Here’s a bonus I saw at college: “Can I touch your hair?” it’s an especially weird one.
I’m not black but Hispanic and get this often because of my curly hair. I actually love it but understand some people might not like it. But at least they ask. Had some people just pat my hair to feel it which is really weird.
That’s funny, because I had a lady I work with tell me to feel her hair.
We were talking about how she always had different hairstyles, and then she explained all this stuff about weaves and fake hair, and then she had me feel her hair to tell the difference.
I did not retain all/any of the knowledge of artificial hair, but I do remember she always had kickass hair styles.
It’s about consent.
The fact that you’ve heard “Don’t touch a black person’s hair” is because SO MANY nonBlack people would just walk up and start touching us without so much as a “How do you do”.
Black people aren’t particularly different than anyone else. The way we are treated is often quite different.
I’m a Latino and I grew out my hair during the pandemic with the goal of donating it. My hair comes out curly when it is long. One day, when we were back to seeing people face to face, a black woman asked if she could touch my hair. I was a little surprised that she asked, lol.
Did you get all offended about it
white guy here.
I had a lady do that to me and my beard in college.
it was weird at the time but scratched a physical contact itch I had no idea I had. the interaction started a long lasting infatuation with black matriarchs.
my point is, it’s fine to tell people no because it’s a limit of yours, but some people get curious about things that are new(to them) and it shouldn’t be held against them. who knows you might even like it.
The problem is volume. You had one interaction years ago. Black ladies get this sort of thing a lot more. I’m sure it gets exhausting.
This is only tangentially related to the point but when else am I going to get to share this story:
I’m a tall white dude with long, thick, slightly curly hair (when short it curls, when long the weight pulls it into waves), my entire life it’s been expected of me to just let women touch my hair and go “god I wish I could have this” or similar
I had a few black girl friends (note the space) growing up and they saw that a few times and we bonded a bit on this hair shit, but they were actually shocked that people at least asked them whereas I’d get molested without asking
One day an older black woman did it in front of my friend Alex and she puts on her heaviest “I’m from the ghetto bitch” accent and yells “nigga why you not even ask to touch his hair? You’re a sistah, you should know better!” And smacks her hand away from me
The look of shock on that woman’s face and level of apology she gave me was the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever experienced racially in my life. I got to see, just for a moment, what it looks like when white people realize theyre being super racist and want to undo it. It was awkward as fuck
I was blonde growing up in a middle eastern country and people used to want to touch my hair all the time. It’s just curiosity.
No, it can only be white on black racism
Speaking of touching hair, this isn’t really related but what are you supposed to do when holding a baby?
Like I held my family members baby the other day at Thanksgiving and my brain just defaulted to petting their nearly bald head like my cat 😭I don’t have kids, but a friend of mine that does commented I sway while carrying a cat in the way someone holding a baby does.
I guess that’s more proof part of the domestication that went on with cats is that they somehow signal “baby” to our minds.
It makes sense it goes the other way too.
I think that’s normal, actually. Little kids like affection and caressing their bald head qualifies. I’m not sure what age that ends, though.
I’m over 30 but I still like it when my gf gives me head scritches/scalp massages. So I guess never for some?
My wife will hiss at me if I don’t caress her hair before sleepytime. I may have married a cat.
Does scratching behind ears work?
I think that will get me bitten
Could be fun
Either that or chew on its ear. That is normal, right?
Last question is pretty legit though. Isn’t there data of how many black kids grow up without a father?
Lol that’s a stereotype. One parent not being in the picture is a poverty thing. Not a black thing. Since poverty disproportionately effects black Americans out seems like it’s a black problem but it’s a system of oppression problem.
Look at the graphs and compare the relative Poverty between latinos as blacks. Then looks at the graphs showing single mothers. There is some correlation between poverty and single motherhood, clearly. But there is definitely a great disparity between the various poor that you just can’t wave off as “racism”. It might be systematic, but not only a system perpetrated by the white majority, cause then the graphs would be equal for latonis and blacks. So perhaps there is a systemic issue within the black community causing men to not take responsibility for their own children? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162221120759
Not everyone believes this, but my understanding is that declassified (CIA I think? been a while) documents support the assertion that parts of our government employed a strategy designed to disrupt black communities. This strategy involved flooding predominantly black neighborhoods with crack cocaine, and then letting addiction, crime, and incarceration take their course.
