I noticed that in the USA people are often strongly divided based on whether they identify as being “black” or “white”. Basically many people there make this a big part about their identity and separate communities based on it to the point where they developed different cultures and even different ways of talking and behavior solely based on whether they identify as “black” or “white”.
As far as I understand it’s based on the brightness of their skin color because of slavery but it’s not quite clear to me who is considered “black” or “white” since I’ve seen many people who for example have very bright skin and seem to have almost no African ethnicity but they still identify and talk/behave as “being black”.
I wonder why they still have this culture and separation since segregation ended in 1964.
Because in other regions like South America such as Brazil for example this culture doesn’t seem to exist that much and people just identify as people and they talk, behave and connect the exact same way no matter the skin brightness. People such in South America seem way more mixed and seem to not have this type of separation like in the USA based on external features like skin, hair or eye color.
To me it kind of feels like this is a political and economic reason in the US that they purposefully want to divide people for their gains. Because the extent to which this seems to have been normalized in Americas every day conversation both in private and in public/commercial spaces feels like brainwashing. And I wonder if this will ever improve since it seems to go as far as people being proud about these racist stereotypes and think this is completely normal. But considering the broader global context and America’s historical background it doesn’t seem normal. Especially with Americas context of slavery you would expect there to be strong efforts of fighting these stereotypes and having a political leadership that doesn’t see “color” and only judges based on individuals personality.
I misread the title as South Africa so at first I was like what the fuck are you even talking about.
Actual answer: slavery, the civil war, then segregation, then Jim Crow, then redlining, and through all of it slave labor through prisons that disproportionately hold black people. All these things create generational poverty as well. Now it is seen in the attacks on woke and DEI. The United States is profoundly racist.
oh Brazil do divide people just not into colors but into classes and not just between favela and the rest but between every single class. It’s almost like a cast system. It’s really weird hearing brazilians talk about other classes.
Also you gonna have a bad time trying to segragate people by color in brazil lol.
I make 5 cents an hours so I get to live in middle favela, you FILTHY poors who make 3 cents and hour live below me in lower favela
It’s the other way around. Low places are higher income in favelas and barrios because they’re closer to public transportation, formal services, commerces and salaried jobs. The higher you are in a favela the poorer you are and the worse are the living conditions. For the lack of vehicular access and the chaotic nature of improvised construction means government institutions have a harder time reaching people there. So there’s no service support, fewer commerce, lack of legal protection and you’re so far away from the formal city that job opportunities are meager.
jesus thats bleak, we should put the Olympics there again!
The understanding of races in Latin America had a lot more shades of grey compared to Anglo America.
In Latin America, there were words for the mixing of various peoples along with a gradation of allowed positions in society.
In contrast, Anglo America typically treated race as all or nothing. Even for mixed race people, they would get classified typically as the lower status race.
its because slavery.
early u.s. was created on the notion that black people werent people. when those that made money on that being fact were forced to think otherwise, it almost ripped the country in half.
that animosity… the desire for non whites to be considered not people did not just suddenly vanish. its festered in america. it is ingrained. it is the ‘southern heritage’ talked about in whispers (and now out loud) with the new fascist takeover of america.
a full 50% of america still hates the fact that non-whites are treated as people.
Don’t forget slavery never ended, it just got rebranded into prisoners in the prison system
not just slavery, modern practices like redlining also kept people physically separate until very recently and some form of it still are practiced today
But didn’t South America also enslave “black” people?
Brazil took over 10 times more enslaved Africans than North America. That comment is way off.
Brazil did much worse slavery, but the racism is “softer”, there was a moment when 80% of the population was enslaved black/mixed people (indigenous were mostly just genocided away).
Because most people are mixed, the racism here today is just on looks instead of ancestry, and AFAIK less violent.but why is it more than in south america?
i would guess size and population densities, and government stabilization. what country is ‘south america’ ?
theres more people in a larger area in a much more stable form of government allowing those socio-economic realities to exist far longer.
ie the united states is super racist.
Decent answer
Racial divides are very much present in South America, but racial tension seems to be a little lighter than in the US. Culturally, Brazil might have gone particularly far down the path of considering everyone part of a shared Brazilian identity, independent of ethnicity. Then again, Brazil has incredible class differences, and how is race distributed between the gated communities and the favela?
