are all whites racists?

[etti]

ok, i don't want to offend anybody, i just read this in an atricle, and i'm interested in opinions.

a journal of my univeritsy published a special edition with the topic "racism".
and there was this article from a (white) girl, who said all whites are racists. and ONLY whites. because colonialism is a white invention, and racism too.
a (white) fellow student told me, he had asked a (black) friend of him, and she said "yes, of course!". so i asked my (black) husband, if he agreed, and he said "many but not all". and he said, non-whites can be racists too.

so thats my opinion too, and i think many people are racists or act racist without even knowing. not, that this would improve the situation, but i think there is a difference and if the people would think more about what they do or say, there would be less racism. maybe.

but back to the main question: so what do you think?

[JorickHorn]

I think most people are, to a degree, racist at some level. It's in our hard-wired psychology to have an in-group/out-group mentality. Generalization comes with that, and those are the building blocks of racism. What matters is the ability of people to recognize their own racist tendencies when they come through and counteract them.

[andrew ogburn]

is it rasist when i laugh at rasist jokes but feel bad right after?

[Loki]

I am white. I am not racist. I didn't notice race until I was 9. I knew some people had various ethnicities, but that didn't mean anything more to me than the differences between hair colors or eyes colors or whether or not someone had freckles. Different people looked different.
When I turned 9, I started middle school. My middle school served the entire east side of town, verses my elementary, which served my neighborhood and a few others. This included the part of town where a lot of minorities lived. Most of the kids in my neighborhood fudged the papers and found a way to attend the other middle school on the other side of town. I didn't.
My first day there, I tried to sit for lunch with my long time friend, who happened to be of mixed racial heritage. I was beaten up for sitting at a supposed 'black table'. The next three years were filled with racial slurs, comments, and attacks for being white.
I never did anything to provoke these attacks, but these three years cemented one thing in my mind: Racism is a dangerous, dangerous thing. If people even think you might be racist, for whatever reason, the will hold that against you, even hurt you. I'm terrified of someone thinking I'm racist or discriminatory. Those were horrible years for me, and at one point I stopped speaking altogether, I refused to step foot in the cafeteria, I tried to find any reason I could to avoid taking the bus.
I think it is very dangerous to say all whites are racist. No one is automatically racist, it is our experiences and choices that make us who and what we are. You can choose to dislike an individual or group of individuals who hurt you, or you can can choose to hate and fear anyone mildly similar to them. People choose to be racist, their skin doesn't make that choice for them.

[Janelle]

I've actually never heard it before, and it sounds a bit absurd. I'm white, I'm not racist. I know that there are people of other races who are racist.

I guess it also depends on your definition of racist.

[BrokenQuills]

Wait, what? Whites didn't invent racism because racism wasn't invented. People naturally make judgements, but when we are ignorant and prejudice they get out of control and we start to judge people based on race or sex.
No, not all whites are racist. Everyone has racist tendencies, but that alone does not make everyone racist. And trust me, people who aren't white can be JUST as racist.

[Emily Ioppolo]

In the words of Avenue Q: Everybody's a little bit racist sometimes.

Everybody, at some point in their life, judges things about a group of people and makes assumptions about them. Think about it. Even every time you make a light joke about a group of people, we make assuptions that we find funny. Maybe white people are assotiated with being racist more because they have such a long history of persecuting some many different groups of people.
So, using the example you said, are blacks being racist when they say all whites are racist? I think so.

[Maria]

One guy who used to go in my class two years ago acussed the whole class of being racist against him because he was black, and that everyone was discriminating him since he "was from the hood". which is kinda funny since we wheren't in anyway, plus that he was the one that kept walking around and keept refering us as "ey, white boy" and stuff all the time.
at that point, one other guy in my class who also is black (or perhaps half black,) lol'ed at him and told him to grow up.


But moving on, racism exist in every "race" and not just between those who are black and those who are white.
and to think otherwhise is just being ignorant..

[Trey Joseph]

I think that since the definition of racism is "The thought or belief that one race is superior to another" that ANY race can be racist. Not just whites. Another problem on this matter is stereotypes...some can lead people to automatically make assumptions about someone of that race and so therefor can cause racist thoughts, even if they are subliminal, in anyone's mind, regardless as to if they are black, white, purple, etc. everyone in some way, shape or form can in some way be considered racist...

[Katelyn Eads]

Literally everyone is racist. It's a psychological phenomenon where minority groups are always viewed in a more negative light than members of the majority group. It happens in every country, to every person. Even members of the minority groups have these biases against their own group.

[Christopher J. Cater]

The girl who wrote that is totally off. You can't say that whites and only whites are racists because the inventers of colonialism were white people(that alone is racist). I am pretty sure people have been racist from the the point there was a visible hereditary difference between groups of humans. Also saying all whites are racist because the ones in the past were is like saying that someone is a killer because someone 500 years ago in their family tree killed someone. I would have to read this article, but it sounds like a load of rubbish to me. Racism is nurture not nature. Any predetermination on a specific individual based on skin colour, sexual orentaion or any other genitic property is wrong. (got to say, even with you saying you didn't mean to offend anyone. I have been highly offended by the idea of anyone agreeing with this bogus idea.)