It worked really well.
And then add in policies over the years that have perversely incentivized splitting up households (much-needed aid not available depending on who lives in the home), too, which may have been well-intentioned but proved very damaging to communities.
And we should also not forget - when comparing poverty outcomes between black and Latino Americans - these groups did not start from equivalent points. The practice of slavery did lasting, massive damage to the black community in the US - it’s basically impossible to extract present outcomes from that history. Far too much trauma.
Behind the Bastards did an early episode on it, I think the takeaway was that there isn’t some memo where Reagan cackles while saying he’s going to do it for these reasons, but there sure were a lot of CIA programs that actively encouraged cocaine and heroin being imported into the US while the drug war revved up simultaneously and AIDs got ignored, so one can certainly see how it sure looks like there was a massive government conspiracy to destroy black communities.
I haven’t heard that one, but they did like a crossover a year or two back with the Hood Politics podcast I believe that was a multi episode deep dive into the topic. Given how few details I apparently remember, probably worth a re-listen for me too, but you oughta give it a whirl!
Lol this doesn’t give any context and has cherry picked data with poor controls over variables. (Like why is a parent missing? Is it due to over incarceration and policing of black communities? Is it due to poor financial state of schools in black communities? What classifies a single mother? Does that mean the father is not in the child’s life at all or just not currently in a relationship with the mother? What about single father’s? Is that accounted for?)
There’s nothing in the black community or genetics. It’s all outside societal pressures. There are hundreds of studies on this by way more reputable sources with vastly different conclusions. The black community is no different when it comes to wanting to have a family and wanting to be involved with that family. But Black Americans ( especially black women) deal with outside factors that essentially guarantees most black Americans are second class citizens.
The fact that you “know it’s a talking point” but don’t know the statistics makes me feel that you should re-think who created the statistics in the first place and why.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162221120759
Data for this study comes from the LIS, which is an archive of cross-nationally and historically harmonized individual-level nationally representative datasets. U.S. data in the LIS come from the Annual Social and Economic March Supplement of the CPS. The main advantage of using the LIS over the underly- ing CPS is the higher-quality and improved income measures that comprehen- sively incorporate taxes and transfers and therefore yield improved poverty measures. I analyze twenty-five waves of LIS data for the United States from 1995 to 2018. I select this time period because it includes all the U.S. datasets for which all variables in the study are available.1
Lmfao, from your article:
it seems more research exploring the role of structural forces (e.g., the labor market, policies, racism, etc.) would be a fruitful avenue for advancing our understanding of the enduring racial inequality in child poverty and the penalties attached to child poverty risks.
Even your article calls out that racism is a major factor that should be studied. Glad you agree.
Not the argument. Nor is there an argument here. The question could be boiled down to: are there more black single mothers? Yes, categorically, unequivocally yes. Doesn’t say anything about the fathers race though, granted. I kinda went by the fact that most couples are not “mixed race”. Which is a bit presumtous by me, but not a bad presumtion given history.
Haven’t made any claims of any reasons. Just that it is. And therefore the last statement in the meme is kinda meh and sticks out among the others.
I asked you to think about why a stat might be popular.
You cited an article without personal comment.
I quoted your article back to you.
You refused to acknowledge the citation as a factor in your statistic, but also don’t have another argument without that statistic.
F
You didn’t ask me anything? You made a slightly condescending comment.
You quoted something that isn’t relevant to my point. But i acknowledge the existence of a flaw in my thinking, in that the fact doesn’t say anything about the race of the father.
A statistic isn’t popular, it just is. And the meme is dishonest for pretending it doesn’t exist.
What’s the point you’re trying to actually make?
the last statement in the meme is kinda meh and sticks out among the others.
If it sticks out you’re missing the point of the chain of statements.
It’s not that the other statements are or are not statistically justified, it’s that making comments to people that are clearly being made because of their race and perceptions about their race is something that tends to happen regularly to black people and other minorities, and not so much to others.
If you have no data about the “fact” (I wish I could highlight even more how much that is NOT a fact) and are asking users to provide evidence that supports that to you, maybe the question is not legit then, is it?