One source observes that “[w]hite workers have 74% higher income on average compared to Black and Brown people”, so just because the culture might be less racist than the US, the systematic issues are still very much there.
As for race tensions, America has a few original sins. One is slavery, another is genocide. The two meet and interact in an interesting way when one considers cultural genocide: Africans brought to the US as slaves were not only forced to work for free, but they were taken from their families, deprived of their language and culture, and forced to create something new out of their situation. That’s the depressing backstory of how blues became so great.
You see this in today’s America: What is there of African culture left in African Americans? African music survived and transformed into call and respond in cotton fields, which transformed into rhythm and blues, which eventually became R&B and hiphop. Other than that? I can’t think of anything, but maybe I’m ignorant.
In South America, it’s a different story. I went to Colombia last year and briefly got to meet some people from the Afrodescendant community working on remembrance. They too were processing not only centuries of slavery and bad treatment, but also more recent horrors of the armed conflict. They did so in ways that embraced their African roots: Their use of colour, their artwork, their whole cultural production still shows clear roots back to Africa. They also have their own food, fuelled as always by “ancestral knowledge”. I also felt like their vibe was a mix between South American and African, but that’s harder to measure. Importantly however, unlike their American counterparts, there was not a successful effort to cut off these roots made on the basis of pure cruelty. They are highly aware - and proud - of their ancestry.
It’s a complex argument, but I think it is an important one to understand why racial divides in the US are so fucked. White Americans are so fucking obsessed about their great grandfather being Irish, yet they don’t want to consider the fact that black Americans had their entire history forcefully erased as a potential issue. I think it is an issue, and I think it’s part of the reason why tensions run so high in the US.
Other than that? I can’t think of anything, but maybe I’m ignorant.
According to this guy, some parts of African language were preserved and adapted in certain groups.
That sounds super interesting! I can’t watch the video right now, but look forward to checking it out. Thanks for sharing! :)
One source observes that “[w]hite workers have 74% higher income on average compared to Black and Brown people”, so just because the culture might be less racist than the US, the systematic issues are still very much there.
Those systematic issues aren’t racist issues tho. It makes sense the descendants of literal slaves brought from tribes from Africa and the descendants of native tribes in the Americas who didn’t even invent the wheel, not even the Aztecs, Mayans or Incas, would have ended up poorer today than the descendants of people from developed civilisations that built huge trans-oceanic vessels. Only literal Star Trek-ian communism could have changed that, even real life communism doesn’t and didn’t suddenly make janitors rich and college educated managers poor. Look at any Eurasian country with no history of migrations or colonies and the poor people there today are the descendents of poor people from a couple hundred years ago, and the rich people today are the descendents of rich people from a couple hundred years ago.
The real issue is the lack of social mobility. Some countries have more of it, some less. The way to achieve it is through stuff like real and strong safety nets and welfare and good universal free education and policies such as a progressive inheritance tax, not through racial measures.
Racial measures exist and have a purpose in divided societies where the racial groups are divided and don’t see eye to eye and don’t understand each other’s issues and therefore each group needs proper democratic representation which also means some amount of economic strength.
In a society where people aren’t actually racist, or racially divided, those kind of measures would only breed resentment because some poor people would be overlooked because they aren’t of the “right” colour, in this case not dark enough. So these anti-racism measures would just create more racial drama.
You can’t use a one-size fits all solution to two different countries with a different cultural situation. And considering neither of these two countries is at an extreme of a possible position, the real solutions are more nuanced gradient policies, skewing one way in one country, and the other way in the other.
a) OP is talking about racial divides, not only racism. b) Makes sense, sure. Whether it’s acceptable is another question. You don’t need full-on communism to erase historical inequality. Even capitalism holds a promise of meritocracy, even though it routinely fails to deliver. In the real world, wealth tax and free universal education can go a long way. But accepting that the descendants of slaves are still poorer than the descendants of their masters and considering it to be anything else than a huge problem is seriously fucked up.
Also, Scandinavian social democracies are pretty egalitarian.
But accepting that the descendants of slaves are still poorer than the descendants of their masters and considering it to be anything else than a huge problem
I implied no such thing, thankfully. I just think it’s really hard if not impossible to focus policies on those descendants of slaves and the descendants of the slave-owners without catching other people in the cross-fire if the policies are done on racial basis. Why not just make policies that help all poor people, regardless of race, especially in societies where the line between descendants of slaves and the descendants of the slave-owners has become highly blurred? It would take longer to equalize the wealth that way, but there’d be less drama along the way.
