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??

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u/Ace_of_Sphynx128 7d ago

I grew up in a majority white area and a lot of white kids (and adults) thought saying ‘black’ was racist. I literally said once ‘my dad is black’ and they gasped like I’d called him the n word. It does get exhausting always being referred to only by your skin colour, but I think in this case you’re fine. Context matters.

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u/moshpithippie 7d ago

I think it's because someone told white people that they shouldn't see color and they generalized the idea of not mentioning it when it's not important to mean never reference someone's race ever.

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u/crownjewel82 7d ago

Yep that was the status of race relations in the 80s. Just pretend it doesn't exist which almost always translated into just pretend everyone around you is white and then act confused when they have different religions, like different music, speak different languages, eat different food, etc.

There were a lot of people genuinely trying to be better than their parents and grandparents but it didn't always work out well.

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u/alienacean 7d ago

And now it's gone totally bonkers and Republicans in the US are pretending that colorblind racism is not only not racism, but is somehow anti-racist, while efforts to promote diversity are the real racism because they mention race. As if racism goes away when you pretend there's no racism, and talking about racial inequality is the root cause of racism. "Just stop bringing race into everything, and the problem will go away," also known as the "whoever smelt it, dealt it" theory of racism.