A Peek Into American Racism, or is it? by the Balloonatic

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

A Peek Into American Racism, or is it? by the Balloonatic

I finally decided to join the platform previously known as Twitter, now X almost a year ago. And it took this long for me to finally unlock the “Blocked by Raging Leftist” achievement. It happened when I was scrolling through my feed on my break a few days ago and casually commented on a political post where someone was replying to a post about Trump being racist by observing that Biden had idolized a KKK leader. Another left-leaning commenter countered that Mitch McConnell and a bunch of other Republican senators had also attended and spoken at the late Senator Byrd’s funeral, so I posted what I thought would be a drive-by comment that no true conservative supports Mitch McConnell. Boy, was I wrong. Almost three days and I’m sure hundreds of comments later as I’m writing this, the conversation is still going on.

It’s been an interesting conversation over all. My ADHD has been in full force the past week as I’ve been putting in 10+ hour days while still trying to keep up with the work on the house, the never-ending housework, trying to get some exercise in because I’m spending too much time on my butt in front of a computer and definitely not getting enough sleep. Today I broke down and had a 3 hour nap – something that usually only happens if under migraine meds or severely ill. I ended up exchanging posts with a young man who seems geniunely curious about where I’m coming from as well as a very angry young woman who has not yet learned how to have a civil discussion. I’m afraid that I let my sense of humor get the better of me to the detriment of the conversation, but I’ve always found it hard to resist poking bears. Internet bears, at least. Real bears are much more dangerous.

The discussion ended up scattering in many directions, mostly due to me getting distracted (squirrel) because when you get a chance to actually speak to someone who is listening, how can you not want to take advantage of it? But trying to have a good discussion when you’re limited to 160 characters at a time is frustrating to someone who actually adores writing essays and loved that part of university, even if they usually were written at the last minute or handed in late. We ended up discussing racism, poverty, culture and programs which are run usually by the government and large organizations that deal with the first two and ignore the third, which is why I think they almost always fail.

I think the first problem in discussing racism with other people, especially if they are a generation or two younger than you is that you will each have different definitions of racist. I am not going to deny racism is real. I’ve encountered it in several of the standard racist stereotypes, from the right and from the left. In some ways, I feel like the person in the meme that shows them slightly left of center, with someone to the left of them and someone to the right of them. Then the next image shows the person now being in the center, with the left moving farther left, and honestly, it should also show the right moving farther right. More time passes and the person who was left of center is now right of center, with the person at the left moving even further left, and the person on the right still far right. I think really, there should be a fourth person added, who was just right of the center line and is now in what would be the middle right. But I digress. The squirrels are still distracting me!

My encounter with the far right happened after my divorce. I entered the world of online dating. It was fun in some ways, but very eye-opening in others. It was a lot of chatting, sometimes talking on the phone, but mainly texting and getting to know other people. I was filtering for fellow conservatives, because politics can be very divisive in a relationship. There was one man I was starting to get to know, who seemed pretty nice and we were getting along until he asked a question that stunned me. He asked me what color my son was. When I asked why that would matter, he made a comment about not wanting to be in a relationship with any woman who may have had sex with a black man. He then accused me of all sorts of things and was quickly blocked. I was shocked. You hear about people like that, but you never really think that they exist, and they do. I’ve heard of the same happening in the reverse, so I am now under the impression that those stories are true, too.

The racism that I’ve seen on the left though, was different to that, but just as racist in its own way. People who know me in real life or on social media, have heard me talk about my neighbor. For the sake of privacy, I will call her Mrs. C, using the initial of her actual first name. When I first moved to my current home, I was quickly welcomed by my neighbors to the east. The neighbors to the west, Mrs. C and her husband, were an older couple and we really did not hit it off well to start. They introduced themselves by telling me that in the months before I technically took possession of the house in June until we moved in August, one of the oak trees on the side between our two houses had fallen down against my house, so they had it cut down and they presented me a bill for my half of the cost. Well. And then there were other issues. We had dogs, so one of the first things I did was hire a contractor to put up a fence and do some things around the house while my ex was back in Tulsa getting our previous house ready to put on the market. I quickly learned that contractors say one thing, but getting them to actually do what they said for the price they quoted is another, and ended up with a rather substandard fence that was definitely not dog-proof so the dogs were escaping out into the neighborhood. And then there were barking restrictions. And increasingly larger fines if your dogs barked for more than ten minutes at night. And someone was calling the police constantly on the dogs, and I was sure it was Mrs and Mr. C.