Sure, that’s a different problem entirely. I’m a big proponent of universal income, universal education, and taxing billionaires out of existence.
I don’t think it’s possible to make up for historical (and soon to be historical, for that matter) injustice by paying for it. I am convinced we need to create a society where these injustices are not decisive for your possibilities in life. So I think we agree on this point.
(Within the academic debate on this, I find the idea of justice in acquisition to be pretty appealing. In particular the article Self-Ownership and Equality: A Lockean Reconciliation by Michael Otsuka from 2006. It’s behind a paywall with its original publisher, but if you search for https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.1998.tb00061.x on sci-hub you’ll find it. It’s less than 30 pages and a pretty light read, as far as I remember)
That’s an interesting point. I think the sheer fact that Americans with darker skin might be the descendents of slaves might do something psychologically to some people and shape their identity in a different way.
But I also think that probably many Americans including the ones from European ancestors are probably quite far detached from that culture anyways. And I wonder if Americans with unknown origin couldn’t just do a DNA test if they wanted to know their ancestry and get in touch with the specific country be it from Africa or partly European if it was really that meaningful for them.
I for example don’t really care about my ancestors. I might come from slaves but I don’t really care as I mainly focus on the present. But every person is different in that regard.
I think we carry culture on even when we don’t notice, so there’s still a lot of Europe left in white Americans even when they don’t think about it actively. In the latest episode of Last Week Tonight John Oliver talked about how American tipping culture originates in how the British during the Tudors period would tip servants when being invited to festivities, or something like that. Just as one random example.
DNA tests to try to re-establish heritage is pretty popular among African Americans who can afford it. Samuel Jackson got himself Gabonese citizenship after DNA tests linked him to the Benga people. But entering it that way through a DNA test in adulthood obviously leaves you with a whole lot of catching up to do.
On a more positive note, it seems African nations are often quite welcoming towards African Americans who search for their ancestry. I’m not sure Europeans will extend such goodwill towards our white American cousins for very much longer.
Usa has never tried to break with their own slavery/racism in the past. They have not admitted that it was wrong what they were doing, and that they will never do it again. Therefore it is still there and it remains strong.
Although there are many who frown on racism today, it is only on the surface, only a show.
It is like a law of nature: when you (as a people) have not learned from history, then you are bound to repeat it.
They have not admitted that it was wrong what they were doing
This is a straight up lie.
- There was a civil war about it. It was the most costly war for the country in terms of lives.
- There was an amendment to the US Constitution about it.
- The President at the time that slavery was ended is considered to be in the top 3 of the country’s history.
- There’s a federal holiday to memorialize a civil rights leader. There are parades across the country on this day.
- There are museums and exhibits all over the country on this topic.
- There are tons of documentaries and shows on it.
This is such a blatant lie, that I don’t even know what to say.
I kept waiting for that comment you are replying to take a turn and be a joke, but it never did. They actually believe America never admitted they did anything wrong when it came to slavery?
I too am at a loss for words.
Yo, I have no idea. I’m starting to believe that a lot of these anti-American accounts are Russian trolls. They’re so unnecessarily antagonizing and hypocritical. Of all political entities in the world to criticize someone else… Europe? EUROPE? Let’s take a look at the hypocrisy.
The US is racist!
- Hmmm, I wonder who even came up with the idea of races?
The US had slavery!
- Umm, who started that slavery?
- Who captured and enslaved the Africans?
- Who brought them over and sold them across all of the Americas?
The US supports the genocide of Palestine!
- Ok, who gave that land to Zionists and why? What was the reason, hmm? And why Palestinian land??
The US spends too much on military and not enough on social welfare!
- Yeah, who’s going to save those fantastic EU welfare programs from Putin?
- Btw, where are European countries buying their fancy high-tech military equipment from?
- Who built those F-16s that European countries donated to Ukraine?
- Why doesn’t the EU build its own military-industrial complex then?
The US invaded Iraq!
- Who drew up the lines of the Middle East to ensure permanent conflict?
- Did someone forget Polend?
The US is belligerent!
- Odd, because I don’t think they started WWI nor WWII. Who was it?
The US dropped atomic bombs!
- Crazy, but what was Europe doing instead of sending troops to invade Japan?
The US has terrible healthcare!
