Am I a racist?

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It's OK to dislike certain acts of a certain group of people, but it's not OK to dislike an entire race based on those acts. None of the complaints you mentioned are unique to Mexicans either. I used to live in a neighbor just like that with blasting music, disrespect and violence, trashed yards, flags from other nationalities, and none of them payed taxes either. Most just worked in construction off the books and collected food stamps, welfare, etc. Most of them spoke english, but I usually couldn't understand it. Oh, and by the way - they were all white. Each human is different and sure there are cultural differences between races. Personally, I like it that way. I also believe that class is what tends to be responsible for the behaviors you mentioned. I seriously doubt that you'd see those activities over at a wealthy Mexican's house. Applying your observations to an entire race, rather than the specific individuals, is pretty racist - I think by definition.

If you hated all people of Hispanic descent (which includes everything from Black Cubans to White Argentines), that would be racist (don't ask me why...

If you hate all Mexicans, that might be Chauvinistic, possibly bigoted.

Racism and bigotry are a form of statistics where a single sample proves the rule for the entire population.

If the entire population bears the given characteristic (not likely), that's dodgy statisics...

Mexicans come in two different 'classes'; the descendants of the original Spanish, and the meztizos (mixed), or pureblood 'Indian' (many 'Mexicans' don't actually speak Spanish as a first language). The 'pure' Spanish have usually been on top, and the more Native American you are, the farther down the ladder you are.

I don't think it's racism because it doesn't sound like you have a problem with the race. Really, it sounds like it's Mexico's culture you have animosity towards, not really the race itself. I think this is how racism against blacks started too.. they came from a different kind of place and had a different culture, so people associated the race with the way of acting, even though anyone of any race can be brought up in any culture. It's only racism when you start to believe there's something intrinsically different in the minds and abilities of a race. (There might be some SMALL differences, but mostly I think it's been proven that there are none that matter in any noticeable or consistent way.)

Well, if you met a Mexican who was polite and tidy, would you be OK with them? There's a difference between not liking all people of a race, and not liking the ones you've met.
Being an aspie, a lot of stereotypes stop applying. I know perfectly well that I'm not likely to be fond of somebody who is typical of any group.
Not to mention that groups in general bring out the worst in people. My parents always told me that all groups of people are bad. You can like individuals with those groups. But the groups themselves suck.

Sand, your hypocrisy is quite blatant. You basically admit you left Manhattan for Finland because you didn’t want to live among people who were greatly racially different from yourself. Then, when someone else expresses similar sentiments but does not have the luxury of being to move to wherever takes their fancy, you denounce them as “racist”.

In fact, you seem to like lecturing people on WP about the meaninglessness of racial differences, and yet racial differences have clearly not been meaningless to you in your life (although you use weasel words like “it’s a cultural thing” to deny it).

Your sarcactic post about “people with thin nostrils” is the sort of thing I’d expect from a brainwashed 18-year old sociology student, not a 70-year-old man.

Btw, I’d be interested to know how long you think white people should keep running away from “diversity”? At what point, in your eyes, would it be acceptable for white people to stand their ground and keep “diversity” out instead?

I'm not sure that moving because of cultural differences is the same as moving because of racial differences-- culture isn't always racial. I thought it was about noise? Culture can be based on age, or economic status, or education.. there are a lot of things besides race that affect culture. Or am I being totally naive? I've met plenty of people from different racial backgrounds who I considered more like myself culturally than a lot of people from similar racial roots.

I don't consider the OP racist....perhaps it is much more of a cultural thing than a race one?

Now I might get attacked for this but aside from race, I think it's ingrained in us without education that when we see a certain pattern of behaviors based off appearance alone, we're more likely to associate those patterns visually than say socially or by stats alone.

I'm wondering if this has had some evolutionary advantages in the past. It would've been probably a huge survival mechanism had we been living in the days where civilizations or clans fought with eachother. Most of these cultures regarding civilizations and clans would've dressed differently or looked differently.

Just a thought...

Moving from New York(my native city) back to Finland(where I had relatives and found the country delightful) was not a simple decision and had several fundamental causes aside from the cultural aspects of the section of the city where I lived. New York at that time (I have no idea what it is now) was rampant with screaming fire engines, wailing ambulances and police cars, and unrestricted car alarms raising noisy hell continuously all through the night. Beyond that the apparently fixed Latino customs of holding horrendously noisy parties every day or two lasting raucously from the early evening through the night into the early hours of the morning kept me from sleeping and I very badly needed to get a good night's rest. There was no way in hell I could persuade people to change their normal social behavior and I felt I was beyond my rights to ask that in a culture that felt it was normal. The extremely weird concept that I was racially prejudiced because I need a good night's sleep and the only sensible way I could get that was to move to a quiet place indicates a hair triggered enthusiasm for castigation based on some sort of almost psychotic negative prejudice motivation.

