Hi there, first I hope I don’t offend anyone since this is not meant to be a bash on anyone and it’s just reflecting my personal feelings. But I assume I will get attacked anyways.
So I’m a 21 year old from Germany and we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here but the few I know who also grew up here are just like any other German and talk/behave the exact same way as every other German and also seem to be perceived like a normal German. Maybe some people might naturally be kinda surprised by people having darker skin since it’s more rare but I feel like people just perceive the different skin shade the same way they perceive different hair and eye color.
But from America I noticed that many people constantly call them “black” or “white” people and make a big thing about it as if they were a different race (and of course we scientifically know that there’s only one human race). And it seems like many Americans identify with that so much that they separated and developed different cultures, behavior and way of talking solely based on their skin shade even though they’re born and raised in the same country.
I know that there was slavery and segregation in America based on exactly this in the past but this is over and we’re living in 2025 now which is why I wonder if this is still appropriate and contemporary.
Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times and it makes me feel very uncomfortable every time I hear this “black” and “white” stuff which is becoming constant since American media is everywhere. And I feel like this is also influencing people overseas like here where especially younger people in cities adopt this American mindset and I’ve even seen some using the N-Word etc.
When I grew up I never even had a concept of “different skin colors” because it just felt normal that people naturally look different and I still think like this about people and see it the same way as people having different hair and eye color but I can tell that these racist ideologies are doing something to me.
TL;DR
its not the labels that cause the divide. it’s the divide (the racism built into the economy and laws and communities) that causes the trauma that requires us to heal within our sub-communities. But the sub-communities are not originally homogenous; i.e. sometimes the only thing sub-communities have in common is the label/slur that “Whites” assigned us and the trauma that goes with that.
Also, for anyone who’s actually lived in the US, you know we strenuously avoid using labels about someone when talking TO that person. There are very strict social rules for which labels to use when/where/with whom. Some people break those rules, then republicans elect them as president. FYI in case its not obvious, OVER HALF of US people hate Trump (and Elon). Why are they in power, you ask? Search “usa electoral system minority rule”
I appreciate you bringing this uncertainty to the community and open yourself for discussion. I understand how it can be upsetting or feel dissonant to see US people who sometimes/often brag of being the standard for freedom and equality, but still use divisive-sounding language. And worse yet, for the outward face of the US to become even more of an international symbol for fascism and oppression than ever.
many people outside the US, and even people inside the US, get confused by seeing us talk a lot about Black, White, Asian, Latinx (historically called ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic’), Indigenous. They often think the labels themselves actually caused divides in US. I’ve heard this interpretation often from young people, mostly Gen Z. This also used to be a part of the “mainstream” (aka white liberals’) mindset in the 1980s/1990s in the US. I’m not white nor black and I also believed that to some level back then.
We still are always looking for new names/terms to unite with each other regardless of sub-groups. That’s how we get terms like BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) which definitely is inconvenient without abbreviation.
Sociological research actually showed that US society was and still is divided even when we don’t use the labels. Its actually our laws, our economic practices, and “certain” groups’ superiority/inferiority mindset (psychological complex) that divide US people.
The laws, for example, sometimes create a lot of extra steps to register to vote. And when those extra steps are analyzed, it turns out it makes voting extra difficult for poor people (like that our voting days are on Tuesday, a work day, so poor people can’t always get a day off, then can’t vote). In many areas of US, the low income group is mostly one or two races, like Black and Latinx. So politicians who hate those groups can secretly make it hard for them to vote by creating voting obstacles that affect only poor people.
The economic system helps to keep people poor by creating barriers for getting house loans or starting businesses. The “Red Lining” system used to categorize land/houses in Black neighborhoods as unlikely to repay loans, so people from there (Black people) or people trying to buy homes there were not given loans. Even if banks wanted to loan to the person, the Gov’t refused to give the bank insurance. But what actually determines the ability to repay a loan? Income or assets, right? But income was usually ignored and Black people were assumed to have no assets worth money.
