Not like “I went to school with one” but have had an actual friendship?
I’ve had a couple of conversations recently where people have confidently said things about the Black community that are ridiculously incorrect. The kind of shit where you can tell they grew up in a very white community and learned about Black history as a college freshman.
Disclaimer: I am white, but I grew up in a Black neighborhood. I was one of 3 white kids in my elementary school lol, including my brother.
I’m black 👀 This post kinda acts like there are no black people on lemmy but we here… at least I am lol
Welp, that makes 2 of us!
Guess we have to start our own instance now so we can talk about [redacted]!
I’m sure there are at least a dozen of us.
Also Black here!
(My keyboard doesn’t have emotes, but pretend this is the black hand waving hi)
Edit: 👋🏾
Also black here 👋🏾
I’m also black (but not American) and I felt the same way reading this lol
I think some people grow up in some very ethnically homogeneous places. When I was a kid, I think we had two black families, one that came from Pakistan when we were in elementary school, and a couple of people form Latin America that moved in when we were in middle school. My (rural Ohio) town had a lot of super racist and anti-Semitic people.
Ops is sheltered and white, probably from small town south.
You’re the first one in the thread lol
I know a couple of black people, but none of them is African-American.
I was born in the US, in Mississippi, but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, as a young adult. A significant portion of my friends were black as a child, and then I fell in with an international community of Haitian-, Nigerian-, and Latin-Americans when I moved to South Boston.
As with anywhere, most people are nice if you express interest in them and their cultures. There will be preconceived notions for some people towards you, and it’s important to understand that most stigmas stem from an absence of interaction. It can be surprisingly easy to break those barriers if you just make any sort of effort. It can sometimes be hard, but it’s so worth it. The kindest people I have met have been from these communities, mostly I think because they’ve worked so hard to build a better life for themselves and their families and friends.
Few things are as rewarding as being accepted into different communities. You learn and experience so much that you wouldn’t otherwise. My favorite experiences have been meeting the families of friends, being invited to cookouts with traditional foods and drink you have never had, and having an incredibly reliable community to lean on in times of hardship - we all help each other because we’re all in the rat race together. All it takes is some humility and a willingness to learn.
I know a couple. One was from Kenya, the other Sudan. I know a dozen or so Black Americans, several of which I have heard out right laugh at “African-American.”
Part of the problem is that the link to Africa was severed when their ancestors came here as slaves. Acknowledging that is pretty vital…
Yeah, I generally refer to the descendants of American slaves as Black (with a capital B) but I wanted my post title to be more recognizable to non-American audiences.
Same. My cousins are half black. I always like seeing them. But they don’t really have any connection to Africa beyond their blood (which if you think about it we all do), and we live in Canada, not America. Their dad is from Barbados.
We don’t have African Americans here, we have black people. We don’t call them African Americans because most black people in my country are not from Africa (we have a large Caribbean population) and they are not American.
I told a coworker this once and they went from saying African Americans to just loudly whisper the word black like it was a derogatory term.
Generally speaking, Black people prefer to be called Black. I’ve had a few discussions over the years and Black works best because it’s not some made up white guilt term (African-American), and is capitalized in the same way that a nationality would be (Italian, Filipino).
Anyone who casually refers to Black people as “African-American” would probably answer “no” to this question. But I worded it that way to exclude a horde of Europeans talking about their coworkers who emigrated from Africa. Black descendents of enslaved Africans have a unique culture, and that’s who I was asking about.
Always thought African American was a stupid term.
Black people have been friends & coworkers much of my life.
Where are they from? I’ve only ever seen “black” to mean African (or descendants of enslsved Africans), South Indian, or Aborigine.
Caribs, for example, are black.
I did not know that! I just assumed any black people in the Caribbean were descendents of slaves.
The descriptions in that article do not seem to depict them as “black”. More indigenous American, similar to the Taino.
My understanding still is that people in the Caribbean who look African are indeed descended from slaves unless they/their family emigrated from Africa more recently than that.
You know “the black community” isn’t a homogenous group right?
I’m a white guy who moved to Japan and it’s funny sometimes that a handful of people think we all must know each other (and all speak English though that’s true in my case).
