is racism the main problem facing black people today?
109582
No.  It is the fact that the laws that are intended to try to even the playing field like affirmative action are racist.  Racism works both ways.  To not be racist is to not care what ethnicity a person is.  Though I am white, I always fill out the forms saying that I am blasian.  What's worse is that laws like affirmative action don't attack racism, they just try to turn men of a different race white.  It is trying to force assimilation.
464141
Racism is alive and well in the usa. It used to be mainly one sided. However these days it is a multibillion dollar a year business that has made many millionaires as well as many a politicians careers. There are laws in place to curb racism. However the way they are often applied, is not balanced. I think we have learned precious little in 200+ years. Unfortunately there are plenty of people who are opportunists and/or hate mungers.
441902
haha too true...but some things are better than they used to be...\n-racism has lessened\n-better technology(well that can be looked at in multiple ways)\n\nok so im having trouble thinking of things\n\nits pretty screwed up
229191
The main issue in Africa is tribalism.  It has caused many problems in the past and current day.  Until they are able to get past this major obstable, Africa will stay in this state of confusion and chaos.  Nothing is being done by Africans or its governments to solve this problem.
165996
Wow Chino. I didn't think anyone would have the nuts to say that. Ditto and kudos. I think that for the most part, racism has been completely turned around. I think the majority of the racism now is black on white. There will never be equality as long as there is ignorance (in both blacks and whites.)
1165006
I kinda agree with u, but u cant expect that every white person is going 2 like Blacks.Sure it would be great 2 have no racists in the world,but be realistic,there always will be.So there will be some who will defend racial comments but we all know that there will be others who will make them & support racism.We just have 2 accept that there are all sorts in this world.There are also a lot of stupid,  black people (not all, just a lot) who perpetuate this stigma that Blacks are judged by.But minority though they might be,most people are judged by the negatives than by the positives.If u meet 100 Whites & 10 are racists we are more hurt by the racial comments of those 10 & judge Whites by them rather than by the positive comments of the other 90. However dont expect any major changes no matter how frustrated u may feel.Its just life & Whites will never understand because its not part of their life. Some may relate but others will not. Still, I do support u in that call for change.
922523
Jeff A, take off your pointed hood and open your eyes.\nLet's look at it from a bigger picture and ask ourselves a couple of questions.\nWhat percentage of the Global population living under the poverty line is black, asian, colored?\nNo matter how you look at it, there is a corelation between the color of skin and prevalence of poverty.\nNow, slavery and colonialism have various debilitating effects. These effects take a lot of time to heal. Every civilization in the past has at one time or the other had slaves from other conquered cultures e.g Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Nevetheless, in none of these cases has the proportion of slaves to citizens come close to the prevalence of the United States. At the height of slavery in the US, there was 1 african slave for every 4 citizen.\nIn the case of previous civilizations, the negative effects of slavery have been greatly healed by the passage of time. It has been barely a century since slavery was abolished in the US, and just a copule of decades since civil right reforms were implemented in the south. It is over optimistic, to the point of naivette, to assume that societal and racial relations in the US would be normalized after only a copule of decades.\nThis brings to mind a skit in an episode of "Family Guy" where a colonial white man removes the shackles from his african slave and says "Okay, its over now. We're cool, right?".\nIt is understandable that minorities unconsciously feel slighted about the past and wish to strike back. In roman history, an army of escaped and former slaves led the Thracean Spartacus led a bloody revolt against the Roman populace.\nIn modern US society, It is sometimes taken as a subconscious mental victory that it is politically incorrect for a white person to say "Ni99er" while black people can refer to each other that way. These irrelevant mental victories help to heal racial problems in the society.\nBeing born and raised for the first 20 years of my life in a West African country, I have the advantage of being able to look at the US society from an outsiders perspective.\nFor anyone who says that the current US society is racially fair, I ask them to research the average family income for a black, hispanic, asian then caucasian family. Numbers dont lie, but ultimately, time heals all wounds (hopefully).