- Interesting. Who is the leading researcher in medical interventions?
- Who subsidizes the world’s medications research and development so the rest of the world can brag about buying that shit wholesale and using generics a few years behind?
The US thinks too highly of itself!
- Of all the continents, which continent isn’t even a continent?
The US is too religious!
- Remind me again, what were the Crusades?
- And, why did so many Europeans even move to the US to begin with?
- Can someone point on a map to where the head of Catholic Church is, please?
As far as I can tell, Europe starts shit and the US is left cleaning up the mess. Then, Europe talks shit about the US for trying to fix the problems it creates while they sit over there basking in the resources they extracted. WTF is that?
Extra: Texas is stupid for wanting to leave the union!
- If Texas leaves (it won’t), should we follow the established naming convention and call it Texit?
Edit: WHY THE FUCK DOES THE US EVEN EXIST??
I think the left is way too anti-american these days and I think the right needs to recognize that we aren’t always so star spangled awesome anymore either.
It’s disingenuous to pretend that America has done nothing good and are nothing but a bunch of fat racist losers or whatever they say.
But it’s also disingenuous to try and pretend like America is number 1 in everything all the goddamn time.
Since this is Lemmy I pretty much only ever see people taking huge stinking turds all over America and aggressively so. I’m not normally patriotic in any major way but listening to these people just straight up lie about America constantly starts to get to me at some point.
Please reread that amendment slowly, word for word. See if you maybe missed something the first time.
Please reread my comment slowly, word for word. See if you maybe missed something the first time.
There was a civil war about it.
I know that. I don’t deny that. But what was the outcome of it? They have reunited with gritted teeth.
Memorials are a good thing to remember people, but not very meaningful for that what I have talked about.
I also wonder why so many Americans still casually use the N-Word. It feels kinda surreal to use this considering all the weight and suffering that was connected to that word.
Imagine Jews or Germans with different ethnicity would be casually using the Hakenkreuz and slurs that Nazis used, as a slang in every day conversation in Germany. That would be unthinkable.
I think it is mostly used by AfroAmerican people, and i believe it is relatively common thing to see groups of people calling themselves with a pejorative word used by other groups (i think punk and queer evolved this way too, though the n-word is a much stronger instance, i see the same pattern)
I think it is mostly used by AfroAmerican people, and i believe
Have you ever asked one of them about the meaning or purpose of that habit?
Nope, i live in France, and here the use of the term is more rare, I do not know anyone using it.
I just don’t think it’s morally good to use a word that has been used as a racial slur and to radically devalue and enslave people and make it socially accepted for people with a specific ethnicity to say. Imo this is the essence of racism and exactly what went wrong in the past with exactly that word. It doesn’t matter if a word is only used by people considered “white” or “black”, it’s the same thing and just not right.
For example in Germany they have a slang called “Digga” (used instead of “bro” or “dude”) which confusingly kinda sounds like the N-Word but it has nothing to do with it and has no racist or negative connotation at all and is used by everyone no matter their ethnicity. If Americans would use a similar slang that also has no racist background let’s make one up and call it “Brazz” and not make it exclusive to a skin type I wouldn’t see any problem. For example they already have “dude” and “dawg” which are perfectly fine. But the n word is just not okay if you asked me.
That’s why it is primarily used by black people in America—the word was used against them and now they are setting the terms for its future use. Just because it makes some people uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean it is ok for a white person to try to control how it is used, just like it wasn’t ok for a white person to make it a slur against blacks. The word is under new management now.
And it sure does add a ring to rap songs.
That’s because most of latin america is mixed with huge percent of population being mestizos. When almost everyone can claim that they are white/black skin color becomes irrelevant. And they were colonized by different people with different culture.
I did a quick Google search and it seems like there are many South American countries with a bigger Caucasian percentage than the USA. As of the 2022 Census, USA is 60.9% . Uruguay having 90.7%, Argentina 97% and Costa Rica has 82%.
In Europe for example the percentage of people identifying as black is even smaller and they’re an even smaller minority but even they still mostly aren’t separated and are culturally the same.
Argentina is also quite racist.
Caucasian itself is a very US term, in the sense that most of so called caucasians aren’t as white as northern europeans. Indians are caucasians, northern africans are caucasians, caucasians are caucasians, southern europeans, turks. Most of these people are ‘white’ but not ‘US white’.
