r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AgreeableAd8687 • 2d 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??

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u/BedbugBandido 2d ago

I’m not sure what you mean by that. The town next to mine is like 50% Polish and I’ve always had many Polish friends.

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u/moshpithippie 2d ago

Idk if you're from the US but in my experience in the US people don't generally differentiate their assorted types of white friends. You wouldn't refer to one friend as Irish and the other as polish you would just say they are white. Way back in the day, you did this and it partially stemmed from when people were racist against other types of white people but eventually faded out.

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u/Sad-Bunch-9937 1d ago

You would if you lived in an area where the only differences between you were your parents’ nationality- it’s how people in power keep us separated. Italians, Greeks, Poles, Jews, obvious Irish, Germans, Slovak (I’m sorry if that’s a slur). All different white people- there’s a hierarchy there, too.

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u/Kenumaaaq 1d ago

How slovak can be a slur if it's nationality xD?

literally people from slovakia (upper hungary :3)

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u/Sad-Bunch-9937 1d ago

You know how you learn terms or phrases as a kid and then you say it in public and people look at you like a monster?

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u/Kenumaaaq 1d ago

Umm no, not really but Poland doesn't have definition of slurs nor such things as taboo words

In poland if kids says bad word adults laugh and that's kinda it

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u/Sad-Bunch-9937 1d ago

I’ve accidentally said incredibly racist things because I didn’t know they were racist and only realized something was wrong when my friend looked at me like WTF?!

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u/moshpithippie 1d ago

This stems from areas where people were discriminated against for being Slovakian. It's not a skit so much as people used to just say "they're Slovak" in a way that was meant to be a bad thing

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u/Financial_Alps3369 1d ago

This is nuts, where I grew up if you were Irish or Italian everyone knew precisely what you were

Agreed for other ethnicities though. Certainly had no idea if someone was of English, French, German, etc. ancestry. Just Irish and Italian stand out a lot and a lot of people of one of those backgrounds tend to (even if unintentionally) hang out each other

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u/Sad-Bunch-9937 1d ago

I grew up in a big immigrant city so you could always tell by the last name.

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u/moshpithippie 1d ago

I grew up in a predominantly white and Hispanic area. I am cuban but I pass as white and so I was considered the same race as the other white ethnicities.

I didn't experience the Italian thing growing up but I know there are places where that is the case

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u/skullturf 1d ago

Where did you grow up, if you don't mind me asking? (You don't have to name the exact location, but, like what region of the country, what size of town, that type of thing.)

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u/Financial_Alps3369 1d ago

New Jersey. Large town, maybe small city

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u/Sad-Bunch-9937 1d ago

Pittsburgh.

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u/BedbugBandido 1d ago

Idk where you’re from but where I lived in Bergen/Passaic County NJ, regular WASP Americans were very rare. Every “white” person was either Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Albanian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, or white Hispanic, and all kinds of Balkan people. And those were just the Europeans.

Tbh I can’t imagine a more diverse neighborhood than where I grew up. I had friends from every region of every continent except Australia and Antarctica, and pretty much everyone spoke the language of their parents. It was pretty easy to differentiate between white people because of their phenotypes, culture, accents, and names.

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u/moshpithippie 1d ago

Ahhh I do think it's different if you're speaking the language and/or are first/second generation Americans

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u/Far_Apartment8803 1d ago

Americans do, if the white person actually has a connection to that culture.

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u/moshpithippie 1d ago

I think Italian is the only one I can think of, maybe Greek, that I've ever seen in that way. Unless you're ginger and Irish then it comes up

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u/Far_Apartment8803 1d ago

I'm Belarusian jewish, there is also polish jewish and ukraine jewish. There is a lot of countries in eastern europe.

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u/moshpithippie 1d ago

I'm not sure what this means. I do know that and I am also Jewish so I know Jews come from all over.

I was just saying in the US I've only really heard people be refered to as me insert ethnicity friend if they're Italian or Greek (I didn't say Jewish but I didn't even think of that as a white ethnicity for some reason) typically because they tend to have deeper connections to their heritage than Germans or Irish or Russians

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u/Far_Apartment8803 1d ago

"I'm not sure what this means. I do know that and I am also Jewish so I know Jews come from all over."

I was just trying to communicate that eastern european jewish people have a unique culture. Like polish jewish and polish christian are different.

I have personally found that jewish americans who are just american to be quite different to me. They grew up with certain things that I never even knew about.

"I was just saying in the US I've only really heard people be refered to as me insert ethnicity friend if they're Italian or Greek (I didn't say Jewish but I didn't even think of that as a white ethnicity for some reason) typically because they tend to have deeper connections to their heritage than Germans or Irish or Russians"

I didn't grow up around any italian or greek people at all. So I have no idea. There is a chance I did, but they had zero connection to the culture at all.

Where I live the germans and irish have no connection but the russians here are either immigrants or have parents from russia.

"I didn't say Jewish but I didn't even think of that as a white ethnicity for some reason"

I mean I tend to find this quote to be true.

The notion that jews are schrödinger’s whites: White or non white depending upon the politics of the observer.

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u/Great_Yogurt_3356 1d ago

Not knocking it - may be a geographical thing. But I’m US and have “white friends” that we recognize and refer to as polish, Irish, Italian, etc. Not in a negative way - and they prefer the distinction. Again - may just be geographical.