be an undue act of racial profiling?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
And now for the real foreigners...
I've always known that for some people a black person is always less of a real American, or a real Finn, than a white person. I'd never expected to see this attitude in such an obvious way in Helsingin Sanomat.
The title of the article is "We'll still have to wait for a Finnish Obama". It starts "In Finland members of minorities still haven't achieved top places in politics". Now that's funny. IIRC the top of Finnish politics had for a long time been in the hands of the Swedish-speaking minority. Remember that guy named Mannerheim? I think the current government has three members of the same minority in it.
I don't think we've ever had a Jew or a Muslim in the government. This is, of course, totally shocking and unfair in a country that has traditionally had a Jewish minority of about a thousand people, and, until the recent times, a Muslim minority of about the same size. The highest a Jew has ever gotten in Finnish politics is being the chairman of the group of one of the biggest parties in the parliament. I am shocked.
But sarcasm aside, the HS article is really talking about immigrants. At this point, I am getting a bit angry on behalf of Obama.
Barack Obama is not an immigrant. He is a native-born US citizen. I can see that the article switches between the terms "immigrant" and "a person of immigrant background". I am sorry if this comes as a surprise to the journalists in HS, but we are talking about the United Fucking States of America here, and there is a lot of descendants of immigrants there. Like, pretty much all the country. Obama has made history as the first black US President, but as a son of an immigrant he is nothing new: we've had Woodrow Wilson and Chester Arthur, not to mention the early presidents, who, besides having been born before the USA was established, sometimes were born to the parents who'd just arrived from Europe, sometimes spoke Dutch as their first language, and in general did god knows what.
But the truly amazing quote is here: "Elisabeth Nauclér, who represents Ahvenanmaa, is an immigrant who moved here from Sweden, but there are no "real" MPs with an immigrant background in the Parliament."
Excuse me? Did I miss us annexing Sweden overnight? Are they talking specifically about the MPs who have an immigrant background but were themselves born in Finland, and if so, why did they forget Ben Zyskowicz, who is the son of a Polish father and has been in the Parliament for 29 years? Or do they maybe think that a person representing Ahvenanmaa is not a real MP?
Or are they using the term '"real" immigrant' to mean people who are not white? If they are saying that a white Finn who has immigrated from the West is less than a real immigrant, do they even understand that this implies that they think that a non-white Finn who has immigrated from the Third World is less than a real Finn?
The title of the article is "We'll still have to wait for a Finnish Obama". It starts "In Finland members of minorities still haven't achieved top places in politics". Now that's funny. IIRC the top of Finnish politics had for a long time been in the hands of the Swedish-speaking minority. Remember that guy named Mannerheim? I think the current government has three members of the same minority in it.
I don't think we've ever had a Jew or a Muslim in the government. This is, of course, totally shocking and unfair in a country that has traditionally had a Jewish minority of about a thousand people, and, until the recent times, a Muslim minority of about the same size. The highest a Jew has ever gotten in Finnish politics is being the chairman of the group of one of the biggest parties in the parliament. I am shocked.
But sarcasm aside, the HS article is really talking about immigrants. At this point, I am getting a bit angry on behalf of Obama.
Barack Obama is not an immigrant. He is a native-born US citizen. I can see that the article switches between the terms "immigrant" and "a person of immigrant background". I am sorry if this comes as a surprise to the journalists in HS, but we are talking about the United Fucking States of America here, and there is a lot of descendants of immigrants there. Like, pretty much all the country. Obama has made history as the first black US President, but as a son of an immigrant he is nothing new: we've had Woodrow Wilson and Chester Arthur, not to mention the early presidents, who, besides having been born before the USA was established, sometimes were born to the parents who'd just arrived from Europe, sometimes spoke Dutch as their first language, and in general did god knows what.
But the truly amazing quote is here: "Elisabeth Nauclér, who represents Ahvenanmaa, is an immigrant who moved here from Sweden, but there are no "real" MPs with an immigrant background in the Parliament."
