*No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt*
Do you feel inferior Orville mogul? Do YOU feel inferior? Do you feel inferior because someone called you Orville? Who is in control of your feelings? Someone else? Everyone else? They’re YOUR feelings, aren’t they? Maybe not?
How many people have received your consent to make you feel inferior? Maybe you should be more selective as to whom you give your consent to allow them to make you feel inferior?
Or you can take Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice to heart. You don’t have to consent to let anyone else make you feel inferior.
Eleanor Roosevelt can suck my butt. If a person goes out of their way to tell you that you are less of a person, different, or inferior, of course it’s going to hurt. Of course it is. Doesn’t matter if it’s because of race, sexual orientation, gender, physical ability, mental ability, finical status, place of birth, beliefs, or appearance. Because it’s never just one fucking person. Usually, it’s a good chunk of society. Unless you’re White. Then it’s an anomaly, and (as this thread would indicate) a lot easier to ignore.
I’ve never been called a slur before, because I’m White. That is, I probably have, but I don’t remember it, because I’m White, and I never had to learn to get used to it. I am a woman, but the most memorable injustices done to me on that front have been physical.
Like xizor, I once had a celebrity use a racial slur when talking to me, but it wasn’t directed at me. At a convention, I asked a celeb guest to sign a Japanese print of a poster from a movie he’d been in years before. He said, “Yeah, those Japs make good stuff.” I started laughing in an ‘I can’t believe you just said that’ way, and he got a deer in the headlights look for a second, before adding - “I’m old school - when I was a kid, that’s what we called 'em.” He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy otherwise, so I’m withholding his name.
Why do YOU let it hurt YOU? THEY said it. The onus is on THEM. It’s not like they’re hitting you with actual sticks and stones.
Why don’t you teach them? Why don’t you get angry? Why don’t you inform them? Why don’t you ignore them? YOU chose to get the autograph of someone who used a racial slur. Why would YOU even want their autograph? Why didn’t YOU simply walk away?
I’ve been called white boy - many times playing basketball. Not in a friendly way either. A lot of black players resent white kids being on the court. I got hit with a lot more elbows and body checks by guys making it clear I wasn’t wanted out there.
My teammates supported me. Most of them black. There were only three white guys on our team.
Street ball is even worse. A white kid can get roughed up pretty bad trying to join in with the wrong group.
The Eleanor Roosevelt quote strikes me as being true of some people: specifically, those who have an underlying feeling of superiority. If you have that, then it’s probably true that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. But where did you get that underlying self-esteem? Maybe you were born with it; maybe the circumstances of your life nurtured it. (Maybe it’s Maybelline.) If you don’t have it, you probably can’t just wish it into being by repeating Eleanor Roosevelt quotes over and over.
When I was a teenager a group of boys started singing “Go back to Jamaica” and calling me Aunt Jemima while throwing a football in my direction. The ball didn’t actually hit me but landed at my feet. I roofed the ball and kept walking.
As an adult I was walking down the street in my very own neighborhood in Park Slope. Passed by an older man standing in his front yard. He yelled, “Fucking niggers!” and stormed into his house, slamming his door. I was all the way to the corner before this really sunk in. This angered me so much, I started to shake. I couldn’t even walk down my own block in my very mixed neighborhood without getting verbally assaulted. I even turned around, ready to bang on his door and show him what kind of nigger I could be when provoked.
It is a loooong way from one corner to the next in Park Slope when walking between avenues (about three, maybe even four regular city blocks long). That was long enough for my better sense to kick in. I still get steaming mad when I think about it.
This. I had bad parents. I don’t think this is a secret around here. I had a good childhood and then horrible teen years, and it totally destroyed my self esteem. I found out I had a mother and a father who had deserted me - you bet your ass I felt that reflected on me!
Now I firmly believe that the ten or so years I had before that is what enables me to have as much self confidence as I do now. I don’t give people space to live in my head, rent-free. But that took years to develop! And in my twenties, I didn’t have much self esteem at all. I was still finding myself.
So it’s lovely to think “I won’t let them make me feel inferior.” It’s a good thought. But it takes practice, and your own accomplishments. And I can’t even imagine, for example, how much worse it would be if you were depressed. I am damn lucky to have the right chemical cocktail and not be depressed…imagine if I was on top of everything else.
