10 Mistakes White People Make When Talking About Race
Over on SirensMag.com, we're in the midst of a race-themed issue. Heavy/scary, I know. But I can't tell you how much the act of discourse about this all-important topic has opened our eyes - and those of our readers. But not all discourse is good discourse (see idiotic political blabbermouths of late). It's easy to botch an important discussion about race with fear, ignorance, or just plain silliness. Uninformed--or even overly politically correct--white people are the major offenders, sure, but anyone without adequate information can be guilty of sounding like a racist or an idiot (wait, that's redundant). With the help of some favorite (and vocal) celebrities and writers, here are 10 things not to do when trying to have an intellectual discussion about race--which, to be clear, you should do. But first learn from these mistakes:
1. Thinking It's Not OK to Talk About It
Race is such a touchy topic because it is often associated with all of the negative history and oppression of minorities in this country. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans share a history of physical and social abuse at the hand of the white majority. Yes, that leads to anger and distrust, feelings so strong that they've survived for centuries. But the only way to bridge the gap and move forward as a more unified society is to talk about it: all of it.
We are supposed to be engaged in a cultural conversation about race - a dialogue largely taking place on television and at the movies. We've traded unquestioned racism for a twisted multicultural correctness. Everything is celebrated, nothing can be discussed. We seem to want to live in an imaginary world without racism, where we celebrate differences but never base our beliefs on them."- Sallie Tisdale, author of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Harvest Moon and Lot's Wife, Stepping Westward and Talk Dirty to Me
2. Using Culture-Specific Slang to Relate to Other Races
K-Fed, you ain't. And you just shouldn't try to be--ever.
Black people have a wide array of colorful terms that come in and go out of style and can be used in a myriad of different ways. White people, it will be extremely tempting to try and incorporate these terms into your everyday language. Don't. When you guys start using our words, that's when we know it's time to stop using them.- Nick Adams, author Making Friends With Black People
3. Assuming Biracial People Identify More with One Side Than the Other
The majority race in America today isn't white, black, or even Latino. It's biracial. And this will only increase with each successive generation. We're a society that loves to check off boxes, but the greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.
As the child of a black man and white woman, born in the melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who is half-Indonesian, but who is usually mistaken for Mexican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, I never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.- Barack Obama, Kenyan/White American, Illinois Senator, presidential candidate
4. Thinking Race Is Only an Issue for Minorities
The tendency is to think of "race" as something that only black/brown/Asian/Hispanic people have - whereas "white" is the default setting ( i.e., we say "American" to mean white, but "Black American," "Asian-American," etc. to identify other Americans of different colors). Everyone has a race. This is a nation of immigrants, from England, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Africa, Asia, and beyond.
To be white is to have a race and a racial perspective as well, and that needs much greater acknowledgment in our culture. Discussions of race will always be limited until white Americans can have an honest, open discussion about what it means to be white in America - the good and the bad.- Molly Faulkner-Bond, biracial Harvard grad who explored issues of interracial friendship in the current Sirens issue
5. Using Outdated Terms When Describing Different Races
Oriental, Colored, and Indian went out of style a long time ago; in fact, they're considered offensive. So, too, is lumping every Spanish-speaking person into a general category like "Mexican" or any Arab-looking person as "Persian" (it's a specific country, people). Feeling the need to identify is a nervous reaction we have when faced with issues of race. Black, white, Asian and Latino/a are generally accepted, but when in doubt, how about you just call someone by their actual name. Who says we have to classify ourselves all the time anyway?
I had to deal with my prejudices. I had to learn to ignore the taunting labels of other blacks who had everything figured out, including how I should act according to the color of my skin. I am human first, and that's where my efforts have gone.-- Donna Leonard Conger, author of Don't Call Me African-American
6. Believing Stereotypes
Yes, black Americans dominate most sports, more Asians are accepted into MIT than any other race, and Latinos have been known to tear up a dance floor. Though some race-specific stereotypes seem like positive assumptions, imagine yourself on the other end, with high expectations placed on your shoulders simply because of a scrutinized minority. White people don't have the pressure to be the best in math or sports; they just have to be good enough. Everyone else should get the same slack.