Excuse me? Did I miss us annexing Sweden overnight? Are they talking specifically about the MPs who have an immigrant background but were themselves born in Finland, and if so, why did they forget Ben Zyskowicz, who is the son of a Polish father and has been in the Parliament for 29 years? Or do they maybe think that a person representing Ahvenanmaa is not a real MP?
Or are they using the term '"real" immigrant' to mean people who are not white? If they are saying that a white Finn who has immigrated from the West is less than a real immigrant, do they even understand that this implies that they think that a non-white Finn who has immigrated from the Third World is less than a real Finn?
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
For freedom and serfdom! For God and slavery!
These were the slogans of the two warring parties in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Romulus the Great. (BTW, how come so few people here seem to read Dürrenmatt? He is quite good.)
These slogans somehow came into my mind when I was reading this.
The ministry of interior wants to make Finland "the safest and the most multivalue country in Europe". They are planning to do it by practicing zero tolerance towards racism.
WTF is a multivalue country? I sort of dimly remember multivalued functions from math, but I am sure it's not the same thing. I haven't find a proper definition for a multivalue country or society, but almost all the pages that I googled and looked at say that a multivalue society (moniarvoinen yhteiskunta) is a society most characterized by tolerance.
Wow. They are going to make Finland Europe's most tolerant country by practicing zero tolerance towards racism. For tolerance and zero tolerance, comrades!
(Sounds funny when you put it in English. In Finnish, of course, they would use two different words, suvaitsevaisuus for tolerance, nollatoleranssi for zero tolerance.)
"Tolerance" is, of course, an empty word of the kind that politicians use when they want votes. Along with "freedom", "equality", etc.- and, increasingly, "freedom of speech". We are all for tolerance, freedom, equality and freedom of speech. Almost everyone you ask will tell you that they are very tolerant of everything except the kinds of things that cannot be tolerated. It's what can and cannot be tolerated that people disagree on.
Hey, I am all for catching all the people who'd punch somebody in the nose for belonging to a wrong ethnic or religious group, and punishing them enough to make them decide not to do so again. It's just that I have a feeling (you may call this a prejudice if you wish) that the zero tolerance for racism won't stop there.
I suspect that "zero tolerance for racism" will mean that there will be some official truth about the races: "races don't exist, but they are equal in intelligence and all the other abilities, even though intelligence cannot be measured in any way anyway, and any statistical differences between ethnic or religious groups are either an illusion or society's fault anyway". I also suspect that "zero tolerance for racism" will mean that the people who publicly deviate from the official truth will be punished.
Rasism is a negative thing. But I just wish that anti-racism crusaders would clearly say what they are trying to do. What kinds of things do they want to make illegal, what kinds of things do they merely disapprove of? Do they want to outlaw racist violence? Discrimination? What counts as discrimination? Do they want affirmative action quotas? In what kind of places? Do they want ethnic jokes to be outlawed? What counts as an incitement against a group? Is it ok to say that group A is better than group B in some kind of things? Does the answer to the previous question depend on whether the statement is factually true?
Yeah, I know the answers vary, which is why I wish people made themselves clear. Or else we can just say that we are all for everything good and against everything bad, and leave it at that.
These slogans somehow came into my mind when I was reading this.
The ministry of interior wants to make Finland "the safest and the most multivalue country in Europe". They are planning to do it by practicing zero tolerance towards racism.
WTF is a multivalue country? I sort of dimly remember multivalued functions from math, but I am sure it's not the same thing. I haven't find a proper definition for a multivalue country or society, but almost all the pages that I googled and looked at say that a multivalue society (moniarvoinen yhteiskunta) is a society most characterized by tolerance.
Wow. They are going to make Finland Europe's most tolerant country by practicing zero tolerance towards racism. For tolerance and zero tolerance, comrades!
(Sounds funny when you put it in English. In Finnish, of course, they would use two different words, suvaitsevaisuus for tolerance, nollatoleranssi for zero tolerance.)
