• olutukko@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      my ended by me growing up. in my country small towns and villages had pretty much no foreigners when I was child so racism was pretty normal. mostly just really offensive jokes and racial slurs with no though give to them. so it was pretty easy for all that shit catch in to you. when I grew up a bit and started hangik out in the closest city I quickly stopped all of that shit. I was never racist by heart or hateful towards minorities but all that joking and slurring was so normalized that I didn’t really give it a thought until I actually started thinking independently.

      I feel sad towards some of the people I used to know who are now young adults and still live there doing the same bullshit and being actually racists

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        That is what it was like in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Unless you lived in one of the major cities,which was like four cities at the time, you didn’t really see anyone who wasn’t Caucasian.

        It wasn’t racism, it was ignorance.

        • sparkle@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Racism doesn’t have to be malicious. It is often caused by ignorance

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        I did have one once. Unfortunately I didn’t measure my pre and post racism levels so I’m not sure if it helped or not. Also it was made by a large overweight man so perhaps it didn’t have the full effect.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      I had friends growing up from various races, my wife is from another race, and I work with other races. I still catch myself sometimes not treating people equally. It’s really easy to prefer someone that looks like me over someone who doesn’t.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Yeah, that’s apparently the prevailing opinion, hence why I wrote the last two sentences.

          Don’t assume you’re “not racist” just because you treat some people well. It’s really easy to treat people differently just based on appearances, so watch yourselves. I assume I’m better than most because I get angry a lot at stupid stuff I overhear, but then my wife catches me saying something stupid sometimes. Nobody’s perfect.

          • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            Sorry maybe I misinterpreted your comment. Treating someone differently just because they don’t look like you just sounds pretty strange to me…

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              It’s subconscious.

              I work with people from a variety of countries, and I naturally gravitate toward people from my own. We share the same cultural background, have the same accent, and have similar skin tones. So I go out of my way to correct that.

              I’m a manager, so when I look at promotions, I have to take a minute to write down the pros/cons to justify a promotion to help counter that bias. I also try to spend more time (lunches, water-cooler type discussions, etc) with those who are different from me as well, otherwise I’d naturally cluster with those who are more similar to me. I notice it in the people from other cultures as well, they tend to cluster with those that are similar to them as well, so hopefully me being proactive encourages them to reciprocate.

              At least that’s how I see it, and it seems to be working out alright.

      • THCDenton@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Dude school is rough. By the time I got out I was racist af. Took a long time to work through that shit.