Racism. What does it mean to you?

[GtoRA2]

Racism? What does it mean to you?

 For me I think it is hugely overblown. I see very little true racism now. I have mentioned the one case I though may have been racism, and I think Meitla called me a commie over it.
  I think the school system is racist in that poor schools get les money then schools in rich areas, and that puts poor kids (mostly minorities) at a disadvantage.

I have been called a racist. I was so angry over this I could not believe it. I am not a racist, nor was the situation a racist situation. Here is the run down.

I worked for a major Scanner company about 5 years ago as a tech support rep. I was the god of support. I knew it all. I was promoted to supervisor and had 30 techs in my group. I worked the 11 to 7PM shift. That late at night things where slow, and since I was not taking normal calls, just supervisor calls I had time to do other things. One of the things I was supposed to do was listen in on calls.
 
  I do this starting with the first person on the far side of the department and work my way over tech by tech. I get to a specific tech, an older black woman.  She is not one of MY techs but I am still supposed to listen in on all the techs on my shift. So I log into her phone.
 
  She takes a call, and listens to the customer for a second, then a group of techs come to her desk and start talking. So she attempts to put her customer on hold, but does not do it right then proceeds to make fun of the guy to the others techs, I can hear it but the customer does not seem to notice. She comes back on he goes on, with his problem and then she interrupts him and puts him on hold again. I look up and she is talking to her friends again. She comes back tells him uninstall and reinstall and hangs up abruptly.

  I have heard some bad customer service in my time but this took the cake. So I write up a report and hand it over to her supervisor the next morning. Later that morning she was called in by the manager. I was there along with her lead and the manager.  They explain to her that she had one of her calls listened to and it was poorly handled and that they would like her to take some extra training.  
 
 She asked who did the listen in and I say I did. She turns to my boss and says “this is all just because I am black and he is a racist! I want to talk to human resources” There was a bit more conversation, me explaining point by point from my report what I saw as wrong. I have only on one other occasion seen a tech be more rude, and that’s when the tech said “Jesus Christ SIR don’t call me an *******!”

 The fact is she was a horrible tech, she blew the guy off and when she got caught she played the race card. Where did this leave me? Same place only I was told never to speak to her in any way again or do listen ins. Only the manager himself was to have any contact with her for any company business.  I didn’t get a write up or in real trouble, but it still pissed me off.
  Now when I hear “I was discriminated against I always have to take it with a grain of salt. A big one.”

 Another case. My girl friend works as a sales admin, her salesman, a black guy, would blow off clients, or quote lower prices then he should and try and sneak it through the system and never call back his clients, so my GF ended up fixing it all.
 He gets three write ups and then fired.  He claims racism and tries to sue! He tried to get my GF to sign a letter saying she heard them say things about his race and she refused, and now he is pissed at her.  He has even called her boss and tried to accuse her of theft. There was no racism in this case either. He was a **** up and if he had been my sales guy I would have fired him FAR sooner since he cost the company well over 100 grand and two very big accounts.

Makes you wonder how many times when racism is called, that its legit or BS?

With people like Sharpton around it seems to me more BS then real anymore.

[mietla]

Originally posted by GtoRA2
Racism? What does it mean to you?

 For me I think it is hugely overblown. I see very little true racism now. I have mentioned the one case I though may have been racism, and I think Meitla called me a commie over it.

Say what!!!!

If I recall the exchange it was about schools and you argued that school funding should be equalized, so every child has an "equal opportunity". My position was that

1) it it simply impossible and
2) the "equal  opportunity" ends with equal access and does not extend to same lunch, same books, same computer and same everything else. That's lunacy.



I can't find a link to this thread, but I always make an effort not to attack people, only the ideas (you'll of course be a judge on how successful I am at that).

I called your idea of "equalizing" schools commie (which it is), I did not call you a commie.

Sorry if you took it as a personal attack. I was never meant as such.

[mietla]

The situation you've described sure smacks of racism, but it is not you who are racist here.

Nothing hurts the equal opportunity like race card played from the bottom of a deck. Unfortunately, it always wins...

[ra]

Racism is the trump card in the great American business of victimhood.   "Civil rights leaders" like Jackson are just race hustlers left over from the 60's.  When they all leave the scene maybe we can start being un-hyphenated Americans and get on with our lives.  If the Democrats let us.

ra

[Dinger]

Bah.
Racism is around.  Pay attention -- in the US most white people act differently down to the level of eye contact and body language according to the race of the person they're confronted with.  It's pernicious and it affects people on a variety of levels. Pretending like it's not there won't help matters.

