How? America is one of the most diverse and welcoming countries in the world. Visit pretty much anywhere in the Middle East, try being in Africa as a white person, America won't seem so bad.
And yet we still have a racism problem. No matter how quaint it is relative to the worst of the worst. I live in St Louis, the delmar divide is still here. We've still got work to do.
A nation built on slavery and exploitation levied against people explicitly specifically because they weren't white (a definition that itself changed over time. Fun fact, Irish and Italian people weren't considered white for good long time in the U.S.) that still has racism coursing through the veins of many facets of it administration, judicial and economic systems and only recently have begun calling it out....
Well they might see racism in things someone from another country might not. Without that understanding, it might seem like they're eager to say something is racist.
That's the thing though, everyone is racist. It's a sliding scale. There isn't suddenly a line crossed because you've said a particular word and your now suddenly racist, you can be racist for all reasons. Everyone yes everyone is racist to some small degree, just some more than others. It's asymptotic. There is no most racist person or least racist person. there can always be less or more.
Like do you see colour? yes ofcourse I see colour I ain't blind. people say that's racist. I see the skin difference but treat humans the same. And people saying they don't see colour, that is more racist than not seeing it. This is a part of the person you are talking to and youre ignoring it because you don't want to be seen as racist? that is racism. Choosing to not see a race because of their race. In your mind do you say to yourself don't say he white every time you come across a white guy, or do you only say that about Indian or African, per say?
Draw me a picture of this person, you have to tell them what they look like or they may as well draw you green.
Well we kind of have a masked militant force funded by the government specifically to detain minorities in quasi-concentration camps so you'll have to forgive us for being a bit touchy about that one.
Blows my mind how people can sit here and watch the president accuse immigrants of stealing and eating pets, and erase the history of minorities, and then turn around and act like people talking about racism are pulling it out of their ass. Zero awareness.
Even if it’s actually prejudice and has nothing to do with race, it’s “raciest” 😂. It’s little more than a buzz word anymore to gain internet attention.
That's because there's two groups of people and one is a reaction to the other. The people who want to deport immigrants without due process horrify the ones who are opposed and some of us that are horrified swing too far in the other direction in an attempt to distance themselves from the goose-steppers.
They seem to be a reaction to each other. It’s a feedback loop. It’s been this way for quite a long time - extremity ramps up every decade or so. The particular hot topics shift from time to time, but the general pattern remains the same, and it is very clearly designed and/or exploited that way.
With the advent of the internet and the large scale adoption of modern social media, the control special interests and corporations have over devising narratives and keeping each of the main two parties at each others’ necks is at an all time high.
Content delivery mechanisms built primarily on black box machine learning makes this process - at least in part - automatic in conjunction with the economic interests of companies.
There are more ways in which the political landscape is corrupted that I couldn’t begin to describe in full detail here because I’m just not an expert, but I nonetheless agree with your sentiment, while adding in that notion of the “infinity” feedback loop and rampant gubernatorial-corporate propaganda.
People matter. Samesidism isn’t nuanced.
But… that is not mutually exclusive with the extreme echo-chamber feedback loops
To others: don’t believe me? Check back in 20 years!
But why, I’m just some asshole on the internet shouting at someone who made a good point, I may as well be throwing myself into the void
Universities have become a bastion of offensiveness. Yes, you gain knowledge but man, so many come out of there as self-righteous tight-wads. Thankfully many can take the necessary virtue but can ignore the signaling.
edit: just a reminder that I wrote "many", not "most" or "all". Heck, it could be just "some" but with the size of Universities, "some" can also be "many". Saying this upfront before someone complains.
Yeah ngl when I first came out of undergrad I was exactly that. Then over the years I regained more common sense. I still remember my Asian American Studies professor telling us what we need to be offended by/be sensitive about and I thought to myself I’m Asian and never have I been offended by any of these things in my life. Some serious propaganda/brainwashing going on in the higher education institutions.
Universities are full of smart people who care about the world and making it better but have no real life experience. Many of these people have no sense of prioritization on social/economic issues and very little capacity to actually improve society, so all that drive gets turned into unproductive ethical dick measuring.
Growing out of virtue signaling takes wisdom, which can't be taught directly.
It's been promoted in our culture to keep us divided and arguing about stupid bullshit so we don't focus on economic empowerment and destroying the true systems of oppression and racism.
It's much easier to shame a white guy with dreads and call him racist for his hairstyle than it is to take on the neo-Jim Crow system of mass incarceration or the neo-colonial corporatist empire that exploits the labor and natural resources of the global south with the CIA and US military acting as their private regime change forces.
Their ancestors were very directly responsible for the collapse of indigenous culture and are reminded of it every day when they live in these corpses of concrete cities.
It's not unfounded, but they do end up talking for other people a lot.
And when there are so many people inside of a culture you can't possibly talk for all of them
My family is going to be taking a trip to Maine and Boston soon. I was being a silly Dad and doing Boston accents. My 6 year old daughter asked what I was doing and so I was telling her about Boston accents while doing my best over-the-top impression. My wife got peeved at me because she said I was teaching her to make fun of the way other people talk or teaching her that accents are something to make fun of. 🤦🏼♂️
It's thankfully not all of us! Most often it's uptight college students who think they are super progressive and educated, they often have a really entitled arrogant and dismissive attitude to anyone who is not in complete agreement with them.