Why? It was election season, and it was obvious they were Democrats. Mrs. C is one of those nosy neighbors, always pointing things out, like lights left on in the house and the garage. What sealed my dislike for them, though, was that first Hallowe’en. I was trying to find out what the neighborhood normally did and was informed that Hallowe’en was Mr. C’s birthday, and they did not hand out candy any more because the neighbourhood was inundated with trick-or-treaters from the poorer area just north of us. Black kids. Not their kind. So I held my tongue and kept my distance. But oh, the horror when the young family two houses down from them ended up moving and a black family moved in. That made two black families and a mixed race family on our street! The Horror! They said their kids told them it was time to move. It made me wonder what they thought and how they were judging me when my younger brother came to visit with his beautiful, amazing three brown children he has with his Grenada-born wife. But I shrugged it off as their loss and kept my distance. I had seen that type of racism in my Ex’s family, too, when the rich white women would gather to talk about debutante balls and pat themselves on the back for being inclusive and allowing in black girls, while their black and hispanic maids cleaned their houses.

However, as time went on, I got to know Mrs and Mr C a little better. We began to build a bit of a friendship. I found out that no, it wasn’t they who were calling the cops every time the dogs barked. In fact, I found out that Mr. C had been sneaking over to my fence and giving the dogs treats. Turns out he likes dogs and missed having one. My regret now is that my military/gun-loving son didn’t get to spend more time with Mr C and join him at his gun club and talk about his time in the service. So after Mr. C ended up having to move into assisted living due to Parkinson’s and dementia, I tried to keep a bit of an eye on Mrs. C. And then covid hit, and people were being told to stay home, don’t go outside, don’t socialize with others. Isolation is not good for anyone, especially seniors. So one day I called Mrs. C and invited her for Sunday supper. And a tradition began. I think since early 2020 there may be less than a dozen Sundays where Mrs. C hasn’t joined us for Sunday dinner. We were there for her when she needed to talk to someone about how hard it was for her not to be able to visit Mr. C, to have to try to find his room and wave at him from the window. And we have continued to be there for her. And she is there for us. She went with me to my divorce hearing. She has been there to support and encourage me as I rebuild both my house and my life.

What does this have to do with racism, you may ask? Are you off chasing squirrels again? Well, the funny thing is that once you spend time with people, get to know them, treat them with respect and love them, they change. It is not an instant thing. It is sometimes a years long process. But it happens. Three Hallowe’ens ago, when I was getting ready for the trick-or-treaters, Mrs. C invited me over to join her other neighbours, as they set up lawn chairs with blankets, and a table full of treats for the kids. And Mrs. C started ooing and awing over the cute costumes and those beautiful smiles, and talking to those folk who live just north of us. A new tradition has been born. And a passing comment the other day – “Boy, that man who lives two doors down sure is doing a great job improving his house and keeping up with the yard.”

I talked to my son about his experiences while we were in the car together and he was able to confirm this. He attends a school where the majority of the students are black, so while they study traditional English stuff like Shakespeare, he also had some interesting assignments based on a lecture and writings of an African author named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on “Danger of a Single Story.” His essays on that and our recent talk led into a good discussion about how the racism he encounters is not like that man I chatted with online. That it’s more about judging people based on our own pre-conceptions, perpetuating stereotypes instead of learning about people as individuals and hearing their story, and that the same thing applies to how he is treated as someone who is white. That the only harassment based on color has been kids who are black making fun of those who are not black enough. So yes, racism exists in the U.S. in many forms. But in my experience, it isn’t limited to just one group or another. And it’s not as prevalent as people try to push. It’s more about putting people into boxes instead of getting to know them as individuals, something that everyone is guilty of. Most of us are just regular people who really don’t care what color you are. I’ll smile at you, and hope you smile back. In the end, we are all Americans, and that should be all that matters.

85 thoughts on “A Peek Into American Racism, or is it? by the Balloonatic”

  1. I grew up in a neighborhood with folks from all over – it was where the Help for DC embassies tended to live, plus some Seventh Day Adventists- which made for a real culture shock when 4th grade moved to an exclusively white suburb where I was the minority because I wasn’t Catholic or Jewish. Fortunately they accepted me as a token WASP, but for the first time in my life I heard but did not join in using words like nigger.

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  4. These days all you hear from the left is racism, white supremacy, etc as a cudgel. Like all language, they pervert any true meaning towards whatever they want RIGHT NOW. I’ve started calling objectionable statements by non-white people “offensive” rather than racist. At least that way they can’t just pull the standard “only white people can be racist” as a response, and they have to work a bit harder to refute that they are offensive.

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  5. I live in a town with blacks, hispanics, asians, native americans, and white people; just not many of them are of non-northern European descent. The only ones who blend in the least are the blacks. But the only reason they stand out at all is because there are so few of them that they’re the shiny new eye-catching jewels in a sea of sameness. That’s not racism, that’s just being sentient.

