What does it mean to you? How do you think it is created? Is it more of a product of personal upbringing or societal belief? Can people recover from it? Who experiences it most?
What do you think?;)
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What does it mean to you? How do you think it is created? Is it more of a product of personal upbringing or societal belief? Can people recover from it? Who experiences it most?
What do you think?;)
Difference cannot alone account for the phenomenon of racism - that is for sure...Rather I hold that when certain differences, which do not serve the interests of those who can be designated as racists occur, the phenomenon spreads itself...In my state for example the minority of turks is subjected to quiet racism and the rise of this tide of racistic attitude has been only recently engendered when the state enhanced its social policy toward the turks...Ethnic differences were always evident, but these differences started to provoke racism only when the interests of our majority were hindered by these differences.
More or less racism is intensified when preached at home, it could have domestic as well as social encouragement, but its basis is nevertheless the same...
The truth is that differences are qualified as negative and positive and according to the qualification we feel hostility or friedliness toward ethnicities...And it is not compulsory for the ordinary person to believe he/she is with harmed interests, he/she may only hate because of his/her careful upbringing, but those responsible for the conditions provoking hate have their motivation exactly in this...
Very good points eagle! But i'm afraid you misunderstood my questions, i was reffering to internalized racism specifically. Internalized racism is racism thats internalized within the victims, so they believe and often act out on the prejudices of others about their group. But you do bring up some interesting points about racism that are also relevant to internalized racism, such as that racism is promoted and manipulated by those of power and is highly influenced by racism experienced by those close to you. I agree that racism is not always the true belief of others, but that they are swayed and influenced by racism portrayed in the media and by others around them. Kinda like catching a deadly conceptual flu, huh?:p
Can you clarify further? Do you mean, for example, if a black woman is the victim of racism by a white man that she would begin to be racist against all white men? Is this your definition of "internalized racism"? Your original post is confusing. When I read "internalized racism", what I interpret is: racist tendencies that we all have but keep supressed inside us- don't act on those thoughts & feelings; yet, nevertheless, they exist. Please do clarify what you mean; I am curious.
Oh no, thats not what i meant at all genoveva. It's when one is bombarded with racist things about them like if everyone said to them "you are this race so you are stupid" , that eventually theyll believe it themselves and consider themselves stupid.
What is Internalized Racism precisely?
*sigh*
Alright, if you are told things many times over you just might start to believe them. sort of like conditioning.
So if someone continually is attacked about their race, maybe they will start believing the racist things people say about them. So they will start feeling racist against themselves. External racism is racism thrust at you from other people, internal is when you feel racist about your own race.
Okay, I think I see what you mean by this "internal racism", for example it can be compared to what Hitler did to the Jews during the Holocaust- right? He and many other Germans undermined Jews about their race so much that pretty soon they all began to feel as if though Jewish people are worthless.
:) Yup, exactly right bright tears. Thank you. Ill repeat my questions now:
What does it mean to you? How do you think it is created? Is it more of a product of personal upbringing or societal belief? Can people recover from it? Who experiences it most?
Oh, I definitely think that internalized racism is a product of society. Even when comments made about your race are clearly jokes, they still affect you profoundly, which leads to you starting to make jokes about yourself until you realize that hey! they're not really jokes I'm making, they're true. Does that make sense?
There's no real way to recover from it, but immersing yourself in positive, non-racist people may divert those thoughts.
ive experienced internalized racism about being an Australian :lol: . Our external racism, as you call it, mainly comes from the British, and it were thier beliefs about Australians which caused me to be believe the negitive stereotype. I no longer feel this way - it was irrational considering what a culturally and racially diverse nation we are.
Racism unfortunately often stems from human psychological nature and then misunderstanding and misconception.
Human beings form when left to themselves form families and social groups, and then from onwards societies and nations, etc. The unfortunate part about it is, is that humans within set groups consider will always consider someone outside that group with some air of suspicion. (This can happen to anyone one, from moving somewhere new and getting to know your neighbors, to a new guy or woman in the office. You get to know them, but until then you are cautious.)
