I learned of it by watching my parents use it while growing up in the Jim Crow south.
You people were never supposed to know of it. You could not be trusted not to burn the businesses to the ground.
Are any reader surprised to learn that such is still very much needed and that several things things may well still exist and be in use to this day?
Same as it ever was. Thats why those of us who live through it still teach our children and grandchildren to "Never Trust Whitey". Funny how White folk are offended by that concept.
You're totally ignoring or forgetting context. Which is that the green book exists because of the Jim Crow laws at the time, along with the general racism.
It's not remotely racist to stay away from white businesses when there is a certain possibility of service refusal, and a possibility that you might be assulted and killed. Hence the necessity of this book.
To say that his family was racist for not trusting white people with the books info, is to be totally ignorant (Tulsa is one example).
You have an extremely weird idea of racism that is not grounded in reality.
I'm a white lady who grew up in the south and yeah, I got absolutely no problems with black people not trusting us white folks. We've treated them like shit for a long-ass time.
That's a naive belief to have in practice. If you are part of a group that has been systematically oppressed by a different group because of your skin color, there is a valid correlation between trust and skin color. To think otherwise is... well... naive.
> Some people you can trust. Others you can't. This has no correlation with skin color.
That's the ideal, which I fully support, but tragically it is not at all the reality of people with black skin in the U.S.
> racist
In a small way, it's an interesting philosophical debate about semantics, but it has nothing to do with the very real, critical issue, which has caused centuries of suffering and oppression for millions of people. While we argue about words, they are in real pain.
I think this is less a correlation with skin color than culture, tradition, inertia and education (or lack thereof). It's demonstrably real, and why it takes decades or centuries to undo. The lasting inertia of institutional racism in the United States is pretty hard to ignore, though I've encountered my share of people who think it's all in the past.
It's not racist to assume that you can more safely trust other people that look like you, because most people are racist and are therefore less likely to betray the trust of someone who looks like them. There are sociology / anthropology / psychology experiments and studies and stuff if you look.
Yeah, going through life using sociology / anthropology / psychology experiments as a moral compass sounds like something a well adjusted person would do.
When my Malaysian immigrant parents bought their first ever house in America (actually still to this day their only house),
It was in a neighborhood in what was a small town about 20-30 minutes away from the Capitol city in Boise, ID
It was around 2000 and we were the first non-white family to move into that neighborhood.
Our experience there was a mixed bag.
There was some of the nicest neighbrods who helped us move in with their pick up trucks saving us a ton of money which we didn’t have at the time.
And even a year ago when my parents moved to California, many of the neighbors got their pickup trucks again and helped them with the move.
But that was the good parts. Sadly there were also other kinds of folk.
We were Buddhist/Hindus but because we were brown and many people didn’t know about Hinduism, basically all brown Asian people of middle-eastern or south Asian ancestry/ethnicity/looks got lumped in with the same stereotypes
And my parents had met some Malaysians who were studying abroad here in Idaho which got them so excited they invited them over.
They were Malaysian Muslims wearinf the headscarf and stuff and so when they were leaving our house
My mom gave the wife of the couple a big hug and one of the not so friendly neighbors saw that so I’m guessing they assumed we were Muslim.
And I got lots of terrorist comments and mean bomb jokes thrown at me.
I guess I never understood Xenophobia towards Muslims
Because my mom (who is Hindu) had best friends from her childhood in India who were Muslims
And also I had visited Malaysia which is 60% Muslim.
And they were very open minded and modern people just like here in the West.
In fact Malaysia was far more progressive than India (which is where my mom grew up during her childhood because Malaysia was having race riots at the time so she stayed in India for her safety).
Malaysia is a multi-ethic multi-religious countries made of multi-generation Malays (Indonesian immigrants), multi-generations Chinese, and multi-generation Indians.
And they all date in high school and are super liberal-progressive and big of fighting for women’s rights and taking rose and sexual assault seriously it is very surprising
Since on average most Hindus and Muslims I’ve met or seen in India or the Middle East are very conservative and the record on women’s sexual rights in India and the Middle East is very limited still to this day.
So I guess SouthEast Asia or at least Malaysia is oddly different.
So my experience with Muslims in general is probably quite different from most conservative Westerners who haven’t traveled I guess.