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  6. I grew up in the coastal mountains of Commifornia. I attended a teeny little elementary and middle school. For the most part it was a pretty pale place (at least until summer rolled around [no, I stayed pale unless I turned into a lobster. My base color is fish-belly white, with that blue undertone. There are people in this world paler than me, but they’re called albinos]), but we had a sprinkling of other skin tones. My first thought was to say ‘other cultures’, but that would have been an untruth. Every kid I went to school with was solidly American, and flavored culturally with ‘mountain’ (this is a sub-culture of redneck) if they stuck around for a few years.

    I was taught growing up that skin tone had as much meaning as hair color, and even less meaning than the color of the other kid’s shirt (since that at least they had some choice in, depending on their parents.) Today, so many self-victimized people scream ‘erasure!’ if you mention you pay no attention to skin color. ”You are denying my past experience!”

    No, I’m not. I have no idea what your past experience is, just like you have no idea of mine, unless you’ve asked and I trusted you enough to actually respond. When I meet someone new in the workplace, I don’t ask myself if they’ve been victimized in the past. I don’t ask if they’ve been discriminated against or subjected to sexual harassment. Frankly, it’s none of my business. I assume that they will do their job and comport themselves in a professional and business-like manner, until proven otherwise. If they wish to strike up a conversation about hobbies or book reading habits, I am more than happy to reciprocate and even venture a suggestion or two. I’m open to starting a friendship, and have on many occasions. I literally do not care about skin color.

    I have been told time and again that this is sublimated racism, that I MUST take skin color into account when approaching someone, that I have to be sensitive to their history and sensibilities.

    As previously mentioned, I don’t know their history or sensibilities. What about MY history and sensibilities? Why must it only go one way? 

    I was in a weekly leadership culture meeting (not as terrible as it sounds) when the manager presenting the weekly message self-identified as a redneck. I was amused. I have always identified as such. Not 24 hours later, he was apologizing because someone was offended and frightened by the fact that he had done that, because she equated the word ‘redneck’ with ‘violent racist’. Well, I was offended that she thought rednecks were racist, ‘cuz we’re not, but my feelings and his feelings were invalid because she was a member of a ‘minority’, a protected victim group.

    And this woman made a huge deal out of it. She didn’t do the sensible thing and privately ask him what he meant by his comment. She didn’t ask for clarification so she could understand (even though one of the company values was to ‘seek understanding before seeking to be understood’.) No, she went straight to the top of HR to complain that she felt ‘unsafe’ now, and everyone had to take a two hour ‘sensitivity’ training as a result.

    I don’t understand this mindset. I know that it’s out there. I know that there are people who think this way, but I can’t quite wrap my brain around how they got there. And I’m sorta glad I can’t.

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    1. Oh, for the Love of Life Orchestra. Once upon a time about a year before COVID, an elegant black lady brought her ca. 6-year-old son into our public library while he was brandishing a filled water pistol, of the exact same space-gun design as the one I have in my cosplay collection. I was at the information desk (AKA the first line of defense) and stepped out to whisper to the tyke that the library was “neutral ground,” and would he please put away his weapon. (Books don’t like water. Duh.) He did so … as his mom was quickly taking him to the administration office to report my “racist” use of the word “weapon.” Fortunately, our administrator was a Ghanaian immigrant with little patience for oversensitive Americans, so all I had to do was apologize (and grovel a little) as an SF cosplayer meeting a kindred spirit. Things got worse after the Summer of Floyd, and I kept my mouth shut until I passed the birthday at which I could retire.

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    2. (even though one of the company values was to ‘seek understanding before seeking to be understood’.)

      1 of the habits of the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

      HR should have told her that she could be disciplined for disrespecting your culture.

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  7. I agree with you that familiarity relieves contempt, but discrimination is a survival skill. I was in discussion group about this, with a very nice black couple, and it helped, but I had to ask them, “what happens if my first experience with black people was that he took a shot at me?” And shortly after that, being called to jury duty watching drug dealers? Am I wrong to exercise some caution around the “unfamiliar”?

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    1. If your first experience with black people is that he shot at you, get out of a war zone.
      Also, an experience with A black person is not an experience with black people. ARE YOU AN INFANT?
      Second? In your mind all drug dealers are black? Where the heck do you live? Because in my experience they’re mostly white with a smattering of Hispanic in the west.
      In both cases, I’d suggest the cure for your incipient racism is to stop watching movies. These are movie tropes, not real.

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      1. I’ve told this before, but it relates.

        Back in the 80s we lived in a mixed neighborhood in New Jersey. The previous owners of our fixer-upper seemed to have been running a boarding house, and I was used to having dark-skinned people turning up at the front door looking for people. So when I got home from work one Friday and found a guy on the wrap-around porch, I assumed he was looking for someone.

        He followed me into the house and pulled a knife. I looked at the knife and thought, “Man, that’s a crappy knife. Flat, brass fittings….I’m wearing a padded jacket….no, better not ty anything.”