Yes, and Argentina is a very unusual South American country due to this. Brazil has a national identity that is based on being mixed. Countries like Peru or Bolivia have made their own national identities that are different but still don’t emphasize ethnicity/skin colour as the US does.
I don’t have a precise answer to your post but I’d like to add my two cents - it’s not just USA. I’m born and raised in Argentina and moved to Australia when I was 19. Although there isn’t a black vs white dichotomy here, people are very, very conscious of skin shades. I still don’t get why they obsess over it.
Just to illustrate, my skin/hair color is sort of like Monica Belucci’s. My eyes are green. In Argentina I was considered a brunette, period. Sure, there were lots of people a bit darker than me, and also lots of people more white, but I never felt like anyone cared. You’d only bring the topic when describing someone physically. In Australia? I’ve been referred to as “a person of color” so many times I lost count, and always by Aussies -even aussies who I would consider to be of a similar complexion to mine. Immigrants on the other hand, don’t seem to mind, no matter their own color. People here somehow find ways to make the skin tone and background matter, and I’m amazed at how some conversations end up touching the race topic gratuitously. It’s in their mindset. They can’t help themselves.
Yes I agree it’s really weird. And the fact that some people would see a person as “white” and others see the same person as “black” just shows how absurd this concept is and that there isn’t such a thing as distinct human races (also skin tones can change depending on how much sun exposure someone gets). All that is made up racism to artificially help humans deal with hate, self-worth issues and finding belonging. But the reality is we’re all the same race who naturally look different which should be cherished. The only aspect a human should be judged by is personality.
Honestly all this obsession with ethnicity is making me pretty crazy as growing up I never had a concept of this and just saw people as people but nowadays it’s so strongly forced on you especially by the internet.
Wow.
noticed that in the USA people are often strongly divided based on whether they identify as being “black” or “white”.
I don’t really see this, in my area at least. Other people’s experience will vary. I notice my white and black clasmates get along very well. Hate is not born, it’s taught. I think this “divide” is more in rural areas. I’m in Philly and it’s a very diverse city, racism between white and black kids are almost non-existent (or at least I never witnessed any actual racism between white kids and black kids beyond the kids being “edgy” with their “dark humor”). I mean like, I never heard a white kid said the N word with the hard R.
I did, however, notice a lot of kids making racist “jokes” against me (For context: I was born in PRC, and immigrated to the US). Like white kids and black kids would both make jokes like “Chinese language probably sounds like ‘Chng Chng’” and then they both laugh at the “joke” I’m just like wtf dude. Luckily, as you go up higher in the grade level, the less racist people seem to be.
For context, my high school was like (approximately): 30% White, 20% Black, maybe like 15% Latino, 30% Asian.
Now, the school was very shitty, there were bullying everywhere. But bullying usually wasn’t based on race.
And despite the racism that I personally have faced, I do have some Chinese-American classmates who were born here in the US, and they seem to get along with everyone else well, so I’m guessing I’m just not “Americanized” enough and its more like Xenophobia more than Racism/Sinopobia. I’m don’t use an “American” name so I guess that’s is one of the major reasons why I get targed for racism but others who look just like me don’t get targeted.
Now, to be clear, that’s not to say there aren’t racism between white people and black people. I’m not downplaying racism, I’m just saying I’m lucky to live in a place where the racism is very minimal. There are probably some racists in certain neighborhoods in Philly. I did see some trump flags when traveling around the city, so those people definitely exist. But my point is that its so rare and so socially unacceptable (at least in my city) that I’m having a hard time recalling when I personally witnessed any serious (as in a non-joke) racism between white people and black people happened (I mean, other than on those on the news).
But, outside of my city, especially the rural areas… I don’t have first hand experience, but those are probably not somewhere a racial minority would want to go to. And I personally would NEVER go to any republican dominated area.
This is sort of what I saw in California - where I’m from, Hispanic people were “the white people”, and people descended from Africans were “the black people” and I wasn’t aware of any sort of prejudice against Asians, they got lumped under the big umbrella of “white” . But when I was in California it was more like black and white guys considered themselves Americans, all one thing, and discriminated against Mexicans and Asians.
It’s all made up, to keep people divided. Not to say there are no historical reasons reverberating still - institutional wealth comes from the past and slavery, so descendents of slaves have legitimate grievance- but the categories/rules of in groups and out groups and who is discriminated against are not the same all over the US.
