Is Traditionalism Inherently Racist?
There's a fine line between upholding cultural norms and structural racism.
In the second of two posts over the weekend about the fight between a Colorado high school and a graduating student over whether she could wear a stole celebrating her Chicano heritage, the conversation drifted from one about the conflict between social conformity and individual expression to accusations of racism. In the main, I find those assertions tiresome. It’s unprovable in an abstract case and simply distracts from the argument at hand, turning a discussion of values into one where those accused without evidence have to defend themselves or be defended by others.
I wouldn’t bother taking that out of the comments section but @Gustopher redefined the conversation into one much more interesting:
[N]ot every instance of racism is going to have a notarized copy of David Lane’s 14 words.
I’ve met lots of folks who “don’t have a racist bone in their bodies”, and who when they don’t have a reason that they can express for opposing things… it’s probably the racist cartilage. Or some of the other bigoted cartilage.
Often they are unaware of it themselves. Something bothers them, something about decorum, or norms or things just not looking right.
It’s often just the existence of someone who doesn’t strive to fit in to a heteronormative patriarchal white power structure. And when someone sticks out that way, they’re noticeable and “in your face.”
It’s a very 1980s form of diversity — we should strive for a world where everyone can be a white man.
The decorative mortars would fit in with that. “You have one square foot of space for personal expression, all other space must conform to blah, blah, blah, with the following sashes permitted”
Dumb Karen shit. HOA type nuisance. Happens all the time with the most liberal of people.
The gaps in the story have all the hallmarks of that type of quiet, respectable racism.
To my way of thinking, we need another word than “racism” to describe this behavior. Not only is it not what anyone would have described that way even 20 years ago but it simply detracts from a more interesting conversation. To be called “racist” is to be labeled a pariah in modern America and will simply put the accused in a defensive posture.
What Gustopher is describing is a clash of cultures. American graduation ceremonies are certainly derived from our European heritage, with many of our current traditions—caps, gowns, and the like—going back to the establishment of universities in the 12th century. What was once reserved for earning university degrees was passed down to the high school level a little more than a century ago. In recent years, we’ve seen the advent of “graduation” ceremonies for middle school, elementary school, and even kindergarten.
Surely, the mere fact that these ceremonies originated among white people doesn’t make them “racist”? Ditto the use of Latin names like “valedictorian” and “salutatorian” for those graduating at the top of the class. Indeed even “graduation” is Latin-derived.
Is there a certain stick-in-the-mud quality to wanting these ceremonies to be solemn, dignified events? To the (almost always in vain) admonition from the presiding official to the audience to save the cheers and applause for the end rather than hooting and hollering for each graduate as though it were a sporting event? Sure. Trying to uphold traditions is inherently conservative.
Ditto community “standards.” Yes, HOAs can be annoying, and officials can be, well, officious. But some people are more offended than others by having to look at cars sitting atop cinderblocks or the trim being painted purple; they have a right to get together and form voluntary agreements that those moving to the community sign off on as a condition of moving in.
Do these things seek to preserve a “heteronormative patriarchal white power structure”? I mean . . . maybe? They certainly often seek to preserve a culture established by heterosexual white men, albeit more typically overseen by white women. Is it therefore racist?
While I find the term “structural racism” inherently problematic for lay conversation,* the concept in and of itself is hard to refute. There are all manner of impediments, many of which were not intentionally racist in any meaningful way, that nonetheless have a disparate racial impact, making it harder for Blacks and other historically marginalized groups to succeed.
So, to get back to the high school graduation example, the expectation that male students should own a pair of black dress shoes, a pair of black dress pants, and a white dress shirt, and female students should own a black shirt and closed-toe dress shoes—while not the least bit racist—likely has a disparate racial impact given the distribution of resources. (And, the expectation that boys and girls will dress in certain, culturally-appropriate ways is definitionally heteronormative and/or cis-normative.)
Is the ostensible expectation that audience members remain silent during the ceremony racist? Not obviously. But it may well reflect a set of cultural expectations from Northwestern Europe that’s alien to other cultures. (I’m uncomfortable going so far as to say that it demands that people “Act White,” which in and of itself seems like a racist conception of non-White cultures.)
Is banning stoles that celebrate cultural heritage (but allowing such decorations on the graduation cap!) racist? Surely not. Does it privilege those from the dominant culture, who therefore have no “heritage” to celebrate?** Probably.
Here’s the thing: culture is rather hard-wired. It’s part and parcel of who were are as human beings.*** Attempts by the dominant culture to preserve and enforce their norms will, almost by definition, have a disparate impact those from outside that culture. I don’t know that it’s therefore inherently problematic to try. Indeed, we tend to decry White Europeans and Americans going to other countries and trying to impose our cultural mores on them.
Given how much the broader culture has changed, it may well be that we’ve simply outgrown the traditional graduation ceremony. We’re a much more diverse and individualistic society than we were when these things became widespread. Maybe we should just ditch trying to standardize student dress and just let everyone in attendance celebrate their differences by dressing how they want and hooting and hollering if they feel like it. After all, they seem to be doing it, anyway.
_____________
*I’ve discussed this many times before. See, for example, my April 2021 post “Carville: Dems Need to Speak Yiddish, Not Hebrew” and my May 2021 post “Conservatives and Critical Race Theory.”
**Or, conversely, would likely be branded as racist for celebrating it.
***I’ve got a longish post on that subject percolating but likely won’t get to it for a few days owing to pending work travel.
Traditionalism isn’t racist. What’s racist is believing that loud black people at a graduation are somehow being less serious than quiet white people, or that they’re doing it to be rude or to ruin the real experience, which is white and solemn. Same goes with dress codes or anything else.
The funny thing is that most social codes are self-enforcing. Like black kids who go to Hotchkiss are picking up on the racial and class cues, I’m certain, and graduate like everybody else, just as black people who summer on Martha’s Vineyard dress like WASPs for the most part. The issue is more than white people have a degree of blindness about their own insecurities re: class and manners which rears its head when a small, completely-irrelevant thing pops up and then they become outraged.
@Modulo Myself:
Again, I don’t think that’s inherently racist. Thinking that Black people are incapable of decorum is racist. Thinking that all people should behave according to your own cultural norms is well, normal.
Why does “solemn, dignified” mean only the expected old-fashioned white way of behaving or dressing? Every culture has its own version of dignified. Why can’t someone celebrate in their own historical or culturally appropriate way instead of enforcing an extremely rigid dress code under robes? There was recently a story where a young lady was forbidden from wearing pants under her robes (much like I was back in the day), something that makes zero sense regarding the “dignity” of the ceremony unless you are enforcing a specific cultural identity. Why can’t someone being respectful in their own way not be honored for their achievement instead of letting petty control freaks have one last victory?
