An undercurrent of racism? [ramble]

[Just a few thoughts I noted on Facebook, I wanted to preserve them here.]

An undercurrent of racism?

Race or ethnicity is the least interesting thing to me. some people get annoyed or offended if I say it of my background, but to me it wouldn't matter where I or you are from. And if you base your life and sense of belonging on race, then I think you're missing something important.
I get this from nationalists who say they "aren't racist, but..." But they worry about the death of the white race, they don't see Islam as a race but they assume Indian(south Asian, in general) and middle eastern people are Muslims. And yes, they're the same people who worry about extremist Islam but mock Muslims who don't stick to a hardline view of the faith, thus condemning moderation within the faith to a degree. Islam isn't a race, but a lot of critics of Islam, mostly older men, see a brown person from north Africa, middle east or Indian or maybe Indonesia, and they assume they're Muslim and they might be the enemy to some degree. Basically, suggest; "If they aren't here to attack us they're here to outbreed us." So I'm not a fan of the not-racist-racists, or closeted racists, or those who otherwise don't see that they're the kind of commenting fools who gives, anyone who wants it, an example of ignorance and casual racism.

When I begin to feel like the anti-racists begin to become the racists. [Ramble]

When I begin to feel like the anti-racists begin to become the racists. [Ramble]

When raised as a kid, in the 80s, I didn't see race. PC culture worked as early as the late 80s for me. Working-class, had very little. Didn't see race. I recall a very dark-skinned girl called Natalie, we were good friends, I thought nothing of skin colour differences as I recall. Most friends in that town were white, very few people at that time in that town were anything else.

Much later, I was about 11, a person who was taught racist opinions, who bullied a Malaysian boy. I didn't know it was racist. It just seemed like a joke, as it must have done to the lad who was the bully, but not the boy who was bullied. The bully got that from this family, as a joke, the older generational casual racist humour. If we didn't magnify racial divides and what makes us different we wouldn't have racial divides.

Sadly, the shoe can be on the other foot. Where many magnify the issue of race politics to correct injustice, but often they generalise and promote division. Which makes the new political correctness in some situations conflict with old skool political correctness. As not treating others differently according to race is treated by some as if it is somehow racist. And being of the right or wrong ethnic background or skin tone can allow generalisations that throw some rich black african people who abuse power into the same rank as the abuse and slaved black Africans used as cheap labour across much of the empires of the colonial empires.

This kind of generalisation also means a person of average working-class who is white-European of average poverty ancestry is junked in with the wealthy slave owners and their descendants. And the preachers of this new political view claim to be socialists as they forget class struggles, as they forget those that still exist, preferring to see things only through racial lines and not in a wider view that accounts for many injustices.

I wouldn't say you're a socialist, or even a liberal or conservative if you claim socialism primarily applies via race. Yet many of the shady opinions that I see as racist now are expressed as socially progress. And it is very concerning political shorthand. As when one generalises, it can, as it goes around, become where they don't express a difference between Jewish people and Israelis and the Israeli government(and military). I know it is cliche to bring things back to anti-Semitism, but it is in vogue with many who claim to be educated anti-racists. And as an example it expresses so much of the kind of confusion that is common if you didn't know better. And, in some ways, it not a great distance away from the confusing the average Jew for an extremist Zionist settler on the West Bank.

And it is not unlike mistaking the character of the average UK-Muslim with the stories of ISIS and Grooming gangs.

There is this idea that if you could find someone associated with the greatest ills of the world, as you see it, even if by a stretch of the imagination and by the blurring through generalisation, that even obvious prejudice is justifiable. It is as if the radical voices on the left have taken a few broad notes from the far-right. Where characterisation matters more than the quality of each person's character. And, it is made more socially acceptable if it wrap it in academic language. In the same way that racism has, from time to time, been wrapped up in the words of the church, if only to gain value in the eyes of the people. And more recently, the racist will toy with pseudoscience, just like the snake oil salesman.

I worry only about one thing, that those who think themselves informed lead society with their little collection of ideas, while those who doubt them and those who know better remain muted.