        So he got my money, got upset when I blessed him, and had me go to the center of the living room with him. Which may be when he realized I was taller. All I can say is I was thinking, “The next thing he’s going to say is, “Take your clothes off,” and I’m going to have to try and kill him.” Whether he could see that in my expression, or something more mysterious happened, he suddenly ordered me back to the sofa, ordered me to sit still and left -hurriedly.

        The cops suggested (since armed robbery was *not* normal in that neighborhood) I warn the neighbors. OK.

        The Haitian couple next door: “Are you all right? We’re so sorry. We hope you don’t move, you’re good neighbors.”

        The black football coach on the other side: “If anything else happens you come to ME!” (We had a break-in the following Monday and he wouldn’t let me go in until he checked things out).

        The black neighbors across the street were much less demonstrative, but they called the cops when the burglar came back for seconds.

        Our only white neighbors? “That’s OK, we have dogs.”

        So yeah, don’t judge everybody in a group by the one who treats you worst.

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        1. Lived in a crappy neighborhood in the Land of Gar. Had a almost solid black GS dog.

          Neighbors and the police informed me that houses with large dogs were the only ones that didn’t get selected as targets. Seem to work.

          When I lived in a marginal neighborhoods in DFW, the break-ins were more likely to be addicts than yutes or pros.

          We help shut down a local meth dealer by assisting the police with property record research. And one of the lusers died after a neighbor switch to a AC compressor that used a new refrigerant. Idiots used to huff Freon, the new gas didn’t have the same effect. . <- worlds smallest violin

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      2. Hilariously my entire experience of criminal activity as a young man was -White- people.

        Because there weren’t any black people, at all, and the dumb pukes around Southern Ontario would fight you over anything, or nothing. I got so I could spot which dolt in a room full of dolts was going to start first.

        But on the subject of toxic Whiteness, I scared the shit out of my Black neighbors one time by pulling up next to them in my car on the street in front of my house, leaning out the window and saying “How’s it going, eh?” The poor guy was from Philly, thought I was doing a drive-by.

        Being me, I had -no- idea rolling down the window meant you were going to die. I’d never heard of such a thing. For me, crime happened when a drunk grabbed your shirt and punched you in the face.

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        1. I know. I was flabbergasted while living in Colorado when I wrote about how the homeless need to be pushed out of the areas they can do damage, and made to either shape up or ship out and was told I was racist.
          Dude, at that time (different now thanks to open borders) EVERY homeless person in Colorado I’d ever seen was white.
          In fact, all of them were considerably whiter than I.

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          1. That’s because the NEW, IMPROVED!!! meaning of “racist” is “we don’t like your politics”; it has zero to do with race. The same for “transphobic”and numerous other “were-once-insults-but now-are- just-meaningless-noises”. Just laugh at the idiots.

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      3. Believe it or not, there were in my youth and perhaps still are, lily white places in the suburbs, exurbs, and small towns of middle America. Almost certainly places where even meeting a black person was uncommon. But if one were to travel, however briefly, to the Big City, one might encounter a woman screaming she had been raped, a black man running from the scene, and a naïve instinct to chase him down while looking for the police to assist. The instinct was soon overridden by common-sense self-preservation when he turned to fire 3 shots in my general direction. And I learned that “discrimination” against the unfamiliar was a survival trait. That kind of unfamiliar was dangerous – caution advised. 

        Not long after, we moved to Mississippi, when real racism and segregation were still very much extant. But, as a grand old Creole gentleman explained to the “lady from New York” who was berating him for the state of affairs, “ma’am, you don’t understand. We live among ’em, work with ’em, our kids play with their kids, we just choose not to associate with ’em socially, and that’s fine. Up north, you put them in ghettos where you never see ’em, keep ’em out of jobs and good schools, Now who of us is racist?”

        As for jury duty it is simply a fact that every drug case I saw that day the defendant was a black man, sometimes flamboyantly and even defiantly so. Not a generalization, or even prejudice, but perhaps inductive proof of a proposition. ”Yo’ honah, I’se jes a proud member of Amer’can aggicultyuh.”

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        1. Uh Uh.
          If you chase ANY rapist, you should expect to be shot at. Color has nothing to do with it.
          I still say you meet an individual you met an individual. To extrapolate to skin color ain’t very bright.
          Also, what in heck has there being “lilly white” suburbs to do with the price of potatoes.
          There are a ton of those in Colorado and throughout the West, as you’d know if you looked. What is the “believe it or not” about?
          Also, were these suburbs inhabited by angels that the first CRIMINALS you met were black? Having lived in a lot of suburbs, including very wealthy ones? I roll to disbelieve and stand by my first assessment.

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        2. To repeat, there were -zero- black people in Ontario where I lived when I was growing up, and there was certainly still crime.