Needing another word for the kind of racism and sexism this represents is like saying we need another word for cancer because not all of it kills you. Perhaps we shouldn’t call stealing “stealing” unless it’s grand theft – if you liberate something from a CVS, it’s not like its a bank robbery or anything so serious and intentional. Do you call someone who only takes a puff every few weeks when stressed a smoker or do we need a new word for it? The fact is the word describes mindset and behavior, not severity of the action or outcome. Everyone does, says or thinks something racist once in a while even if it’s unintentional or accidental, everyone. Much like Jeff Bridges definition of redneck, it’s a (momentary) absence of sophistication and sensitivity.
The fact that is bothers people to have their negative action pointed out so much that want the word treated as the problem instead of them is why we can’t separate the two. We can’t soften the language to appease the queasiness of folks who don’t like the label but won’t take the time to ponder what caused the label to occur. You know Christianity how posits that everyone is a sinner but holier-then-thou types will harp on specific sins as “the ones that count”? They’re the kind that want another word for them and those kinds of sinners over there. Does it change the nature of sin in God’s eyes? Nope but it sure does make them feel better!
I would love a way to eliminate Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March from all graduation ceremonies.
People are conservative and people are racist and bigoted. All of them. The automatic reaction that Western culture or people with white skin are the root of all evil is tiresome, lazy and unproductive. I’ve seen the stole story presented as “of course, it is because the faculty and administration are anti-hispanic bigots” in the most lazy and condescending way, all without even acknowledging that the exact same symbolism was allowed to be worn (and was, in fact, worn) on the tops of the mortars. You can’t make progress if the automatic answer to everything is that all white people are racists and everything they say must be discounted.
(I have deleted a long diatribe here about all the incredibly bigoted and racist things I’ve heard and seen during my travels overseas. Your welcome.)
@James Joyner:
What is the cultural norm in a graduation? Is it expressing pride that your child is graduating? Or is it enforcing a judgmental type of conformity upon others? The latter is not exactly racist, I guess. It’s just about putting people in their proper place and making sure they stay there. If your cultural norms are always being violated by others who are acting exactly like you just with different mannerisms, then your norms are kinda fucked, if you ask me.
There are real conflicts between people because of class and race. Many of these conflicts will exist even if everyone knows where they are coming from. But these are interpersonal and intimate conflicts which are real. People love each other and have problems because of where they came from. What’s particular white is setting up conflicts about the stupidest shit imaginable–graduations, library books, cartoons, beer ads, or anything involving other people and then pretending that it matters. What’s the difference between demanding ‘orderly’ graduations or advertising experiences and getting upset in 1955 because you saw a black man on television with a white woman?
@KM:
This is the crux of the issue. But you can parse this down farther:
– Is it ever appropriate to expect a uniform standard of behavior. Is there anything that is out of bounds?
– If so, who gets to decide?
– How do you handle edge cases?
– How do we deal with non-symetrical behaviors? For instance, someone who believes it is appropriate to hoot and holler at a graduation can ignore anyone who is quiet, but not vice versa.
Simple calling anyone who objects to loud displays a bigot is, well, bigoted.
@Modulo Myself:
How is this particularly white? If I were to draw a circle around any group of 12 or more people of any color, creed or nationality, there would be at least a couple who spend a good part of their time setting up conflicts about the stupidest shit imaginable.
We have a generation raised on screens, normalized to an environment where they can present themselves in any way they like – as any sex, race or even species. The avatarization of the disconnected individual. I am this meme, this sequence of emoticons and some buzzwords. They expect this same level of individual expression in the real world.
I have mixed feelings about this. I never, ever want to tell another human being how to be in the world so long as they aren’t doing it in the streets and frightening the horses. On the other hand this need for individuation as expressed in clothing strikes me as insecurity and it sometimes makes me cringe. I instinctively dislike public display and follow the David Mitchell rule: my appearance should be in no way noteworthy.*
Is any of this racist? We need another word. Racism is a serious thing, heart-attack serious. This is just too trivial to deserve that word.
*The number of identical LT Black Eddie Bauer t-shirts I own is ridiculous. My closet is where style, indeed light itself, goes to die.
Well, the first task would be to get rid of mandatory attendance for graduating students. I had to go to my high school graduation to actually get the diploma, but I skipped my college as an unnecessary expense getting the magic parchment in the mail. Of course, the ceremony is a way for the schooling cartel to imprint and maintain the cult and donors.
But it is diversity that has made public schooling (and college) a political football. It was a problem in eastern Europe between the world wars, and we know how that went.
It is traditionalism that is at the root here, but not of white, heteronormative, whatever… but rather by old cult members doing their duty to continue the pomp and circumstance without which government schooling’s hold on the populace might wane.
Is clinging to these traditions conservative or the rest of the long list of accusation or is it just old fogeyism?
@MarkedMan:
The person (or group) with the most power (and the willingness to use that power in extreme ways to enforce his/her-their decision).
And what’s in the parentheses above is the rub.
@JKB:
It’s a different world where I come from. We didn’t and diplomas were mailed out because our records weren’t official yet on commencement day. (And I suspect the same is true in your case, but I really don’t know and so won’t accuse you of telling tales to make a meaningless point about the oppressiveness of systems.)
ETA: And needing to go back a century for your example is STILL a bad look. 🙁
The word “racist” has so expanded in meaning that it’s largely meaningless at this point. When everything is racist, then nothing is. And the concept of “race” itself is – at best – poorly defined, especially the peculiar way we do it here in the US (ie. “Asians”).
It’s also become strangely acceptable to decry and include the kitchen sink under “racism” (ie. criticizing Islam is racist) while, at the same time, criticizing people for being white is perfectly fine. Judging someone negatively because of some arbitrarily lower threshold of melanin content in their skin is not pseudo-racist; it’s blatantly so and also stupid.
Yes, visit any other country. Japan is racist as fuck. Korea is racist as fuck. China is racist as fuck. Every country in the middle east is racist as fuck. They all have de jure racial supremacy policies. Most countries are actually ethnic nation-states that organize to preserve a national culture and identity which usually includes a racial component. Every country seeks to limit the number of immigrants in order to preserve that national culture, and immigrants are expected to at least pay lip service to the prevailing culture norms. You can call that racist if you want, but that makes the term meaningless since that’s how every human culture functions.