Its a rhetorical question for you to see the flaw in the picture painted by the “meme” https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/reporting/impact-absent-fathers-mental-health-black-boys
Look at the graphs for single motherhood https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162221120759
Its a rhetorical question
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t rhetorical. You were being racist and biased in your question and now trying to hide behind rhetorics. You think you’re the first person with bias I’ve seen who’s trying to “I was joking!” his way out of their bigotry? Lol
for you to see the flaw in the picture painted by the “meme”
There is no “flaw” in the comic. It’s showing the VERY REAL difference in treatment among white and black people
Look at the graphs for single motherhood
Maybe you should actually read the article before asking me to look only at a specific portion of the whole story. Especially since, at the very beginning, the author herself wrote
But a growing literature is demonstrating how the impact of single parenthood and family structure on children varies by racial group, including evidence that Black children experience smaller single motherhood “penalties” for some outcomes, like education.
So, once again, your comment was poorly thought out. The article you yourself shared, was exploring HOW they differ and it even talked about possible socioeconomic reasons for why there are differences. What it didn’t do, is carrying out a census to show if indeed black men are more likely to leave their families.
And now, please stop trying to wiggle your way out of your bigoted comment. I don’t care about such sad attempts. Bye
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t rhetorical.
Just because you don’t know what rhetorical means, doesn’t mean it wasn’t rhetorical.
The study is about the correlation between single-motherhood and child poverty. Don’t take a random quote from the article in some attempt at gotcha, when you didn’t even address the question.
It doesn’t really conclude anything other than the evidence is showing that marriage might not be the great savoir of children from poverty that some might think. That does NOT change the fact that black women by far in a way are the largest single mother group according to the data. Now, ill grant you that it doesn’t say anything about the race of the father. There might well be hispanic, white and Asian men that are the fathers in question.
Just ignoring the fact doesn’t help. Poverty doesn’t explain the entire discrepancy. Unjustly incarecerated black men might be an answer? Justly incarecerated black men? Chauvinistic tendencies in a social group?
More to the point of the meme. It’s a legit question. Rude and racist, but true. All the other questions in the meme are blatantly racist since they don’t even quantify.
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Plenty of white guys that ditched, divorced, etc their partners after getting them pregnant as well.
Nice whataboutism. Not saying anything about the reason, but you automatically go for the “the others do it too.” I just question the honesty of the postulation in the meme. Since the father is more often than not in the picture, as is evidenced by data collected and more often than not an argument for why black men fall into crime more often than others, it is a valid question. Dont know why a doctor would ask such a question though. Seems fake.
Black men fall into crime more? I’d love to see a study on that. They get incarcerated at a higher percentage, it’s not the same as actual crime rate.
It is more common for black fathers to be absent according to certain demographic measures.
However: race is not the only factor to the statistic, and the statistic in not defined well through time.
At one point “divorced or never married mother” was the basis for the statistic. Shifting it to “father lives in a separate home” is better but still misses that you can live in a separate home and still be there for your kid. That’s before you get to adoptive fathers and all the other non-biological support roles.For all those measures, economics is a better predictor than race. Race serving as an indirect measure of economics is its own can of worms and bias.
Finally, a question can be statistically valid and still be biased, inappropriate, or just rude.
“You’re black, so I don’t want to assume your child’s father is around” is all of those.And you’d likely still find that out using the same question from the left.
Also just some warning that there is immense racial bias in a lot of data. Take what you’ve heard with a grain of salt.
It doesn’t matter what the stats are, it’s insanely rude.
Wtf? Is this someone’s experience?
USA privilege, probably
I can’t speak to the ones about holding babies because I try to generally avoid that, but I’m a black woman, and I feel these to the depths of my soul.
I remember some girl in college literally asking me “Oh, are you from a broken home?” It took me a minute to even understand the question.
The healthcare ones are real. I hear it from my own patients. I have to apologize for my job sector too frequently to women of color.
Are you guys ok over the pond? I thought every panel after the second was just silly but then I read the married guy’s comment…
These aren’t normal questions from strangers. Unless you have a strong reason to, you don’t assume details about people’s lives when getting to know more about them. Even the questions on the left are presumptuous and can represent a faux pas, but they’re mild enough that the recipient would likely correct any wrong premise without making it an incident. But trying to guess details reflects poorly on you if you are wrong. Mostly you would express interest in what you can see about someone as an invitation for them to share more if they care to.
but then I read the married guy’s comment…
Kinda amusing that you didnt take this seriously until you had a white male confirm it for you.
