Poll: Are racists victims too?

[Brawndo]

I wouldn't say it's how they're raised, but their childhood experience as a whole, probably.

Let's say hypothetically a white kid is raised by racist parents. Let's assume he goes to school, and a majority of the black kids are really nice and don't meet the description of what his parents made them out to be. Eventually he's going to understand that race isn't really a determining factor on who someone is. It might not be immediately, because he's going in initially with a racist mindset, but if his experience points to the contrary, then he probably isn't going to be racist.

Now let's say hypothetically a white kid is raised by racist parents in the projects. Now let's assume he goes to a bad school with black kids also raised by racist parents in the projects. If he's in a scenario where the black kids are all assholes to him, and he never sees otherwise the negative things his parents told him are reinforced by experience. In this scenario I think it's very likely for even a rational minded individual to be racist. If you start out with a certain viewpoint and there's very little to no evidence pointing to the contrary, why on earth would you change your view? I mean yes, it's going to be kind of unlikely that someone is going to be that sheltered, but it does happen.

Not to say there aren't some people that are just willingly ignorant assholes, but yes, you make a point, sometimes they are just products of their upbringing. Though I wouldn't really consider them "victims."

Except a majority of the black kids will NOT be nice to him, because he will likely self-segregate himself from them, and they will pick up on his prejudices relatively quickly. The majority will most likely be mean back to him, perhaps rightfully so, which will only reaffirm the white kid's original views in his mind. I've seen this scenario happen multiple times in my high school, except with the races flipped. This is one of the reasons why it is extremely hard to combat racism.

Also, I think some of you give humanity too much credit in the ability to change, especially dramatically. If anything, challenging someone's values and beliefs usually makes them dig in deeper (best example - atheists on this forum). George would be more likely to take on a victim mentality when told he is ignorant and bigoted, and then retreat further away among like-minded individuals.