And this is true for “white” countries as well. France – a “white” country, long railed against US cultural dominance for poisoning what it means to be French. They explicitly made laws to preserve French culture and limit the influence of American culture. The French, those racists, have the temerity to want to preserve their French culture! How dare they!
I think many Americans, particularly the parochial ones who constantly decry “white supremacy” at everything they don’t like, are ignorant of the fact that the US is, de facto and de jure, one of the least racist countries on the planet, despite our history and the further work we need to do to atone for the crime of slavery.
@James Joyner: Indeed as the very idea that “loud” is a particularly Black trait inherently speaking, versus a ethno-social class habit. Certainly my Senegalese colleagues in business from proper families would be rather off-put by the loud social habits of working class New Yorkers, “Italian” or “Black” or whatever.
Of course the Soviet new-man orientation of cultural left commentators shall find socio-economic ranking another sin to be expurgated from society, however humans remain over-clocked chimpanzees fundamentally.
@Andy: I think using the word racist – I presume you do so in the expanded to virtual meaninglessness sense you point to – rather becomes pointless, but indeed in USA land the multi-culti Left has in effect expanded their scope of “sensitivity” to be rather close to the racist extremists parody of them.
I don’t know USA is de facto or de jure least racist – an overstatement really – but the point of the Bobo Left desire for wearing hair shirts and politically appropriate Self Criticism is rather self-harming.
Well, human beings are inherently racist, in a small ‘r’ kind of way. We all have affinity bias. We all have a very deeply inscribed process that automatically classifies every human we meet as either belonging to Us or to Them. I think this is solidly established by some pretty good data.
And on top of that, it is impossible to grow up in the United States without getting exposed to a bunch of racist ideas. Some of them are going to get a toehold.
So racism will always be with us in the same way that adultery and thievery will.
And, this isn’t static. There isn’t Nothing We Can Do About It. We can do lots, but we need to know what battle we’re fighting. First and foremost, the battle is within us, not Those Guys Over There.
Job One of this program would be to detoxify racism, to turn it into something we hold on to much like we hold on to other human behaviors that create problems. Humans can be very blind to their own attitudes, particularly when there is a huge amount of shame attached to certain of those attitudes.
Talking about it, in a less toxic, adversarial way is what’s going to reduce the impact.
The other thing that will reduce the impact is in how we form groups. Every Us is created. We need to organize groups – at least some of them – by purpose, not by identity.
—-
Public high schools are organized by geography, and attendance is mostly mandatory. So they won’t necessarily create an Us. Schools work hard at doing this, and it never seems to land all that well on some of them, even in an almost completely white high school like I went to.
…
But to answer the question posed by the OP headline: Traditionalism is about as racist as human beings are. I don’t know that I would describe the issues as centered on “traditionalism”, as much as they are centered on competing identities.
@Michael Reynolds:
I dress pretty much the same way. I have one style of t-shirt I like and have about a dozen of those. Same with pants and shorts. I prioritize comfort and utility.
But, I also have a suit, a jacket, shirts and ties. I wear them maybe once a year (being a full-time remote worker has advantages) – and one of those times was my middle child’s high school graduation that happened last week.
For the rest of your comment, I see the same thing and have similar mixed feelings. It may be that I’m a cynical Gen-Xer, but a lot of the individual demands of younger generations come off as narcissism. Life isn’t Burger King – you don’t always get what you want.
@Modulo Myself:
I’m with @MarkedMan in thinking that someone is going to set the standard and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the dominant culture will do that, making shifts slow. Culture isn’t inherently racial. The United States was 88.6% White in 1960, 87.7% in 1970, 83.1% in 1980, 80.3%in 1990, 75.1% in 2000, 72.4% in 2010, and 61.6% in 2020. The culture has changed significantly over that time just in my own observation. But it’s not shocking that “White norms” still dominate the culture.
I don’t think so.
What I’m reading is that certain *cough* non-racist *cough* people tend to come up with rules that are not necessarily racist in and of themselves, but are nonetheless meant and intended to have a disproportionate impact on minorities.
It’s not so much the rule itself – which, in this case, isn’t explicitly racist – as the unspoken motivation for implementing such a rule.
Lee Atwater:
Personally, I don’t now if that’s actually the case here. But plausible deniability is a critical aspect of such “totally not-racist” rules. So, who knows.
In any case, “dominant versus minority culture” is a red herring here, IMO.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, a standard of behavior is appropriate. Running around buck naked covered in blood’s gonna be a hard no for everybody. What needs to happen is the standards need to be updated to what’s actually happening and the needs of all graduates and their family. Standards get revised all the time so why not these?
Build time into the ceremony for it. Make adjustments such as extra time for individuals when walking so there can be some noise that it doesn’t affect the next person. We already do it for applause, after all. It seems that some noise is ok if it’s the culturally appropriate as dead silence when everyone walks is not the norm. You can ignore someone who is being loud, btw – you just can’t unhear them as ears are open holes that detect all sound. Silence is expected when you are supposed to be paying attention to something (ike a movie) and let’s be honest: no one is paying attention to all the hundreds walking, What they are upset about is someone hooting and hollering while someone else’s child walks and they are on their phone. You only have the right to expect silence during your attendee’s segment. That part is superficially for you and yours. Its rude for others to be loud then. Why should you expect control over someone else’s segment? It seems very Karen to have it your way in your piece and your way in theirs.
@Modulo Myself:
What’s racist is believing that black people are loud and white people aren’t. It’s racist to believe that solemnity is a “white” thing that black people are excused from because of the color of their skin. It’s racist to believe that black people shouldn’t have to adhere to a norm of solemnity because their blackness makes them loud.
@drj
What’s your evidence for that being the case in this instance?
Were graduation ceremonies loosey goosey affairs, with everyone simply wearing and behaving however they liked, in the 1950s and 1960s but, when more and more Hispanic students started to graduate in the 1990s and 2000s, the rules suddenly changed? If so, I’d see your point. But it seems instead that demurring on a demand that the rules be changed now is being castigated as “racist” as a talking point.
@Andy:
The United States is one of the most racist places in the West, and one of the reasons it remains so is that too many white Americans are a) high on their own supply and denial about it and b) have no way to understand the near-constant barrage of racialized microaggressions experienced by black Americans daily. I’m treated much much much much much much much better in France than I have ever been in the United States, and it’s not even close. Not even *close.* There’s a reason Tina Turner and James Baldwin and so many black intellectuals and creatives who have had the means decamped to Europe.