One could say (I don't) that stereotypes are benevolent: All Asians are smart and hard-working. All Asian men are geeky engineers with high-flood-water pants and calculators on their belts. All Asian women are either passive, submissive chrysanthemums or seductive, manipulative hotties. I suppose it's true that these aren't hugely destructive stereotypes, but they are stereotypes nonetheless, and they can have hurtful consequences. I think to get rid of these stereotypes, Asian Americans are going to have to be more vocal and political. The same goes for other races.-- Don Lee, author of Yellow: Stories
7. Thinking Affirmative Action Has Anything to Do With Someone's Success
One of the most controversial issues of the past 20 years is affirmative action, a term widely over-used and often misunderstood. It was supposed to explain educational and hiring policies put in place to encourage more diversity on college campuses and in the public sector. The naysayers made it sound like minorities were given hand-outs, which has resulted in an assumption, even years after most of those progressive policies have been killed, that a successful minority must have been given an easy ride. How about you ask Oprah if she was given an easy ride when networks constantly told her she looked and sounded too "ethnic" early in her career? Do you think the late CBS anchor Ed Bradley was given a break when he accidentally became the first African-American White House correspondent, a result of his network sending him to cover what they thought would be a Jimmy Carter loss? And of these two "View" hosts, who do you think earned their coveted role more: Lisa Ling, a trained journalist, or Elizabeth Hasselbeck, a "Survivor" contestant?
A white boy that makes C's in college can make it to the White House.-- Chris Rock
8. Assuming One Man's Success = An Entire Race's Progress
It's commonplace to celebrate the breakthrough successes of minorities, the firsts, the bests. These people deserve our accolades, certainly, but the success of a few doesn't mean an oppressed minority is triumphant. We still have a long way to go. The day we stop clapping for the minority in a "good for you, kid" condescending manner is the day we've made real progress.
I never thought I was going to be a success. I was the longest-produced comedy at Warner Bros. and I don't feel special. When you have to work harder just to break even, it's hard to feel special. I got cancelled so they could put Cavemen on the air. It doesn't make sense.-- George Lopez, whose The George Lopez Show was the longest-running, most profitable all-Latino show in the history of network television
9. Thinking Cultural Exclusion Is Racism
White people are in a difficult situation in this struggle to talk about and understand race. On the one hand, they are reprimanded for being the majority that alienates all other races. But are minority races guilty of the same exclusion by keeping to themselves? Or is such elective segregation the only way to preserve community and a strong racial identity?
I don't even like the term 'self-segregate.' Kids group together on common lines of interest and experience. If Hispanic kids want to sit together and speak in their mother tongue, that shouldn't bother anyone, but they should have the same opportunity to meet other kids. My decision to sit with people who I share things in common with is not the same as legalized imposition of segregation.
-- Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph. D, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Can We Talk About Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation
10. Declaring You Are "Colorblind"
There is no such thing as colorblind (in fact, it's a long-running Stephen Colbert gag for just that reason). It is not a racist stance to see color, but a fact of life. Ignoring it promotes ignorance.
You cannot live in this country and not see color. We all need to step out of the naiveté box and stop pretending it really doesn't exist. We need to understand that we live in a world that gives certain people privileges because of the color of their skin.-- Oprah Winfrey
Heather Wood is co-founder and Editorial Director of SirensMag.com. To see original article, click here.
Follow Heather Wood Rudúlph on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SirensMag
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Racism is not a monopoly of the majority. In fact, there are racists in every minority group.
There are minorities who have prejudices against other minorities and, against the majority. Hawaii is supposedly a mixed pot and one would expect people there to be without prejudice, at last I heard, there is such a thing as " reversed discrimination " there because white people are the minority ! Go figure.
Persia is a country?
Iran is now what was once Persia. So, for example, most Iranians are Persians I won't appreciate being called Arabian.
The post does fall into the politically correct category of trying to broach a serious issue.But the top ten list evokes the same stereotypes it is highlighting. What I think she was trying to point out was that there still exists racial stereotypes that show up in how white people relate to Black people, when she really should havd said people of color. Native Americans are not immigrants, and yes I DO prefer to be called that as to not be mistaken for an Indian from India. Racially charged language is a delicate topic. when a white person says something to me along the lines of "You people can really .." something or another, THIS is not a complement or even a keen observation. It sounds and is racist. My brother cant dance. My sister is bad at ALL sports.One of my Asian friends HATES math and science. As much as i would like to think race isnt a big issue, it is now more than ever.Write a post about the top 10 things you shouldnt complement Black people for like graduating from college and knowing how to swim. Banish 'You speak so well' from all langauge unless refering to correctly speaking a language while on vacation. Nommo you are correct. If I had a radio show, and said Britney was a hasbeen pop star ho with momma issues I would definitely be seen as racist. I KNOW better than to use this kind of language while white people often say they dont know when they're being racist. Dont ask me to explain chitterlings. dont like em, dont eat them ever. All Italians from New Jersey do not have mob ties. Leave the racial jokes to Chris Rock. Oh and I can ice skate too.
White people cannot talk about race. Unless you buy into the whole "The Western World is the root of all evil" thing and preach reperations, affirmative actions and welfare than you cannot be white and discuss race without being branded a racist.
It sucks but it's a fact.
But, Stephen Colbert doesn't "see" race.
