Are you racist?

Alex · 02-15-2006, 02:52 PM

The ways in which I'm "racist" tend to be probabilistic. I put racist in quotes because I'm not necessarily meaning just negative things but simply conclusions based solely on race.

I see a Hispanic person and I know that they are more likely to speak Spanish or have difficulty speaking English but I don't assume that to be true of this particular person. But if I walk into a fast food restaurant and see a Hispanic person working the register I will approach them more mentally prepared to deal with a language barrier than I might be if it were a white person (though of course, it is certainly possible they have a language problem as well).

I know that a black person is more likely to have grown up poor, with imprisoned relatives, and raised by grandparents but I don't assume that to be true about any particular anonymous black person.

No, it wouldn't occur to me that David Goldberg might want bagels and lox, but that is for two reasons: 1) despite the fact that it is also an ethnicity I tend to view Jewishness as primarily religious and I really don't care about religion and 2) I don't view bagels and lox as particularly Jewish. Similarly, when I look at "soul food" I recognize it as really just being poor Southern food (my grandparents ate the same stuff on the farm); it's just that for most Northern whites the first poor Southerners they met were blacks migrating from the south and therefore the food they ate became associated with blacks.

Anyway, I definitely use race to make probabilistic predictions about people but I do that with any other possible clue about people (age, dress, geography) and do my best not to actually act based solely on probabilistic predictions. As long as race is associated with differentiating predictors, "racism" can't really go away and may actually have some value.

But no, I have never liked or disliked somebody simply because of the color of their skin. I may like or dislike behaviors that have some racial correlations (and such correlations almost never anything to do with inherent racial qualities) but I do my best to differentiate correlation from causation.

02-15-2006, 02:52 PM	#13
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	The ways in which I'm "racist" tend to be probabilistic. I put racist in quotes because I'm not necessarily meaning just negative things but simply conclusions based solely on race. I see a Hispanic person and I know that they are more likely to speak Spanish or have difficulty speaking English but I don't assume that to be true of this particular person. But if I walk into a fast food restaurant and see a Hispanic person working the register I will approach them more mentally prepared to deal with a language barrier than I might be if it were a white person (though of course, it is certainly possible they have a language problem as well). I know that a black person is more likely to have grown up poor, with imprisoned relatives, and raised by grandparents but I don't assume that to be true about any particular anonymous black person. No, it wouldn't occur to me that David Goldberg might want bagels and lox, but that is for two reasons: 1) despite the fact that it is also an ethnicity I tend to view Jewishness as primarily religious and I really don't care about religion and 2) I don't view bagels and lox as particularly Jewish. Similarly, when I look at "soul food" I recognize it as really just being poor Southern food (my grandparents ate the same stuff on the farm); it's just that for most Northern whites the first poor Southerners they met were blacks migrating from the south and therefore the food they ate became associated with blacks. Anyway, I definitely use race to make probabilistic predictions about people but I do that with any other possible clue about people (age, dress, geography) and do my best not to actually act based solely on probabilistic predictions. As long as race is associated with differentiating predictors, "racism" can't really go away and may actually have some value. But no, I have never liked or disliked somebody simply because of the color of their skin. I may like or dislike behaviors that have some racial correlations (and such correlations almost never anything to do with inherent racial qualities) but I do my best to differentiate correlation from causation.
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