Also, why is it that when one or a few white people are called out for racism they try to dismiss and deflect by saying that “everything” or “everyone” is being called racist. Just because *you* get called racist does not mean “everyone” is being called racist. Just because the racism in a certain situation is being pointed out does not mean “everything” is being called racist.
In fact most instances of bigotry and prejudice that we experience, black people never mention. Why? Because if we pointed it out every time, that’s all we’d do. And neither I nor anyone else has time for that. That’s how deeply anti-black racial prejudice is ingrained in American culture, and until black Americans travels and experience places that actually aren’t as white supremacist as the US is, where — finally — you are treated normally, you wouldn’t even know.
The older (and grumpier) I get, the less I’m willing to hear people use “it’s racist if you complain” about anti-social behaviour. And keeping quiet at graduation isn’t just a “white people” thing.
Yeah, there may be racism in the US. But I think a lot of what we call “racism” is more “classism”. I suspect that anyone with a dark skin who spoke with an English accent, dressed like a WASP, and demonstrated Boston Brahmin reticence would find himself treated much differently than someone looking and acting like “a kid from the hood”.
@grumpy realist:
Heh. Yes, but not as differently as you’d think.
@James Joyner:
No evidence whatsoever (as I already stated in the comment that you were responding to).
My point was that (IMO, at least) Gustopher was describing a different phenomenon than you were addressing.
What is the “norm” for something like a traffic stop? I know what it is for me on the rare occasions when I’ve been pulled over as an adult, it’s probably a reasonably pleasant greeting followed by “I’m not going to cite you today, but drive more carefully.” Not so for all my countrymen…
For Black drivers, a police officer’s first 45 words are a portent of what’s to come
@DK:
You really need to get out more.
@MarkedMan:
I have traveled the world, including seven international trips in the last two years alone, sometimes for up to a month at a time. So you really need to sit the f*** down.
Like I said: the United States is one of the most racist places in the West. You being ignorant to that reality and in denial because you don’t have clue what it is like to consistently experience real anti-black racism is a you problem, not a me problem.
@Andy: the funny inversion and mirroring of racial essentialism cutting both ways for a lovely dialogue of the deaf.
@grumpy realist: or what a reserved and refined Tijani tariqa member from Dakar, or what one self-same collegue would view as proper behaviour.
Class, indeed, and essentialisation of originally class behaviour as ethnic marker.
@DK: trips and living in places are not really synonymous things…. what the visitor sees is hardly what the resident experiences. Not that one anticipates any changes of opinions from these exchanges.
@Lounsbury:
Hehe. Is that so? Pray tell, what experience do you have moving through and getting to know the United States and other countries in black skin, as a resident or a visitor?
@James Joyner:
“Thinking that Black people are incapable of decorum is racist.”
“WHOSE decorum?” is the question.
@JKB:
So you are admitting that the GOP has become the party of “old fogeyism?”
@DK: There are other people. There are other types of racism. Just ask the Bosnian Serbs and Croats. Or the Macedonians. Or the Armenians. Or the Kurds.
@MarkedMan: And how does any of that change the reality that the United States is one of the most racist places in the West? I don’t follow.
@DK: how should I define that, “black”? Americans style or Senegalese or Moroccan or French or even Britishin some flavour? Being averse to the innumerate pretence that anecdote is data, and to blind blog comment is particularly probative, I shall only say my imperial confettis family, being a suspicious mélange and indeed physiologically visible rootless cosmopolitans has not lacked in lived experience as résidents, let alone travellers, in the funny vagaries of colour in différent geographies.
But that’s neither here nor there really.
It remains that the traveller and the résidents are different expériences and comparing apples and oranges.
@Lounsbury:
It remains that you don’t have any experience being a black resident of the United States or other Western countries, or traveling in the United States or Europe as a black person. So you actually don’t know whether the comparison is apples their oranges or not, do you?
@MarkedMan:
We’re talking about getting worked up about which displays of happiness are appropriate or not at a public ceremony. No one is booing a student, for example. They are just being happy. Mistaking a few grades of difference in behavior re: happiness for anarchy and total chaos is a very white thing, sorry.
@Andy:
What’s racist is believing that black people are loud and white people aren’t. It’s racist to believe that solemnity is a “white” thing that black people are excused from because of the color of their skin. It’s racist to believe that black people shouldn’t have to adhere to a norm of solemnity because their blackness makes them loud.
That’s not what I wrote. You guys are at the point of pointing to an Episcopal church service and saying this is a solemn ceremony and then a black church with a gospel choir and saying this is too loud and not serious at all. People should do what they want to do–but in a public ceremony like a graduation you need to figure out there are different ways to display happiness.
@Kazzy: why the standard setters. Such is human nature. Although I should vote in favour of the decorum of the reserved Tijane over American trend to celebrating populist vulgarianism of whatever colour essentialism is attached.
@Kazzy: why the standard setters. Such is human nature. Although I should vote in favour of the decorum of the reserved Tijane over American trend to celebrating populist vulgarianism of whatever colour essentialism is attached.
@DK: You seem to be defining racism as being limited to white racism against black Americans. If so, then yes, by your definition the US is the most racist society.
@DK: what définition my dear fellow of black, your expansive American one of quite the astonishing spectral spread? Or a Sénégalese one? Regardless, we should rather differ from your opinion about our European experience at the very least although admittedly in USA land terms one rather expects our Francophone familial exchanges gives us quite a different étiquette, but as rootless cosmopolitans, imperial confettis, we are quite used to really not fitting any good slot.
@Andy: @Lounsbury:
the funny inversion and mirroring of racial essentialism cutting both ways for a lovely dialogue of the deaf.
@Modulo Myself can correct me if I am wrong about their intent, but I am almost certain that my explanation reflects the meaning. From what I have read of Modulo’s posts here, they appear to be using a shortcut rooted in their experience. In fact, likely a form of veiled prejudice they have witnessed first hand. I know I have seen this exact example play out many times.
The wording is a reflection of how bigotry evolves as social norms change. Rather than describing the behavior of Black people (or white people) in toto, it is descriptive of how bigotry can be sanitized in a way that provides an avenue for denial of said bigotry.
The example that takes the fewest words to explain: replacing “n-” with what is widely considered to be a racially neutral term. But over time, it ceases being neutral, but it doesn’t necessarily lose its original connotation for everyone. See: “thug.” This form of euphemism can be leveraged quite easily to serve other purposes.