If Stephen is colorblind, it must be right!
Colbert '08
IT IS MUCH EASIER WHEN YOU ONLY SEE PEOPLE AS PEOPLE AND NOT A COLOR.
I don't think the focus should be on the mistakes white people do when talking about race or the mistakes black, brown, yellow people do when talking about race. Why not just say, the mistakes WE (as one group of people, not segregated group of people) do when talking about race?
The first mistake WE do is think that there is a SUPERIOR race. Sociologist James Henslin contends that all races have their geniuses and their idiots. As with language, no race is superior to another. The gravest mistake was acting on this mistaken belief like Hitler, the Hutus, and the Serbs in Bosnia did.
The second mistake WE do is think that "pure" races exist. Geneticists have found, as reported by Natalie Angler for NY Times (2000), humans are strikingly homogeneous, differing from one another only once in a thousand subunits of the genome and that researchers at the National Institutes of Health had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race.
People act on these beliefs, therefore, racism exists. If WE regard race as simply a variation of colors and shapes, the issue of racism will not come up as exemplified by multiculturalism in Switzerland where four ethnic groups live peacefully in political and economic unity. Henslin goes on to say that multiculturalism has been so successful in Switzerland that none of the ethnic groups can properly be called a minority.
Such is what I'd like to see in America. It would be a dream come true.
I think the biggest problem is the title of this piece. It sounds like a "10 things to avoid at a pizza parlor" type Cosmo title. Oh, and I've got a black friend.
what makes Colored offensive. NAACP national association for the advancement of COLORED people. Or Indian for that matter. Aren't people from India called Indians? People don't break down into categories of black, white, asian, latino. Do Spanish people want to be called Latino? (I mean ones actually from Spain.)
The problem with you is that color does matter and your fear of being called racist won't allow you to see that. A white guy can't even call another white guy nigger without getting hounded if he's heard. Yet it's OK for black people to say nigger, and call me a cracker at the same time. That's racism. If a certain word arises race related feeling in you then you are the racist. Dialect has nothing to do with racism.
The real problem with racism is that it does exist and you are all scared to death of it. Then again you are the same people that want to protect the worlds idiots from themselves (idiot-proof the planet syndrome) while there are perfectly capable people starving due to over population not to mention the pollution and strain we put on our planet.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are real. They exist for a reason. No racist sat around and made them up. Stereotypes have been observed and noticed by everyone. That's not to say that all Asians are geniuses or that every black man can "Be like Mike" but obviously a lot of them can play basketball because we see them on TV every night almost. Obviously a lot of Asians are smart or there wouldn't be so many of them at MIT. You have to embrace these differences, not play them down as if they don't exist. We are the product of our past. We became different races of the same species and have developed differently throughout the thousands of years we've been separated. WE ARE DIFFERENT and THAT'S OK!!
You are racist. You just haven't realized it yet.
Maybe she was referring to Native Americans not wanting to be called "Indian". I think it's likely.
Have you asked one--an American Indian that is?
They aren't actually "native" either. They too are immigrants, remember?
My son likes to be referred to as "Indian". He's the American "type".
While I'm mostly in agreement with the original post, I have to agree that labeling "colored" and "Indian" inherently offensive is precisely the sort of dialogue preemption white people are obsessed with. Google "Tim Giago" for an Indian's take on "Indian." He speaks for the vast majority of American Indians, who call themselves, personally, by their tribal identity and generally "Indians."
Will "Indian" offend? Sure it will. And so will "'skin," Amerindian, and Native American. Or not. If a person is unintentionally offended in a conversation, we should have the civility to moderate our language to avoid it. Trying to avoid it before the fact requires common sense, not some arbitrary set of rules.
"Someday white people will be on reservations."
Yeah...on the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, etc. etc. A tragedy, to be sure.
What an absurd statement!
We're all of us, of all races, too self aware in this country, now, to sit passively and let things just happen. There have been too many slave trades, too many genocides, too many pogroms, too many totalitarian dictatorships.
The only "reservation" today is one of the mind - and it's a self-limitation. (Are you reading, neo-cons?)
"We're all of us, of all races, too self aware in this country, now, to sit passively and let things just happen. There have been too many slave trades, too many genocides, too many pogroms, too many totalitarian dictatorships."
Are you serious? Sitting passively and letting things happen is ALL we have been doing for the past seven years! The shrub has moved America closer to becoming a totalitarian dictatorship than at any other time in our 200+ years! We have passively sat and watched more than one genocide attempt and done NOTHING. We are anything BUT "self aware"!
The other side of the Affirmative Action coin is the guy at my office who somehow landed a decent IT job on the "diversity scholarship", but then turned out to be blatant incompetent screw up, a scam artist with no work ethic of any kind, and who takes dangerous short cuts that puts the company's data security at risk, not to mention the productivity of those he is supposed to be supporting.
