No, I can agree. If you're acting like people don't matter, and that violence is the only way of solving a problem, people aren't going to care about you, and they're going to think you're a careless, heartless savage. On the other hand, if you're kind, loving, caring, and accepting, people will likely treat you with the same respect.
This country more often than not confuses race with culture.
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· 5 years ago
More than one thing can exist at the same time. For example, there's racism AND classism. What they both have in common is that there's a group "in charge" which defines what inside and what's outside their circle AND that determines the fate of those out of their circle. So, if rich people hate poor people, they can make it harder for them to succeed and leave the restrictions of their class behind them. So the wrong accent, the wrong clothes, tatts, cars, neighborhood might keep a capable person from reaching what they could have reached as members of the "right" class. Otoh, lots of white lower class people have developed an aversion against rich folks who look down on them. 1/2
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· 5 years ago
2/2 So if they meet at the wrong/right place,. where the lower class whites have sort of a home field advantage, it might even end up bad for a rich person, even though s/he never discriminated lower class people. It's unjust, unfair, just plain wrong. But is it reverse classism, when all they can basically do is to insult and scare them? Guess y'all know where I'm heading…
Tbh- I don’t know where you’re going. But I do agree that classism is a factor many don’t consider. There’s certainly often a sort of “they want to exclude us so we will exclude them too” attitude that can pop up amongst all types of different groups of people for class or other issues where there may be “bad blood.” It’s a rejection- I mean, for much of American history a good enough reason to make laws or big decisions on running the country could be based on the reason: “Because this isn’t how the British would do it.” It’s no more right for one group to exclude another, but it is important to recognize it happens and try to understand and empathize to why. It is important so that we can minimize negative behavior in ourselves and learn to accept and communicate with people who have the same emotions but see the world differently.
I have a professional job, and like most people I know, respect everyone I meet until given a reason not to. When working on a product or process design, I always seek out the opinions of the people who will implement it, be they assembly line workers or mail room people, or machinists or whatever. They can sometimes point out the non-obvious weaknesses. I also don't think someone needs to have a college degree or live in a certain area to have a worthwhile point of view.
But, it's very common to have to "swim upstream" against the idea that because I have a degree, have a professional job, and don't speak like an idiot that I must be looking down on people who feel inferior. There's a prejudice that gets put on me that I actually don't have. So, who's prejudging someone in actuality?
Everyone is bias in some way or another. There is a certain level of practicality to it. When you watch a warehouse worker and see they have potential to do more- you’re learning about them. But if I Gabe you no other information and presented you with an on the spot decision who to make your new project manager- the new hire who was a PM at google, or some random mailroom clerk- you will likely base your decision on the assumption that the ex PM already has the skills and is the safer bet. However we do not know why they left google- or if they were fired. Bad attitude? Bad work? Incompetent? And we don’t know that the warehouse guy isn’t just down on his luck and needed to keep the lights on. However by applying generalizations to the scenario we can help inform critical decisions. The pilot blacked out. There’s a 17yo kid says he can fly the plane and a 40yo who looks like he was in the service says he can do it. The 40yo could be an ex pilot or just some old guy trying to...
“Step up,” and the kid could be confusing video games with real life, or he could be a prodigy who’s flown with day since he could hold the stick in his lap. We take the info we have, and make the bast assumptions we know how. That said- that’s all those are. Assumptions made in a moment. The key is to not define a person by these assumptions but to use them as a guide and then actually take the time to discover who they are beyond what we assume. To not treat these as facts but just as guides to help us. The wider the breadth of our experience with people and situations and the more observant and open minded we are in life, the less narrow and provincial we can make our initial impressions. The more we sincerely try to learn about a person before deciding we have them all figured out the more we will actually learn about who is in front of us and not what we expect based on circumstantial clues. That’s where the line to prejudice is drawn versus bias.
So you are correct that many people do just assume that people of a certain bearing who seem to have money or privelage or education may be certain things like elitist, stuck up, clueless to their struggles, etc. The truth is that you can’t always tell what the guy next to you has seen or done. Daily life doesn’t give medals to wear on your chest for having been through the shit in life. That guy in a suit next to you could at one time have walked a very rough road. If we treat everyone with basic dignity and respect and not decide what they are capable or who they are before we get to know- we might still generalize as humans, but we can avoid prejudice. It’s nuanced.
I mean if you disrespect people just because they have sagging pants and are posing in a silly way for cameras that says a lot more about you than them.
True that. That’s the same attitude that says people with tattoos or piercings make bad employees, or that to be accepted people shouldn’t wear garb their religions require or shouldn’t speak another language when around d others who speak it as well. It’s an insistence that whatever our cultural norm is- that should be everyone else’s. It’s not about a mixing of cultures but about a mono culture that requires everyone else to adapt to the conventions of a group or be excluded from that group. Where prudent- such as not allowing murder or slavery, it makes sense to force people to adapt to a singular system, but where such mandates bear little or no practtical imperitive other than to force assimilation out of aversion to other cultural norms- it is primitive and arbitrary.
No you're absolutely right. But sometimes people are shamed for it. Black children are dubbed "oreos" or told they're "acting white" depending on the music they listen to or the clothes they wear. All races are sometimes told they are "stuck up" or "uppity" if they dont constantly put themselves down.
I don’t know that I agree it is “right,” but you have a good point. Even on this board people often find my manner of speaking to be overly formal, sometime people even mistake it for condescension or hostility. For the most part I just wrote that way, I text with proper punctuation, complete sentences, capitalization, etc. some find it off putting. From the stance of this argument though, it illustrates the point. People who “say their pants” metaphorically in writing, often find morenproper writing out of place or innapropriate. Odd, alien. So we have people using slang and informal speech essentially saying that it is ok, as long as it is in the way they deem appropriate- or in other words “yeah- I don’t alwys use proper English, but these examples here are worse than I am so let’s target these examples!” It seems odd to me that when I was starting out making just over minimum wage I needed to wear a pressed shirt, dress shoes and slacks. But when I broke the Jr. executive mark...
.... red tennis shoes and jeans were considered appropriate work attire. That technical professionals I worked at in a “blue collar” capacity when I was younger needed to be well groomed, sharp dressed and clean. But the ones making $100k+ can look like they rolled out of bed and stink like Fritos and shame- the same Fritos stuck in their unkempt beards. So society demands conformity from people it sees closest to the “bottom” while telling those higher up it is just a formalit and only required on rare occasion. How odd indeed- more odd still that it isn’t a general aversion to lack of formality, but to specific examples which tend to stem from cultures outside of mainstream Anglo European avenues...
But, it's very common to have to "swim upstream" against the idea that because I have a degree, have a professional job, and don't speak like an idiot that I must be looking down on people who feel inferior. There's a prejudice that gets put on me that I actually don't have. So, who's prejudging someone in actuality?