I don’t know what kind of upbringing Mrs Roosevelt had. I do know she had every reason to feel superior! I also know what kind of upbringing I had, and what kind of effort and work it took me to get to the point where I feel comfortable in my own skin and value in myself.
I suppose I did get called racial slurs all the time growing up and never thought about it. Well, I hated it, I just never used that lens on it before.
I was a white girl growing up in inner city LA. Got called lots of things by groups of Mexicans. Probably other groups too. Just held my head up and kept going. What else was there to do?
It wasn’t until I moved away for college that I realized this wasn’t the way everyone lived.
Has it ended though being a white woman? For me, being a black man, it continues on, the racial slurs, the comments, the physical abuse. Maybe its over for you? But definitely not for me.
In middle school a black boy called a black girl Aunt Jemima during P.E. when we were playing tennis and the coach sent him to the office. I didn’t hear or see what happened but we asked him about the next day and he said the Principal told not to that again and that was about it. He claimed the girl whooped his ass at tennis and he said something like, “Damn Aunt Jemima, you got some skills.” and that it was a compliment.
Also in middle school my history teacher called me a honky. Never heard that term before nor that it was meant to be an insult. My friend and I thought it was funny and we started calling each other honky. The teacher didn’t directly call me that but friend and I were talking about how we didn’t know any slurs for white people besides rednecks and white trash and the teacher overheard and said, “Well, you’re white so you would also be a honky.”
While it’s true as an idealistic standpoint, it’s vastly far from the pragmatistic reality. When the majority of the world believes you’re inferior, you will be treated as such—no matter how you feel about yourself.
So what then is the answer when it is “sticks and stones”? I’ve been stripped naked, chained, tied up, suspended, humiliated, held down, beaten, whipped, shocked, burned, kicked, punched, bitten, stepped on…that’s all on them yes…but also, something I had to survive.
White too but been called a slur and remember it. No it is not part of my daily life or even a recurring part of my life nor is other negative discrimination.
But “white” is a broad group and whites can be minorities as well.
Until this thread, it never occurred to me that being able to laugh off a racial slur was another example of white privilege.
But it’s true. I’ve never been called a “honky” or a “cracker” or “whitey”, except in jest, and if I were, I’d have a hard time taking it seriously.
(" ‘Honky?’ Seriously? The Seventies just called, they want their slur back.") That’s probably because it happens so rarely - or, rather, I am aware of it happening, so rarely - that it just doesn’t have the sting of “raghead” or “nigger”. Or even worse, “you people”.
I’m a middle-class white straight cisgender neurotypical male; fully-paid up member of all the power classes, in other words. But I’ve been lucky enough to have formed several friendships that are secure enough to explore questions of race, even contentious ones; friends to whom I can ask, “Hey, what’s up with black dudes growing long fingernails?”, while they can ask me “Why do white girls wear long-sleeved sweatshirts and shorts, what’s that all about?”. Which leads into, “Why are you scared of young black men?” and “How is calling another black person ‘bougie’ not racist?” It’s helped me see the passes that my white face and male genitalia get me, that others - “Others” -don’t.
Guess I’ll chime in for the sake of diversity. I was routinely called ‘haole’, once with thrown rocks while in elementary school in Hawaii. Of course, haole (white) like a lot of racial terms is used as both an insult and a straight up descriptor in Hawaii. The rock time was an insult.
For me it’s everywhere, doesn’t matter what neighborhood. But like you, I can’t change the reason I’m targeted. I’m black and I have big feet. The summers are hot, and I run and lift weights shirtless and barefoot. The summer is the worst time for the comments and abuse. Same for you I would imagine.
Mostly when racism happens, at least where I live, it’s not overt, which is why there’s this certain subset of people who never believe you. Just like when you are sexually harassed, there will always be a subset of people who don’t believe you.
“Oh, he was just being nice.” “Oh, he didn’t ignore you because you’re not white, but because he didn’t see you.” “Oh, she’s just old.” Etc.
Real ethnic slurs are rare…the only place I heard them regularly was when I lived in Nashville for a while. That was a bad time. The white girls were ignoring me and ostracizing me and making sure I had no friends, and the black girls were beating the crap out of me. I got no relief!
