Since I haven’t found a sub for sociology I decided to post this question here looking for a scientific answer. I’m looking for a more empirical answer rather than opinion based since I think this is critical in understanding such a complex and nuanced topic.
So I noticed that in the USA people are often strongly divided based on whether they identify as being “black” or “white”. Basically many people there make this a big part about their identity and separate communities based on it to the point where they developed different cultures and even different ways of talking and behavior solely based on whether they identify as “black” or “white”.
As far as I understand it’s based on the brightness of their skin color because of slavery but it’s not quite clear to me who is considered “black” or “white” since I’ve seen many people who for example have very bright skin and seem to have almost no African ethnicity but they still identify and talk/behave as “being black”.
I wonder why they still have this culture and separation since segregation ended in 1964.
Because in other regions like South America such as Brazil for example this culture doesn’t seem to exist that much and people just identify as people and they talk, behave and connect the exact same way no matter the skin brightness. People such in South America seem way more mixed and seem to not have this type of separation like in the USA based on external features like skin, hair or eye color.
To me it kind of feels like this is a political and economic reason in the US that they purposefully want to divide people for their gains. Because the extent to which this seems to have been normalized in Americas every day conversation both in private and in public/commercial spaces feels like brainwashing. And I wonder if this will ever improve since it seems to go as far as people being proud about these racist stereotypes and think this is completely normal. But considering the broader global context and America’s historical background it doesn’t seem normal. Especially with America’s context of slavery you would expect there to be strong efforts of fighting these stereotypes and having a political leadership that doesn’t see “color” and only judges based on an individual’s personality.
Where I live the government literally built a useless freeway just to separate poor black communities from the middle class white ones. This is actually very common.
You imply people make their identity around race and thus choose to be separate because they are only comfortable in their culture, but you have the causality the wrong way around. People for the most part don’t make their race their whole identity and voluntarily separate their communities based on that - most people actually seem keen on interacting and sharing culture and space, but there are racist policies still that keep people segregated and create dramatically different lived realities among populations. These racist policies physically separate people, and the economic impacts keep the disadvantaged folk stuck in ghettos and make it hard to integrate into more affluent “white” and mixed spaces.
Black folks are treated differently by the police, by educators, by employers, and this translates to different economic, health, and political outcomes for many people of color (tbh viewing this as “black” and “white” is not how race works in the U.S., it’s more like “white” and “not white” with a spectrum and some inconsistency based on how “white passing” some in-between people are).
Not to mention that property taxes are what fund local schools and infrastructure, so if you live in a more affluent “white” neighborhood you have better funded schools and are more likely to go to college, get a good job, afford a home, etc. and growing up in a poor neighborhood means your schools are not as well funded and the opportunities available to you are limited.
Decades of inofficial segregation that is being enforced by zoning, landlords, prices, corrupt officials, CIA drug campaigns, etc
Basically slums. If you physically seperate groups of people, they will always see the other as different and eventually develop distinct cultures, dialects, etc. which only furthers the social seperation.
Centuries of slavery, followed by another century of segregation, and nowadays we have one of the most racist countries in the world.
While racism is probably different in S American countries like Brazil, I don’t for one second believe it no longer exists there.
One, because I’ve met Brazilians and read the news about Brazil and consumed Brazilian media. Two, there is still a strong correlation between race and class, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Brazil, see the section on Persisting Inequality.
Yeah, just because racism might look different in other countries doesn’t mean that other countries don’t have racism. For Latin America in particular, early colonialism was often perpetrated by single men enslaving the local populace and/or importing from elsewhere. The plurality of people enslaved were sent to Brazil, with additional huge numbers going to carribean nations and the rest of central/south america. Only ~10% went to what is now the US and Canada.
English colonization in north america at the very earliest was also single men, but it quickly became a place where families would immigrate, so the colonists population was bolstered naturally. In Latin America, the colonists “intermarried” (which i don’t think is a responsible word to use in this circumstance) with those under their control. This lead to different class structure than in the English colonies. It’s only natural that this would result in different concepts of race.
Racism exists everywhere, but the States are a special kind of racist.
Have you ever visited an Asian country?
Lived in Indonesia.
Not really adding, it’s just a comment on the topic: I’ve always been confused by mass media saying Kamala Harris is black. There seems to be something about her physical features that mark her “black” in the eye of US Americans.
“Black” doesn’t really refer to skin colour, just like “Jew” in the 3rd Reich didn’t really refer to religion.
I’m aware. It’s just that the range of who I consider black differs from that of US Americans. It would never have occured to me to call Harris “black” if I hadn’t heard someone call her “black”.
