Hey there, I was wondering if I’m the only one who feels like this or not.
So I grew up thinking that we people all look different and never had a concept of something such as “white” and “black” people.
But especially in the last years I noticed more and more that a lot of people make such a big thing out of whether someone is “black” or “white” and what their ethnicity is.
It feels like it’s to the point where they make this define their core identity as if it’s very relevant how people look and how bright/dark their skin is as if this changes their personality.
It’s like so many of these people constantly bring this up to the point where it’s brainwashing and they literally even use racial slur as slang that was used in the past to devalue and enslave people based on their skin tone.
Since I experienced this it made me very uncomfortable since I never had this concept before and now I constantly have to obsessively think about it and feel like it’s manipulating me and these people still bring it up all the time.
I think this is driving me insane cause I never would think about humans so strongly because of their skin or something since it simply isn’t relevant and it just feels wrong but I can’t escape it since so many people continue to make such a big deal out of it.
Edit: To the people saying people have different advantages because of their skin, I’m fully aware of that and I wasn’t intending to debate that. My question was primarily about if other people have the same uncomfortable feeling that many people differentiate between people based on their skin and make such a big deal out of it (so more a personal feelings question than a generale debate about why it exists) because imo in a healthy society this shouldn’t be the case. But in my opinion the fact that we continue this behaviour instead of changing it is the exact reason we have racism and the issues of inequality based on someone’s skin in the first place. We need to start to change at some place and not just give up on it. If we continue to see people as “black” or “white” instead of just seeing them as “people” and only look at the past we will never end this issue. Ignorance is certainly not the solution. I found these videos where I think Elon Musk and Morgan Freeman are pretty much hitting the nail on the head.
Wow, nice assumption.
Also, define “white”.
Are southern Italians “white”? Greeks? Bulgarians (who can range from Irish white to Indian brown)?
How about Roma? Do you even know who Roma are? You probably (insultingly) call them Gypsy. These are people who have been shat upon by virtually every society in existence over the last 10,000 years, and they too can range from Irish to Indian (since they originate from what is now northern India). Are they white?
Entirely depends on who the majority is. Racism is just tribalism.
Yes, those groups are all typically considered white by pigmentation except the ones that are Indian brown, including light skinned romani people. Just like light skinned gay people would be generally considered white, or ethnic Jews who are light complected.
The boundary between black (or brown, yellow, red, purple, or green) and white is not black and white, but the social implications can be pretty cut and dry if you find yourself strongly in one category or another in many parts of the world.
Trying to assign someone as “Asian” is a somewhat more difficult task with more nuance, skin color though is pretty straightforward. You can google peter griffin skin color chart and figure it out.
Exactly what I’m thinking. Imo this whole concept of “white” and “black” people doesn’t make any sense and is just an excuse for racism and hate
The human mind seems to have some sort of built-in tribalism. Throughout history, humans have gravitated towards favoring the in-group and discriminating the out-group. The difference between those groups could be skin color, language, religion, family name or anything. Could be literally anything, no matter how trivial or silly. There have been some interesting studies about this.
See also: minimal group paradigm, in-group bias.