          I recall seeing a guy get his throat cut one time trying to get guys to leave a bar after last call. He was a bouncer. White guy. Guy who cut him, random dirtbag. White guy. Both drunk. Bouncer lived, as far as I know.

          The most interesting thing to me was that I had packed an entire van with band equipment and left the bar at 2:30AM, and the cops still hadn’t shown up.

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          1. So you had no reason to “discriminate” against black people because you had zero negative OR positive experience with them– exactly my point. Up to the point in my life where I was shot at, neither had I. Needless to say, that colored my view of the entire race for a time. Had he been white I would have had no distinctive feature by which to discriminate against others like him, and recognized him as a one-off individual. Experience erases prejudice. Fairly quickly, in my experience. 

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            1. Rolls eyes. No. And yet no.
              My first American sang at me,and was a truck driver.
              Only a fool or a toddler would assume from this all Americans are truck drivers or sing.

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              1. Was this truck driver uniquely distinguishable from what you knew of all other Americans? Did he attempt to kill you? One forms an opinion of a “tribe” by the first encounter one has, (that you recognize as an “unfamiliar”) and subsequent encounters either reinforce or reduce that prejudice. One trusts or distrusts based on that first serious encounter, moreso if that first encounter is a clear danger. After that you quickly (hopefully) meet non-dangerous members of that tribe and treat individuals as such. That SHOULD be the default in all cases, though in a few it cannot be. I worked with a group of kids for six months before somebody looked at the class photo and pointed out they were all “Hispanic” with dark hair, skin and eyes. 

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            2. Still going?

              Upon moving to NY, I worked in several hospitals, noteably in Mount Vernon NY (aptly named Mt. Vermin) and Yonkers.

              PLENTY of dirtbag black people looking at me funny every day when I’d show up for work. Plenty of punks that needed the hard stare before they decided the honky was going to be too much trouble.

              But also a -much-larger- number of perfectly reasonable black people more than happy to accept the large and kinda weird Canadian dude working at their hospital.

              So, I learned that yes, dirtbags exist, and some of them are black, but they are vastly outnumbered by normal people. Some of whom are black.

              I can still tell which dolt is going to start sh1t in a room full of dolts, now that we have so many new immigrants in Ontario. A stupid monkey is a stupid monkey, it doesn’t depend on culture or surface albedo.

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              2. You can deny my personal experience all you want, but implying I am some kind of racist is over the top. I am simply saying that what is /called/ racism is, in many cases, prudent caution of the unknown or unfamiliar, until it BECOMES known and familiar. As is said elsewhere, one quickly learns other clues portending trouble that don’t rely on surface characteristics like race.

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                1. We’re not. But we’re saying the conclusions you took on meeting ONE black person in urban insane circumstances, and doing jury duty with a black accused are exaggerated and prejudiced in themselves.

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                2. “implying I am some kind of racist”

                  “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

                  I’m cautious and suspicious around humans, myself. My experience indicates it is very hard to tell who’s a dirtbag from 20 feet or more.

                  Dogs, them I don’t worry about. They tell you what’s up right away.

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                3. You’ve stated your chain of logic, repeatedly, and get pissed off when folks point out that the links are broken and the whole thing is a not rationally supported.

                  You made judgments that aren’t justifiable on due consideration. That’s human.

                  You’re getting pissed off at people showing you how and why those judgements were wrong.

                  That is being stupid.

                  Quit making the choice to be stupid.

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    2. I was in discussion group about this, with a very nice black couple, and it helped, but I had to ask them, “what happens if my first experience with black people was that he took a shot at me?”

      Well, replace it with any other inheritance group.

      “What if my first experience with a man was one shooting at me? And shortly after that, being called to jury duty on a drug case?”

      A sane person can identify relevant “unfamiliar” and irrelevant “unfamiliar.”

      IE, dude dressed like Kong Ming, complete with the feather fan?

      I am going to be cautious. Especially if there’s no comicon scheduled for a few weeks.

      Dude of any sex or ancestry with weird colored hair?

      Somewhat cautious… but if I identify it’s an inherited trait, instead of a chosen trait, that caution goes out the window.

      Someone speaks a language I don’t recognize? Cautious. Especially as language is big indicator of culture, and cultural mismatch is painful.

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      1. The language/accent issue is going to be a big one if things get dicey in the Republic. :(

        I foresee all sorts of failed shibboleths and interesting conversations.

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        1. Accent is a lot harder, because those shift relatively easily– in most people.

          The folks that keep the accent forever are relatively uncommon, although of course memorable.

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          1. I’ve heard of incidents in which someone will accompany his or her fiance home somewhere else in the country to meet the fiance’s parents… and over the course of the trip to the parents’ home, the fiance’s accent will shift from a fairly mild version of the regional accent, to a very strong and pronounced one.