Yet the powers-that-be in the company won't fire him for fear that we'll get a visit from the Jackson-Sharpton corporate shakedown tour bus. How many more of these dusky bozos are there? What is it costing American business in lost income and productivity?
In my experience there are plenty of incompetent people in the workforce and it has little to do with the color of their skin. Many big corporations are afraid to fire ANYone for a specific reason (not a layoff) without hard evidence (proof of theft and such). They're afraid of getting sued by everyone, again regardless of skin color. Just because you have a belief and have found an example that fits your belief, does not mean that belief is validated.
Dude, there are plenty of dusky bozos who didn't attend school on diversity scholarships who are costing American Business billions of dollars.
That has nothing to do with Affirmative Action.
A bunch of unqualified people get hired because they know the right people and/or are great interviewers.
Shit, look at our president!
Why they haven't fired this guy has nothing to do with lawsuits. It's just as hard to fire a white person/female as a minority. You need as much of a paper trail and verifiable proof to avoid litigation.
I think your post is a great example of the simmering racism that is still a part of our country.
Thank you, however, for candidly expressing your opinion.
I think, comparing the "cost of incompetence" of this one guy with that of the Bush administration and congress, makes the cost of this one guy miniscule.
What Affirimative Action program installed GW Bush to screw up (at least) two nations?
The Affirmative Action program that installed Bush is called white privilege.
And is Al Sharpton protecting all those white bozo's in the financial industry who thought that perpetual housing price inflation was a business model?
Black people get fired from jobs every day just like white people. Do you really think Al Sharpton can run around protecting them all?
If you are unwilling to sit together and talk about your problems (differences), you will definitely fight over it in the long run. Some things are just too obvious to sweep under the rug. Nice post anyway.
From where I stand (seated here in the American Midwest) it no longer makes sense to discuss it at all.
Someone, of some viewpoint or other, is bound to get loudly upset no matter what.
It's not possible to say there are problems in the world without being labeled a racist - so I'm not going to try. Nor am I inclined to offer much in the way of help, understanding, or concern when it comes to resolving those problems I can not mention. And when you tell me I am part of a problem, what on earth makes you think I'm interested in "solving" it for you? Tell me I don't (can't?) understand and you remove any incentive for me to try.
I'm opting out of the discussion because there's no longer any good reason for me to remain actively involved in it.
Why did you bother to answer in the first place. Your non-answer is pretty much what you bothered to answer in the first place. You kind of justified the author's contention in the first place.
Maybe some day you'll take the time and trouble to actually post a coherent sentence. In the meantime:
I answered because the terms of the discussions about race have become completely exclusionary. We are seeing divisions into smaller and smaller groups, not only based on racial/ethnic criteria, but also religion, sexual orientation, and more. And each of those groups, in order to make its point, draws the dividing lines ever more sharply. As someone who prefers the idea of inclusion, of the notion that we have more common interest than division among us all, this tells me there is no place for me in the discussion any longer. So find your solutions, if you can, in your exclusionist dreams, without my participation, or even attention. I have better things to worry about.
Racism has been a fact of human life, and will continue to be a fact of human life, for one overriding reason: we've all got monkey-brains in addition to our fully human brains.
The specifics of whose on top, whose on the bottom, what evils have been done, and what needs to be done to address them, will vary from place to place, and age to age.
People of goodwill can, and will, continue to both agree and disagree on appropriate social remedies and inter-racial rules of engagement.
Anytime you're tempted to take a sociological swipe at the problem here, shift your focus and think about (say) the problems between the Hutu and the Tutsi's in Rwanda, or the various pre-western tribal cultures in America.
Same shit, different day, as the saying goes.
Unwillingness - or inability - to consider deeply the META-problem of human existence is what leads to "10 Rules" like this blogger has offered, which attempt to address symptoms, rather than causes.
Telling other people what's OK and not OK to think, or to say, doesn't fix anything in the real world.
One interesting phenomenon to observe, right here on PuffHo: a lot of liberals, lefties, progressives are no longer willing to be bullied by raced based arguements when it comes to making their own judgements.
Recent example: the Michael Vick case. There were a small number of bloggers and commenters trying to make the case that the near universal outrage at his behavior was an example of racism.
That dog wouldn't hunt, to borrow an apt phrase - though years ago it might've won adherents.
Though I'll listen to what anyone has to say, I - for one - refuse to kow-tow to anyone's idea of rules of engagement with my fellow human beings on any subject - including the subject of race. I'll find my own way, thank you.
If you want to let someone else drive your bus, by all means do so.
I gotta say, I found this post a bit bizarre, but I haven't yet sorted out why.
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