This is the psychological effect of friend or foe thinking, you want to establish if that person outside of your normal zone of comfort is friendly or hostile. This is of course natural, and effects everyone.
This is where the use of misunderstanding or misconception then comes into play. Those who are willing to sound out their objections about something, might find a favourable ear amongst those who are unsure.
This often happens when the normal rules of society don't apply, due to heightened tensions. (Hitler's Germany found a ready scapegoat in the German Jewry, as did much of the Klu Klux Klan in Negroes.) Other times it comes from a position that has subjected the other into a form of domination and therefore sees them as something less than themselves. (Britain, India, and South Africa. The Belgian Congo.) Or religious reasons. (Brahmins Hindus versus Pakistani Moslems, Christians vs Christians, Christians vs Moslems, holy wars, Jihads and crusades.) Hence those in a position of power, preaching these radical misconceptions because of some reason or another are often in a position of influence, those under them to accept their views as the common truth and promote their form of racism.
As for the question, does it effect people. Of course it does, but on many different levels. Some people believe what they are told and thus never even try to make a difference. Others are so incenced that they turn to violence and form other racisms, against those whom they feel have oppressed them. Other are indignant, but instead of seeking violent action actually target those theories which are spread about their race and seek to disprove them by example. Other believe what they hear, beleive that they are stuck in that system and can't break out of it, so they pursue that stereotype because its the only thing they know.
Personally I don't have time for Rascists, you get the good and the bad in any society and in any race. I believe that if you want to work, raise a family, and practice what you believe peaceably go ahead and do it.
The only time I will ever object is when people seek special treatment, or contribute to the degrasion of society, not the enhancement. (IE Criminal involvement, etc.)
"I may be a white boy, but I know I can jump!"
Shizz. :crash:
I am so glad that there is finally a discussion about this topic. IMHO it is the internalization of oppression that is the key factor in keeping oppressed groups in their place. Looking at internalized racism specifically, I would say that the psyche of blacks in America(I will only focus on that since that is the place I live)have been adequately manipulated, conditioned and distorted that any collective response to the racism that the group faces has not, yet, occured. The centuries of raicst messages that saturate this society have, inevitably, been deeply internalized in the african-american community and it is this that is responsible for the rampant drug use, inner-city violence, high rates of suicide, and on and on.
I remember reading The Auto-Biography of Malcom X and learning that when Malcom was in grade school he told his teacher that he hoped to grow up and be a lawyer. Ofcourse his teacher told him that was very unrealistic and that he should really focus on being some type of trade worker/laborer. This is only one example but this kind of daily assault on the minds of young people of color happens everywhere all the time in very big and very small ways.
I just finished reading Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. The protagonist in the novel is an ex-slave and he tells the story of his father being a slave and hating being a slave so much that he ran away, escaped. The son has hated his father for many years and still struggles with feelings of having his father abandon him, his brother and his mother.
But it also gave me insight into one of the key issues in the black community today and that is the difficulty many men of color have in terms of their role in the family. I am not black and will not write too much since I am obviously ignorant of many details. But this has everything to do with internalized racism. The psyche of the black man today in 2006 still reflects the historical legacy of black men a hundred years ago.
We are all so much more powerful then we feel and I think it is our unexpressed awareness of this fact that causes all sorts of depression and feelings of rage across the board.
nuf said,
big subject for me
has been for years
Ghideon
just so I rember this later but self forfilling prophecy!
As it stands, Drame/ I could not link the two words of the topic correctly in Bulgarian/...I entertain that perhaps this internalized racism does not differ much from any other undervaluation...I am inclined to treat the subject as the old psychological oppression in which self-evaluation is directly dependent on foreign evaluation...In severe cases only the degree is the different factor...In internalized racism this self-evaluation is only too obssessively rejecting objectivity...This alone is not sufficient to account for internalized racism however...For example a turk is much more vulnerable to this condition than a Bulgarian and I suspect / correct me if I am wrong / that Black Americans in your country would be far more vulnerable than White Americans...So what is evident in almost every person - the self-evaluation debacle - combines with a historical or social tradition, which has developed vulnerability in this race for example to produce internalized racism...However, as I am with the impression that internalized racism exists as purely isolated phenomenon, I would attribute it more seriously to obssessively dependent self-evaluation/because no whole races appear to be subjects to it/...In this respect it makes it only a manifestation of a quite another deeply rooted problem...