427961
That's a tough one, since most people would never admit their racist feelings because they are 1) ashamed of feeling racist and 2) it is bad for their 'image.' \n\nYou have the David Dukes and the Farakhans, who have figured out how to make their racist feelings work for their benefit, or their 'desired image.' \n\nBut really the WORST and most damaging racism can be found in the greed based, capitalist world system, better known as BIG BUSINESS. As long as there is inequality in the world, with the 'haves' having the biggest slice of the pie, there WILL be racism. \n\nWe (whites and blacks and reds and browns and..) were tricked into believing that slavery was abolished, when actually the 'package' was just rearranged so that the people would be more productive for the 'bottom line' of Big Business, which was already in charge of things at the end of the Civil War! They created a 'minimum wage' and then charged rent to their workers, giving the workers an illusory sense of freedom. Freedom my @!#!! \n\nBut now we don't have to be black in order to be slaves of Big Business (white man)! We only have to be POOR. There is no freedom for those who are in chains and slavery to POVERTY. Big Business, which is one and the same with the current American Government, is the made over White Slave Owner, and all he'll EVER care about is HIS bottom line.
85975
I don't think White on Black racism is really a contributing factor when you speak of the African continent as a whole.  The only place where that may have been an issue was in South Africa.  Considering the vast numbers of illegal imigrants that are entering South Africa from the rest of Africa just for survival one can come to the conclusion that racism has absoluteley nothing to do with the poverty experienced in the continent.\n\nIn South Africa and it's closest neighbours this may have been a contributing factor but when one looks at Zimbabwe where most of the "white" owned land has been redistributed to the heroes of the struggle, their economy is now all but decimated.  \n\nNow, in South Africa, Apartheid has been replaced by Affirmative Action so white on black racism has simply been replaced by black on white racism and the country is still running pretty well.
1158875
I really think the indains should have more of an issue with white people than the blacks should. But it really wasn't that long ago that we whites where hanging blacks... and really that takes awhile to just get over it.   I just wonder how white people would feel if thier grandparents and great grandparents where taken out and hung because they wanted to vote or ride in the front of the bus.   We as whites and blacks need to remember the history behide this issue so that it will never repeat itself again.    As far as racism goes there will always be racism due to the fact that there will be always someone with feelings of being better than someone else.  It needs to be forgiven but never forgotten...and I myself am very sorry for what my past white americans done to the black americans.  I just wished that white americans would take care of their own like the black americans take care of theirs but then again we have never been taken out of our beds to hang because of our color.. while our children watched.   It really wasn't that long ago.
159933
People are still racist. They may say they're not, but they're lying. Racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia other prejudices take time and effort to eliminate. It seems like with every landmark achieved, we stop working on eliminating prejudice. But it's continuous, intergenerational struggle. \nIt's a mistake to think that racism should just magically disappear just because it's 2006. It takes work.
360642
Yes, but it isn't going to happen in our life time. Racism is perpetuated by the minority's as much as the bigots. As soon as they learn to let go of the past and stop making everything a race issue things will start to change.\nI will admit that I am prejudice. I am prejudice against lazy, ignorant people who think they are owed something. I don't care what color they are!\nIn my opinion there is only one race. The human race. It is time to stop perpetuating the ignorant old ways of our ancestors and get down to making a better world for everyone. Who's with me?
1179095
I think this is a good question that cannot be answered broadly.. It's not fair to say "a lot of african americans are racist toward white people" Just like it isn't fair to say "a lot of white people are racist toward african americans" .. granted it is easier to "name call" racism stemming from "white people" but from what I know about history african american people were opressed by whites for a very long time..\n\nContinue to open your mind and be friendly with people of all cultures, backgrounds, skin color, etc.  The world is a more interesting place with diversity, you can't change other peoples' minds, so do the best you can with your own.
966224
Great question, by the way, but I think that racism is way too entrenched in today's society, to the point where it's just too sensitive a subject for anyone to "forget" about it, not that some in society ever should.  It's very difficult to forget and forgive something like racism, even if it really was or was not racism per se.  There sometimes, and I emphazise sometimes very difficult to prove whether an incident was racism or not.  If a store has a paycheck for a white worker, but the the paycheck for the black worker was lost in transit, is that racism?  I could bring up plenty of other scenarios like this, but it's all about feelings.  It's like trying to define sexual harrassment, it's not always easy.  To break it down, too many people are set in their ways for racism to end anytime soon (at least completely) in todays's world.
