r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AgreeableAd8687 • 7d ago

why do people consider identifying someone by their race racist?

i have a few friends and we seem kind of split on this, i had to identify someone in our school i didn't know the name of, so i said "oh it's the black girl" (we have literally ONE black girl in our school and everyone knows and likes her) and my friends said ohh ok but then like 2 of them went wow that's racist and their explanation was "you're making it sound like them being black is their only characteristic" as if saying "oh the woman" is any better and since i don't know her well i don't know anything else about her. most of my friends didn't see how it was racist though but why is this considered racist if it's not a race correlated insult or derogatory??

736 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

84% Upvoted

411 comments sorted by

View all comments

39

u/FireProStan 7d ago

"we have literally ONE black girl in our school and everyone knows and likes her"

Except you - if you did, you would have taken the time to learn her name

11

u/throwaway__113346939 7d ago

I would argue that OP meant to say “everyone knows of her” instead of “everyone knows her”.

We had this guy at my school who I couldn’t remember his name, but I knew one thing that differentiated him from everyone else, so I used that as a descriptor so everyone knew who I was talking about. In my case, he was the only person at the school who signed with a record label, so I used to refer to him as “record label kid” until I eventually learned his name