The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in historically having a large, enslaved underclass that was kept down using racial justifications and against which there is still measurable bias across all areas of life (hiring, police stops, criminal sentencing, etc.)
It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.
A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.
to add to what you said, racism probably doesn't impact anyone they know either. In that sense maybe it isn't a "problem" in homogeneous countries, but it does seem like a powder-key just waiting for the fuse to be lit. Particularly in an increasingly global world.
The US has required an "immigrant class" since before and after slavery ended. People forget that we didn't like the Germans, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc
At one point in the South there were jobs only Irish were hired to do bc they were very dangerous and slaves were too valuable to expend on that labor.
Immigrants are necessary for our economy and have been since the beginning. This isn't a great truth but it's the truth.
Yes but Black people in the US have been historically treated _worse_ than immigrants, which is entirely unnecessary and leads to a lot of efforts to fix the results of previous subjugation.
Didn't you guys do the same to every other immigrant? Italian? Irish? Even us, slavs?
And isn't affirmative action a form of open racial preference? In my country, there's no way a race would play any benefit in eg. college acceptance... tbf., colleges don't even see the candidates until they're accepted (with few exceptions).
Every immigrant was treated poorly initially, but nothing compares to the special hell inflicted on African slaves brought to this country. With the possible exception of the Native Americans.
Sure, but you don't look at that, but look at race.
For example, would affirmative action policies give priority to a white irish man/woman, a descendant of the poorly-treated irish people ~100years ago, or to a black person whose (grand)parents immigrated to USA after the slavery was abolished?
Yeah I think there are plausible arguments that affirmative action is not the right way to solve the problem. Mostly I’m trying to explain the dynamic that causes affirmative action to exist.
I think favorable treatment for direct descendants of slaves is a much more defensible position, than favorable treatment based on “race”, which is difficult to even define.
This is done to every immigrant group, but generally most immigrant waves assimilate and are treated more or less equally. Through all those waves Black people were consistently and persistently treated badly, with things like official segregation, anti miscegenation laws, voting restrictions, redlining, and other unofficial policies and extra-judicial public murders.
Not sure what country you’re in but the fact of a permanent visible racial/ethnic underclass that has only recently won the right to vote among other things creates that dynamic.
> The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in … [history of slavery]
I think that’s part of it. But Europeans invented (or at least widely commercialized ) this instance of slavery, and they aren’t fretting about it. I think America’s fiery vivisection of its own morality Probably comes more out of Its role as “world saving hero police” in WWII.
The ‘suddenly thrust upon them heroism’ caused them, in the subsequent decades, to then intensively examine all the ways they were, perhaps, not living up to it.
And also, I think there’s a more fundamental thing that by being in a role of “world police” you necessarily have to use violence, but whenever you use violence, there’s always inevitably guilt and shame attached to that somewhere in the psyche, or the collective subconscious.
So… while much of the violence may have been done under the idea of righteousness, I don’t think the American people can easily escape the guilt that comes with that and I think that’s one of the reasons they kind of have such Tumultuous self reflection, about how good they really are or not.
Yes Europeans invented slavery, but the deadliest war as a percentage of the population in American history was the American Civil War. This lead to a period of violent segregation and repression even after the Union won. In many places Black people had effectively fewer rights than naturalized and second generation immigrants and until at least 1964.
I agree that there is other complexity for the US psyche but slavery and segregation is huge.
I was responding to this person’s more precise comment with shorthand. But yes, specifically Europeans invented transporting Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa to plantations in the Americas to do labor intensive harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
His point was that Americans didn’t uniquely invent that institution, not that there was no slavery outside of Europe.
Hmmm, war is often fought under a 'banner' that is different from the fundamental motivations. This the the classic "Jihadi's Dilemma": you need to craft an ideology to recruit those willing to die in the name of it.
Race has been a reliable 'cause-de-celebre' in the US politik for long eras, seemingly. I think you ought focus less on these superficial causes and more on fundamental ones: economics, resources, capital.
It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.
A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.