740292
all i know is that they are haters. Black people had a bad history and look at us now. They are still trying to put down on us....well there is nothing to put down on now. [ex questions i've witnessed:\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AvtrRnnmeoJkUGXOlA4kincjzKIX?qid=20061101140754AA1alum\n\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AufXq.WIIiJ75BO9AnAa0WUjzKIX?qid=20060920075718AAOIyqr ]\n\ni mean. i love ALL people.....this is nonsense.
164036
Whoa, step back, take a deep breath...\nIn America there are no armed struggles taking place over race, ethnicity, or tribe, as there are in Africa - central Asia - poorer parts of South America.\nIn America we have laws on the books against racially motivated violence, and those laws are regularly ENFORCED.\nMartin Luther King was an American; he taught us all lessons about non-violence, tolerance, and race that we have taken to heart.  His work is not yet finished...but we are much farther along in stopping the cancer of racism than many parts of the world.\nSo, please don't judge America on one or two incidents you have experienced or read about.  Take us as a whole.
681093
I can only speak for the white people that I know and from that I don't feel most white people hate blacks. If they did, blacks would not be in the positions many successful blacks find themselves in today. Does racism exist - absolutely, but that is a knife which surely cuts both ways.\n\nAgain this is from my perspective but I feel the difficulty many blacks have achieving in this country can be attributed to the following reasons:\n\n1) There is a small percentage of blacks, specifically young black males, which are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crime in the country (particularly violent crime). I have heard but can not recall the sourse that attributes 75% of murder in the country to black youths. If that is correct, that would mean that roughly 3% of the population is comitting 75% of the murders. Reduce the murder rate attributed to young blacks in half and it is still an outrageous statistic.\n\n2) An extremely high percentage ( 60+ % ) rate of unwed black females giving birth into a system which will perpetuate their children into almost certain poverty and dependence on an ever increasingly resentful society.\n\n3) A significant portion of the black culture which appears to be incapable of fully integrating into a system which has proven time and time again that its rewards are directly proportional to the effort put into achieving within the system.\n\n4) An apparent broad based inability to accept that not all actions taken against blacks are because of skin color. Sandra McKinney is yet another recent prime example. Had a white person, congressional member or not, struck a white house cop in today's climate, that person would be under the jail, not appearing on 200 media outlets for a week playing the race card. \n\nI have to admit, it was refreshing that not a single member of the Congressional Black Caucus participated in her defense in any manner.\n\n5) Hold on to your hat for this one - I feel the single biggest reason blacks aren't as succuessful as everyone would want them to be is an inabilty to move forward despite the tragedy of slavery. \n\nThere absolutely has to come a time when that era in their history is remembered but not used as a crutch or devisive tool as it clearly still is today. \n\nThere IS NOT another single society on the planet that has not taken slaves, or conversely, has not been taken as slaves primarily as a result of war. It does not make slavery right.  It just makes it attributable to being a fact of history like the 1,000's of other atrocities committed by people upon one another. It makes slavery a fact of history experienced by every single race, society, culture, and country that ever existed prior to 1900.\n\nMy ancestory is Irish. I will not get into greta detail about the well documented torturous behavior the people living on what is now as Ireland have endured since seemingly the beginning of mankind. \n\nDo I fault, the Scandinavians, the Romans, the British. Each of these groups have taken slaves, ruthlessly murdered men, women and children and looted everything of value they could manage to carry and some they couldn't like the land itself. These are all well documented facts. But most importantly to me is that they are facts which did not happen to me, my parents, or grandparents just as no black person living today can claim. \n\nI accept this is how people of different origins treated each other during that period in history. Nothing more, nothing less. Just actions in the context of world history.\n\nThere must be some point in time when blacks living in the US accept their history in a similar fashion or they will never fully allow themselves to intergrate into the society. \n\nPick your magic number. Whether its 150 years, 500 years, or 5,000 years, it will disappear into history as all other horriffic tragedies have.  Only they can decide when it disappears in their history. \n\nJust as a point of reference, between 1841 and