[dfxm12]

In my lifetime, I've witnessed first hand a lot of racism, and just outright violence towards Asians and Blacks, including institutional racism. I believe that's the difference.

Italian Americans don't have to worry about this sort of institutional racism (at least not in generations), so it's easier to assume these jokes are honest attempts at humor vs bigotry.

[mc32]

I’ve been to Mexico. Sometimes people there try to mimic your accent and poke fun at how you sunburn so easily.

Back in the US if you were to do similar to a Mexican, you’d be accused of racism for mimicking their accent or making fun of some part of their physiology they cannot change.

[toxik]

Punching up versus kicking down. They're different things.

[mc32]

That’s bullshit. They don’t know my status nor you know if they are the seaside peddlers or the upper class Mexicans.

[toxik]

It’s a hard sell to say you feel like your heritage was cause for grief when you come from a superpower, and the richest country in the world. You may individually be not well off, but we’re talking about group properties.

[mc32]

Oh, now it’s about group power and not individuals?

See, people keep on redefining things. So a Mexican-American being from a “super power” what, they can be made fun of by white Mexicans because?

What about Chinese from China, now that they are super power, does everyone get to pile on any individual because as a group they are powerful (based on PPP they are on par or surpassed us).

It all bullshit. If it’s not for me or it’s not right for them, then it’s not right for anyone.

[what_is_orcas]

It's always been about group power. The idea that it's about individuals is, to use a term you might be familiar with, fake news.

A few years ago, the right was blowing up about "reverse racism" or racism against white folks (I'm speaking exclusively about the US now, because that's really all that I know) but that's not possible in America because whites are the most privileged race. Are there some poor white people? Absolutely. BUT (and this is the integral part) the systems of power don't work to keep poor white people poor in the same way that they work to keep poor black people poor. There's no assumption of guilt when it comes to white folks. Despite equal rates of drug use, white people are less likely to wind up in prison/jail for drug offenses than are black folks or other minorities.

Racism might be different in China, I'm not sure.

Also, while I'm on the subject (this isn't directly related to what you said, but it's related), the reference to race isn't racism. I've seen the attitude that to acknowledge race is racism a lot here on HN, and it's just false. I've seen it used to essentially silence people who say "as a black person, I perceive this as..." which is an extension of racism: the false idea that the victim of racism can't identify the racism because to identify the racism requires that they bring up race in a conversation in which race wasn't overtly called out.

[_v7gu]

Now that's just racism on another scale: you're saying Mexicans are below Americans?

[Spivak]

Yes. Mexicans have not installed institutions that create and perpetuate widespread discrimination, prejudice, and harm to Americans but the opposite is true.

Punching up or down isn't about the relative superiority or inferiority of groups, it's about the human made power dynamics that exist between them.

[mc32]

This is weird, you're saying the only racism is institutional racism (tho you must recall the motto Mexico is for Mexicans' as well as a history of slavery in Mexico) that attitude used to keep out legal foreigners (LatAm and NAm) from some types of jobs.

Never the less, it's ridiculous to think that a Mexican cannot be racist against an American or a Honduran or whatever.

Mexico imported slaves from Africa and that wasn't abolished till the 1830s though there was an exception that allowed importation of slaves from Texas.

[batch12]

It is either racist or it isn't. The now-popular punching direction catch phrase is just a way of excusing hypocrisy.

[vtyzsc]

Many Hollywood movies with a plot that clearly takes place 5 decades after WWII have evil German characters named Fritz and Hans. Racism? You can certainly still experience anti-German sentiments as a 20 year old abroad right now.

I don't mind these movies at all, but there do seem to be double standards.

[dfxm12]

Die Hard is not the same thing to German Americans as is a rise in violence against Asian Americans [0] or institutional racism against Blacks for their respective groups.

There doesn't seem to be a double standard.

0 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/21/one-third-o...