Poll: Racism both ways.

I'm inclined to think that quite different feelings masquerade as "racism".

For instance, these three attitudes seem to have different causes and different symptoms:

(X = a person of obviously African origin, and Y = a person of obviously Anglo-Saxon origin.)

1. The hostility a low-status Y may feel towards any X.

2. The discomfort a middle-status Y may feel in the presence of a low-status X.

3. The hostility a low-status X may feel towards any Y.

A further aspect is the vocabulary of "racism": taboo words are available to a Y, that any X will find offensive; but as Anon has demonstrated above, no words of equivalent force are available to an X who wants to insult a Y.

This suggests to me that we're dealing with a number of quite different phenomena.

MrP

I think the urge to look down on another class is simply human weakness.

e.g. My (distant) aunt had always been the "bullied" in her family.  But as soon as the family was wealthy enough to hire a maid, she started picking on the maid non-stop.  Having someone else below her in the totem poll was simply too irresistable.

I know this is not a racist attitude, but it has the same motive.  Deep down, no one wants to feel like they're the "bottom rung", whatever that means socially. Not that I'm saying anyone should belong near the bottom--I'm just describing a prevailing attitude re: social class, be it determined by ethnicty/race/profession/whatever.

LanguageLover wrote:

Though Henrietta is a native English speaker, and I am not, I think the word "instinctively" refers to "without thinking or reason" sense, rather than "be born with it"! We have to ask Hitch to see which one of us interpreted it according to the writer's idea! Racism is a complex phenomena, but it always makes me wonder why African-Americans, at least in the movies, call each other "n i g g e r" as well!