A lot of people have commented that internalized racism strictly stems from the outside world. Yet i have witnessed many people, all exposed to the same racism, and not all of them taking it so severely to the point of developing internalized racism. I think i agree with your point there Eagle(if i understood it right) that it takes a certain insecurity and vulnerability to succumb to internal racism. Yet i also think racism can be promoted in the home. Parents who are inflicted with it can influence their children to feel the same. And sometimes, just like external racism, they may not actually feel or believe their racism. They could be expressing animosity from another cause. I have met people who have grown up despising their parents culture because they had so much pressure to conform to it. It isnt the actual culture they are rebelling against or ashamed of, but the actions and feelings around pushing the culture on the kids. What do you think?
Exactly...In this particular case of domestic dogma, culture cannot be viewed independently by the children, because even the grown mind persistently associates it with other patterns of behaviour and emotions, which are largely unpleasant, their origin being persuasion...This again proves that undervaluation of any culture, race is not an irreducible condition...Internalized racism is a manifestation of psychologically related disorders/this may be a strong word, but I cannot seem to find another/, both in the case you mentioned and false self-evaluation, the problem of internalized racism appears to be distant from any merits of race or culture or to be independent in itself, it is rather a distorted grimace of a some disunity, lurking in the personality...Quote:
Originally Posted by dramasnot6
It`s just racism.Quote:
What does it mean to you?
It is both a mixture of a personal and social upbringing since a human is "the son of his environment". It is about being affected by someone`s own race and especially in the early years.Quote:
How do you think it is created?Is it more of a product of personal upbringing or societal belief?
Racism makes us think about ourselves or others as inferior or unimportant, it made us cause damage to ourselves and our society.Quote:
What do you think?;)
We just should end it.
There are various types of plants, and so there are in humanity.
What do you mean by "plans" poetess?
What can we do about racism?
What can we do about Internalized Racism?
Nobody is saying that racism does not exist or that internalized racism does not exist. So ok. Racism is a reality and so is its internalization. We agree that racism and I.R. are bad entities because many many people have suffered deeply as a result of these dynamics.
Now I don't know what to say beyond that. Not because I do not have plenty of ideas but because of questions that I want to figure out first.
I have really been spending some time trying to figure out what goes on here in the forum and in the net world in general. Here we are discussing a very important subject but there are problems. How do these discussions take place? I mean if I am talking to a friend who I know very well and care about then the conversation will reflect that. If I am talking to a complete stranger then more then likely it will be a very different conversation. Also, if I am a 65 year old African American woman and I speak about racism that is one thing. If I am a 30 year old caucasian man that is another. Both absolutely valid but the statements, ideas, emotions, questions will be coming from two people with profoundly different life experiences in relation to the topic and that will be obvious to anybody participating in the discussion.
Here I am not sure what is going down. I do not know folks too well. I know next to nothing about people's background or their current conditions. What someone does for a living? How much money do they earn? What group or groups do they belong to? Black,white,asian, Christian, Jewish, urban yuppie, rural farmer...
The reason I bring this up is because this is big stuff we are discussing and it would make sense to figure out how to actually get a handle on problems like this and use technology as effectively as possible in understanding a problem, examining its causes and impact and coming up with possible solutions.
Me? I am 42. Jewish. Born and raised in NYC. Grew up on the exact dividing line between very very wealthy folks on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and very very poor folk in Spanish Harlem and Black Harlem. I went to a private school but only hung out with the other folks on tuition assistance.
I currently live on social security and ssi. I have been unemployed for almost a decade. I live in downtown Oakland. I graduated from college in 1987 with a BA in English. I have been homeless and have served about three years in total in different jails. I have had several relationships but none of great longetivity.
