Since American culture is so fragmented, it kinda makes sense that people of one nationality or race would feel more comfortable around people who look and act like them. I was born Jewish (on my mother's side), and I'm also American. While I am technically part of a minority, I never felt that way....I always considered myself to have grown up in an upper middle class American culture, not a Jewish culture. My mother's family kept up with a few of the traditions, as well as celebrating the big holidays like Hanukkah (wherein my mom lights candles for 8 days), Rosh Hashanah (with my mom calling me to wish me a happy new year), Passover (with a seder dinner at my aunt's house), and Yom Kippur (ehh...maybe we'll sit this one out). Even the Jewish people I knew growing up who mostly hung out with other Jewish kids did so because their parents made them go to Hebrew school and that's where they met everyone they became friends with. I never went to Hebrew school, or CCD, because my parents weren't trying to shove any religion down my throat. This "Hebrew school subculture" that formed carries friendships on to this day. I'm friends with some of those folks, but not nearly as close with them as the kids they went to Hebrew school with. That said, my parents gave me the choice of religion and culture, so if I wanted to I could have attended Hebrew school and become friends with those kids back then. But that's not the path I wanted to take.
That long story was to set up this point: In America, the majority demographic (white people) can make a choice as to what subculture they're a part of. But if you inherently look different from the majority, your choice has already been made to some people who were not culturally exposed to people who look like you early enough to accept them as "just people" and not "people who look like this that do $stereotype". There are a lot of people living out there in Small Town or Suburb, USA who have really never had close interactions with a non-white person before. How many years do you have to live like that before it becomes embedded in your mind that people who have a certain color skin act a certain way, just like you have it embedded in your mind that a disheveled dude sitting on the street holding a sign doesn't have a home? If you never meet a black person in real life, and only watch movies/TV that star or are about black people, why wouldn't you think that's how all of them act?
I think that's how prejudice in general starts, and mixed with just the right amount of racial tension, this can lead to full-on racism. I also believe that if you're a kid growing up and all you see of cops are YouTube videos of police shooting innocent men and women, meeting a police officer in real life must be a scary situation. Being a police officer after the last couple years is going to be a lot more challenging than it has been previously.
That long story was to set up this point: In America, the majority demographic (white people) can make a choice as to what subculture they're a part of. But if you inherently look different from the majority, your choice has already been made to some people who were not culturally exposed to people who look like you early enough to accept them as "just people" and not "people who look like this that do $stereotype". There are a lot of people living out there in Small Town or Suburb, USA who have really never had close interactions with a non-white person before. How many years do you have to live like that before it becomes embedded in your mind that people who have a certain color skin act a certain way, just like you have it embedded in your mind that a disheveled dude sitting on the street holding a sign doesn't have a home? If you never meet a black person in real life, and only watch movies/TV that star or are about black people, why wouldn't you think that's how all of them act?
I think that's how prejudice in general starts, and mixed with just the right amount of racial tension, this can lead to full-on racism. I also believe that if you're a kid growing up and all you see of cops are YouTube videos of police shooting innocent men and women, meeting a police officer in real life must be a scary situation. Being a police officer after the last couple years is going to be a lot more challenging than it has been previously.