Of course, if Modulo were to explain all of this, they would likely be accused of tedium by a particular person here.
@Lounsbury: I find it funny that your post indicates a belief that it is impossible to be a traveler in the USA due to having residency in one little slither. As if this country is so uniform that everywhere and everyone is exactly the same or something..
@Kurtz:
Of course, if Modulo were to explain all of this, they would likely be accused of tedium by a particular person here.
And in 5x the words, 25x the pretention, and 1/25th of the coherence.
Uncharitable as it may be, it is because you are American and a visitor, and one rather likely I would expect with an Anglo Christian name, or otherwise an American one understood so.
If one is from one of the cités or if one carries a name indolent of an arabomuslim ex colonial territory from the former empire, well, your expérience is different.
American privilege as it were.
Of course if one presents a mélange then one can game, but humans universally do like to define groups, in, out, us, other….
Thus a familial political liberalism, ever so distrustful of identity politics. By extended expérience essentialism identarian politics tends to lead eventually to unpleasant outcomes.
@James Joyner:
We do know, from the articles that you posted, that the enforcement of the rule on sashes, garlands and things about the neck was new this year, and only explicitly stated after the lawsuit.
The trigger was, according to that reporting, the girl with the Mexican and American flags stole. The reason for that trigger was not mentioned.
(I am deeply suspicious of unmentioned reasons)
@Matt: eh what???? Impossible to be a traveller in the USA??? What?
@Modulo Myself:
The point is that any group event will have certain norms and expectations, even those with diverse participants, like a graduation ceremony. If one of those expectations is being solemn/quiet at specific points (especially if whoever is MCing asks for that), that isn’t a “white” or “black” expectation, and labeling it as such is racist, as is granting exceptions based on skin color.
It’s just a simple common courtesy for anyone to be mindful of behavioral norms for any group event and at least try not to be disruptive.
@DK:
Your example of France is a historic exception largely confined to Paris and perhaps a few other major French cities. Racism is still very pervasive in France.
As far as travel goes, I can see how visiting major cosmopolitan cities in Europe could lead to your differing experiences. It’s a different picture in other parts of the world, and when outside of cosmopolitan areas.
And Lounsberry is correct about living vs. visiting. When I lived in the UK in the 1990’s during my time in the service, it wasn’t in London, and attitudes in other parts of the country were (and remain) very different. There was a continual problem with discrimination against black US service members, especially for housing. One of my subordinates was chased down the street in Peterborough by some racist drunk Englishmen and was beaten up. The base had a list of establishments and areas that were off-limits because of problems with US service members in general and non-white members in particular. London is like a completely different country compared to the rest of the UK.
Bury, Bury….
In any case this thread is nice example of American intelligentsia adoring dialogues, albeit deaf ones, on race.
Lacking statistical insight, I cannot characterise any comparisons of Most or Least, but it seems unquestionable that no country adores these dialogues of the deaf about race more than USA land.
@Lounsbury: That’s funny because when I went to Paris I had “stupid american” yelled at me (one of several random times) because some other people were being mildly noisy while getting setup in their hotel room. I wasn’t even making any noise I was just trying to enjoy relaxing on the balcony. If anything being a tourist in France was some kind of sin to a non insignificant amount of the population I interacted with. I’m guessing part of the problem was that my french was pretty elementary so it was rather apparent I was a foreigner.
In case you’re wondering I wasn’t the stereotypical American tourist loud and needy or anything like that. I prefer to be quiet and to not be noticed. For some reason that seems to get me noticed even more here in the states.
@Lounsbury: Your post clearly stated that since he was a resident of the USA he couldn’t compare traveling the USA to traveling other countries. As if the USA is so uniform and everyone knows everyone so well that you get the resident experience everywhere you go…
@Kurtz:
Side question: was “thug” ever a neutral term? I’m just wondering why you chose this as an example
The simple truth is that a lot of our expectations on what it is to be “professional” or “formal” come from our (semi-imaginary) past where certain people weren’t seen, and where language, arts and expression were limited to old white guy things.
We carry that forward. We expect people of all colors, ethnicities and genders to “act white” for a very particular interpretation of white. This is obviously going to be easier for people who are white, fit gender roles, etc.
It’s an inherent petite racism, sexism, etc in small-c conservatism and an emphasis on a very particular decorum.
And sometimes it’s just background stuff and sometimes it gets used as a cudgel to keep those “other people” in line — where it goes from a petite racism, sexism, etc to the full thing.
It also means we excuse all sorts of things because it’s the way it’s been.
If you walk into an ice cream shop, and they have music playing in the background, you’re far more likely to notice it if it is rap than classic rock. Even if the classic rock is The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” which gleefully describes a slave owner beating and raping a slave.
This is a hypothetical, and I’m not saying that our notions of professionalism and decorum are as awful as the lyrics to “Brown Sugar,” but we don’t we also don’t pay attention to them and we don’t think about how they affect others.
A family of first or second generation immigrants views their kid graduating from an American school as something that reflects on them and their heritage and should be proclaimed as loudly as has often been accepted for trivial things like enrolling in the military… and the school decides to take away stoles and garlands and what have you as being too distracting from what the event is about.
(And someone in that administration decided to double down and not give an inch, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that person is just plain racist.)
And god help the employee in that hypothetical ice cream shop who suggests that perhaps the music selection should not feature songs about beating and raping slaves. They aren’t going along and getting along. They’re a trouble-maker. Some kind of feminist or woke.
@Andy:
Saying someone should try not to be disruptive doesn’t clear anything up. Women are frequently told not to be ‘pushy’ when in fact they are doing what men are doing: which is being ‘assertive’. What makes something disruptive is no more clear than the difference between ‘cheering’ (good) and ‘hooting and hollering’ (bad).
A lot of this just sounds like dislike of how other people express themselves. At graduation people throw up hats which have been known to have funny messages written on them. Sometimes people clown and joke around. Then they cheer. The sudden transformation of this event into a solemn and pure ceremony going back to the 13th century and the first medieval universities is just laughable bullshit on the level of Bud Light being the choice drink of the herrenvolk.
@Lounsbury:
Pot and kettle, my dude.
Which is a shame, really, because I do think you would have something to add to this conversation – if you weren’t so insufferably dismissive of other people’s actual experiences.
Based on my (admittedly) anecdotal observations, I would argue that Anglo racism mostly revolves around concerns about (blood) purity, while continental racism is more (but certainly not exclusively) about xenophobia.