In a certain sense, there’s no such thing as a homogenous group, period. But there are similarities between individuals with similar cultural background and historical context which makes it useful to talk about them as a group, while acknowledging that individuals will deviate from the average.
But there are a huge number of black people in the country with a huge number of cultural backgrounds.
Depends on how you slice em. A white person from Minnesota is very different from a white person in NYC, but it’s often useful to group both of them as white to contrast with, say, Asian. In the same sense, Asian can mean Chinese, and Chinese can mean Taiwanese, etc
Grouping people based on similarities is not inherently bad.
Grouping people based on similarities is not inherently bad.
“White” is not a “similarity” - it’s a racial classification.
Splitting hairs
The supposed “racial commonality” proselytized by white supremacists is purely a product of “scientific racism.”
No… it’s not a question of splitting hairs.
I thought the last of you “race isn’t real lalala if I don’t acknowledge it it’s not real” people got shamed into silence decades ago.
It’s decidedly not useful to say they have the same culture, though, because they don’t. There are common elements, but they’re nowhere near the majority, especially comparing those common elements to the common elements they also share with most black Americans because they’re American.
Well that’s a ridiculous take. So it becomes impossible to discuss culture?
Black people from Chicago, St Louis, and Oakland have cultural similarities. If you refuse to acknowledge that, you’ve taken “I don’t see race” so far you’ve looped back around to racism. This is exactly what I was getting at with the question.
Well that’s a ridiculous take. So it becomes impossible to discuss culture?
Black people from Chicago, St Louis, and Oakland have cultural similarities. If you refuse to acknowledge that, you’ve taken “I don’t see race” so far you’ve looped back around to racism. This is exactly what I was getting at with the question.
It’s perfectly possible to discuss culture. Race is a small part of their culture, and you talking about “you must not know black people if the black people you know are different than the ones from my neighborhood” is racist as fuck. You’re disqualifying a hell of a lot of black people from “really being black” with that shit.
Black people from Chicago, St Louis, and Oakland have cultural similarities.
Of course they do. Those are all urban environments. Most white people from the same neighborhoods will have mostly similar cultures, because, like I said, race is a small part of that culture.
Is it an important part? Absolutely. There are systemic issues that they are exposed to because of their minority status that white people in the same environment are not. But there are plenty of black people who aren’t from urban environments, and many of them are as different from black urban culture as they are from white urban culture.
Wikipedia has an entire article on African-American Culture.
African-American culture,[1][2] also known as Black American culture or Black culture in American English,[3][4][5][6][7] refers to the cultural expressions of African Americans, either as part of or distinct from mainstream American culture. African-American culture has been influential on American and global worldwide culture as a whole.[8][9][10]
Most white people from the same neighborhoods will have mostly similar cultures
Absolutely not true!
Well, not living in America certainly makes it difficult to start friendships with African American people.
But all the black people I know are extremely annoyed at the automatic assumption that their culture is Africa American.
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To be honest, I’m definitely expecting some assholes to show up with “I once walked past a Black man on the street, anyway here’s my manifesto on racism”.
What’s the proper way to handle the eyeballs?
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Sounds nasty, but I’ll try anything once. Reminds me of what my 2nd generation Chinese coworkers say about chicken feet and other unusual Chinese food. On the other hand, everyone who’s tried lengua says it’s good but everyone who hasn’t gets the ick.
I grew up in a very white community.
ope,
Everything checks out here
I don’t know any Americans let along African-Americans.
Omg, that NAME! BWAHAHAHA! I’m sorry. I am so sorry! I just keep imagining you waking up in the morning, sir, looking in the mirror and then in all seriousness saying to yourself… deep voice “You know what would be a really kick-ass name? Taserface!” That’s how I hear you in my head! What was your second choice? “Scrotum Hat”?
It’s about time someone noticed. HAHA. That is one of my favourite scenes in all of the MCU.
How long did you have to wait, señor face?
June 14, 4 weeks ago.
I live in a city immediately adjacent to one of the statistically blackest cities in America. I went to school in said black city for most of my childhood. I work in that city and have lots of black coworkers that I get along with just fine. My take? They’re just people like any other. Some of them are assholes. Some of them beat their wives. Some of them are total nerds. Some of them are the kind and intelligent. Some aren’t. Just like every other skin color. Black people are just people.