It’s sad how ignorance and lack of exposure is probably one of the biggest contributors to bigotry and ignorance, of course trying to maintain power and control over minorities is probably also a strong reason.
I remember in Middle School all the stuff people kept saying about Hindusm
“Why does your religious step on babies?” Etc etc.
I remember asking my mom that when I got back home from school and she laughed saying “If we stepped on babies I’m pretty sure India wouldn’t be overpopulated”
But prejudice by the majority race/religion isn’t limited to America.
When I visited Malaysia (I’m an American citizen but was a child immigrant who left Malaysia at the age of 5 and grew up here in the US my entire life since the age of 5) in 2007 there was an old fair skinned Malay lady in the train and when an dark skinned Indian man sat next to her
She started yelling racist things to him telling him to go back to India
Even though he’s a 4th generation Tamil (Tamil is South Indian) Malaysian.
And in India recently I’m starting to see some rising Hindu nationalism similar to the Trump Christian nationalism.
Both of which are silly since they go against the founding Constituonal principles of secularism and religious freedom enshrined in both country’s constitutions.
I don’t understand why but this phenomenon of the majority race or religion fearing minorities and wanting to suppress minorties to maintain power
Is quite widespread on a global scale.
Anyway there wasn’t really a point to this ramble other than to share a story and some perspective on race and religion issues.
I saw people commenting trying to say you were race baiting and stuff for your comment about your experience growing up in America.
And I disagreed with them and didn’t like how they were saying you were being racist with your comments and they were implying like that stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore.
I disagreed with those commenters because at Berkeley we had folks who were part of the BLM movement mentioning what they went through growing up and also all the statistics surrounding incarceration and police brutality.
What they experienced was so bad and nothing like what I experienced in my lifetime.
So I shared my experience to say I agree with you that there definitely are prejudiced folks out there.
I was in no way saying my experience was similar to yours. I’m so sorry if that’s how it came out.
Your feels are not why the Green Book exists and the Civil Rights Movement was not to move past mentalities like his. The Civil Rights Movement was to make white people stop systematically oppressing black people and taking advantage of their persons and their property. Those survival mechanisms you half-heartedly nod to are still necessary today because the police in America will kill you without a blink if you're black and the likelihood that they get away with it is very, very high.
Re-casting the movement to make white people stop oppressing black people as a shot at "mentalities like his," when white people have been oppressing, killing, and enslaving black people for the entirety of the history of this country is beyond the pale.
And, to be very clear, I am white. I'm also not dishonest, though, and that matters.
Actually you're being very dishonest, namely through the use of overgeneralization. Not all police will kill black people "without a blink", and not all white people from the last 300 freaking years can be lumped together.
Regardless, my "feels" have nothing to do with it. How do you propose to solve racial inequality if people categorically refuse to trust each other on the basis of race? Moving beyond "don't trust whitey" and similar mentalities on all sides would seem to be a prerequisite.
The "whole purpose of the civil rights movement" was to secure rights for people who didn't have them, not to placate the sensibilities of the oppressors.
In the US, to this day, we have terribly segregated and unequal communities where "never trust whitey" is a survival strategy, especially when it comes to police.
And moving past mentalities like those of the parent post would naturally secure those rights even more strongly.
For my part I was taught that not trusting people on the basis of race was racist and that I shouldn't do it. I was taught that making general assumptions about people based on race was racist and that I shouldn't do it. I was taught all this as early as kindergarten.
Sure there are some areas today where "never trust whitey" might still sadly be a survival strategy. You could also say it's a survival strategy for a black person at a Klan meeting. The issue is applying it as a general rule as the parent poster did. We're not going to solve any of the remaining racial inequalities if people categorically refuse to trust each other on the basis of race. That's arguably the definition of racism.
> And moving past mentalities like those of the parent post would naturally secure those rights even more strongly.
A critical part of "moving past" this means recognizing that we are not past this.
A lot of people treat things like the Civil Rights Acts or the Emancipation Proclamation as a faucet. Turn off the faucet and racism is fixed. In reality, it's more like a house fire. It raged bright for a long time, thankfully you put it out. Of course you can't move right back in. There's cleanup to do. There's rebuilding to do. You wouldn't tell the family outside the just-extinguished fire to "move past" it.