Which means that both DK’s and your relatives’ experiences can be true at the same time: while the black American is not seen as a threat (they don’t cause crime in the banlieus, and race by itself is less of a concern than in the US), that may be very different for the average Senegalese or Algerian, who, in addition to being non-white, is a far more credible threat to what some French would see as their civilisation.
But instead of listening and evaluating, you just had to reflexively bash anything perceived as being remotely “left.”
How constructive is that?
@Gustopher: But remember, they did allow the Mexican flag on mortar boards. I have no idea what made them start banning stoles of various kinds, but it seems pretty clear it wasn’t to keep Mexican flags from being displayed.
And FWIW I don’t really care if people hoot and holler for every kid or for none of them.
I did get a viewpoint from an administrator at my sons HS graduation. On the subject of stoles, they were tired of the whole thing, as what had started out being a very rare exception (Valedictorian and… the other one(?)) was then extended to different stoles for honors in general and then that didn’t sit well with parents of kids with learning disabilities and they had to come up with special stoles for them and by the time my son graduated there were a dozen or two different stiles that had to be designed and approved and purchased and reimbursed and they felt it was a big pain in the butt and just one more thing to have to keep track of and manage during a process with so many things to mange to begin with. As for the cheering each kid individually, they knew it was inevitable but regretted it for two reasons. First, it was a huge school with hundreds of kids graduating and every year they got complaints about how long it took and she felt it added time. That wouldn’t matter in a small school. But the second was one I hadn’t considered. Her heart went out to all the kids who didn’t have anyone cheering them.
Just a reminder that climate change is coming, AI experts are warning of Skynet, viruses and resistant bacteria are still hunting us and thousands of nuclear warheads are aimed at hundreds of targets.
@drj: Well put. The death of meaningful dialog is the reflexive need to attack and disdain any viewpoint not your own. It devalues the worth of your input substantially and makes it easy to dismiss.
@MarkedMan:
“Thug” is a way of saying n*gger without actually saying it. “Thug” (similar to “urban”) is code for “black,” specifically “unruly young black male.”
Pretty much every time a talking head on TV complains about “thugs,” it’s in reference to black people. I’m surprised you never noticed.
The word’s etymology is kind of interesting, too.
@MarkedMan:
When I was young (which is a ways back now) I interpreted it to mean “street tough” without any racial connotation. Conservatives have worked, with some success to make “Thug” = “Black Male”, or perhaps “any black male who scares me”.
@Andy: “a lot of the individual demands of younger generations come off as narcissism.”
This may come as a shock, but a lot of the individual demands of your generation came off as narcissism to the older generation.
Whenever I hear people complaining about how terrible the current generation of youth is, I think fondly of a letter written by Wordsworth in his elder years in which he talked about the terrible younger generation and how they could barely be made to sit down and read a book because they were all so lazy and shallow. Some things haven’t changed in the last 200 years.
@anjin-san: ….now extended to “any black male who isn’t Justice Thomas.”
(I suspect that in their hearts of hearts they’d include Justice Thomas as well. Sigh.)
@Matt: Your French experience anectdote is the very illustration of how anectdote is not data, of course also not relevant to that point in the least, you not being a Tina Turner nor a Baldwin for example.
No, as Andy successfully understood but you evidently did not, my most only observed that the experience of travelling is not the same experience as being resident.
That was with respect to his comments comparing USA land to other countries, and, his international travelling, note the part, other countries, international. Quite relevant.
How you arrived at your bizarre misreading entirely escapes.
The observation in any case is a bland one that is not dependent on one’s own country, but is a simple reality that the exposure of the traveller is a very different experience than that of the resident and to make the comparison of one’s life as a resident in whatever country relative to whatever social issue, to travelling through and visiting, well that is an error.
@drj: rather entertaining example of a comment brimming with irony, as queerly enough my comments had rather nothing to do with Left nor Right, and merely reacting to a certain confounding of travelled versus resident.
@MarkedMan: Indeed Lounsbury is very capable of providing much needed insight but his shtick of the left is always the real evil and being overly verbose makes him tedious to read. At most I skim his posts these days because his formula is just tiresome.
@drj: Wow thank you that was quite the unexpected dive.
@Lounsbury:
Have you ever actually traveled the USA? It is legit like traveling through different countries as you move from one ocean to another. There were times in Europe where I felt more like I was in the USA than when I was traveling in the USA. So my argument is that traveling the USA regardless of being a resident in some tiny slither can VERY much be like traveling abroad especially when it comes to the treatment from locals. Since in both cases the locals don’t care that you’re a resident +2000 miles away…
Seriously do you have no idea how big the USA is? You can drive for +20 hours at 85 mph and still be in one state…
A few years back…
“Cross their legs!” Damn!
@Modulo Myself:
Since I think it was me that used ‘hooting and hollering” I want to say, just for the record that I consider it a synonym to “cheering”. I don’t know if that is a Midwest thing or just a me thing.
@drj: Oh, I’m aware. But the way I read your comment I thought you were saying it had evolved to be neutral or it had been neutral in the past. (I think the Thugees would resent ever being described as neutral)
@Lounsbury:
So I’m asking again since I still haven’t gotten an answer: you know this, how? Where did you gain your expertise in what black people in America and elsewhere experience as visitors and travelers? Do you have any data to cite, and if not, from where are you pulling these self-assured declarations about the black experience?
@Michael Reynolds:
If we all we are willing to do is rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, then I damn well want a good chair.
(If MAGA wanted to fix global warming and crush the minorities, I’d slip into the closet and come out in a red hat, but “luckily” no one is doing anything much on it, so I can care passionately about the little things)
@DK: Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, I assume.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s been here a while.
It just hasn’t gone catastrophic yet.
@Andy:
That is not up for dispute. I’m wondering how one makes the illogical leap from the mere factual existence of racism in France or the UK or elsewhere to declaring racism less pervasive and problematic in the United States.
To wit, racial and homophobic bigotry was pretty nasty where I grew up in exurban/rural Georgia among kinda of people whose families produce Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Newt Gingrich voters. I’m now a resident of West Hollywood, CA where — lo and behold — anti-black prejudice is still quite pervasive among the good liberal gays of Los Angeles, a proudly progressive city that is also racially segregated to a scary degree.
Yet it would still be silly for someone back home to use the depressing racial segregation and stratification here in L.A. to claim the rural South is one of the least racist places in the US when, in fact, it is one of the most racist places in the US.
