Last week I sat down with Daniel Fincke from the FTBlog Camels with Hammers to chat about race and race-related subject matters. We were trying out the Google+ hangout environment that we used for last week’s FTB + Skepchick group conversation. I imagine that I’ll be finding more ways to use this tool and be releasing more videos.
We got cut off by a dropped connection, so there’s two parts:
We talked about a number of fun topics, including
- Affirmative Action
- Diversity
- Colour blindness
- Implicit racial processing
- Feeling safe about having ‘the race conversation’
- Liberal racism
- Humour
- “The black community”
It was a fun and productive conversation, and I enjoyed myself a great deal! Hope you enjoy it too.
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*I feel it necessary to apologize for the inconsistent posting recently. Up until now I have prided myself on keeping a regular schedule; however, some recent (positive) changes in my day-to-day schedule have made blogging consistently a bit more difficult. I am trying to make adjustments, but those will take some time.
You brought up your instinctive reaction to certain racial groups in one of the videos. Did you always recognize it as racist behavior, or was there a point when you felt justified?
At first I thought I was objecting to a pattern of behaviour, but then I realized that I was unfairly associating that behaviour with a particular group (Chinese people). It was wildly unfair and definitely racist, and once I figured that out I applied the skeptical, anti-racist tools that I use for other things to my own thoughts and behaviours. It was just a weak spot that I had to address, which is how I know my system can work.
I haven’t finished the video yet (and might not be able to for a bit) but, having come to the dreaded discussion of “educating”, i wonder if you’d suggest an especially thorough and readable “racism 101” we might point people toward, instead of having to make the arguments ourselves and dig up the occasional sources?
You can always try my FAQ, which has a lot of basic-level stuff in it.
I don’t know of another go-to for 101-level race stuff.
Aha! I looked through the sidebar and couldn’t find such a thing, but Google is my friend. Thanks very much.
Was there a particular incident that made that “click” or was it a gradual understanding?
It was a conversation with you that suddenly made me understand the basic concept of white privilege- my initial acceptance of the idea can be traced back to one particular moment, one particular analogy. I’m curious if you had an “ah-ha!” moment as well.
No, I don’t think I can trace it back to any one event or realization. The prejudice was just something that I hadn’t really given much thought to before, and at some point I’m sure I said “belief X is in conflict with belief Y” and I dropped Y.