OK. I have not wanted to share some of those truths about my life but I feel much better having done so. It seems to have helped me feel like I am actually going to be understood a bit more. And if this is true for me then I am confident that it is true for anybody else.
We are miles and miles apart. We have never met each other. How do we do this? How can we use this extraordinary medium...this global, magical, instant, technological tool while doing justice to...well...to our deep yearnings for understanding, discussion, community and...justice?
Welcome to the site! I think its a wonderful thing LitNet has so much diversity. It makes for even better, more diverse and interesting conversation to get as many perspectives as possible. it seems you come from an interesting background, what are your thoughts on the topic?
That may be the case for internalized racism, but do you think a personality disorder also applies to when people externally lash their insecurities through racism? Many are racist because they actually fear, and express it as hate instead, those from other countries. Perhaps this same fear can stir internalized racism? I think your ideas on what triggers internalized racism are definetly applicable to most serious cases, but what about the issue to a less severe degree? Perhaps some persecute themselves in fear of others doing the same. As if , by agknowledging and adopting prejudice of others, they are preventing it. Sort of like "If you cant beat them, join them" philosophy. Of course i find this equally unhealthy and uneffective as if it stems from a psychological disorder but find it interesting how logic can alter when under fear.
The discussion after your original post really cleared up what you meant by "internalized racism" I think internal racism might describe it better, but hey, I didn't invent the word.
Anyway, I once saw some documentary about a man who went around visiting black schools at some point no long before/after Civil War (I don't really remember)
Anyway, he would show the students several dolls of varying shades (black/white) and ask which one they were most like. Every last black child those the White Dolls. There was some controversy afterwards, because all those blinded white people could not see how wrong that was...
This has really stuck with me, so I thought I should share it. It certainly shows how Internal Racism can taint an entire generation, an entire...Race, if you will.
So, basically, internal racims affects most profoundly children, who have never known anything else. Why would they think Black people were worth anything? As far as those children know they never have been and never will be worth anything.
Thank goodness those days are past...
How does a black kid picking a white doll show racism? I don't follow?
What do you mean by already there? Like heridetary racism? Well eagle and i were discussing how those vulnerable to severe internal racism usually are insecure to begin with. I guess in that sense it was already there...but its the same when people go mad. It is normally not from scratch, there is often a psychological flaw that is triggered by an external event. Or did i misundertand your question?
Perhaps they could not be associating it with race though? Look how the color "black" is portrayed to kids. Black magic, black much more associated with villanous characters in kids books. And white ubiquitously represented in western society as pure and angelic. Cant really blame kids as racist, but easily influenced by the color bias theyre exposed to everyday. Of course,these influences may take effect for racism later on.
:( I'm not sure how to respond to your post. I suppose part of my frustration is that I am not sure what to do here. I could write about how I am feeling right now...which is not too good. I could share my thoughts about internalized racism. I could write about what racism and internalized racism has meant in my life. Have I acted racist towards others? Have I seen how people of color are impacted by racism? I am just sick and tired of thought,thought, thought without some heart and some real clear connection from an idea or concept to lived experience. It just seems futile.
I have sat in jail cells for days and days and days. I have spent so many years on the street, hanging with the underclass that I now feel profoundly estranged from normative culture. Now folks can say that nobody is actually normal or whatever. But that is not really true. I mean most people work jobs 40-60 hours a week to pay rent, pay for food, bills, their childrens education and so on. When I turn on the tv and watch the weather report the meteirologist says something like "and now the weather for the work week." They are not talking to me or to the entire community I belong to. There is a profound feelings of not existing that goes along with this experience and countless others.
I have slept behind bushes for years and after a while the people who walk past you become "the others" just as I am seen as "the other" to them.
I mention this because it is difficult for me to participate in any type of normal form of discourse that is seen as regular in this culture. It's really like I am from some other nation or country. I have lived in a 3rd world nation for my adult life. I once told someone that its like we are all in some big body of water and a few people are swimming real fast and powerfully, most people are swimming without any real speed or force and a large group are doing the doggy paddle.
