First we need to define racism. What is racism? You believe a particular group of people is better/worse than you based on race,
Or
is it that you are generalizing certain social/behavioral trends with them?
I would say if it’s the latter, racism exists everywhere no matter how hard we try to say it doesn’t. What matters is how you as a person or society come together to negate it... in that regard US is failing. Because there is a lot of systemic “generalization” .. as a brown person with a Muslim name, I got “randomly selected” quite a lot at airports. Is that racism? Blacks do get pulled over a lot for traffic stops. They do get asked a lot of questions cops probably won’t ask me, such as “have you had an alcoholic drink?”
Overall, I say all minorities in the US do see a lot of generalization and stereotyping, and if that accounts to the definition of racism you go with, then yes, US is racist.
But if you want to claim that most Americans believe that you are better or worse as a human being purely because of the color of skin, then I would say no, a vast majority of people probably do not believe that.
Yes, racism could have different meanings to different people.
My experience has been totally the opposite. Never ever was I randomly selected for checking. And even if I had been, I will gladly cooperate with TSA and make everyone’s job easy. There have been incidents where an elderly white lady or a young White male were randomly selected in the same flight as I was, but not me, even with the fact that my first name is Muhammad.
So far as police pulling over blacks and asking additional questions go, in my opinion it’s a mix of two main factors - first, a very, very very small minority of white cops who are racist but secondly, and most importantly, it’s the statistics and data that pushes cops to have a certain behavior towards blacks.
Due to gun violence in the American streets, it’s all a matter of probability. Either the cop dies or he kills. Almost every criminal has a gun in the car.
So when cops chase or pull over a black guy, with the information pulled out against the license plate, they perhaps also operate on probabilities.
When a total of 9% of certain race is responsible for 80% crime in the country, and that certain 9% race is also responsible for 50% of homicides in the country then any human brain will develop a certain stereotyping towards that race.
Does racism exist in America? You bet it does!
But those who complain the most about it, must also own it up.
Why don’t Indians Pakistanis, Chinese, Arabs, Latino Americans etc, complain so much about racism? Look at their crime statistics and look at their contribution towards paying taxes and working hard to make an honest living.
I still believe that American police with all its flaws and short comings, is quite darn good.
You dial 911 and they are at your service within minutes. Hats off to our police officers. If you are a criminal, you shouldn’t have a prob with them. In almost all cases in general, you cooperate and it makes everyone’s life easy. It’s as simple as that.
And USA as country, IMO, is still one of the best in the world. There may be racism and politics on higher level. And we have our growing pains like every other country, but for general public, there is an abundance of opportunities.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what’s your skin color or what’s your religion.
You can get education of your choice, you can start a business, and you can live a pretty good life because “where there is a will, there is a way”, stands true in USA.
If this wasn’t been the case, we or our parents would’ve not moved here, and would happily live in Pakistan or India.