On the other hand, I'm familiar with accusations and lawsuits of this sort.  Many of them have very little to do with racism, and a hell of a lot to do with tort laws.  The problem is not "victimhood", but the corporate notion that a "racism suit" is such a bad thing that it has to be avoided at all costs, that is, at a nice out-of-court settlement cost. In many cases, it's extortion.
 Most people are good people, but you will always have prettythangholes willing to set the cause of civil rights back fifty years if it means covering their own incompetence.
The problem is independent of republican or democratic administrations: racial discrimination is illegal, and you can get civil damages for it.  Thanks to our glorious system of jury awards, most companies are happy to pay a sum of money on unsubstantiated claims of racism than submit a lawsuit to judgment.  The result is you see morons playing the race card.

But it doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist, or that employees aren't discriminated against on the basis of race.  If anything, it's worse now. Companies are finding non-white, non-male hires a bigger risk because any firing or layoff is vulnerable to an accusation of racism or sexism.  That makes those persons less appealling economically.
 would there be less racism without antidiscrimination laws? I doubt it.  Is there a better solution? If there is, it's obvious and overlooked.

[Gadfly]

That is the key problem with the JJ/Sharpton method of "improving" race relations.  What they do, in fact, sets it back for the reason Dinger says.  And DO NOT call THAT racism, it is a business decison based on liabilities, not capabilities or color.  For women it is often the same way.  As a business person, you must be very very careful about firing anyone but a white male-him you can just boot and move on.

edit-which, in Texas at least, is the way it should be for everyone.

[Malleus]

I'm like a lot of you in here, ex-military, in my case, I spent almost 15 years in the U.S. Army Infantry, most of my time in the 101st Airborne.

I do not consider myself a racist, nor do I even consider myself prejudiced. The military certainly wrung that out of me. I worked alongside people of a variety of colors, creeds and upbringings.

And what did I learn? There are close-minded, ignorant, and beligerant people from all walks of life, and the open minded and easy going get slaughtered by them.

For me, still to this day, I could care less what color you are, what religeon you follow, or whatever. My way of life has always been "Get the job done" and if you willing to get it done, hey, you're okay in my book.

Do whites (of which I am one) discriminate? Yes, I do believe so. And because of those two examples listed above. God forbid I am ever in management. {Go Teamsters!} But looking at those two examples I wonder how I would deal with them if I was in their place.

Do non-whites discriminate? Oh yes, most certainly. Since leaving the service, I now deliver wine, beer and liquor to bars, resteraunts and liquor stores. We get "discriminated" against while making deliveries in "Da Hood" or whatever.

Hmmm, rambling, it's late.

Final thought - People need to wake up, stop thinking about just themselves, and work together to get the U.S. back in line. All this PC crap is going to run us into the ground.

[Karnak]

Racism is when your expectations of who or what somebody is are influenced by their race.  Racism can also be when policies are structured or implimented in such a way to focus on a particular group of people irregardless of qualifications.

As to the comments about racism being present in the various minority groups, that is of course correct.  We're all human.

Interestingly, in the state of Washington their hate crime laws have most frequently been brought against blacks for racism against non-blacks.

[Sandman]

Other day, my son goes to the fair... he went with his friends... at one point he and his friends decided to get some sort of rice bowl teriyaki thing... His friend walks up and orders... $2... then my son... they didn't walk up together so the guy had no reason to think they were together... he orders the same thing.. $3... he questioned the guy at the counter who replied, "that guy is asian. you're not."

[RTR]

never mind.
been drinking.
RTR

[DiabloTX]

I've ran into so many racial stereotypes, especially when I managed that auto repair shop, that racism exists on all social levels, all races, and at any time.  I've seen it so many times that nothing about it shocks me anymore.  But, to be honest, the most shocked I have been was the racism I ran into in Canada when my ship had a couple of liberty stops there.  And I thought Texas was bad...

[Fishu]

To think of it.. I don't think I've ever heard of a white guy calling an african (or person of some other race) as a racist.
However it isn't unusual to hear these representors of the other races to refer to racism.
(of course this is not a generalization)

[Gadfly]

^What did he say?

[ccvi]

When Ripsnort claims he's full blooded-American (http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94444), does that make him a native racist?

SCNR

[Tumor]

I hate everyone equally.... keeps the race card at bay.