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Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

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Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#121

Post by usrusr »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #104
usrusr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that most of the world is worse (or different?), but America is still special because it has so much pure racism that isn't a blend with xenophobia. Here in Germany for example, black skin Africans report wildly different amounts of discrimination: the lucky ones are those who, due to some inexplicable subtility, tend to get misidentified as African Americans. Suddenly they are on the other side of that stran…

Genuinely asking, what would be an example of pure, overt, common racism in American life?

Literally everything that hurts people whose ancestors have been born Americans for more generations than they can trace back?

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#122

Post by starkd »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #100
starkd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we have a biological tendency to be somewhat racist, but among every person that I've met who could be classed as being marginally racist, usually they do not really mean the things they say. Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. I say, marginally racist, because I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronall…

> Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. An exception like "oh well you're one of the good ones"? > I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronally, I think they are a very small insular group, if they exist at all. Talk to old people if you want some disappointment then.

The "exceptions" is where racist attitudes get broken down. It creates the cognitive dissonance. It doesn't happen right away, but its a significant step in the right direction.

Yes. This includes most "old people". A lot of the talk an jabs or using racial epithets is superficial when you get right down to it. At least, in my experience.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#123

Post by Bhilai »

For westerners in thread complaining about the smell of Indian food/curries, guess what, your food smells too (meat being cooked/bbq'ed smells yucky to vegetarians who have never experienced meat.) Even your bodies have a rotten cheesy odor. I am not being racist, I dont care what anyone cooks or eats. Its just a matter of perspective and I am providing a perspective that you have probably not heard about yourselves.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#124

Post by jhanschoo »

TomVDB wrote: post #10

Was surprised to see “Singapore”, expected “Bay Area.” When I left my last rental after buying a house, my elderly white landlord asked me to help him put the property on Craigslist. When I did so and mentioned the Cupertino school district, he asked me to remove that part because “it would attract too many Indian families with kids” to avoid the curry smell. He had no issue with other Asian ethnicities, the previous…

Singaporeans are all well aware about the discrimination in renting. It is opportune to note that almost one year ago the Prime Minister addressed this as part of a speech https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/ndr-entirely-basel... , in so doing claiming that all races are treated equally, disingenuously so by narrowing his use of equal treatment to be with respect to the state apparatus, and not Singaporean society at large

Indeed, here too the reason claimed is Indian curries

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#125

Post by barking_biscuit »

orbital-decay wrote: post #47
franciscop wrote: post #20

This is one of the few instances that I've seen open discrimination agains white western people in Japan. In my journey for renting a place, after a couple of visits and getting a "no because he's a gaikokujin (foreigner)" I asked the agent to disclose it firstly. He did, but tactfully: he is a foreigner who is learning Japanese and came to the university in Japan and is hired by traditional company X and blabla. Sti…

Might it be because of the additional legal requirements for a landlord in case of foreign tenants? Or it's really because they don't like non-Japanese?

Most Japanese people are really friendly and have pretty good attitudes towards westerners. The difficulty arises when there is a relationship between the two parties that may at some point require settling a dispute or problem solving between the individuals and it's way outside their comfort zone. They don't necessarily have a problem with the individuals (though there are a few older people who live around military bases that do), but they clearly have a problem with how such situations make them feel.

One time I wanted to go into a restaurant and there weren't any signs anywhere that said 'Japanese only' or anything like that, but I rocked up to the door and made an inquiry in Japanese to the lady on the door and some guy from in behind came through and was like 'sorry, no foreigners' and she turned to him and said 'no, it's ok he speaks Japanese' and I went in and had a meal without any problems.

It definitely offends my western sensibilities to be exclusionary in that way, but I think the thing native English speakers take for granted is that it's a lot easier to have an open and inclusive society like we try to when we can make a pretty safe assumption that the people we're including will be able to communicate with us to an adequate standard. I'm fluent in Japanese. It was a really hard language that took a lot to master. I have an excellent sense of the range of English abilities of Japanese people. The language barrier is a huge factor in the discomfort felt. Then there's the cultural norms. Japanese people tend to talk about other Japanese people as if everyone has baked into them the same set of rules / behaviors / assumptions. When that goes out the window, I think a decent proportion of them don't quite know how to mentally simulate how they think such a person will behave other than it'll possibly (and maybe probably) be in violation of at least some of the norms that they kind of rely on.

It always makes me pretty sad when people level comments about native English speaking countries being racist etc and then you look at how much poorer you'd fare in comparison in the general case if you were to live in their country.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#126

Post by speakfreely »

justinsaccount wrote: post #76
choko wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to deny loans on the basis of race. Your race is also not a factor in your credit score.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make?

People frequently cite historical racial inequities (race-based loan denials) as proof of racism in 2022 when those specific issues are no longer prevalent.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#127

Post by KMnO4 »

timwaagh wrote: post #24

Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.

It’s a reminder that your own stereotypes exist for a reason. You’ll never remove that from the human brain. It’s not always a bad thing (your brain takes in cues, combines them with experiences, and uses that to make decisions while spending less energy).

But we should be careful to not let our own biases be baked into systems and processes.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#128

Post by post_break »

Bhilai wrote: post #111
post_break wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lived in an apartment complex and a neighbor was indian. That smell traveled through the whole building. I honestly think it passed through walls much easier than weed. It was bad.

Bad for you maybe, I love the smell of curry being made. I hate the smell of meat being cooked on bbq but hey this is a free country right and everyone is allowed to cook their own food.

I don't mind the smell, I do mind the smell every single day. Just like I don't mind kids playing, babies crying, loud music. But when it happens every day it gets to be a bit much.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#129

Post by em-bee »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #104
usrusr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that most of the world is worse (or different?), but America is still special because it has so much pure racism that isn't a blend with xenophobia. Here in Germany for example, black skin Africans report wildly different amounts of discrimination: the lucky ones are those who, due to some inexplicable subtility, tend to get misidentified as African Americans. Suddenly they are on the other side of that stran…

Genuinely asking, what would be an example of pure, overt, common racism in American life?

for one the fact that most americans are aware of the existence of racism and openly debate it. whereas european rasism is hidden, and many people are unaware that it even exists because they don't see it. in germany, racism is considered a feature of the extreme right, ignoring that general xenophobia is more widespread than that.

european racism is also more xenophobia than about race, which is exemplified by the difference between africans and african-americans. it's less the skin color that matters but where you are from. an african-american is from a 1st world country with a western culture similar to europe, whereas a native african is from a 3rd world country. "from the bush", from a poverty stricken and war-torn region.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#130

Post by foobarbecue »

starkd wrote: post #116
christophilus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist. I once helped a needy young man in Seattle by taking him to get some food. The lady at the checkout counter was black, and oh, man did he spout some shit. It turned out he was a legit neonazi. I actually picked his brain for quite a while to get an idea of the “why” behind things. Anyway, this experience is the reason I roll my eyes when someone calls ____ a nazi. There are legit nazis in the world, and t…

I don't deny they exist, but they have been marginalized in society. They don't hold any significant power in terms of holding people back.

The problem isn't overt racists so much as subtle, persistent bias, which absolutely holds people back in very significant ways. See my comment about my grandmother.

And... unless you're in a marginalized minority group, you really aren't in a position to know how racist people are.

Oh yeah, I just remembered, we also recently had a president for four years who was overly racist. Remember his attacks on Judge Curiel? Remember Mexicans "are rapists"?

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