There are no such things as races.

Well, yeah. That’s a pretty easy way to turn a pretty non-racist comment suddenly racist on his part, though. Stereotype much?

I’d assume that each person, not each race, has good and bad traits should be common knowledge for people.

I usually say that “A-holes come in all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, ethnicities, sexual-orientations, nationalities, and religions.”

Your dad, and a lot of other people are used to believing that their are races, but no scientist has really thought so since about the late 1940s, and now there is incontrovertible proof, now that we have seen data from the human genome project. There are very superficial differences in skin-tone (melanin production) that have to do how close to the Equator your ancestors lived, in nose and eye shape, etc. but genetically speaking these similarities are minute, and there is more genetic diversity within so-called racial groups than between racial groups.

That means if you are a Northern European white-skinned person, you are more likely to be more genetically similar to a dark-skinned African person than you are to another so-called “White” person.

People are people.

Duh.

Neither someone’s race, nor their economic status, dictates how you classify good people and assholes.

Most people learn the whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing in Kindergarten.

Whatever you decide to believe, bitter sweet rose—and that is your choice, your life mission—try not to judge your dad too harshly or let others do so. He grew up in a different time and place with different influences.

More like to every person, there is good and bad.

What? Everyone knows there are no hard working black people! Your dad is so wrong!

^Workin’ it ..:)

No matter how you look at your question, the bottom line is yes, there are trashy people in all races. i have arrested trashy white, black, red, brown and just about any other skin color you can think of. these people are the law violators, most of the time. i see no skin color with decent people of all races.

Those are not races. They are skin tones. Get over races.

People are people are people are people. All the world over. Some are great, and some aren’t. The color of their skin has no influence on that.

I really want to know why you don’t like the way your dad thinks.

For me, there are honest and hardworking people, and there are lazy, ignorant and selfish people, and everything in between. Add a low socioeconomic status to the mix, and your white-skinned-lazy-ignorant-and-selfish-people become white trash, and your black-skinned-lazy-ignorant-and-selfish-people become ‘dangerous black people’ (sorry, I’m not American and have no idea what sort of terms are in use or would be offensive.)

But why does anyone find it necessary to add the color of a person’s skin to the description. It’s not relevant. I mean, we don’t go around saying someone is a really tall-lazy-ignorant-and-selfish person.

@augustlan I agree, and I think it’s just another way that we label social groups. My answer was just to question @bitter_sweet_rose‘s father’s approach, which appears to be: you have black people, and you have white people, and black people can be good or bad, and white people can be good or bad. Whereas my approach would be: you have good people, and you have bad people, and good people can have black or white skin, and bad people can have black or white skin.

Your dad should rather contemplate that in most human cultures there are bad and good elements. People are people. Skin color or the shape of the nose has no correlation with good or bad behavior. What matters is how we raise our kids and what societal norms they are exposed to.

There is good and bad in every ethnicity/“race”... and all other aspects of humanity.

It has nothing to do with ethnicity, it has everything to do with humanity.

It sounds like your father is saying “people are people” just like I am. I wish more believed like that. My life (and the lives of a lot of other people) would be much easier.

There will always be the hard workers and the slackers in any place on earth, regardless of race, faith, and intellectual ability.