Music Banter - View Single Post - Racism vs. Classism
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Old 05-04-2014, 07:09 AM   #7 (permalink)
Paedantic Basterd
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They're definitely both still active, however racism has become a form of modern prejudice, wherein prejudiced attitudes exist, but are not spoken or openly endorsed--at times are not even known by those who hold them.

This is an improvement; social norms now rule that racism is not cool, and people will go to great lengths to adhere to them, however, there are still as many studies that pop up which indicate a black man is more likely to be shot while holding a cellphone than a white man is, or that a first nations/native american child is more likely to be put into remedial school programs.

As for classism, it is inherently tied to racism. Our history of oppressing immigrants (voluntary or otherwise) has placed them at the bottom of the monetary hierarchy, and prejudice has been seen to help keep them there; it is without doubt more difficult for someone who is not white to get a job to earn the money to go to the school to get the qualifications to be hired for the well-paid job--and that itself is an oversimplification.

I am of course not denying that classism is a rampant, if not definitive problem for our time, but it's inseparable from other prejudices, and those other kinds of bias have by no means vanished.

As for people being angry about historical crimes, I understand it. I understand, because the oppression isn't gone. It's changed and it's lessened, but people are still disadvantaged by the colour of their skin, resulting from those historical crimes against humanity, and the rest of us are still implicitly impacted by them.

Prejudice truly is as easy as another's comment triggering a stereotype--that you don't even endorse. We are all with prejudices, however hard we each work to control them, and acknowledging that we are is the most important step in defeating them.
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