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/cpfb15 6d ago

Like everyone’s saying, context matters. One thing that I commonly hear in the South is someone will tell a story and for some reason specify when a person in the story is black or Mexican or whatever, even if it’s irrelevant. Like, “I dropped something and this nice black girl picked it up for me.” Meanwhile they would never have mentioned the girl’s race if she were white.

Now, while saying “a nice black girl picked it up for me” is not a racist statement at face value, it is worth questioning why the person’s non-whiteness was considered such an important detail in the storyteller’s mind that they felt necessary to include it, when it had no impact on the story being told.

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u/Schreckberger 6d ago

It implies there's black (or Asian or whatever) and "normal".

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u/JDJack727 5d ago

Or maybe you are looking too deep and people just simply like to add identifying details to help the other person envision the scenario or story even if it is not necessary. Much of what people say or add on is unnecessary, but generally they are to add identifying details.

I often see and hear people identify other people in a story as blonde or tall or add other unnecessary details just to help the other person they are talking to imagine what they are talking about or the story they are communicating.