"Tolerance" is, of course, an empty word of the kind that politicians use when they want votes. Along with "freedom", "equality", etc.- and, increasingly, "freedom of speech". We are all for tolerance, freedom, equality and freedom of speech. Almost everyone you ask will tell you that they are very tolerant of everything except the kinds of things that cannot be tolerated. It's what can and cannot be tolerated that people disagree on.
Hey, I am all for catching all the people who'd punch somebody in the nose for belonging to a wrong ethnic or religious group, and punishing them enough to make them decide not to do so again. It's just that I have a feeling (you may call this a prejudice if you wish) that the zero tolerance for racism won't stop there.
I suspect that "zero tolerance for racism" will mean that there will be some official truth about the races: "races don't exist, but they are equal in intelligence and all the other abilities, even though intelligence cannot be measured in any way anyway, and any statistical differences between ethnic or religious groups are either an illusion or society's fault anyway". I also suspect that "zero tolerance for racism" will mean that the people who publicly deviate from the official truth will be punished.
Rasism is a negative thing. But I just wish that anti-racism crusaders would clearly say what they are trying to do. What kinds of things do they want to make illegal, what kinds of things do they merely disapprove of? Do they want to outlaw racist violence? Discrimination? What counts as discrimination? Do they want affirmative action quotas? In what kind of places? Do they want ethnic jokes to be outlawed? What counts as an incitement against a group? Is it ok to say that group A is better than group B in some kind of things? Does the answer to the previous question depend on whether the statement is factually true?
Yeah, I know the answers vary, which is why I wish people made themselves clear. Or else we can just say that we are all for everything good and against everything bad, and leave it at that.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
"I don't like people with dark skin. In fact I despise them."
No, I am not showing my true racist face here. Just trying this statement for size, kinda. How does this sound to you?
(No, I don't despise people for their skin color. Or any other physical feature, for that matter. I do find some physical features of some ethnic groups much more attractive than corresponding physical features of some other ethnic groups, and I am quite open about it when I happen to be talking about sexual attractiveness, but I would hardly put it in the aforementioned form and say it at a press conference when asked how I liked my trip to some country. That, of course, is because I am a shining paragon of political correctness and not because I never get invited to press conferences where people ask me about my trips.)
Anyway, that's what Serbia's Eurovision winner Marija Serifovic said at a press conference last Friday, except that it was about white skin. According to a guy who claims to have been at that press conference, the exact words were "ne volim blede, plave i ljude sa providnom kozom, ustvari ne da ih ne volim nego ih prezirem". ("I don't like pale, blond and people with transparent skin, actually not only that I don't like them, I despise them").
Oh, dear... There is no sin in having sexual preferences based on skin or hair color, but one would think that Marija if anyone should understand that lack of sexual attraction should not turn into contempt for people, considering... (Yeah, I know this sounds catty, but seriously, it's hard to resist.)
Marija is unfortunately not alone. In fact I don't think I have ever heard a so-called civilized person, at least one who does not self-identify as a racist, disparage any skin colors besides white and red (of the kind that a very white-skinned person acquires when he or she spends too much time in the sun), but white and red seem to be fair game.
A couple of years ago a young white American woman who was visiting me here said "almost everyone is white here, it's so creepy". For a variety of reasons I did not try to talk sense into her, but she was exactly the kind of young woman who would never think of saying "almost everyone is black here, it's so creepy" in a black area, even though, like the overwhelming majority of white Americans, she most surely finds all-black neighborhoods somewhat creepy, for reasons not directly related to skin color. (You can say you find them, or some particular black neighborhood, somewhat creepy, but if you want to be polite you don't say "black", you say "inner-city".)
