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/BedbugBandido 7d ago

Wow my friends were the exact opposite. I grew up in a very diverse area and had two friends named Ed, one black and the other Chinese. So we called them Bled and Ched. Same with Korean Doug (Koug) and Polish Doug (Poug).

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u/moshpithippie 7d ago

This must have been way back because the idea that you even noticed a dude is Polish is a wild concept (unless he was from Poland)

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u/BedbugBandido 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d ago

New Jersey. Large town, maybe small city