White people (myself included) are insulated form a lot of these effects, so it's important we stop and force ourselves to consider them. It's too easy otherwise to pretend the fire's out and everyone's peacefully dreaming in their beds.
> Sure there are some areas today where "never trust whitey" might still sadly be a survival strategy. ... The issue is applying it as a general rule as the parent poster did.
Maybe it's a lot worse than you think, because a lot of people with actual experience being black seem to say so. The people who say it's not are, IME, the people with the least experience.
Those areas where it is a valid survival strategy for blacks in America are, in addition to the usual "oh, most of the former sundown towns after the sun goes down," but also almost any place the police ever are, ever.
It is not on individual blacks trying to get by in their day to "solve racial inequalities". It is on those of us with privilege and power to ally with those without such privilege and power and fight with them, not to demand that they do stupid and self-harmful things because we, the privileged and insecure, would like to believe that things are just great.
Things are really, really bad for a lot of people right now. It's worth considering their viewpoints before foghorning your way in with yours.
Not "didnt have them..." rights that were usurped by the majority for fun and profit. There is a difference. Getting what back $10 that was stolen from me is not the same as making a new $10.
Using talking points for what amounts to racewar incitement is seriously against the Hacker News guidelines. We've banned this account because we've already asked you to please stop posting like this it doesn't appear as though the necessary change is forthcoming.
it is. the rest of us are trying to survive out here with secret trump supporters in our workplaces, schools, universities, restaurants, grocery stores, and every aspect of our day to day lives.
How? I never challenged the validity of his/her experiences, simply their relevance to the modern day and how useful they are. Apparently that's too much for some around here, people are putting all sorts of words in my mouth.
Behind what? No one "wins" an internet debate. I read an opinion I strongly disagreed with and challenged it. And while I have the time I'm continuing to challenge some of the responders. It's honestly been thought-provoking.
Instead of trying to shut them down yet again, perhaps it's time we took seriously the fears and experiences of black people. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that they are very real (not that I would have reason to doubt them).
> That's not to say discrimination doesn't exist today, and maybe "Never Trust Whitey" was a survival mechanism in the Jim Crow south, but I was taught the whole purpose of the civil rights movement was to move past mentalities like yours.
The reverse racism bit isn't real if you think about it. Allow me to ease your mind: You have nothing to fear. You won't be lynched; racist police won't make you drop your pants in a 'stop & frisk'; if you do get arrested, the court system is mostly run by white people so racism won't cause you to be put in jail and be given a disproportionately harsh sentence; the laws are mostly written by white people so you won't have to worry about near-open discrimination, like the war on drugs, or just plain ignorance about the problems you face; there won't be a whole major party running on subtle discrimination against you with dog whistle messaging; almost every job you apply for will be with white people, so your skin color won't hurt (and will often help) you there; your kids won't wonder if they are inferior, because everyone they see on TV and in leadership will look like them (except for the criminal characters on TV); you won't have to have 'the talk' with your kids about the police; you won't have to worry about how to give them realistic expectations, such as they will have a difficult time in certain careers - what if they want to be police detective, governor of Alabama, or star developer in Silicon Valley? You're safe; take a deep breath.
I just read an article in the NY Times about NYPD police detectives. In the intelligence division, a premier assignment dealing with terrorism, almost all black officers were put in what was called the "Rap Unit"; their job there was security for prominent entertainers (rappers, I presume), and they were promoted at far lower rates than white peers.
Yeah, I want people in general to stop judging others on the basis of race. Clearly the exact opposite objective of the civil rights movement.. /sarcasm
I never said black people were the problem, or that white people are already there. I said mentalities like "never trust whitey" are the problem, and I'd include corresponding white mentalities like an irrational fear of black people, stop and frisk, police abuse, etc in that category.
The Civil rights movement will make no progress if it alienates potential allies by first demanding penance for one's skin color.
There is an interactive display of the Green Book at the
National Museum of African American History and Culture https://nmaahc.si.edu/ (I think on the second or third floor).
I saw this very eye-opening video of a presentation on the Green Book, which I hadn't heard of before. The stories some of the participants tell transformed how I look at the experiences of black Americans.
You people were never supposed to know of it. You could not be trusted not to burn the businesses to the ground.
Same as it ever was. Thats why those of us who live through it still teach our children and grandchildren to "Never Trust Whitey". Funny how White folk are offended by that concept.