Study: You may be more racist than you think

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by WinniBug

One thing that upset me was watching "Bring It On: All or Nothing" with Hayden Panettiere and Solange Knowles. (I know, I know...I was bored and there was nothing else on TV)
Hayden's character transferred to a mostly-black school and they constantly referred to her as "white girl", "barbie", "vanilla latte", "frosted flake" and made comments like "looks like we're finally gettin some snow on campus", "coffee is like crack for white people"....
I wonder how people would react if it was the same movie, only racial roles were reversed and Beyonce's sister was the one dealing with racist comments. Sometimes I think racism has done a complete 180 to where people are afraid to even mention a black person's skin color, but racist comments about white people are ok.

Solange would rip you a new one for calling her Beyonce's sister in reference to one of her own roles. She apparently doesn't like that much!

Anyway, the way I see it making comments like these about a black person is adding insult to injury in a racial sense. Making comments like these about a white person is still pretty novel considering it has only been 30-40 years since a black person could do so without threat of death. Unfortunately, I think that such comments don't appeal to the humor of a lot of viewers and really only serve as an illustration that black people are classless. Movies like this one give whites an inaccurate view into the mindsets of black people and perpetuate the idea that there is "savageness" lurking just under the surface.

Overall, saying unkind things about anyone is always inappropriate, but it goes a lot further than that.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by preciousjeni

Solange would rip you a new one for calling her Beyonce's sister in reference to one of her own roles. She apparently doesn't like that much!

Anyway, the way I see it making comments like these about a black person is adding insult to injury in a racial sense. Making comments like these about a white person is still pretty novel considering it has only been 30-40 years since a black person could do so without threat of death. Unfortunately, I think that such comments don't appeal to the humor of a lot of viewers and really only serve as an illustration that black people are classless. Movies like this one give whites an inaccurate view into the mindsets of black people and perpetuate the idea that there is "savageness" lurking just under the surface.

Overall, saying unkind things about anyone is always inappropriate, but it goes a lot further than that.

I agree with all of this post.

Add, to the bolded, the fact that blacks are more likely to be the "token" in an all white environment than whites are in an all black environment. So people are a lot less interested and impacted by something that is a lot less common. Plus, many whites feel as though there is no lasting effect to "mean words" because once they leave that context, they are back to being white, the power and numerical majority. We've discussed before, whites will often say "I don't care if I'm called a h****," etc because hurt feelings mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. If people can't keep whites from opportunities (denying membership into a high school or college group doesn't count) outside of that setting, it is just a momentary inconvenience rather than a life altering event.