And then there are those who have drowned. They are not dead, I guess the regular laws of physics are on hold here. These folks live on the bottom. It is dark and cold and very dangerous. Nobody wants to live down here and that is why everybody above keeps on making some effort to simply "stay above water" (as the cliche goes).
But there is an interesting perspective that the drowned folks have. They can look up and see all the different movements of the men, women and children above them. The folks above can not see those below but the below can see the above.
From where I sit right now every white person in this society has blood on their hands. We have all been deeply, cruely, profoundly conditioned to fear, judge, pity,hate,patronize,idolize,sexualize,blame,scapeg oat,black people. Folks do not get it at all. Just because I may have read a bunch of radical literature and just because I have joined anti-racist organizations and just because I have a few black friends and just because I do not wear a white sheet and put flaming torches on the front lawns of black peoples home does not mean I am free of racism. Not at all. Not in the slightest.
I mean my God! Michael Richards spews out the nastiest racist rhetoric I have heard in a while and he says "No. I am not a racist" And folks accep hat! Then who is?
Folks want to know what racism is? It is each and every time you make a judgment about a black persons self based on how they act, what they have done, what they have not done...I can say that I saw a black woman sit in a park drinking a pint of brandy. That is a fact. I can say that I have seen many black people drinking booze in many different parks. That is a fact. But if I then go on to say that blacks are lazy, self-destructive addicts I am in very dangerous waters. I have gone from empirical objective facts to very subjective assesments of an individuals inner world/inner being and then I go further and make statements about an entire races character/being-ness. It is not that this is just a mistake as regards racism. It is a mistake anytime we do this to anyone ever.
That punk who shot some store owner and stole the money. You know what. That punk is a human. And he is every single bit as human as you or I or Ghandi or Whitman. Does he remind you of Ghandi? No. No damn way. He has been violent, abusive...But unless we actually meet him we have almost no idea who he is, what is going on and why he did what he did.
I am going to stop here cause I am exhausted, pissed off and...well...can't rant and write and stay online forever...
The only way I have survived all these years is by what I believe about myself, the world and all other people. And I believe that saying we are all human is not enough. We also need to say that we are all, thus, humane. The tragedy, sadness, anger we all feel is, I believe, because we do know this deep down and the chasm between what we know to be true and how the world looks and operates is deep as the void of voids and that is what hurts. What hurts is the countless miles that exist between the beauty of a sunrise as you lie down on a hill and feel the damp earth versus the 50 Iraqis killed in one bombing. They are all gone. Forever. And the infinity of the horizon is also the infinity of their death, of their eternal non existance. The voices gone. The texture of an old mans skin. Gone. The cry of joy from a baby girl smelling a rose for the first time. Gone. Not gone because of nature. Not gone slowly and gently like a soft whisper between lovers. No. Gone from a metal bomb made to kill, made to end, made to hurt, made to maim, made to extinguish that which is most dear. They are gone because someone wanted them gone, wanted them dead. And I can not help, as I write these words, but notice the compassion I feel for both the killed and the killer. When I wrote the words "wanted them dead" I felt a terror. To want to kill life, how tortured a sentiment, how bleak a desire.
I have splashed in the salt water of Tel Aviv, the waters of my homeland and looked forward to each cool gentle wave as it approached me. The chill, the taste, the steady deliberate never ending nature coupled with the spontanaiety of the wave as it broke over me, kissed me, licked me like a large dog. Yes, yes, let this never end, let me splash like a boy forever.
I had no place to go. I was in Israel but I had run out of money. I knew nobody. The land that I had wanted to fall in love with was full of bile,puss and acid hatred.
How could this be? How could there be such joy in this world and such pain.
How can the salt water taste so sweet? Was it a dream? It does not matter. The past is over I tell myself "it does not matter" I tell myself...
Perhaps some of us are diverting the subject slightly....