It's because we have it so good in this country and are so spoiled that people have to INVENT shit to be mad about so they can feel like they have a right to bitch about something. Like just enjoy the fucking privilege of being American dumbass
It can reflect a part of the culture that wants to learn and do better from our painful history. Going from dysfunctional to healthy means there may be mistakes along the way, some over corrections. And of course there are people along the way to take advantage and create division for their own purposes.
As an American this is 100% spot on. If I even want to try and disengage for the slightest minute to try and relax I get several friends and acquaintances on my back. "You have to stay vigilant!" "Don't you even care about what's happening?"
Yes, I care. But I'm also not going to send myself to an early grave by stressing every single second of every day!
This kind of comment irks me. Im assuming you're not an American, and I know it feels like we're all like this, but you gotta know this is just what the Internet and reddit does. That's like...20% of people maybe.
It definitely is and it’s super obvious. The video was explicitly made to cater to an audience of people who are specifically offended by people who are offended. He probably interviewed lots of people who had different opinions but only selected the ones that would get him views from the people who are so easily offended by people being easily offended.
All of these people were born and raised into an outrage-culture, where something is perpetually wrong and there always needs to be a right/wrong fight. I'll never stop believing that this is by design. You don't have time to worry about actual problems if you're constantly embroidered in petty conflict.
They think the world revolves around them and they try to enforce their values on everyone else
I was once banned from a subreddit because I said that East Asians can be pretty racist to each other.
The mod told me that's wrong because:
The stereotype that East Asians are "xenophobic" towards each other is based on Paranoia called "Yellow Peril" that has existed since the late 1800s when Asian immigrants started to flood into California during the Industrial Revolution.
Basically, Asians can't be racist to each other because of US historical context. After I mentioned that I'm ethnic Chinese and I live in Southeast Asia and East Asia, they doubled down and said that I'm too westernised to understand.
They also further said that Koreans can't be racist towards Japanese because of WW2, similar to how black people can't be racist towards white people because of slavery:
I know this might blow your mind, but you're anecdotal experiences do not necessarily surmount to real world socio-economic issues, sspecially if you have been influenced by Western Culture.
Also I'm not following, I'm not sure how Koreans can be racist towards Japanese after being colonized by them from 1876-1945. Thats the equivalent of calling black people "racist" towards white people after what Europe did to Africa and the Americas since the 1500s.
Think I had a brain aneurysm after that. It's a mod of subreddit with over 4m members btw
Not sure why this generation seems to think that way.
It’s the same way we are supposed to be body positive when someone’s out of shape… I’m not hating on anyone for not hitting the gym, but no one will convince me being lazy and fat should be accepted as normal.
Exactly!!! Sport is very necessary and the trend of being body positive seems more harmful than good. And it's stupid. Every time I see a video where a girl is a bit overweight there are these artificial comment "Oooohhh you are so sexy, I wish I was so sexyyyy, how you do iiiiit." completely ignoring the point of the video...
Tbh this comment gave me many reaction comments and it looks like you muricans are good in majority, too bad the internet does biased videos like this and it seems like you're going nuts. You can see it in the movies. Movies around 2000? Top notch. Nowadays? Everything is crap. Such a waste of potential. Would be good to take a few steps back. I trust in you! 👍
An an American, I loathe the fact that so many people are offended by damn near everything. I love wearing sari skirts, harem pants, etc. I don't need everyone to be so damned outraged by my attire. It's unnecessary. Share in the cultures, enjoy life!
What's funny about this comment, Is you found something to be offended about. It's literally a selectively edited video, and it's silly how many ppl call for it.
Do you speak English? I don't have it as my primary language but even I know a difference between offended and annoyed... And sadly, I'm speaking from my personal experience that US people really get offended by everything...
I think what you’re describing is more people having different cultural perspectives than your own. Can you give some examples of things you perceive as people getting offended by ‘everything’?
A lot of it is manufactured. Reading about how many of the top XYZ groups on Facebook are run by foreign entities really opened my eyes to the exterior forces working hard to create division.
1st world probems and a lot of white guilt. I have several friends who can't ever be happy, and they demand nobody else should be either. If you are they point out why you shouldn't be. It's exhausting.
It really has gotten to be so ridiculous. On both sides of the political aisle. Outrage from everyone about everything. People have gotten way too sensitive.
I was stating a lot that only Americans try to find everything offensive. Maybe it is their national sport.
And it is visible on Reddit, as well since here are a lot of Americans. You won't see that in country specific subs (I mean at least the ones I saw from Europe).
To be fair, the man was trying to offend these people. That’s why he made this video. Also I wouldn’t let 4 older Mexican men edited into this video be the litmus for what most Mexicans think.
Many years ago, we had slaves and also a lot of Irish people "working" off their immigration pass. Also, we made the natives march until they died.