In the US disapproving of white or red skin usually has a bit of class overtone to it. I am not trying to condemn classist remarks here as such - most of the people who belong to educated classes do not think much of uneducated classes in general (with personal exceptions, of course) and make a rather poor job of concealing it - but I find it quite annoying that a lot of people say it both ways, managing to mention both "those trailer-trash rednecks who have to work in the sun while we sit in our air-conditioned offices" and "those pale fishbelly-white folks who have to spend their whole day in the office while we can afford some leasure at the beach" (the latter can be sometimes heard from the people who are lobster-red themselves after abusing said beach for way too long). That, again, from the people who would never-ever mention black skin as a predictor of class, although in the US black skin does in fact have a strong correlation with belonging to uneducated classes.
I seriously think we need a "white is beautiful" campaign. Not to say bad things about other people, including darker-skinned white people. Not to celebrate European or Central/North European heritage (nothing against celebrating it in general, just am not taking about it right now). Just an esthetic/sexual thing with lots of pictures of attractive scantily-clad white-skinned people (of all races that sometimes happen to have white skins, and of both sexes), and advertisement of sunscreen. The tolerant crowd might look at it with suspicion, but the dermatologists of the future will thank us.
(No, I don't despise people for their skin color. Or any other physical feature, for that matter. I do find some physical features of some ethnic groups much more attractive than corresponding physical features of some other ethnic groups, and I am quite open about it when I happen to be talking about sexual attractiveness, but I would hardly put it in the aforementioned form and say it at a press conference when asked how I liked my trip to some country. That, of course, is because I am a shining paragon of political correctness and not because I never get invited to press conferences where people ask me about my trips.)
Anyway, that's what Serbia's Eurovision winner Marija Serifovic said at a press conference last Friday, except that it was about white skin. According to a guy who claims to have been at that press conference, the exact words were "ne volim blede, plave i ljude sa providnom kozom, ustvari ne da ih ne volim nego ih prezirem". ("I don't like pale, blond and people with transparent skin, actually not only that I don't like them, I despise them").
Oh, dear... There is no sin in having sexual preferences based on skin or hair color, but one would think that Marija if anyone should understand that lack of sexual attraction should not turn into contempt for people, considering... (Yeah, I know this sounds catty, but seriously, it's hard to resist.)
Marija is unfortunately not alone. In fact I don't think I have ever heard a so-called civilized person, at least one who does not self-identify as a racist, disparage any skin colors besides white and red (of the kind that a very white-skinned person acquires when he or she spends too much time in the sun), but white and red seem to be fair game.
A couple of years ago a young white American woman who was visiting me here said "almost everyone is white here, it's so creepy". For a variety of reasons I did not try to talk sense into her, but she was exactly the kind of young woman who would never think of saying "almost everyone is black here, it's so creepy" in a black area, even though, like the overwhelming majority of white Americans, she most surely finds all-black neighborhoods somewhat creepy, for reasons not directly related to skin color. (You can say you find them, or some particular black neighborhood, somewhat creepy, but if you want to be polite you don't say "black", you say "inner-city".)
In the US disapproving of white or red skin usually has a bit of class overtone to it. I am not trying to condemn classist remarks here as such - most of the people who belong to educated classes do not think much of uneducated classes in general (with personal exceptions, of course) and make a rather poor job of concealing it - but I find it quite annoying that a lot of people say it both ways, managing to mention both "those trailer-trash rednecks who have to work in the sun while we sit in our air-conditioned offices" and "those pale fishbelly-white folks who have to spend their whole day in the office while we can afford some leasure at the beach" (the latter can be sometimes heard from the people who are lobster-red themselves after abusing said beach for way too long). That, again, from the people who would never-ever mention black skin as a predictor of class, although in the US black skin does in fact have a strong correlation with belonging to uneducated classes.
I seriously think we need a "white is beautiful" campaign. Not to say bad things about other people, including darker-skinned white people. Not to celebrate European or Central/North European heritage (nothing against celebrating it in general, just am not taking about it right now). Just an esthetic/sexual thing with lots of pictures of attractive scantily-clad white-skinned people (of all races that sometimes happen to have white skins, and of both sexes), and advertisement of sunscreen. The tolerant crowd might look at it with suspicion, but the dermatologists of the future will thank us.
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