(February 8, 2015 at 12:39 pm)Dystopia Wrote: I am using race as a social construct. I'm aware that biologically there's no evidence for "races", but I'm warning people beforehand to avoid comments like "race doesn't exist". When I talk about race, I mean physical and cultural features we link to specific groups of people
I am curious, what drives some people to be racist against their own race? This isn't as rare as I thought. My girlfriend has gipsy ancestry, which basically means she looks white with slight Indian-like traits. She hates her ancestry, she really does, she is racist against gipsy people and denies that she has such ancestry. It's not rare for her to suggest a stereotype such as "Gypsies live on welfare and are criminals" is true. I don't really make a big deal about this, as people have the right to be racist against anyone and it doesn't impact me that she thinks half of her biological family (she's adopted) are a bunch of low class morons.
But it bothers me somehow - If I found out I had ancestry from 'x' ethnic group, I wouldn't care much, but I wouldn't simply say that group sucks because I would automatically self-label myself due to me being a part of that group.
Another example - A colleague in university is black, and he once said "Whenever I see a black man at night, I cross the street right away".
Why do people do this?
I see nothing strange about it. Just because someone is racist does not have to mean they automatically think their own ethnicity is the best, or even good. Especially, if they were not brought up in that particular culture.
It seems like there might be a lot more to your girlfriend's story, than you described, that can explain her attitude. How come she was adopted and at what age? What happened to her biological parents? Does her adopted family have a prejudice against gypsies or other races? Was her ethnic background known to/ suspected by other children and adults when she was growing up? Because if so - they were mocking her for it, there's no question about it - I have yet to visit a country where "gypsy" is not used as a derogatory term. You seem to be suggesting she simply found out about her ancestry one day, when she was fully developed as a person and decided on the spot she hated gypsies, which I'm finding hard to believe.
Being an adopted child is difficult in itself, looking (even slightly) "exotic" can make it way worse, especially growing up. I'd guess she had some bad experiences, because of her ethnicity and instead of hating the culture in which she was raised, she - logically - "decided" (most likely sub-consciously) to blame the culture that she has next to nothing in common with, other than a few physical traits, for which she may have been persecuted. I'm not saying it's "right", just that it's understandable.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