            It’s a funny thing.

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  8. I hang out online mostly at Instapundit, and have been seeing a huge upsurge in the quantity and quality (for certain values of “quality,” IYKWIM) of old-fashioned Judenhass (I dislike the pseudoscientific term “anti-Semitism”). There’s even a bit of the fashionable “Israel the genocidal colonial project” going on — you wouldn’t expect that on a righty-libertarian site like Instapundit — but a lot more of the “hook-nosed Christ-killers who are clearly responsible for all the world’s difficulties” sort of thing associated with the throne-and-altar European right. Although I would actually take a bet that the human hemorrhoids posting it would feel relieved to be seen by a Jewish doctor if they ever landed in an emergency room. Just saying.

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    1. IIRC, not being inclined to jump into a couple of hours of Bible reading atm, it was the Sadducees and Pharisees of the Sanhedrin that got a wild hair up their backsides about Jesus’ preaching, not John Doe and Mary Doe Hebrew. The basic fault of the common Jewish folk in Jerusalem at that time, as it is now and usually has been just about everywhere, was blind obedience to those in authority. Only low IQ and lazy faux Christians would blame the entire Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus. Show me someone who blames a person for the misdeeds of his 100 generations removed ancestor, and I’ll show you an idiot who isn’t fit to be in society.

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    2. Keep an eye on them, and notice how many kiss Putin’s backside, too.

      It’s like the strongest indicator of “this guy is going to go full-on Soviet propaganda spouting”– they have a weird thing about the Jews.

      They show up on Catholic blogs, too, usually talking up the Orthodox, and trying to get folks to flip over religiously.

      “Oh, wow, Putin is sooooo great, he supports traditional morality! … Israel is nazis!”

      The American Catholic had a flood of them for a while, they were obnoxious and got down right nasty when folks didn’t do as they were told. 

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    3. Honestly, and I hate to say this because the left deploys it so much, most of the Jew hatred online on the right is for real Russian dizinformazia. The racism too. There are some American puddingheads, but most if you look at the rhythm of the language? Russian. They watch our movies, see, and they think with a little effort they can get us into a race war. They’re idiots.

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      1. But of course you’d say that, you’re Jewish…

        …at least according to one of the more obtuse Insty commenters. I’ve been pretty heavy on the block button over there, recently. There’s more all the time – real organic feeling.

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    4. Instapundit gets a lot of rather unpleasant people in the comments. Some are there just to troll. Others are likely paid hirelings, there to either create quotes or try to propagandize certain opinions.

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    5. I know its tedious to block those guys – again – every day when they create a new account.

      But it greatly improves the tenor of the Open Thread when one does.

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    6. The notion of inheriting guilt is an evil one. Whether it’s the ancient yet still sadly relevant accusations against Jews or blaming all white people everywhere because some white people were slavers.

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      1. And never mind that all cultures, no matter what “race” they were, practiced slavery and there are plenty of examples in history of when “Whites” were enslaved.

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      2. It’s a doctrine of Original Sin. You are guilty of crimes you never committed against people you never met, most of whom lived and died long before you were born.

        And the ‘victims’ are traumatized by events they never experienced, which likewise took place long before they were born. It’s all a sham, and a scam.

        Slavery is a horrible remnant of our primitive past, in which the practice was universal for 200,000 years. Not until the 18th century did people start seriously trying to put an end to slavery. Gee, wasn’t that right about the time of the Revolutionary War and the Constitution?

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  9. I decided two things many, many years ago.

    First – there is only one “ism.” Tribalism.

    Second – humans, in general, are lazy; they want little more than to stay on the easy setting for their daily lives.

    Thus, “racism” is simply lazy tribalism. Unless you are physically blind, someone of a different skin tone is, 99.99% of the time, NOT of your tribe. Same for all other “isms” – an elite New Englander tribe member can tell immediately whether someone is of their tribe. Which includes other elites, by the way, if they are not New England elites.

    One of the problems with Western Civilization, especially the United States, is that determining whether someone is of your tribe is far more difficult than in previous days. It is particularly difficult if you have broken out of whatever early conditioning you had, and have decided just what makes a person a member of your tribe, and what makes them obviously not a member. THEN you have to look at individual cases – which is very, very hard to do, and takes much time and effort.

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  10. I am very prejudiced towards large breasted blue eyed redheads. I can’t help myself, I try and try but to no avail. Personally I blame Maureen O’Hara and all those old movies. 

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  11. When it comes to race, mine is “human’. I’m willing to try to get along with anyone, until they prove that they don’t want to get along with me. After that, I’ll avoid them if at all possible. If someone wants to call me a racist, I’ll just point out that that is an old, worn-out magic word. It no longer has the effect that it used to.

