Comment by klaff
4 hours ago
Thanks for the link. I'm a white American who has been lucky enough to visit Sri Lanka! I don't agree with your conclusion that American racism is inescapable, or uniquely so. I believe we can make progress on bigotries - in particular, despite the current and despicable wave against people who are transgender, non-binary, or otherwise queer, I believe we have made significant progress in reducing homophobia over the last 5 decades (the ones I can remember!). On the negative side, I did reach the conclusion (due to what I've seen during the Trump era) that much of what I thought was progress on racism was simply racists learning to code-switch. That part's depressing.
I do not think American racism is inescapable. I do think it is more part of the culture than it is in other places: like caste in India. It makes it more difficult escape because race is treated as an important and immutable characteristic. I find it odd that so many liberal Americans can accept the idea that gender is a matter of identify, while race is a fixed biological characteristic.
The other oddity is a tendency to lump everyone non-white together. Think of phrases such as "global majority".
> I find it odd that so many liberal Americans can accept the idea that gender is a matter of identify, while race is a fixed biological characteristic.
Liberal Americans said race is arbitrary in my experience. And people who said gender identity should be respected believed it was fixed.