Really strong observations, Drame...But beyond a direct relationship between an external racist oppressor and an individual persuaded in self-depreciation, do you give an assent to a proposition in which the victim of internalized racism employs this state, so as to control...I mean something of the psychology of the victim: Accepting your weakness you expect condescension from those sympathetic/clearly not the oppressors but the others/...I really do not believe this to have any mass occurence or to be a common case in internalized racism, but perhaps internalized racism can be used not only against oppressors, but also in an attempt to control...In this particular case, in which race and culture are involved I find it hard to believe however...As we were talking of special cases, I thought I might bring it to light...Quote:
Originally Posted by dramasnot6
ghideon, I personally appreciate your sharing all these valuable thoughts...It is my belief that one can never know whether a chance talk with a stranger on a bench will not be a saved life...One never knows whether the person beside him/her does not think of suicide for example and a few nice words will not make a difference or a shared experience help a searching soul and so on...
Drama I meant Plants**
OH, lol, now THAT makes sense ::D :thumbs_up
Yes, quite what i was getting at. When i mentioned fear i also meant the fear of not being acceptance, being shunned. Internalized racism can be a technique to draw away from the self, through self-hate, that is causing you fear. Sort of a direct approach to the problem, simply attempting to dilute or dispose of it rather then finding real solutions to the issue. Possibly a bit of cognitive dissonance comes to play too...
there's a famous US Supreme Court decision (Bakke v. US?) where a justice coined the term, "reverse discrimination", which was used to describe white college applicants as the object of an unfair admissions process that had set aside a certain number of seats for blacks with lower scores (i.e. quota system). in a footnote, one of the dissenting justices wrote: "Discrimination is discrimation, period." in other words, let's knock off this idea that discrimination flows "one way" - from white to black, as 'reverse discrimination flows from black to white. a shrewd conceptualization used very subtly to assign blame (in the sense of whites being the progenitor of racism). gimme a break.
the topic here is "internalized racism" - another interesting term, i wonder where you got it. the fact is, racism exists, so what's the difference whether racism is internal or external? the world doesn't go on "out there" nor does life go on "in here"---human beings comprise the social milieu with racism defined as a "collective condition" without the need then for bifurcated boundaries, don't you think? i suppose this sort of thinking would do away with the need for all the lovely psychologists in the world! ...not that this here philosopher has anything against psychologists or anything. :)
Really? I want to ask you something dramasnot...and I ask this for real, not rhetorically. After reading my last post do you have a better idea of what "internalized racism" means to me?
Your original post asked readers to answer the question "what does internalized racism mean to you?"
It means the world to me dramasnot. Literally.
White people are a minority? Yes. That is if you look at the world population there are billions and billions of human beings with non-white skin versus a profoundly smaller group who do have white skin.
Now lets go to the USA for a minute. 300 million men,women, children. Now there are more white people then blacks and there are more white people then asian people but when you simply look at how many caucasian people there are versus people of color, once again those with white skin are the minority.
I will go out on a limb here and say that I do not care deeply about racism because I hate what it has done to people of color. No. I am no more of a saint then the next Joe and I generally think about those things that will improve my life in some way and I put those considerations in front of the condition of other peoples lives.
If there were this huge circle and inside this circle there was a real small dot...that dot would represent whites vs other races. And yet I still seem to wake up each day to a white world. How can this be? What forces are important to understand inorder to explain this bizzare dyanmic.
Well...there are many many forces at work. But to get personal, if I live inside that small dot then how come I am not acutely aware of my difference? Why do I still wake up and feel as if my race represents the norm? That my race represents the type of culture that is the sign of health?
We(white folk that is)are dots and we have been lied to and told that we are, actually, huge,the size of planets.
My passion is not really about the economic inequalities or some deep philosophical conern about power and its use. No. I simply want to be. White people are lied to and the lies never rest. And it is whites who suffer for this. Folks want to talk about isolation? OK...here is some isolation for you...how does a very very small group manage to create a way of life that somehow denies at each and every single moment of each day the absolute, objective fact that it is we who are terribly, beyond words, lost,confused,and so alone that we must not even face the alienation we experience because to do so would be to admit the denial so vital to our supposed sanity. We live in little little boxes and tell ourselves that it is we who are ok. And as long as we stay in those white culture boxes we generally feel ok and are told we are just fine. All the time in the shadow of a mountain.