As for the people, when I say “superiority/inferiority mindset”, I mean that certain US pink-skin straight neurotypical people have become accustomed to feeling comfortable in a very specific way, and accustomed to not being criticized for that refusal to change, and refusal to bring other races into their lives and into their comfort zone. Research on this area found that when we don’t discuss race openly with some type of labels, children would observe and absorb parents’/adults’ implicit feelings of discomfort around other races, even if their parents were civil rights believers/activists. Then while growing up, the child believes themselves to be “non-racist” (because of the thinking “my parents/role-models were non-racist!”) while still having this discomfort. If the person realized they had this subconscious conflict and discusses it with friends of other races and in a mindset of humbleness and desire to learn, they could usually manage the discomfort and be an anti-racist (different from non-racist) without conflicted identity. However, if the person doesn’t recognize the internal conflict and eventually expresses their discomfort emotionally directed at people of other races, they would predictably face backlash. Then because they identify themselves as a non-racist, they believe the backlash was unfair and feel that they have become the victim of “political correctness” or “the woke agenda”. This scenario is EXTREMELY common in the US and, I would bet, an analogous one is common in most western countries. Particularly regarding immigrants, refugees, Roma people, or Jews.
I call the group “certain US pink-skin straight neurotypical people (PSSNTP)” because those of us with other skin color (BIPoC), other neurotypes, other sexuality have not ever had the opportunity to become that level of comfortable in the context of the entire US society that includes “straight white” people. BIPoC and LGBTQ are able to be comfortable in sub-groups that share our uncomfortable experiences. We call those groups Black, Gay, Asian, Pacific Islander, Neurodivergent, etc because other terms are more awkward/inconvenient, but also due to having bad experiences being called by those names or called more malicious synonyms, and otherwise treated badly by the PSSNTP and those bad experiences unite us in our sub-groups. Yes, some non-white, non-straight, non-neurotypical have also oppressed others. They were never the majority of oppressors, and they were hoping to hide the non-majority aspects of their identity by “going with the flow”. For what it’s worth, Empathy is also a minority identity characteristic among USA straight males, when it reaches the level of choosing discomfort for oneself in order to improve life for others.
Lastly, about "White"ness. As you mentioned, there are no “races” in the human genome except the human race. As far as I know, the term “white” referring to caucasian people was first spread widely during North American (NA) slavery in order to unite poor caucasians (British & other Europeans in debt slavery as “indentured”) in NA with rich caucasians (mostly british aristocratic slave-owners) in order to motivate the poor to report African slaves who had escaped. They also motivated the poor caucasians to side with rich by hiring them as a slave patrol unit, with higher salary etc. This is the origin of the entire concept of Police (for the whole Earth, as far as I know) as an enforcement unit under civilian authorities and separate from military.
Southern Slave Patrols as a Transitional Police Type | Office of Justice Programs - ojp(dot)gov - https://archive.ph/OSLBv
The Invention of the Police | The New Yorker - https://archive.ph/CkfpI
Even Police themselves admit it
ima say this, I never really liked all of the “politically correct ways” to refer to race. It always urked me when people would refer to me as “A person of color” or Bipoc. Like honey just call me Black, cus thats what I am. 😭
I feel like theres this weird fear amongst some white people that if they say the wrong thing while a black person is present, that they’re life will be RUINED. Shit I even had a piano teacher express to me what was basically White guilt one time. She felt ashamed of herself for just being born white, and I remember just feeling absolutely awful that whatever the hell was happening in the media right now made her feel that way. I dont care about reparations or idk- whatever tf BLM the organization is babbling about (Bad organization btw, they’re shady. DO NOT give them your money.) I just want people to treat me like a person :/
I dont want my white friends to “fear” for me or any of that shit (all I have is white friends lmao) Race is only relevant once I start cracking jokes about myself. I hate that in this day and age, there is this expectation that just because I’m black, that I MUST care about certain things. We tried moving away from pigeon-holing ourselves and only made it astronomically worse. You ever hear jokes about “Oh- White people always do this-” or “Black people don’t do that”? THAT WAS THE GATEWAY to segregating ourselves all over again, and we perpetuated it! We AS BLACK PEOPLE, saw ourselves as certain way and made it so that its an expectation TO be that certain way. Do you have any idea how many weird looks I get when I tell another black person I’m Agnostic? The response is almost always “Nah what?? Your black and you don’t go to church or any of that? Thats crazy…”
TBH a lot of the bullying I got through my entire life was by other black people, and that was when I realized that even we have prejudice against our own people. Dude- WE STEREOTYPE OURSELVES!! All the time! So much so I got a whole ass list of things Black people arent supposed to do ENTIERLY CURATED from comments I got by other black people.
