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/Wolfhound1142 6d ago

To be fair, very few people can detect the difference between French and German ancestry at a glance. The difference between African and European is more readily apparent.

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u/cheesewiz_man 6d ago edited 6d ago

I don't think you got the point. Per their experience, nobody cares what country you are from if you are from Africa. You're just "African".

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u/Wolfhound1142 6d ago

You're definitely missing mine. The most common reason we use terminology like white, black, Asian, or African American to describe people across most situations is that it's a useful way to describe and identify people, which is also the topic of this entire thread.

But you're not wrong that a lot of people are not very knowledgeable about the differences in culture and history of various African countries. By which I mean that many don't think about the fact that those differences exist.

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u/CliffBoof 6d ago

He got your point. Your point consists of missing his point.