Even if he were correct, the point is moot: a black man does not need to a full-time resident of both West Hollywood, CA and Guyton, GA to gain enough experience to know that while, no, West Hollywood is not a racism-free utopia, his relative status in rural Georgia is diminished. Said black guy could spend two weeks (and I’m being generous) in both and get the gist. I’m a little surprised anyone needs this explained.
The point Lounsbury is trying to make is neither relevant nor clever, but a lame attempt to negate experiences about which he is clueless.
@Michael Reynolds:
And wouldn’t it be nice if we could get Republicans and ex-Republicans as worked up about climate disaster, rampant income inequality, our embarrassing and crumbling transportation grid, unaffordable healthcare, near-daily mass shootings and other real threats as about Mexican-themed graduation sashes and other culture war distraction nonsense du jour.
@DK:
I mean, you have to face the truth: you are simply arguing about American racism with people who seem not to be daunted at all by the fact that you have experienced racism in America.
To me the most salient thing about ‘white people’ in America as a social group is that everything turns into apologetics. Like, the American government has done almost nothing to rectify the consequences of discrimination. There were no truth and reconciliation committees, no reparations for slavery to redlining, no forced desegregation. The woman who had Emmett Till murdered just died, a totally free person. Yet Americans are taught 100% that a corner was turned as if by magic. After decades on the internet arguing about this shit, I could not tell you what anybody on the other side believes a post-racial future would look like, except there would be no anti-racism as defined by anybody than your average ‘non-racist’ white person. It’s not even a question of dwelling on the past. Rather, this form of dysfunction is endlessly toxic for the future.
@MarkedMan:
Neutral in what sense? Racially neutral? Yeah, I think so.
It was the first one that came to mind that was not specifically racial initially. Brevity was one of my goals so it seemed like the ideal example. Some info:
“Jackbooted thugs” doesn’t have a racist connotation. I’d be curious to find out more about the jump from Sanskrit to English usage, but I don’t have the time right now.
@DK:
I guess it comes down to how one measures such things, which is admittedly difficult.
I come from the view that the US has long been much better at integrating disparate communities since we are not an ethnic nation-state like most of the world, to include Europe, which is not managing that well at all. For all our faults, we have done this better than almost anywhere else.
Or if you look at countries like Japan and Korea, you don’t see the racism much because there are virtually no black or any other kind of people except the natives. And that’s because those countries are so racist that they don’t allow anyone in except temporary visitors. I’ve been to both, and you don’t have to peel back much of the onion to see how their societies are completely opposed to the normal American notion of a melting pot and a “nation of immigrants.”
In China, the Han are ascendant both legally and in reality and are currently engaged in genocide. In the Middle East, many countries have a three-tier hierarchy: the natives are at the top, westerners are one tier down, and third-world servants are the lowest tier. There is a huge difference – both in the culture and legally – between an Arab native, a westerner (even a black one such as yourself), and a maid from the Philippines.
Much of Africa is tiered into ethnic and religious cohorts with little equality, either in the culture or in law.
There are plenty of other examples.
By contrast, the US doesn’t do any of that. What constitutes the dominant “white” culture is always changing, as is what is considered “white.” We aren’t like ethnic nation-states in that regard. France, since we are using that example, passes laws that attempt to prevent the pollution of French culture and language – not just from the US, but also from their minority population and the rest of the EU. The French government’s policies promoting French culture have taken several forms, many of which are discriminatory and would be flatly unconstitutional here in the US.
The ethnic states of Europe have objectively not done as well integrating immigrants and people from other cultures. And that’s because there’s an inherent tension between being an ethnic nation-state vs. a multicultural society. Many of the nation-states in Europe explicitly try to promote and preserve their “white” cultural traditions in ways that are simply not possible in the US. This is why their immigrants have generally remained poor and second-class citizens for many generations. The Algerian slums I stayed in when visiting Paris in the mid-80s are still there today.
So it’s great that you have a better experience in Europe than in the US, but your personal experience is not dispositive of the reality of actual government policies and the distinct difference between a political union like the US and an ethnic nation-state like most everywhere else. Ethnic nation-states are, almost by definition, racist entities because they exist to maintain the ethnic and cultural dominance of their respective populations.
@Modulo Myself:
That’s how people are generally – it’s not just white people. Most organizations in every part of the globe have rules of conduct and behavior. One doesn’t get a give themselves a pass to toss them aside because of skin color and then cry racism when people complain that you broke the rules.
People – everywhere – don’t like it when individuals unilaterally decide the established rules or norms do not apply to them, whether it is a graduation ceremony or anything else. The reality is that this is normal human behavior, not “white” behavior. White people yell at graduations too, and are just as narcissistic as anyone else in wanting the rules to adapt to their personal needs.
An American of any color who goes to, for example, the UK and violates the unwritten queue rules will be looked down upon. It would be stupid of the American to suggest that the Brits complaining about the American’s behavior are being racist.
@Andy:
Yeah, I mean if you can’t grasp that a person being too loud at a graduation is doing it out of pride rather than a desire to break the rules for their own advantage, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s bad taste and good taste, and there can be a funeral in bad taste but that doesn’t mean the dead aren’t being mourned or there’s a great subversion of the rules of order.
I don’t have enough hours in the day. Bring back the button – or else. . . .
@Andy:
Many of the nation-states in Europe explicitly try to promote and preserve their “white” cultural traditions in ways that are simply not possible in the US.
What’s hilarious about your conception of European ‘ethno-states’ is that you are so focused onto white and non-white that you happen to miss the entire class history of, say, England or France. You have to be insane to take a look at England with its accents and classes and snobbery and say yes, before immigrants England was totally cohesively white and not at all a place where incredible divisions existed between people. “Ethno-state’ is just a weird way of claiming the least interesting traditions are so very important.
What makes a specific type of white Americans so distinct is the weird combination of egalitarian beliefs and distrust of class systems and a total dislike of the practice of egalitarianism because it exposes them to others in a non-egalitarian way. It’s like instead of society, you have a manual for a computer made by Radio Shack c. 1982. That’s all they can handle. This type of person doesn’t see the comedy in class differences (like, say, an English person might) because they don’t see (in their words) class or taste or race but they also can’t handle any type of social difference. It’s truly fucking weird.
@Modulo Myself:
Well, that wasn’t your original point, so you’ve moved the goalposts. In your original comment you said:
And my point is that being disrespectively loud has nothing to do with the melanin content on one’s skin and isn’t exclusive to black people. There are plenty of white people who are unreasonably loud at a graduation and they are not any less assholes that black people who are unreasonably loud.
