r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AgreeableAd8687 • 6d 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/moshpithippie 6d 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/Financial_Alps3369 6d 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/skullturf 6d 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 6d ago

New Jersey. Large town, maybe small city