I have come to a realization.

Ironweaver

The fairly regular talks about social issues and SJW lunatics we have over here have made me think more deeply about the whole thing - to look at the usual theories, analyze them, break them apart and reconstruct them all over again to see what are their exact flaws and try to come up with a pleasing answer. For a good amount of time domestic racism has been in my spotlight, and I think I have finally come to a conclusion.

What do the typically mentioned victims of domestic racism, non-white minorities in America, immigrants in Western Europe and Gyspies in Eastern Europe, all have in common? They are all, on average, drastically poorer than the dominant ethnic group, even their lower classes. When you ask a typical racist what are his issues with the aforementioned groups, they will claim that they are "dirty, lazy, undisciplined, uneducated, coarse, do petty crime etc", all of which are directly related to their material status and class and the same adjectives that a wealthy snob would use to describe the working class. Their skin color, language or other marks of discernment are, in the minds of the privileged, a subconscious association to their class. Thus, most forms of domestic racism directly stem for classism. Oppressed groups aren't poor because they are discriminated against, but discriminated against because they are poor. Thus, the prerequisite for getting rid of domestic racism is either helping the discriminated to stand on the same level as the dominant ethnicity in the material and class sense (which would be an extremely long and difficult process) or establishing a classless society.

You can often see upper-middle class bourgeois liberals fervently rallying against racism and making fun of the poor and working class at the same time. They are hypocrites, and racist in their own way. Ask yourself - despite what they claim, would somebody like that want to live in a black ghetto, an immigrant neighborhood or next to a gypsy carton city? They, consciously or subconsciously, hate them, not because of their skin color, but because of their "poverty, dirtiness and barbarism". They would nenver sacrifice their own social and economic privilege. The fundamental fault of liberalism is that it seeks to establish social equality, albeit in a limited form, while fundamentally preserving the social status quo, the class system and capitalist economy, which are the sources of many of those inequalities. It's impossible.

ClockworkUniverse

Oppressed groups aren't poor because they are discriminated against, but discriminated against because they are poor.

I would argue that it's not really an either/or thing. Once discrimination or poverty happens, the other will kick in pretty inevitably.

JHM

What CW said. It's more of the two feeding off of one another than anything so straightforward as one making the other. Discrimination causes poverty; poverty causes discrimination. They feed off of one another like some hideous ouroboros.

Ironweaver

But you will see that most discriminated groups were already poor and economically handicapped to begin with. However, I agree that, while the sources are in poverty, it continues as a cycle. Basically:

poverty --> discrimination --> poverty

ClockworkUniverse

True, but I think that's more because being poor makes it impossible to defend against discrimination. For example, if the colonists arriving in the Americas and the natives had been exactly equal in terms of power, they might well still have hated each other, but the colonists wouldn't have been able to act on that hate to such a horrible extent.

JHM

There's also the matter of motivation directly affecting the nature of discrimination. Take how the French and the English, and moreover different groups thereof, each treated the Native Americans when colonising the New World, particularly in Canada.

Ironweaver

Both of you are correct, but I was talking mostly about domestic racism, that is, racism within a single country/society. Obviously, the colonial era didn't have colonists and natives living in the same society, but as warring factions. The racism and hatred between them was of a different kind, and its sources should be looked for elsewhere.

ClockworkUniverse

That's true.

I do think economics are a source of bigotry, I just don't think they're the source, or that there is any one.

JHM

Indeed. I apologise for the digression.

Domestic racism, especially institutionalised racism, is a very complex and bizarre thing, driven (as you have said) very heavily by class considerations and economics. Take, for example, the racial caste systems that existed in New Orleans and Brazil in the early 19th century, in which a "black" person of a certain class or complexion might own slaves, and a "white" person might be all but a slave given to that person given the proper circumstances.

Any way you cut it, racism is weird.

glennmagusharvey

Also, one can make economic and personal decisions, without race as a criterion, that effectively factor in race due to economic conditions.

For example, an upper-middle-class neighborhood, whose residents generally have white-collar jobs, generally have a lower crime rate than lower-middle-class neighborhoods, whose residents generally have blue-collar jobs.  Upper-middle-class neighborhoods in the United States are also more likely to have few non-white minorities and Hispanics (with the possible exceptions, in recent decades, of east Asians and south Asians).  So, one could choose to live in an upper-middle-class/white-collar neighborhood for safety reasons.  Poorer minorities are less able to enjoy this choice (as UMC/WC neighborhoods generally cost more to live in, because they're nicer).

So you have individual non-racist economic decisions that cause an unintended racial discrimination phenomenon.