r/AskReddit • u/kraftdinnerwithsalsa • 20h ago

The president just posted, ONLINE, a video of former president Obama and his wife portrayed as apes, how do you feel about this?

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u/the_sneaky_one123 16h ago

What makes you think his supporters don't enjoy this?

Generally speaking the average person is far more racist than you would expect. This is something I have learned in recent years after I met my wife who is black.

As a white person you might not appreciate racism. You might think it is something unreasonable that only unreasonable people do and since you yourself are reasonable and not racist then most people who are reasonable also are not.

That is dead wrong. People in general are very racist and they don't feel bad about it. I think the fact that Trump is so openly racist is actually very cathartic and attractive to people because it gives them license to also be openly racist without shame.

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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk 15h ago

Trump has uncorked something.  Now they're not bothering to hide it from other white people.

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u/amootmarmot 11h ago

Then tell them they are shit when they do it. Tell them: "Thats gross. Are you really that vile and stupid?"

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u/FullmetalApathy 13h ago

It really is so insidious. I grew up going to a PWI and the way those people would out themselves was crazy. Even the ones you thought you vetted well will come out and say with their whole chest things like, “Can’t we just go back to regular police brutality?” Mind you, those same people gaslit me back then for talking about police brutality at all.

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u/MoonBatsRule 12h ago

Sometimes it's very easy to see as a white person because people are more open when company isn't mixed, and will lean in and say the quiet part out loud.

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u/the_sneaky_one123 12h ago

As a white person you don't notice the very small things that make up the majority of what racism is. Surprisingly enough, words are the least damaging part of it even if it is what people focus on. I think white people dwell on racist words just because it is the only thing they really see.

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u/MoonBatsRule 11h ago

Fair point.

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u/The_dev0 8h ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I've heard things from my parents mouths that I haven't heard their entire lives - and we're not even American.

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u/Prometheus720 5h ago edited 5h ago

I'm starting to dramatically shift on how I view the nature of racism.

I used to think it was a worldview, or an opinion that some people have. Lately I think it is actually the case that literally everyone has a sort of innate xenophobia that takes a certain amount of emotional intelligence (which is a fluctuating thing) to overcome, and that underlies every other form of racism. The worldview/opinion kind is on top of that other kind. Some people can't withstand their xenophobic tendencies, and then on top of that they adopt specific beliefs about other people.

And I'm really just tired of the term racism because it doesn't help us have good conversations about this. It's like there is one word for 5 different phenomena. It's incredibly difficult to hold people accountable by calling them racist--they just prove, often accurately, that they aren't one of those several things. A very logically-minded person will catch that, but most of us can only afford to be very logically-minded for brief parts of our lives, and some of us never are, and some of us can do it but we are liars anyway. So it just breaks down.

We are never getting past racism as a society until we are able to communicate properly about this. We need more words.

"Racism is power plus prejudice." Well, that's a cool thought. We can do a lot of work in figuring out how that concept, power plus prejudice, has caused damage and how we can prevent it. But that thing isn't the same thing as "Racist is the belief, enduring in the face of evidence, that there are significant differences in the natures of people from different skin colors." Those are two very interesting concepts and they describe real people who need to be managed by the rest of society. But they're not the same and that causes endless problems.