And yeah, people assume a lot of shit about them as a group and make idiotic blanket statements. I have some of my own preconceived notions in my head, and when they pop up in my head I remind myself how dumb it is to carry those.
I live in a city immediately adjacent to one of the statistically blackest cities in America.
Isn’t it terrible that my immediate reaction to this sentence was, “oh so you probably live in an extremely white area”?
I have some of my own preconceived notions in my head, and when they pop up in my head I remind myself how dumb it is to carry those.
That’s kind of what I’m getting at. It’s a constant thing that the human mind tends towards, and the best defense (imo) is personal experience. I always remember the gangbanger 19yo I knew, last I heard he was going to trial for an armed robbery, real “thug” type but he once confessed to me that he loved listening to pop music like Gotye and Katy Perry, but had to put on a real mean face when he was wearing his earbuds so his friends would think he was listening to rap. He wanted to open a barbershop and was teaching his little brother how to ride a bike.
You’re right, people are people. And they’re complex. Groups of people (race, culture, religion) are just complex groups of complex people.
I just wish people with no experience in a culture would take a step back and be a little less trusting of what they hear 3rd hand.
I don’t get out a lot period, but my friend is black. They live out of state, but we talk on the phone a couple times a week.
Now, on one hand, its a sample size of 1. On the other hand, that’s a solid 50% of my social circle.
That being said, “black culture” varies just as much as “white culture”. You’re trying to generalize a massive number of people, and you’d probably be surprised how hard that is. I don’t think you could pin down any single cultural element as being ubiquitous among black Americans.
Nothing is ubiquitous among any large group of people, but to suggest it’s useless to speak about people as groups because of it is silly. People of similar cultural background have commonalities.
I’m not saying its totally useless, I’m saying gets harder and harder the larger the group gets. The commonalities get fewer and less universal as group size increases.
It doesn’t get harder, it just gets more general. Statements made about groups are not intended to be universally applicable to every single member of that group, just generally applicable.
I was close friends with 2 black kids from across the street all through my school years, and another black dude in my neighborhood for a while in my adult years until they all moved away. But, like… There wasn’t much of a cultural difference from me; we were all “middle class” Californians.
I saw one of dudes from high school run into some racists yelling the N word at him once, but it was 2 skinny assholes vs like 7 of us and half of our group was on the football team so when we didn’t just ignore them, they pissed themselves and ran away.
Justice boner activated.
I grew up in a country where there was no black people at all when I was born. It wasn’t till much later that black people could be seen about in larger cities as students or tourists, usually a bit of a tourist attraction themselves.
Whenever I went to the west my parents always asked if I saw any {hard r n-word}s about. I don’t think they even knew it was offensive.
I try my best as a progressive to be anti-racist, but I have no clue about black people honestly or what problems if any they face in the UK apart from discrimination by the police and home office, as people they seem alien and strange, and in London all PoC in general I saw seemed to have no interest in interacting outside of strictly religious/ethnic/national lines and i don’t mind that, though it did make uni cliques seem more like ethnostates.
It is very difficult to be anti-racist if you fundamentally don’t understand the struggles of the oppressed. Sometimes you can do more harm than good, despite your best intentions, simply because you have no knowledge of the issues.
The Ibram X. Kendi quote that spawned the idea (among white people) of anti-racism was a good one:
The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’
But as a Black man, he inevitably approached the subject from a bone-deep understanding of racism almost from birth. I think he failed to consider people who were so far removed from the struggles of Black people that they legitimately had no understanding of the issue.
I think that if you are ignorant of the issues, or have a surface-level understanding (the white college kids I mentioned in the OP), it is sometimes best to simply be nonracist rather than anti-racist…or perhaps better to be anti-racist in the sense of “I oppose the concept of racism”. But this idea of “I must take action!!!” is…not terribly helpful if you have no idea what you’re doing. It’s like going to a poverty stricken neighborhood planning to build houses for the homeless, but you have no experience in carpentry or plumbing or roofing or anything. Your heart is in the right place, but please. Slow down. Take your cues from those who have lived through it.
or perhaps better to be anti-racist in the sense of “I oppose the concept of racism”.
