![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
White Guilt
yet 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.
no subject
One day at school, a girl, Laura, who I think was Mulatto (this is relevant to the story) was teasing me: "Sarah, You've got a big ass."
Laura, being the same general size I was, I said "Yeah so? You've got a big black one."
As if I wasn't enough of a pariah anyway, suddenly the whole class came down on me for being a racist. HUH? I have big lips, too, so what? It wasn't a racist comment, IMHO, I wouldn't have known how to say something racist had my life depended on it.
I was no longer color blind: Suddenly I learned I had to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL what I said around people of different color, I suddenly had to treat them differently than I did everyone else I knew. This still seems to be the case, one isn't allowed to point out physical differences, whether they're complimentary, descriptive, or not.
no subject
It never occured to me that there was any difference between people other than their personalities, until I was in Junior High. My first love (*sigh*) was a boy named Aaron Counts. I found out when I was in like the 6th grade that he was a different "race" than I was, because his cousin told me - of course his cousin was explaining that *he* was a different race than I was too. The fact that their skin was darker than *mine* had not really crossed my mind beyond "that's a pretty color, it's warm and rich".
I get all weird about ethnic heritage when it comes to physical features too. the idea that "African" people have any one feature that is universal is odd to me because Africa is as diverse as Europe in that regard. Ethiopians have fantastic necks and skull shapes; Solamians have gorgeous bone structure (Iman is a fine example); West Africans have the biggest smiles on the whole planet, really amazing; the Ashanti people (a more nomadic and wide spread tribe) have this amazing bluish black skin color, it's so deep and so lovely; Egyptians have large beautiful eyes. All of them are African, none of them are the same shade of brown or black. I think that is what is so confusing to me about racial identifiers, "African-American" means that you have African heritage to me - what if you are Haitian and Jamaican? While there are several people who are of African decent via Haiti or Jamaica, there are also several who are *just* Haitian or Jamaican and have dark skin.
The whole idea that your cultural identity is based on your skin tone is bizarre. The whole idea that I should be sensitive about what I say to people based on what color their skin is, that's just odd. I have never been able to wrap my brain around it. I never will either, I am sure. it means that I periodically have to explain myself because what I mean is not always what people hear (ask me about the whitest guy I know sometime). I don't mind that so much, it seems like people are more excited by the fact that I think that way than by the words I choose to express it.
Someone asked me a couple of years ago if I "had any black friends". I stared off into space for a little while and said "I have no idea, probably". He started in on a diatribe about "if you have to think that hard, it means you don't associate with anyone who is black...", I was still thinking about it. My first thought was that, being goth, the majority of my friends are black people - it's the predominant color of their clothing, and often of their moods. And then I remembered Derek's "no, I really am black" speech (more of that "whitest guy I know" story) and told him that I *do* have at least one friend who says they are black. he was all kinds of confused.
Somewhere along the way, people forgot that being equal does not mean being the same, it means having the same value. (2+6)/4 = (4*4)/8 both sides of the equasion have the same value, and are resolved in the same order, but the equasions are actually different.
no subject
You're being awfully biased toward the female chromosome here. Why aren't there more "Y"s?
no subject
no subject
Very well said.
I have always thought that nobody owes anyone anything if they didn't perpetuate a wrong themselves. Yeah, all of our ancestors have done something bad to someone else, but it's past. Learn from it and just behave considerately and fairly to each other *now*. It's that simple.
no subject
no subject
no subject
on a completely unrelated note, I had no idea you were still around baby. I will add you back in. :) I thought you had dropped out and moved on to bigger brighter horizons perhaps.
no subject
Actually, I guess I'm not completely colorblind. Usually, I find different ethnic background, and the culture that comes with it, to be fascinating and interesting. But when someone defines their entire identity by their ethnicity, that makes me rather uncomfortable...
no subject
People who define their identity by their ethnicity are just *boring* to me.
Phrase "I'm black" could mean so many different things to me, for instance: my soul is black, I am so goth; I sat in the sun way too long and now I am charred; my skin is a lovely shade of space inky black; I had an accident dying my clothing; I mean to say that my skin is a dark brown and I am a person of color.
I have known people of all kinds of cultures that had the ethnic heritage of some other continent entirely. Skin color will never equal anything other than melatonin content to me. *shrug*
West African Guilt?
Er..yeah - in any case, I totally agree with your article...:)
Re: West African Guilt?
Good to see you again. :)
Well said...
Re: Well said...
Oh I'm sure more people do think this way....
It could make your unfortunate school experience seem like a picnic.
Personally I've never cared about fallout, but that's because I enjoy a certain amount of brashness in my life. Others may not welcome the potiential fallout.
The end all be all of the "guilt" thing is in actuality more of a "greed" thing, IMHO. To ask that someone feel guilty for what they have not done usually means you're looking for a handout.
That's why I found it uproariously funny that the movement to end affirmative action in CA is spearheaded by a black businessman. In his eyes, such programs only affirm what bigots have said about blacks. Without help from whites they cannot succeed.
CA politics are better than the funnies.
Lovely rant though. Would that more LJs had such quality material in them. =D
Re: Oh I'm sure more people do think this way....