[spennant]

I read jrm4’s comment a little differently… It’s not that one’s skincolor correlates to opinion, but that it necessarily informs it. It’s pretty evident that people of similar skin tone and experiences may differ in opinion (just look at any family). Because of this, my takeaway wasn’t that it was the only thing that informed one’s opinion, but skin, as one of our society’s integral method for categorizing people, is intractable from the opinion forming process, particularly around matters concerning race.

[pure_simplicity]

Skin color is a very passive trait. You can choose to make it as important or unimportant as you want. People who overemphasize skin color tend to be bad people. As such, I advise you to just not pay any attention to skin color, because as soon as you try to involve race or skin color in your judgment, you by definition become racist (no matter how well intentioned you think you are). The only way to not be racist is to leave race out of the equation and judge based on universal principles, thereby treating everyone equally (and we can debate which principles are universal).

Because of that, calling your opinion a black opinion is literally an invitation to your conversation partner to become racist in their judgment, since you are trying to get your conversation partner to focus on your race when they are considering your opinion. The only right way of treating that additional and unnecessary information is to ignore it, but if it can only rightly be ignored, then it shouldn't be shared in the first place since it is an impediment to constructive dialogue.

Skin color is as important as the paint job on your car: for some people it means the world, for some people it's just a paint job. It's liberating to not care about race, you should try it.

[jrm4]

This is, without question, the most naive thing I have ever read on this entire site.

People will and do treat you differently because of your skin color. And how people treat you affects you, whether you think so or not. Either you live in a hole and never come out, or you haven't yet fully comprehended what's going on around you.

It's NOT simple. It's not "getting called names all the time" or anything like that. It takes time to fully get.

[pure_simplicity]

I'm not denying that some bad people will treat you differently for your skin color. What I am saying is that how you respond to it is far more important than how people treat you (for most situations in our modern society, though some situations can be insurmountably overwhelming). Rather than me being naive, it is you being too black and white in your thinking when reading my comment (by making a false dilemma).

I've experienced neo-nazi racism against my person because of my skin color (and I mean literal self-identified neo-nazis, not merely a label given through the slanderous designation of some intolerant leftist). Despite those experiences, because I chose not to succumb to a mentality of victimhood those people's hateful attitude and behavior did not have the harmful effect on me it could have had.

However, if you believe that racism is as pervasive as the air we breathe, and the country is systemically racist, and white people suffer from implicit bias (and mysteriously it's only white people, kinda racist huh?) then I have to disagree. Racism exists, but the vast majority of people are good people. These days, the real racists (besides the tiny minority of actual white supremacists) are the so called 'anti-racists'. Their anti-white rhetoric to me is as appalling as the anti-black rhetoric of white supremacists. They forget the golden rule, don't do to others what you don't want done to you.