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.
USAmericans have a heavy focus on heritage due to their history (wiping out nearly all of the local population). It is thus a great melting pot of people who left their own behind and had to start again from scratch. Going to another country where everybody’s from somewhere else led to them trying to find out how they’re unique and looks and heritage are the easiest to focus on. Combine that with a good chunk of their population being descendants of slaves (African, Asian, and European) and you will have a bunch of people focusing on that. Now factor in that blacks are the third biggest ethnic group.
The same didn’t happen elsewhere to the same degree as in the US because there are millennia of history and culture in other places or the population is more homogeneous. Go to Poland you’re surrounded by Polish people whose forefathers might’ve come from the very same region, spoken the same language, adhered to the same values and customs, suffered very similar fates, and shared the same traditions. They will try and stand out differently e.g through their accent, dialect, money, and so on instead of skin color and heritage.
It is a complex, multi-faceted issue, but those are my impressions of it. I agree that the focus is annoying, especially when copy-pasted abroad as if history doesn’t matter there, but I’m sure the more you read about US history, the more you’ll understand.