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  12. I spent most of my growing up years, from 1st grade or so through graduation from high school, in the East Bay Area of California. It was a melting pot situation, as pretty much everyone mingled in the San Francisco area of the 1970’s, and I can’t remember racism ever being a problem. The out-group was mostly hippy types back then. My best friend was black for most of that time, until her family moved out of state; my family adopted an Ethiopian girl who was black (though Ethiopians of her descent were considered Caucasian) through a missionary for our church, and no one much thought anything of it. Then, in the 1980’s my dad lost his job and got a new one in St. Croix, USVI, and we moved down there. 

    Were we shocked to discover that blacks were more racist toward other blacks than they were toward us, when only 5% of the island’s population was white. We learned that they had a whole gradation based on shade of ‘blackness’ and the darker one was, the more discriminated against they were. We had never encountered such racism, nor color based discrimination, as we were used to the quaint notion of making friends on the content of their characters, one might say. The island people were shocked that we invited our school mates over to our house regardless of where they stood on the ‘desirability scale’ and we attended one of the all black churches, and not the ‘white’ one where most of the people my dad worked with attended. It changed our outlook on culture and society completely; we could see the accelerating divisions due to race all over when we returned to Southern California after that, and it was definitely a change for the worse.

    When I did home health care for several years after getting my degree, I was the only white therapist pretty much who would take cases in South Central LA, in places like Compton and Englewood or Paramount, because I never had issues with anyone; I gave respect and got it in return, as the folks I served were just grateful that someone would come to their home to help their family member, and provide good service. I made a lot of friends among those families during that period, and never had a problem with safety or being mistreated when I went into their neighborhoods. They made an effort to look out for me while I was there and watch my old beater truck so no one would mess with it while I was at their home seeing their mom or grandpa. I can pretty much bet that I wouldn’t be able to do that today in those cities. I have been okay in the South Phoenix Hispanic neighborhoods though as they also look out for me when I go in to provide therapy in home. Maybe someday I won’t be able to do that anymore either as the influx of outsiders disrupts the congeniality of the family culture there. The culture is definitely more suspicious now than it was based on color; fear will do that.

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    2. Very interesting. I am reminded of a trip we took to Chile to help out with the school down there. Across the street was a large graffiti sign, and Spanish and I asked our host what it meant since the words were unfamiliar (and the painting obviously hurried). He said it was a protest against how some of the people were being mistreated and I asked who they were. “Los morenos” (the dark ones) he said. I couldn’t tell the difference, and had no reason to try. I wonder if, especially in these hypersensitive times, we are objecting to “racism” when it is something else entirely?

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  13. I grew up ages 5-10 in a city (suburb of Cleveland Ohio) undergoing “blockbusting” (which my parents helped with). When we moved there it was all white. When we left it was 90% black. We got along with the newcomers. We had block parties. All the children played together.

    Two years later, I rode my bicycle back to that neighborhood and nearly had it stolen from under me by tweens & teens calling me names.

    What was the difference? When the first black families moved in they were traditional middle class families. Two parents, children taught to behave civilly. Kept their homes in good repair. This was 1962-64.
    The federal “War on Poverty” which forced fathers out of their homes if their family was to get aid started in 1964.

    In a few years the population and dominant culture of that area changed dramatically.

    The area we moved to from there was ~40% jewish, ~10% black with a smattering of asian & hispanic. Another area where everybody pretty much got along with each other. It never had the redlining our former home had so it never got the sudden influx and it didn’t change much for decades.

    Racism seems to fade into the background where the people share values and a common culture.
    A mix of cultures where you can usually tell the people who don’t share your values by sight tends to breed racism.

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  14. I get irked by the changing definitions of “racism.” Instead of the original “irrational prejudice against a person based on his skin color or facial features,” we get “a system of power” and all the associated [garbage]. Thus the truly stupid “[group] can’t be racist because they didn’t have power.”

    Feline eyeroll. After all, everyone knows cats are superior to all humans. Sniffs, washes paw.

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      1. And that’s really what this DIE/antiracist crap comes down to in the end, no matter the pseudo-intellectual claptrap they use to obscure it. Assign a set of immutable negative characteristics to a group of people identified by their skin color, and use it as an excuse to treat them badly. That’s all they’re doing.

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    3. They have to change the definition because the people pushing that definition require tribalism to justify their authority.

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    4. Expanding the definition of racism has really made it lose all meaning. It’s gotten to the point where I joke they should tell what isn’t racist, the list would be shorter.

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  15. I live out in the sticks. This post is why.

    I have my own opinions, which after 67 years I do not expect anyone to agree with. They never do, particularly when I’m right. The righter I am, the more they don’t agree.

    That’s fine. My opinion, my problem, right? I don’t care about it anymore.