Note: am white male, I just saw the irony (?) in the situation.
Racism is one of the only institutions Americans are still willing to vote to protect.
Missing the classic, “You speak so well!” Like, wtf, did you expect me to speak in pure jive and clicks???
What it is big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap.
Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don’ want no help, chump don’t GET da help!
Jive-ass dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Shiiiiit.
I can’t stop laughing at this comment, I can hear it.
I’ll give you a bonus one: “But where are you originally from?”
“where are you from?”
Here.
“But where did you grow up?”
Here.
“Where were you born?”
Here.
“But where were your parents from?”
The town over.
“Okay but where were your grandparents from”
[Other country]
“Ah okay now I can finally put this label on you and refer to you as [country]an whenever I talk about you and hang all these assumptions on you”
I got in trouble for this once lmao
A group of teenagers showed up to the charity event my club worked on every year. They all knew each other and I was curious what organization they might be a part of, so I asked one “so where are y’all from?” Only then did it occur to me that they were all Hispanic and the poor kid, looking unbelieveably annoyed, firmly told me “here.” I was able to stumble into my real curiosity but God that was embarrasing.
Or white person: “You speak [West European language I was raised in] very well”
Me: “Uh thanks you too”
White person:
Wait that’s illegal
What type of racism is this? It’s an everyday sort but contains institutional and casual types. Is there a label for it?
30 Rock had an episode where Liz thought Tracy couldn’t read. I loved his label for it:
“The subtle racism of lowered expectations.”
That’s a fantastic way to say it.
“Bing Crosby said that!”
“…no, Bill Cosby said that.”
“That’s racist!”
yeah, prejudice.
microaggresion?
Not shure, would say microaggressions are something intentional or at least come from dislikeing the other person. This examples are rude and hurtful but I dont think that they are intentionall and come more from prejudice and bias that people picked up over they life and most people probably doesn’t even recognize when doing so.
intentional or at least come from dislikeing
Who says this is any different? Like if you look deep down you will probably find they don’t like the person that much either, and only because of her sex and color.
I’ve found microaggressions mostly due to ignorance instead of malice. I’d classify these and your definition as such.
I looked it up and youre definition is right, my bad.
It just sounds off to me to name something unintentionaly with the word aggression as the definition of aggression contains an intent to cause harm.
That’s why they’re called microaggressions. They’re unintentional actions or words that are not meant to be hurtful, but just giving it a little extra thought, it’s easy to see how they can be.
Meanwhile, actual aggressions are purposeful and obviously meant to cause harm.
Bigotry of low expectations!
Imagine people being racist.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
This is basically the plot of Crash
Cronenberg Crash is better.
No no no. They are not racist, just curious (answer of my colleague when pressed on his questions).
And they said Ted talks were starting to suck… ***** Would watch again
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I’m white, and married to a black woman. Gotta say, this is pretty accurate. Add shitty service from wait staff when the white person a table over gets regular checkups, and doctors not taking anything she says seriously, even when her symptoms are obvious. And people being rude to her when she asks a question, but nice to me when I ask them the same question a moment later.
It’s one thing to know, in abstract, that racism exists. But experiencing it through what my wife goes through on a daily basis has really opened my eyes. It feels like we exist in 2 separate worlds when we’re not out together.
To add: some of the comics, as well as your, examples are good examples of intersectional discrimination. To take a particular one: the doctors-not-taking-you-as-seriously thing happens to all women. But it’s much worse for black women in particular. And it’s also not as bad for black men as it is for black women.* So, that’s an issue she’s facing in this severity because she’s black AND a woman. There are many such intersectional issues, and it’s important to acknowledge and work against them. Anything related to children is similar.
- I remember that from a statistic, I’ll try to look it up if anyone would like me to
doctors not taking anything she says seriously, even when her symptoms are obvious
I’m married to a white woman, and she also experiences this, so this might be a gender discrimination problem, rather than (or in addition to) a racial discrimination problem, sadly.
Yea, that part is a gender discrimination issue, some doctors will refuse to even tie a woman’s tubes if they’re “too young” saying shit like “What will your future husband think” and if they are married already even saying shit like “You’ll need your husband’s permission/need to be present”
It’s disgusting.
Yep.
Being a woman trying to get your medical concerns taken seriously is hell.
Can’t imagine how awful it would be to stack “not white” on top of that, too.