The original poster suggested, in effect, that the whole neighborhood should be forced to move for my satisfaction which seems to me to be clearly racially motivated. I suggested that I was committing a logical move to get away from a very disturbing situation which was the ambiance of that locale and to equate that with racial prejudice is clearly pushing a concept that has no basis whatsoever in reasonable sense. That my age is somehow brought into the discussion indicates that the writer is reaching pretty hard to find some way to condemn me. That I should be uncomfortable with some cultures and be castigated for that also seems well beyond reason. I find the generally accepted frightful treatment of women in many middle eastern cultures to be totally repulsive and I suppose this can be characterized as some sort of prejudice so, on those terms, perhaps I am guilty of a few prejudices.

Of all the great responses I think this is the best one so far. I guess you could say that I more dislike the "Mexican Culture" and the individuals that bring it, more than I dislike the people, or individuals, or race itself. I find golden brown skin of most Hispanics attractive, and their sense of "family" having greatly needed social value. However, the way they live and act as a "group" is disturbing to me, and they way I am treated by many of them is disturbing and frustrationing.

I think Social/Economic class has something to do with it too, as does my inability to adapt well to change and new social situations because of Aspergers. In college, I got along very well with many people of Hispanic orgins, but they were higher class. Most of my problems have been with lower classes. So that may be the majority of it. I also just really dislike people speaking another language besides English. It doesn't seem right that all groups must learn except one. And it is annoying when you cannot communicate with others in your community because they will not learn the native tongue especially in emergency situations.

THX.

I don't think the whole neighborhood should be forced to move. I think that people that destroy and are disrespectful of others and property should not be allowed to move in, regardless of race or country of orgin.

How do you know how people will act before they move in and interact with the residents? Suppose a family that moves in is very well behaved and the teen age children start to misbehave. Do you throw them all out? People change. Local culture changes. I have no decent solution.

MAny Mexicans (Particularly in Nuevo Leon) are also descendents of Spanish Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition period.

Is this a problem with lower classes of Hispanics, or lower classes in general? Some ethnic cultures are louder/more open in general, while others are a bit quieter, I guess.. but I think the difference is far more social than racial. (*gasp* an aspie?! having a social problem?! *fakes all kinds of shock and dismay*)


Things like education and class are so new that on an evolutionary basis, they're pretty much meaningless. "Sizing someone up" is done on an almost completely physical basis. Also, travel is a pretty new thing. Races mixing the way they do now just didn't happen in the past, because the world was bigger. Besides in major trade centers, most people in the past probably would never have seen someone of another race. And even "major trade centers" narrows it down to the last couple thousand years. The biological basis just isn't really applicable now that you can travel anywhere in the world within a day.

We can be relatively confident that this is not true, as easily as comparing the outcomes of children of Aboriginal lineage placed with white families on the basis of age at which they_were placed. It is my understanding that those who were_placed at a young enough age with their new white families, assimilated and their behavior was not broadly distinguishable from that-of white children raised in similar social settings.


Their land was certainly stolen.

As for fertile land to wander in, that is really rather ridiculous.

Their lifeways were tailored to their environment and range and removing some area from a group’s range in most instances makes their lifeway no longer plausible or sustainable. Even where the theft does not prevent them entirely from retaining their lifestyle, your notion that they still have plenty of land makes as much sense as suggesting it’s fine for me to move into your house, bring my friends, and do as we wish, including trashing the place, so long as we leave you a room or two to wander about in.

So are you quite happy for whoever to just up and move into your home, take control of the place, do as they see fit, call you primitive if you do not like it, demand you follow their rules, and trash the place if they want?



I do not know-why you would find it strange that people do not appreciate that large proportions of a group they belong to have been exposed to undesirable products and lifeways that are not sustainable, are not healthy and are very difficult to extricate oneself from. Are you suggesting that people are better off for having poor diets and becoming alcoholics? I do not see how.

If someone moved into your house without you wanting them there, got you addicted to heroine, then up and left, you personally might not beg for their return, but the large majority of people would.

Might I ask how you would expect people who have been prevented from living and learning their traditional lifestyles, and who in many cases could not live them anymore due to physical alterations of the environment by the people who stole their land, to be able to live and support themselves if you simply knocked all the buildings down and left? How would that return the land to the state it needs to be in to support the traditional Aboriginal lifeways? How would this magically cause people who have been deprived of their traditional ancestral subsistence skills and knowledge to suddenly become skilled in these things?

While I expect it’s not true of you generally speaking, your views on this one issue strike me as very uneducated, unbalanced, egotistical and judgmentally pompous.


Even Aboriginal Australians? I ask because you are not being at all fair towards them.

I know what you mean. Culturally, I am a Sephardic Jew on my father's side so I'm probably related to the Ladino "Marranos" who were forced to convert or were driven from Spain. (Our family ended up in Hungary, Poland, and Russia.)

I like to travel, so I really enjoy exploring "foreign" cultures. The way I see it, there are annoying people (jerks, freeloaders, criminals, etc.) in just about every culture (as well as good people who get overshadowed in the news by the riff-raff).

As an aspie, to some extent I feel foreign everywhere I go (from as close as the local corner store to Budapest). One of the great things about traveling abroad is that when you make a social mistake, people tend to blame it on your newness to the area and the culture and don't immediately assume there's something intrinsically wrong with you.

very nice discussions