Racism and Stereotypes

Sorry for lack of updates this past week. Been busy with a lot of things.

So recently I've had conversations about racism and stereotypes on facebook with some friends of mine. Now I know this topic has been done to death, but I promise this won't be as boring as previous articles that you may have read.

I want to talk about the subtly of racism and the use of stereotypes as such. Many people who speak of racism or stereotypes as applied to the real world can be in danger of supporting the wrong side if they do not understand the subtle word play used by people who are most definitely racist. There is a sort of "code", a set of words, context, and phrasing that can tinge something with a strong odor of racism quite easily. For people who know about this, things aren't new. Racism comes in many forms but it's the stuff that's just enough to make out but not direct enough that you could make a case to stop it.

What I mean is this: Referring an african american man or woman as a monkey is offensive. It's is near a racial slur in america. This is because, in the recent past, people who were openly racist would say that minorities with dark skin were "ugly", "monkeys out of a jungle", not "sophisticated", "animalistic", and so and so forth. African americans, have experience this sort of racism in the past and they won't forget it. However on the other side, not many caucasians know about this. A good deal do, but the ones that don't miss the underlying point.

When people said the Tea Party is racist, they show a guy waving a monkey with a sin on it that says "Obama". Some people just look at it and say "Oh, well they just don't like Obama's policy," when in fact there is a strong hint of racism there. Which is why a lot of people see such a site and claim that the offended party are "making things up and simply complaining about things that don't exist". This only makes that person seem as siding with racist even if they don't mean to. And thus we have politics today.