I think it’s both. It probably starts with gender discrimination (as the medical field highly favors men. Look at the differences in how we are taught about heart attacks for men and women for example) but then on top of that, it adds the racial discrimination.
Black women (and especially queer black women) are among the most discriminated groups sadly
That’s why the term “misogynoir” exists. It’s both, and they pile on and increase each other.
the term is cool though
Absolutely. I was thinking specifically about intersectionality when I wrote that, but misogynoir also applies.
I didn’t want to simply write “that’s intersectionality” and leave though, that’s why I wrote about a more practical example instead
The more general term is “intersectionality”
Older doctors were literally taught that black women have a higher pain tolerance. This in part originated from an early gynecologist doing experiments on black women slaves without bothering to give them any anesthetics. His justification for it was basically that they could handle the pain, and there are doctors practicing medicine today that still belive it.
Yeah, lots of doctors that graduated university in 1870 running around
It’s fun when people reveal they don’t know how actual education and science works. They must think we just reinvent the wheel every time a kid decides to be a doctor or something.
A survey of medical students in 2016 found the same trends in actual beliefs, long after the data disproved the theory.
You might actually look into how long that was taught and pervaded into medical attitudes, how little women’s anatomy has been studied compared to men’s, and assumptions made about care for black people and women compared to white people and men, respectively, before making comments like this.
I don’t have the time to look it up for you, but I will recommend the book Bonk by Mary Roach for the anatomy stuff. You will be very surprised.
Same here. Even women doctors have been shitty to my white wife over things that should be obvious or at least taken seriously.
I can only imagine black women have it worse and that makes me pretty furious considering what I’ve already seen.
Well known gender thing, worse for women of color.
The prejudices stack together, unfortunately
This RPG’s rules are bullshit!
Welcome to #outside
It does depend on gender, but also on race. Even many of the medical procedures are inherently racist, since they were developed mostly with white men in mind. Especially anything that calls for visual checks can be very biased.
We’re both Eastern Europeans in Western Europe, so not visible minorities until we open our mouths.
We were recently house hunting, and my wife is the sole earner.
I can’t count how many times we had to explain that, or how many times we were disadvantaged against people with the opposite situation. When we applied for a joint bank account with both of us working, guess whose name they put on the account. Or try getting hired without getting asked about your family situation. For her, it always comes up in “small talk” in interviews, very obliquely of course. For me, maybe six months to one year into the job.
On the other hand, she opens the street door every time there’s a heavy delivery, as they don’t try to have her carry heavy cargo to our apartment like they do to me, despite it being paid for.
Which country is that? Switzerland?
It bothers me endlessly that people who advocate for keeping the tipping system are directly asking to perpetuate racism. Many of them don’t even know thats what they’re doing, but I’m slowly learning that most people (including minorities) actually like systemic racism.
What is sad is that this will be viewed as normal and acceptable next year because saying it’s not acceptable is “woke.”
Don’t think I ever saw this. But then again I’m in a blue city, so there’s that.
Edit: Not saying theres no racism, there is a lot in fact. But I never see the type depicted in this comic. Its either overt racism with yelling slurs, or its just a normal interaction. I dont see much passive agressiveness.
Could it be that you’re a straight white male who doesn’t mix with people outside that particular bubble much? I’m one of those, and I’m willing to believe others when they say it happens, and how often. Even in those places where the majority vote for the more progressive candidate.
I’m a man and I’ve never been catcalled, but I can believe women who overwhelmingly say it’s a common experience.
A non-black person saying they’ve never been followed around a convenience store, or dealt with adultification (the phenomenon where racial bias leads people to treat black children more as adults, including things like the first row in this comic assuming a young black woman is holding her own daughter).
We all live our own experiences, so trying to deny that something happens based on not having experienced it yourself is just being obtuse.
The liberals do it almost more than the conservatives. It’s more open racism and avoidance in red areas but somehow it’s a kindness to talk down to people of color in the eyes of the liberal.
Not quite. I’m an asian american. And while I do witness racism often, its usually not the same racism as depicted in this comic. Theres is not much passive agressiveness at all, its either just yelling slurs, or they are just normal people. My comment probably got off the wrong impression. I’m not saying theres no racism, there is, a lot. But I never see these passive agressive racism. Its either overt racism with slurs involved, or they are normal people, like there’s no in between.
Happens in Boston literally every day