Black people dont:
-dress goth
-dress emo
-obsessed over horror
-talk about bugs or etomology
-Wear Japanese Kawaii fashion
-wear hoop skirts(?)
-Talk “white”
-research about mental health
-TALK about mental health
-tell others they have mental health issues
-Engage in “Heathenism”
-talk about shakra’s or Astrology (even though a massive portion of that community tends to be black chicks but whatever)
-Wear cat ears
-wear furry tails
-become furries/wear fursuits
-listen to Hyperpop/Vaporwave/1930’s music/noise music/ anything that has to do with new-age alternative/experimental -music
idk, I hope me going off about this wasn’t offensive or some shit, but what I’m basically trynna say is white people aint the bad guys a lotta the time, deadass we can become our own enemy, and that goes to any Gay, Trans, Black, Mexican, etc etc. But the only people to experience that typa shit would have to be people in those communities, and a lot of the time, we get scared to actually speak out about that stuff out of fear of being ostracized by own own people simply cus we don’t fit some sort of Behavioral quota.
if there was anyone or anything I could 100% point to as being an enemy or crooked, its the rich 1% People wanna always be like “oh the rich old white men…” Honey, theres black people there doing the same thing. Like be real with me, do yall got any fuckin clue how many Rappers just blow up and become stupid rich. And then what do they do with all that wealth?? Spend it on dumb shit the same way a privileged white boy would, and not a single fuckin bit goes back into donating to the black community let alone bettering the already shitty conditions we live in. If anything most of em make the stereotyping WORSE being acting as some kind of figurehead for the Hood. If a black person gets stupid rich stupid quick, 9/10 they’re going to become a terrible person and not give a rats ass about poor people. They’re rich, why would they need to?
I used to be so scared of the hood growing up, I live in a mostly white neighborhood full of friendly old white ladies. But the music- Oh my god it made it seem like if I breathed wrong, I was gonna get shot or gangr8pd INSTANTLY. Bro, the hood is full of so many friendly communities. People will walk over to each others houses n shit ALL THE TIME and have cookouts and little community gatherings. So much so its a meme about the shit we do at cookouts. I still sometimes face prejudice now, but its mostly from younger black kids who are just naive asf. But fr, the Hiphop industry and the shit they churn out DOES NOT HELP, it just worsens the idea that we black folks gotta act hard and be hard and shoot a mofucker if they look at you sideways and ALLLLLLLLLL that. Female rap is even worse. More likely than not though, the reason the music is like that is cus of the industry doing that shit on purpose, how tf else did Sexxy Red or Ice Spice get as popular as they did?
Alright thanks for coming to my TEDtalk, there was refreshments in the back but I ate all the biscuits n gravy, mah bad.
I totally agree that the root problem exists not only with the rich old white men. They are simply one of the urgent external threats, mainly because rich people’s money gives the ability to oppress all the groups at once.
But yeah, we definitely oppress each other.
My Dad used to be a local leader in our community and he would organize parties once in a while, sometimes for a holiday, sometimes for an election, etc. It’s the type of community where everyone is considered a relative, regardless of family ties. Every single time I attended those parties, some slobbering drunk old guy would come up to me and say “Why are you still fat? You need to exercise, kid.” I was in elementary school! And the old guy had fucking fat beer belly too!
…I can’t even bring myself to talk about the shit my own Dad said to me.
Across the world, the more colonized or enveloped in majority control that the country/community is, the worse the internal oppression and othering seems to be in sub-communities.
I hate it.
Love how your reply is both respectful/compassionate and informative. Well done.
thank you very much!