White Guilt
Apr. 10th, 2004 05:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
staxxyyet another one of those concepts that just mystifies me. Realistically, Humans (as a race)should be horrified and embarrassed by the things that humans (as a race) have done to one another. To say that one nationality, religion, or skin tone should feel guilty about what other people of that same nationality, religion, or skin tone did more than 100 years previous is ridiculous.
This goes back to something (I believe it was) you said earlier this week about treating people like *people*. You want good service in a restaurant, treat the staff like they have souls and lives. If you want to "make a difference" in how people treat each other, treat everyone like they have a life and soul. It's not fucking hard.
Give special treatment to people who have earned that sort of treatment from *you*. This whole "well, I have to be sensitive about X being X" is bullshit. I am going to decry the Christian propaganda machine to the Christians I know just as much as the pagans. I am going to rant about the national stupidity of any nation to whomever I damn well please. I don't really give a damn about the color of anyone's skin. I never have and I never will (with exceptions to creating art based on them, or my own sexual preferences for the pastiest pasty white skin).
If people really want to move beyond slavery and apartheid, stop fucking harping on it, stop jumping up and down about how you are X and fucking proud to be X and goddamn it you better recognize the X about you, and be yourself with people and allow them to be who they are. Nothing says "I want to abolish segregation" quite like "our cultural slang is a language to be taught in schools".
This is my response to the debate started here..
And, I have been pulled over for being "in the wrong neighborhood" on multiple occasions. And do *not* get me started about Police harassment.
if people really want to make a big difference, they would raise their kids to be color blind when it comes to skin and be more focused on the person behind the skin. It can be done. My mother did it. Unless someone has actually discussed the color of their skin with me or made a specific point about it in my presence, I have no idea what it is unless I am looking *at* them.
I can't even count the times people have asked me about the nationality or skin color of one of my friends (even just referring to them with a modifier of same) and it always takes me a minute of staring into space while I pull up their image and analyze it with that data in mind. *every time*. I see what color people are on the inside more often than the outside.
and, as a side note to the European Slave trade - they enslaved more than Africans, kids. It's a historical fact.
public post on this one. So ranty, I had to share with the whole fucking world.
This goes back to something (I believe it was) you said earlier this week about treating people like *people*. You want good service in a restaurant, treat the staff like they have souls and lives. If you want to "make a difference" in how people treat each other, treat everyone like they have a life and soul. It's not fucking hard.
Give special treatment to people who have earned that sort of treatment from *you*. This whole "well, I have to be sensitive about X being X" is bullshit. I am going to decry the Christian propaganda machine to the Christians I know just as much as the pagans. I am going to rant about the national stupidity of any nation to whomever I damn well please. I don't really give a damn about the color of anyone's skin. I never have and I never will (with exceptions to creating art based on them, or my own sexual preferences for the pastiest pasty white skin).
If people really want to move beyond slavery and apartheid, stop fucking harping on it, stop jumping up and down about how you are X and fucking proud to be X and goddamn it you better recognize the X about you, and be yourself with people and allow them to be who they are. Nothing says "I want to abolish segregation" quite like "our cultural slang is a language to be taught in schools".
This is my response to the debate started here..
And, I have been pulled over for being "in the wrong neighborhood" on multiple occasions. And do *not* get me started about Police harassment.
if people really want to make a big difference, they would raise their kids to be color blind when it comes to skin and be more focused on the person behind the skin. It can be done. My mother did it. Unless someone has actually discussed the color of their skin with me or made a specific point about it in my presence, I have no idea what it is unless I am looking *at* them.
I can't even count the times people have asked me about the nationality or skin color of one of my friends (even just referring to them with a modifier of same) and it always takes me a minute of staring into space while I pull up their image and analyze it with that data in mind. *every time*. I see what color people are on the inside more often than the outside.
and, as a side note to the European Slave trade - they enslaved more than Africans, kids. It's a historical fact.
public post on this one. So ranty, I had to share with the whole fucking world.
