Its a trivial anecdote but I'm sure its repeated thousands of times a day. And the right way to think about is not obvious to me. Was just watching CNN where a few volunteers who had come from out of state to help people in North Carolina were being interviewed. When describing a few of their rescues they mentioned that they came upon "a black gentlemen" in trouble who they went on to help.

But there was absolutely no reason to make mention of his race. They did because in their mind it was somehow not totally irrelevant, They helped him. They called him a gentlemen. But they also felt, at least subconsciously, that his race was noteworthy. And they might have voted for Trump. So what category do you put people like that in?

Maybe its your bigotry.

Describing a person as a "black gentleman" is no more racist than saying " young boy".

Its a description, but you place racial overtones to the description.

It damn well is racist to saying "young boy" to a black gentleman.

The kids these days call that sort of thing "cringeworthy."

Microaggressions are forgivable racism and/or sexism at least that's what's implied in the definition. Forgivable in the sense that they're supposed to be small in scope and out of thoughtlessness or carelessness and not out of aggression.

Are we sure the helpee wasnt a white guy with the last name "Black"?

Something else

Remember when that Sklansky fellow told a young girl she should kill herself and she did?

Maybe they mentioned his race to make the point that they're not racists.

People can take language too literally. Unless the person speaking mentioned the race with a certain level of disdain in mentioning the person's race, I see nothing wrong with it.

If you really wanted to be cynical, you could say that they mentioned the person's race as a way to show that not all Trump supporters are racist. However, that requires making assumptions such as thinking they support Trump because they're white and in North Carolina. What I can say for sure is that none of the Trump supporters I know would ever even think about volunteering their time to help strangers. So perhaps their political affiliation shouldn't be assumed based on skin color and location.

You no what there is no reason to do? Listen to this ****ing useless drivel. You have proven time and time again to be no better than Awval, or Wil, or any other right wing moron that has ever posted on this forum. Completely pathetic.

Emergency responders, police, etc. are all trained to report race. Probably it helps identify people in confusing situations.

In North Carolina and the rest of the south, everybody identifies everyone by race, and it is a reflection of internalized racist thinking, even when it's done by progressives who hate racism. It's part of the US's social pathology that makes overcoming the black-white world difficult that so many people feel it necessary to identify skin color as a primary attribute. They can't get out of that box of seeing everyone as black or white.

Thank you for the insightful question. Its not racism. Its something else.

I recently helped a child learn about writing a paragraph and paragraph writing gives us a little insight into why the rescuers pointed out that the gentleman they helped was black. A paragraph has a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and additional detail. The word "black" is an additional detail about the gentlemen. Sure it isn't necessary but it does serve a purpose.

Human beings use words to transmits thoughts from one person to another. We use additional detail to help more clearly paint our own thoughts or memories into another persons mind. It is natural for us to interject addition detail especially when an object we are talking about deviates from our standard mental model of it.

As an experiment, I asked my wife to imagine a random man. She did. I asked her the race of that man, she said Asian. My wife was born an raised in Asia so the result was what I expected. A person born and raised in China telling a story to his Chinese friends about how some other driver on the road cut him off might say "then some guy cut me off"; not mentioning race if the reckless driver was Chinese. The guy who cut him off closely matched the story tellers standard mental model of a guy. Now if the reckless driver happened to be white, race could be mentioned in the story because its a detail that deviates from the the story tellers standard mental model.

It usually isn't anything more than that.

So why do they refer to race way more often than to height or weigth or hair color when they are looking for a very concise description?

Uh, because its concise? Its not racist to describe a black person as black.

Describing a characteristic of race and racism are not necessarily the same thing.

But I understand how its construed as such now.

Its people assuming racial overtones to any factor they can.

Referring to race is an easy way to quickly narrow the search field.

In brasil it is far less normal to refer to race than it is in the USA, when quickly describing interactions with someone.

I don't think it is racist to use black, asian and so on the way americans do.

But it think it denotes pretty clearly how salient race is for americans.

Only if that race is extremely rare. Otherwise other physical characteristics are far more useful, if that's what you want to accomplish ("narrow the search field".

If I am looking for a certain man in America, I have to consider about 100 million suspects. If I am also told that man is black. I only have to consider about 13 million suspects. See my point? I'm just making best guesses at numbers but they should be reasonably close.

Yes i see your point. I repeat that other characteristics are as informative or more than race, but are pointed out far less often in summary descriptions.

Could you provide some anecdotes? Unless we are talking about the 50 ft woman, skin color is going to be the most efficient determinant. Hell, even then, assuming there are multiple skin colors of 50 ft women, it would be.

Also, snu snu.

wearing unusual cloth for the circumstance, having a big beard when it's not in fashion, wearing a hat where almost nobody does, strange haircuts, massive weight/underweight in countries where it is not common, etc etc.

Like you see a black guy dressed as a priest doing something strange. If you have to choose only one word , would you go with priest or black, in a country with a decent amount of blacks?

Automatically associating black people with being "suspects" is pretty racist.

To address Sklansky, noting the blackness of black people is not necessarily due to some personal animus, but it is likely a product of living in a society that perceives white people as the normal and non-white people as the other, not to mention a society where racial stratification is really, really important. If you find yourself always using race to distinguish people, then you can work on being better than that, but referring to black people as black is not going to get you taken to task, unless you're obviously looking for a cookie for treating a black person as a person, or if you're making further insinuations about the person because they are black.

Racism is not a binary thing where you either want to go around and lynch minorities and bring back Jim Crow or you want to live in a Star Trek utopia where no problems exist at all. Virtually everyone falls somewhere in the middle.

But when people throw around the word "racist" they think it's the former which is why you have so many stories of people like George W Bush where he says the worst moment of his presidency is when Kanye called him a racist.