True. To me it is this, and opposition to systemic structures that actively enable it, which often intersect with the same systems that enable other forms of oppression.
I firmly consider myself an ally. I do not know best, and I cannot really take action as I would not know what to do. I fully agree on that 👍
I live in Canada. In Canada we just call them “people” or “Canadians”.
I’ve met, worked, and work with African Americans in the US.
I’ve heard lots of racist whites call black people “Canadians” when they want to speak in code. e.g., “lots of Canadians here tonight.” You know what word they’re using behind closed doors.
Assholes are going to asshole.
Grew up in a community that was whiter than yours was black.
4th grade was exciting: we had a new, native American student in my class! Everyone else was white. There were two adopted kids in my neighborhood that were brownish, raised quite white (islander and South American). The only black people in the city played for the university football team.
Moved away from there, did most of my work in music. Many black, Hispanic & Asian coworkers, some friends.
I'm back in my birth city now. Black & Hispanic people are now established portions of the population of the city.Posting my reply to someone else.
I was born in the US, in Mississippi, but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, as a young adult. I am mixed from white and pacific islander - I look mostly white, just with Asian features - but a significant portion of my friends were black as a child, and then I fell in with an international community of Haitian-, Nigerian-, and Latin-Americans when I moved to South Boston.
As with anywhere, most people are nice if you express interest in them and their cultures. There will be preconceived notions for some people towards you, and it’s important to understand that most stigmas stem from an absence of interaction. It can be surprisingly easy to break those barriers if you just make any sort of effort. It can sometimes be hard, but it’s so worth it. The kindest people I have met have been from these communities, mostly I think because they’ve worked so hard to build a better life for themselves and their families and friends.
Few things are as rewarding as being accepted into different communities. You learn and experience so much that you wouldn’t otherwise. My favorite experiences have been meeting the families of friends, being invited to cookouts with traditional foods and drink you have never had, and having an incredibly reliable community to lean on in times of hardship - we all help each other because we’re all in the rat race together. All it takes is some humility and a willingness to learn.
I feel like I’m losing that cultural flexibility. Not the cultural sensitivity, just the willingness to immerse myself in something different. Any tips for stepping out of your comfort zone?
Sure! It will be uncomfortable at first, and you will face some difficulties at first. The hardest thing is to build a friendship. But once you’re actually friends with someone, that’s your chance to fully dive in. Just be sure to learn and recognize any of your own unconscious biases and leave them at the door. Can’t realistically expect anyone else to accept you if you don’t do that first (this is for everyone. We all have these, which is why it’s important to recognize them and lose them)
I understand not all locales have this advantage, but I was fortunate that Boston often had festivals organized by these communities. If your city has any, go to them. Go to concerts, bars, community events, religious gatherings if you’re into it, or any other event where you can more easily interact with people. All it takes is to build one meaningful connection and then your network will naturally grow.
Ah that’s the thing, I’m in the opposite situation. I live in San Francisco, so I have more cultures than I can shake a stick at just in my immediate friend and coworker circle. My closest coworker is Tunisian, my roommate is Chilean, the guy I volunteer with is Estonian, the last girl I dated was Korean (all of which, meaning, immigrated to the US from those countries, not my ancestry is from so and so)…as I mentioned in the OP, I grew up in a very Black community…and yet, my closest friends are the most Starbucks white you can imagine.
Opportunity is not the issue. It’s the actual diving in. The familiar is comfortable.
Ahh, I see. Well, it’s natural to congregate to groups you’re similar to - no one likes feeling uncomfortable. But a couple months of being uncomfortable is what it takes. Find some sort of common ground and work from there. Even if you remove any biases of your own, there are those who won’t do the same for you. It isn’t right, but it’s understandable. If someone doesn’t reciprocate any meaningful interest, move on to the next person. It just takes persistence and the desire to interact with other cultures. As I mentioned in my post, building stigmas and unconscious biases down the road often happen because there’s little to no real personal interaction with other groups. Not saying you will, just something I’ve noticed in people through the years, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.
Excellent point. Maybe I can think of it like inoculation against bigotry.
I’ve had a couple of conversations recently where people have confidently said things about the Black community that are ridiculously incorrect
Do tell.
