Susan Arendt said:
Therumancer said:
The problem is that racism is pretty much dead in the US, and the Western First World for that matter.
You are very fortunate that you apparently live in an area where you can go through day to day life and believe this to be true. But I assure you, racism is alive and well in the US. Having lived the majority of my life in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and now living in Durham, NC, I see it quite frequently.
All I'll say is that I worked 10 years in casino security, with that time split between casinos on two differant Indian reservations. I also tend to be a militant, a cynic, and an extreme pessimist. If I believed racism existed as anything but a tiny fringe, I'd be all over it a lot more frequently than I am as a matter of course.
Then again a lot of it might be simply on how we both interpet racism. I for one consider racism and bigotry two seperate things. Reality also being what it is, with differant subcultures, I believe a conflict can wind up being divided along racial lines without it actually being racist.
See, racism is when a group of people believe in the superiority or inferiority of one race compared to others as an intristic state of being. Truthfully not being a racist tends to lead towards bigotry where due to everyone having the same capabilities, people can expect the same kinds of behaviors ideals of conduct of others that they expect of themselves. While they can end of seeming similar, I believe there is indeed a distinction.
Being casino security is not an action packed job like in the movies. Despite what the casinos in an "Oceans 11" might seem like it's by and large a dog and pony show. Things are interesting occasionally, but it's largely a rut job like anything else.
On the other hand as part of that rut job, Security Officers are called in to do things like escort terminated employees out of the building. In such situations routine complaints are made about racism in connection to the firing. It falls upon Security and/or Suerveillane to investigate such claims in many cases, not because of any great love for the people involved, but for the simple principle of protecting the butts of our employer in case such an allegation was ever to be pursued. I will tell you flat out that in a place that is wired to the absolute gills 99% of the time when investigated it turns out to be absolute bunk, and a disgruntled ex-employee groping for any weapon they can get true or not.
The point here is not that racism does not exist at all, but that it is a tiny fringe behavior. As someone who has been part of investigations into such matters, and who has spent many long, boring hours observing people who didn't realize it for various reasons, when I am speaking here I am not doing so from the perspective of someone who has exactly been sheltered (quite the opposite as there are things I can never un-learn, or un-know sadly). Of course a big part of the problem here might be in differant interpetations. A lot of people tend to expand the definition of racism into things that I do not think it applies to. I hold to a very specific, literal definition. You'll find far more bigots than racists, and bigotry is a whole differant area of discussion.
Of course I've said more than I should already, since I'm certainly not going to argue too much with the Senior Editor of The Escapist.
