Not like “I went to school with one” but have had an actual friendship?
I’ve had a couple of conversations recently where people have confidently said things about the Black community that are ridiculously incorrect. The kind of shit where you can tell they grew up in a very white community and learned about Black history as a college freshman.
Disclaimer: I am white, but I grew up in a Black neighborhood. I was one of 3 white kids in my elementary school lol, including my brother.
I know a couple of black people, but none of them is African-American.
I was born in the US, in Mississippi, but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, as a young adult. A significant portion of my friends were black as a child, and then I fell in with an international community of Haitian-, Nigerian-, and Latin-Americans when I moved to South Boston.
As with anywhere, most people are nice if you express interest in them and their cultures. There will be preconceived notions for some people towards you, and it’s important to understand that most stigmas stem from an absence of interaction. It can be surprisingly easy to break those barriers if you just make any sort of effort. It can sometimes be hard, but it’s so worth it. The kindest people I have met have been from these communities, mostly I think because they’ve worked so hard to build a better life for themselves and their families and friends.
Few things are as rewarding as being accepted into different communities. You learn and experience so much that you wouldn’t otherwise. My favorite experiences have been meeting the families of friends, being invited to cookouts with traditional foods and drink you have never had, and having an incredibly reliable community to lean on in times of hardship - we all help each other because we’re all in the rat race together. All it takes is some humility and a willingness to learn.
I know a couple. One was from Kenya, the other Sudan. I know a dozen or so Black Americans, several of which I have heard out right laugh at “African-American.”
Part of the problem is that the link to Africa was severed when their ancestors came here as slaves. Acknowledging that is pretty vital…
I have had close friendships with two black people. One was originally from Usa (which probably qualified him as African American for your question), the other was originally fom Nigeria, but was a German citizen.
I live in Germany btw. where nearly everybody has white skin color.
Right, I know we have a lot of international users here on lemmy, so I wanted to specify Black Americans, the descendents of slaves. For instance, one of my friends and coworkers is a very dark skinned Tunisian, but that’s a very different culture than the one I was asking about.
What you describe is world wide problem.
We don’t have much black people here (it is more curiosity than “the shit” you refer to) but there are some other groups like Roma people and recently Ukrainians, that gets to be the political punch bag.
And yes I know some people from these groups. I am pretty open minded and I see homelessness, excluded communities and stuff like that mostly as social or information problem.
Open mindedness is the key though. I don’t know, and have never known, any Japanese people more than a passing acquaintance. But I don’t go around confidently discussing aspects of Japanese culture. When I talk about Japan, I’ll say stuff like “I’ve heard” or “my impression is”.
It is very difficult to be anti-racist if you fundamentally don’t understand the struggles of the oppressed. Sometimes you can do more harm than good, despite your best intentions, simply because you have no knowledge of the issues.
The Ibram X. Kendi quote that spawned the idea (among white people) of anti-racism was a good one:
The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’
But as a Black man, he inevitably approached the subject from a bone-deep understanding of racism almost from birth. I think he failed to consider people who were so far removed from the struggles of Black people that they legitimately had no understanding of the issue.
I think that if you are ignorant of the issues, or have a surface-level understanding (the white college kids I mentioned in the OP), it is sometimes best to simply be nonracist rather than anti-racist…or perhaps better to be anti-racist in the sense of “I oppose the concept of racism”. But this idea of “I must take action!!!” is…not terribly helpful if you have no idea what you’re doing. It’s like going to a poverty stricken neighborhood planning to build houses for the homeless, but you have no experience in carpentry or plumbing or roofing or anything. Your heart is in the right place, but please. Slow down. Take your cues from those who have lived through it.
I live in a city immediately adjacent to one of the statistically blackest cities in America. I went to school in said black city for most of my childhood. I work in that city and have lots of black coworkers that I get along with just fine. My take? They’re just people like any other. Some of them are assholes. Some of them beat their wives. Some of them are total nerds. Some of them are the kind and intelligent. Some aren’t. Just like every other skin color. Black people are just people.
And yeah, people assume a lot of shit about them as a group and make idiotic blanket statements. I have some of my own preconceived notions in my head, and when they pop up in my head I remind myself how dumb it is to carry those.
I live in a city immediately adjacent to one of the statistically blackest cities in America.
Isn’t it terrible that my immediate reaction to this sentence was, “oh so you probably live in an extremely white area”?
I have some of my own preconceived notions in my head, and when they pop up in my head I remind myself how dumb it is to carry those.
That’s kind of what I’m getting at. It’s a constant thing that the human mind tends towards, and the best defense (imo) is personal experience. I always remember the gangbanger 19yo I knew, last I heard he was going to trial for an armed robbery, real “thug” type but he once confessed to me that he loved listening to pop music like Gotye and Katy Perry, but had to put on a real mean face when he was wearing his earbuds so his friends would think he was listening to rap. He wanted to open a barbershop and was teaching his little brother how to ride a bike.
You’re right, people are people. And they’re complex. Groups of people (race, culture, religion) are just complex groups of complex people.
I just wish people with no experience in a culture would take a step back and be a little less trusting of what they hear 3rd hand.