The boxes suck. The lies suck. The alienation sucks. The guilt and shame and self-hatred inside of Me...sucks. If the world is not really all that white then I want to be able to embrace the world and feel safe, understood, accepted....but that is not the case. I can not actually accept the true nature of the world because...well....it probabaly scares the sh*% out of me and at least in terms of that stark terror I am most certainly not alone.
Old School remember? Rap back in the day. Fear Of A Black Planet? Now that was a title I will not forget.:crash:
These are some interesting posts, and I might have to say something about this issue. I am very dark myself and I know how society makes such people believe that that is definitely a fault. I just need to gather my thoughts.
the above view is a classic case of internal racism. :D i've heard this "white people are minority" argument that is voiced regularly on militant black stations as a call to galvanize forces that it's time for the "majority" to assume rightful control, that whites have fooled the "majority" for far too long. your little "boxes" speech smacks of racism - however cleverly candy coated - suggesting a white power structure. but no such structure exists, it's all in your little box head.
embrace the world and feel safe because nobody's stopping you. get over it.
this is more internal racism or victimization externalized.
What I meant was that certain prejudices might actually be true for a given individual. To give an example. I'm Italian-American. Many people seem to think that a large number of Italian-Americans are involved in organized crime. Now I would say that 99% or more of Italian-Americans are not involved in organized crime. But what about that 1% that may actually be in the mafia. Was it because it was internalized racism?
Look I hate racism. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. But something else I hate is psychobabble. The idea that we can understand how a person became that person. There are people who show signs of internalized racism and there are people with the same background who do not. I don't know what this internalized racism really means.
Thank you for explaining. I probably could've made it a bit more clear, I really tend to get off topic on forums...
Never in english, thankfully, I get 60s in grammar and 100s in writing...it all balances out :thumbs_up
In case there is still any confusion, the children were asked which doll were THEY most similar too. These children were so tainted by internal racism that they chose the white dolls out of shame for being black.
I think. I saw that documentary a long time ago, my interpratation could be wrong...
I don't understand this exactly. Perhaps you are not remembering what they were asked precisely. I would agree that this is internalized racism if they were asked which doll is better, or something to that effect, and they picked the white one.
But if they were asked which they were most simmilar too, then I would deduce the following possibilities:
(a) They were delusional since clearly the skin color was different
(b) They associated their education with white people, which in the mid 19th century is a perfectly logical association since only white people went to school.
Neither (a) or (b) strike me as internalized racism.
I believe that it is possible to determine factors that contributed to a person become who he/she is. Like for me, I know that being raised in an absurbley conservative church, being socially shunned for my acne, and having a tendency to inadvertantley finding major flaws in well-established systems have contributed to the quirky, unbalanced person I am.
But the italian/mafia thing is not quite comparable. For one, there are not many italians anymore. From what I heard, the country itself has a negative birthrate (more people are dieing than being born). Secondly, not everyone thinks that all italians are in the mafia. Many do, but it is easily overcome with some quick stereotype bashing.
Internal Racims for African Americans means that EVERYONE thought they were inferior. The few people that recognized this as disgusting were ignored and thought to be anti-religious (after all, god encourged the slavery of blacks, according to churchs of that time). After centuries of nothing but hate and exile, this noble Race began to think that themselves.
Internal Racims means that the Racim against a certain Race (namely blacks) is so widespread that the people being...Racized? begin to hate themselves as well.
I hope I cleared it up for you, if not, I had fun writing it (and inventing a new word "Racized").
note-AUGH i'm sorry, every Racim I typed was plural. I know it isn't supposed to have an 'S' don't worry...
note-I agree that it isn't a clear example, and the circumstances with the dolls might've been different. As I said, it was several years ago that I saw this documentary
last noe-if this is completley off base, I apologize. I'm new to the forums, and I am not used to being surronded by people more mature than I am. It's very nice, but It'll take some getting used to.