    What I do care about is other people insisting I’m going to do it their way.

    When I hear the Left wing anti-racists talk, what I hear is “I really hate those racist White people! There oughta be a law!”

    But then when I hear Right Wing racists talking, they say stuff like “I really hate those [group] guys! There oughta be a law!”

    As in, there’s not a pinch of difference between them. Two groups determined to use the power of the state to make me and everybody else comply, differing only in the details of what they’re trying to make me do.

    I can’t live next to that.

    Country acreage for the win.

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  16. I notice toxic/dangerous/hypocritical/ignorant sub-cultures, leadership, groups, areas, and behaviors, not skin color.

    Was born a mutt and extended family is a mixture of mutts of all types of colors and religions.

    I hate that the TPTB cranked up race card game to divide the masses. But then again, many folks are still on the Democratic plantations in the fields and house doing chores for the handouts and power. Maybe that will change now their replacements are being imported, but too many seem to be in thrall to their Masters.

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    1. I think that’s one of the things that surprised me the most. They accused me of being solid MAGA, even though was quite frank that I don’t agree with everything Trump says. And they kept contradicting themselves, were condescending, stating that they were fighting against stereotypes while putting people into boxes. They couldn’t understand that they were doing the things that they were accusing me of doing. And what seemed the most outrageous thing to them was when I said that the best way to find out what is happening in the world is to talk to people and build relationships with them and turn off the news. It’s all propaganda. It was sad, really.

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  17. I think my last reply was eaten by WordPress. It was an interesting conversation, but in the end, it was rather depressing to see that the two people I was replying to seemed incapable of independent thought, were unable to say anything that disagreed with the party line except for accidentally admitting that men had different physiologies than women, and weren’t able to see that their tone wasn’t going to win them any converts. That generation needs a bid dose of humor injected in them. I’m blaming the comic industry.

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  18. I think my last reply was eaten by WordPress. It was an interesting conversation, but in the end, it was rather depressing to see that the two people I was replying to seemed incapable of independent thought, were unable to say anything that disagreed with the party line except for accidentally admitting that men had different physiologies than women, and weren’t able to see that their tone wasn’t going to win them any converts. That generation needs a bid dose of humor injected in them. I’m blaming the comic industry.

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  19. The population as a whole understands that even “affirmative action” is still a form of racism. Here in Commiefornia, we have Prop 209. It was a ballot measure that passed back in the ’90s, and banned all forms of racial preferences in institutions that were affiliated with the public. That includes the many state universities. Now don’t get me wrong. The state universities still find ways to discriminate based on race. But instead of merely saying, “We have to fill at least this many admissions slots with ethnic group X”, they now look for things like the zip codes of certain ethnic communities, and other sorts of things that likely suggest the ethnicity of the applicant. It’s still there, but there’s an added layer of distance.

    Anyway, getting back to my point… Unsurprisingly, the California state government hates Prop 209. But it can’t just arbitrarily overthrow a ballot measure that was passed by the voting population at large. Only the voters themselves can do that. The most that the state legislatures can do is to put measures on the ballot to overturn Prop 209. And periodically, they do so. The most recent was a couple of years ago. And as always, it was soundly defeated on election day.

    Even a majority of Californians refuse to support the racist policies of affirmative action.

    Mind you, that doesn’t keep them from heavily favoring politicians of their own ethnicity (which has caused some interesting conflicts as a community changes over time…). But actual race discrimination is understood by a majority to be a negative, even in Commifornia.

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  21. My name is Bob, and I think the Balloonatic’s distant and perhaps alien situation reflects my own experience.

    I have some interesting challenges when it comes to staying sane and on an even keel. One is that I am a hermit, and easily lose contact with people I do not regularly communicate with. Second, I am a theory obsessive, and also used to be a much more automatically trusting reader of non-fiction. This last tends to make me the sort of person that the communists easily exploit.

    Executive summary is I trust theory too easily, and it really helps me to try to see individuals directly for who they are.

    I was involved with Sad Puppies, and had some bad experiences with some of the Puppy Kickers.

    In particular, some nasty nasty people who were Critical Race Theorists.

    I often talk about other aspects of critical race theory, but one aspect is that it can drive ordinary people insane, because they spend all of their time mentally around a selection of very nasty people, or people who have been seriously misrepresented as very nasty.

    It is possible to have that same effect, from sampling crazy vicious critical theorists as your contact with part of humanity.

    Sad Puppies, for me was a period where I had few in person contacts, and the contacts I had were necessarily narrow. As a result, years later, after more of that isolation, I found that I had ‘oppressed’ groups I had not met any real people from recently, and that as a result I had by default been trusting the critical theorists as samples of whatever group they claim to be activist on behalf of.

    I owe a guy a lot for, though he did not know it, helping me out away from one of those bits of madness.

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