I was at three graduations this year (one for my own HS kid, and two for friend’s HS kids), and almost everyone ignored the request to save cheering and loudness for the end. I’m not at all upset about it, it’s normal. But most people were respectful enough to stop their cheering so that the family members of the next graduate could hear the name being called and have 10 seconds or so for their own cheer. A small number were not so accommodating, and those people did not conform to “white” or whatever racial categories templated onto behavior you might imagine. In the age of cell phones, people like to video the event and are understandably annoyed when they can’t hear their kid’s name called. This isn’t a black or white problem.
My point is that acting like a selfish asshole is universal, and people ought to be polite. There are plenty of black people who are fucking assholes. And there are plenty of white people and every other “race” who are assholes too. What I don’t agree with is the implication that it’s OK to be an asshole as long as the melanin content of your skin meets some arbitrary threshold.
Disrupting an event for one’s own narcissistic desires is not something to be heralded regardless of your “race.” That’s what standards and norms are all about, they are supposed to be respected by everyone.
What you’ve missed is that I am mocking these constructs that attempt to categorize and deconstruct people into “white” and nonwhite groups. I’m not the one here suggesting that certain behaviors or norms are “white”- whatever that means.
Exactly, but such distinctions do not matter to American progressive culture warriors. The Scottish, Northern Irish, English, and Welsh are all “white” to Americans and to the government’s racial classification system. The absurdity of that is part of what I was trying to get at in a sarcastic way.
To the relevant populations they represent, they are vitally important. It’s not weird at all, it’s how most societies and political communities (in a broad sense) have functioned through most of history. Germans want to maintain German culture and identity. Irish want to maintain Irish culture and identity, ect.
That’s a very interesting and novel (to me, at least) way to characterize American ideals and the American creed. I think it’s true that Americans, as a collective, have yet to live up to those ideals. But I disagree that this failure is limited to “white” Americans.
Part of the problem I have with this entire discussion is the sloppy labeling of things as “white” or not. In every instance mentioned here, one can point out countless exceptions where people who are not white hold the same values that people here have identified as “white.” There never seems to be a clear definition of what “white” means when used as a hand-wavy adjective. Which “specific type of white Americans” are you talking about exactly?
Oh yes, this reminds me very much of the type of people who get upset at Dave Chappelle making jokes about social differences.
@Andy:
It’s actually not “great” at all, it’s an idictment of my home nation. So while it’s both predictable and gross that the usual soft-right suspects insist condescendingly dismissing my experience so you can deny certain realities about racism in the US, psuedo-intellectual babble European ethno nation-states does not change that both and I many many many many many many other blacks across generations have had and continue to have these disparate experiences for a reason. And we aren’t lying or making it up, no matter how much some deluded, self-impressed, and stubbornly racism-ignorant folks want to pretend otherwise.
Nor will we be bullied into silence about these truths by people who have neither the data nor the personal experience to backup their faulty claims about what we know from direct experience. These know-it-all dudes who actually know very little about this particular subject can lie to themselves if it makes them feel better, but they can’t gaslight us about our own lived lives.
@Modulo Myself:
I mean I’m not really arguing. Black people know what we’ve experienced. They don’t, and they’d also don’t have any data to refute our experiences. So I guess they’re just going off vibes, but it’s not going to make them any less wrong. They just don’t know what they’re talking about.
The one will never go broke underestimating the confidence of mediocre American men.
@Modulo Myself:
Maddeningly so.
But again, some of these dudes swear they’re experts on everything. Even what it’s like to be black in US and Europe even though, you know, they’ve never actually been black anywhere. It’s comedy.
@DK:
Because it gets them off the hook:
“We have already done better than the rest of the world. What more can you ask? You shut up now.”
Moreover, the only way to even make this argument is to compare the integration of white communities in the US with the integration of non-white communities in Europe.
But hey, any excuse for not having to do anything is good! Even if it involves ignoring the color line in a discussion about racism.
@drj:
Thank you.
And what I ask for is evidence. They know this how? Do they have data showing blacks in the US are actually less likely to be detained or killed by police than in other Western countries? Or that blacks in the US face less resume discrimination or get better health outcomes?
Or do they know by osmosis? Are they psychic?
What gets me is they will lecture a black guy about how he can’t possibly know from his own actual experience that things are better for him racially in one country vs another, because he’s not a resident of said other countries.
Yet they — who are also not residents of said other countries — are somehow confident minorities face less racism in the US.
Make it make sense.
They ain’t got no data. They ain’t got no anecdotal experience traveling or living in the US and elsewhere as a racial minority. They just magically know better than you. Because, of course, they always do.
It’s the fact that only things that originate among white people are considered “traditional” or “normal”.
If you proposed a ceremony that was equally old, but originated from non-white people, it wouldn’t be called “traditional” in our society.
So if “traditional” is a term exclusive to white cultural history, it is by definition racist.
@Michael: Well, no. Long-standing mainstream traditions in the United States will almost by definition be ‘white’ given that, until very recently, whites were 90% of the population and far and away the dominant culture. But, really, it’s only a subset of ‘white’ traditions that are mainstream. Very little in the way of the traditions of poor whites are in that category.
@James Joyner:
But they are 100% of the “tradition”.
@wr:
These conversations remind me of my favorite teacher quote, that I reflexively bring up when one of the other teachers talks about ‘kids nowadays’.
Some things haven’t changed in over 2000 years.
I don’t know that one can definitively say which country or which western country is the least racist. From my, admittedly limited, experience different countries and different regions of the same country are differently racist/bigoted.
I would defer to DK, or anyone else who has personally experienced or has real statistical date to bring, on which country/region is less racist against what we would today identify as black people in the USA.
I’m not sure that attitudes towards a single ethnic group would make one country/region less racist overall. A few years of living in Europe hearing people casually talk about how having Turkish people move into a neighborhood was terrible because they would sacrifice goats or chickens on their balconies while decrying the horrible state of racism in the US was eye-opening. Some of those same people would put on blackface for Christmas (Sinterklaas really) celebrations, and that was in a major cosmopolitan Western European city. Those same people treated black Americans and their Kenyan classmates with respect and kindness. So, which place is more racist, Amsterdam or San Francisco? Where you stand on that is most likely defined by your identity and what you personally experience. It is much to broad a category with far too many variables to have a single meaningful answer. What should be obvious is that everywhere with people has a racism problem and that it is more important to work on that problem than to try to rank societies by their level of racism. Trying to use that ranking, or having made some measure of progress on that front, to excuse ourselves from working on the very real problems at home (wherever that may be) now is enabling racism.