Is this just me... racist question?

In general humans agree with their kind and disagree with other kind.

It can be race, it can be religion or language or anu other thing.

If every thing is same they will find some thing to disagree.

In India they fight over cast of the person, In Iraq there is fight between Shia and Sunni.

True modern country will be a place where people love to live with other type.

In that sense US is more advance than any other country.

Racial difference is becaoming thing of the past.

I find your question a tad difficult to comprehend, but I'm going to go ahead and take a shot at it anyway. Here goes

Yes, I do think racist people as a whole are dwindling in numbers in this country. However, many of the remaining racists are extremely vocal, and so their rants, diatribes, books, websites and what have you get lots of attention, which is of course what the racists want.

That being said, I do not think that it is a given that, just because someone such as myself appears a tad hung up on this issue, it automatically qualifies them as a racist, which is what many people seem to be implying of late.

I do think that having someone such as Obama, a biracial person, running for the Presidency shows that we as a nation have evolved in a meaningful way. However, by the same token, I emphatically do not feel, as many people apparently do, that deciding not to to vote for Obama automatically qualifies one as a racist..

First of all, racism is not a generational thing, where it fades successively in each generation automatically. You would think that it would, like if the parents are slightly racist, the children would be less racist, and the grandchildren even less so, until it just disappeared from that family. Sad to say I've seen "backwards progress" on that in several families. I think that's because family is not the only influence in a child's forming attitudes on this.

I come at this subject from a psychology background, and I have a feeling, a suspicion, that there is some hardwired thing in the human brain that at least makes us initially suspicious of anyone who looks different from our clan. If you think of all tendencies and behaviors as relating to survival, then it makes sense to be wary of strangers. How did early humans identify strangers? They looked, dressed, and communicated differently. Does that sound like anything familiar to us today?

As people stopped being nomads and settled down, they acquired tools, claimed land, etc., and so strangers were a threat to that. You can see how over hundreds of thousands of years, this grows to what we see as not just modern racism, but also sexism, ageism, nationalism, and other behaviors that attempt to reduce the number of competitors for resources and to try and protect what someone sees as theirs. In many ways besides race, some people will try to marginalize others to gain the best position for them and their families.

This doesn't mean that we can't use our developed big human brains to think past these tendencies, but when people feel threatened (say by job loss, limited opportunities, etc.) the brain is wired to handle that fear-response a certain way, and for some people, it's "back to basic survival mode" and demonizing others who are diffferent from them.

So, for example, maybe in the 50s, my parents felt very secure and were very open to the advances being made by people of color in the civil rights movement then. Jump ahead to the same place but two generations later, and maybe their grandkids have suffered loss of a parent, lived on the low end of the economic scale, the manufacturing jobs that helped my parents do so well are gone now, and the prospects for this next generation don't look good for doing as well as their grandparents did. If they have the proper guidance, they will be given options to move ahead, but often they don't get proper guidance, and they get frustrated and look for someone to blame. There are a lot of influences besides a family that will tell them to blame "those other people". Backwards progress. Racism & sexism and ageism and all the -isms re-enter the picture to reduce the pool of competitors for what is out there to be had. So these things may always be with us.

That's how I see it, anyway.

Racism had not died, it may have dwindled, but not died. Of course we would all love for racism to be a non-issue but that's not the case. Just go on Youtube and read comments for videos that include minorites, its crazy.

Most importantly, slavery wasn't that long ago, and neither was segregation. This country is only a few years out of racist policies, it's going to take time.

I agree that it shouldnt' be an issue anymore... but it is... there are still plenty of racist people out there... and if Obama becomes presidant I think a lot of true colors will come out with that... every time he does something wrong or not liked I think the color card will come out... and I've heard a lot of talk about how he will probably not be presidant long... same with Hillary.

As much as you think its over its definitely not I live in a small town in Kansas for school, Im black and the school is mainly white. They really didnt have a problem with me until I started getting involved and was interested in a position of power. They dont think black are good for anything more than entertainment. No one agrees with interracial and I even had a teacher talk about hanging someone. People want to sweep this under the rug it needs to be addressed once and for all more in depth!

From what I understand, Obama is rather racist against Jews. So your idea there about a black man running for president means that racism is over as a struggle in the nation is kind of out the window there. The black man running for president is an antisemite. Lonnnng history of it, too. He has a long history of contributing to, showing up for formal dinners, and other fundraising activities for anti-Jewish organizations. Do your homework before assuming that just because he's black, racism is over. It isn't by a long shot.

You're sick of it because you're caucasian. Whites have always been on top on the totem pole.

It's not over. I am not a racist, but I am scared. I see a couple, maybe several young African American kids walking toward me and I stop and go another way. A bunch of Vietnamese or Chinese kids with spiky haircuts and cigarettes hanging from their mouths--I'm scared of that, too.

They just built a shopping mall across the street from our subdivision. I was aghast. Let's give the population (high in Vietnamese & Chinese) another reason to hang around in our neighborhood.

I am NOT a racist. I'm just scared.

TX Mom

No, one man's running for one office is NOT sufficient evidence to say racism is gone.

Heck, go to the Politics section and see all the racist questions about Obama (things like him making fried chicken the national food and other -- much worse -- slurs).

It's still true that blacks don't get home loans at the same rate as whites whose finances are identical to them -- to take just one example.

It's still true that blacks are rountinely harassed by cops simply for being black.

As much as I wish it weren't an issue anymore, racism is a complex issue that is deeply rooted in our culture and will remain so. It's impossible that we "don't see race," to borrow a line from Stephen Colbert. If you read Beloved by Toni Morrison, you will realize that the effects of one of the most revolting practices in American history, slavery, will forever have echoes in future generations of African Americans. It is not enough to hope that it will simply go away and let us live in peace among our diverse neighbors. And thus, racism will not only endure on the white side, but also among African Americans.

***

By the way, I too hope that I haven't made myself sound racist. (I could hardly be racist anyways; I am a minority, and have lived in minority communities all my life.)

Also, I want to correct something I said earlier. I do not believe that we will "forever have echoes" of slavery's effects. I am optimistic that, if we continue to create institutional changes and make positive changes in the way that we approach and resolve the issues left in the wake of this scourge, we can overcome it.