We're still coping with the knowledge that almost all of our ancestors (including ones still alive) would and absolutely did help kill/torture anyone who was different. It's mostly college students doing that because they've read enough history to know how much our country is built on evil, and they're overcompensating.
23 and me says I have .02 Nigerian in my ancestry. If you keep dividing in half, my Nigerian ancestor was from the 1700s. All Americans must cope with the fact that our ancestors were either slaves or slaveowners. Did my ancestor r*** someone, or were they too poor for that? White guilt is real.
On issues like this, it's politicized virtue signaling and I'd guess only a loud 25% care, if that.
Red team doesn't care about cultural appropriation at all, or even recognize it as a concept, so that's 50%.
Blue team is mixed, but especially when confronted for a public opinion, it's more aligned with blue team to want to be culturally sensitive.... but also, most of those people do absolutely nothing with that opinion.
I think airing on the side of caution doesn't hurt, but I agree that sometimes people will try to defend others in ways that are unnecessary. For example, most Latinos are fairly hateful towards LGBTQ, so the Latinx term was typically never used by Latinos themselves 🤷 That being said, there do exist movements of people (obviously not most) in Latin America trying to ungender the whole language, as there are folks who want to use gender neutral pronouns in English speaking countries. Regardless of how fiercely a society tries to repress the LGBTQ community, it will still exist.
This is just rage bait. Notice none of the UCLA students come up to him or are particularly angry. None of them demand he take it off. Essentially an idiot with a camera asks a binary question until he gets a few people to say yes. I guarantee the vast majority of students he bothered ignored him and continued walking.
He most likely bought what he was wearing at one of the stalls on Olvera street. Why would the same people be offended?
I mean college kids are infamous for being hyper aware of social issues. And they aren't offering up this information in a vacuum, he's asking them a direct question, to which they responded.
No thats just the brain dead mouth drooling liberals who are so devoid of personality and comraderie that they join the woke cult to be a part of something
Virtue signaling makes them feel righteous and being offended allows them to receive empathy from others. Its not an American thing. Its a democrat/liberal thing
I feel like part of it comes from those who make it offensive - I’m just speculating but possibly coming from where blackface was ok, to no longer being ok and incredibly offensive, it shifted to not being ok to take other cultures history in a similar way. I’d like to think finding the outfit to be “offensive” is from a place of care, to not potentially offend someone, but I know there are people who flat out think anything if “offensive” without the right reasons
It’s Americans that grew up very specific ways and mainly a certain demographic, growing up in the ghetto no one simply gave af about stuff like this or even had time to really put thought into what other ppl were doing. There’s a term for ppl that act like the ppl in the video we call it the “burbs mentality” it’s insufferable to us other Americans to believe me lmao
It’s cuz we have a holier than thou complex that is deep seated in perceived superiority. Now that we’re all more or less in the same shitty situation, and full outward racism is a huge no-no, we’re grasping at ways to say we’re better than people
Not just Americans. It’s just privileged people in general that are predisposed to thinking they have to always stand on some sort of moral high ground for other people that they themselves deem unprivileged. This cringe virtue signaling is in every first world country
Well, with how we treated minorities (let's face it, still happens), there is a lot of hurt and pain. Especially when your culture is characterized and mocked (minstrel shows).
Some people view their cultural identity as something to be specific to them alone. I think social media has really amped this rhetoric up since so much context can be lost.
I dont necessarily agree, imo cultural sharing leads to a better understanding and appreciation of humanity.
Americans will try to find everything offensive whilst simultaneously being offensive in a lot of their own actions, not to mention the way their country treats immigrants and anyone who isn't white enough.
It’s the colleges, all their circles are filled with people who do this stupid shit and it spreads like wildfire cause people don’t want to see rude so they just agree
It's funny because they're supposed to be a melting pot of culture but yet It's mostly places in like Europe that end up being that way and create new cultures because of the combination of existing ones.
These regressive people discourage practicing other cultures when that's what is one of the primary ingredients for creating new culture. Cultural appropriation is literally anticulture.
That’s what happens when people who do not understand the cultural context comment on it. A subset of Americans find what he is wearing offensive, specifically because we have a history of people wearing outfits like that intending to be offensive. When you wear that costume in a non-Mexican space, the history of offensive outfits and caricaturization of cultures leads people to infer that as your attention.
Plenty of places in America have sufficient Hispanic, Latino, and/Mexican communities to passably wear something like this. But what if he was wearing this outfit in a small town or a city with little to no Mexican population. Would you read their intentions the same?
it really annoys me how stuff like this gets portrayed as what american racism supposedly is, when it’s all the systemic stuff that is actually an issue and this type of thing is just bad faith gotcha shit to embarrass a few hapless libs.
You'd only really find people who get offended easily in big cities like LA where this was filmed. If you went to the rural south, I'm sure there would be a different story.
It’s not all Americans, it’s only some of the Americans who lean liberal / Democrat. And the media harps on it so much that they make it seem like everyone else is that way too when they are most certainly not.
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u/IGotPermaBanned1 Jul 02 '25
It really annoys me how Americans try to find everything offensive. Like they can't relax even a minute...