True that, but this specific instance was the first time he’d verbalized the chasm that exists because my reality is not his reality. I agree with your post, though.
Yes, this race business is everyone’s problem. It is how we use the mechanisms we’re given that defines us.
Thank you for those kind words, Li’ll Pluck. No doubt you are correct, this isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. Sucks, doesnt it.
When you dine out, which one picks up the tab? Auntbeast, I wonder if we’ve come any distance at all in my lifetime at least. ( Boy. There’s a shitty statement. Hear me out. )
I don’t pick and choose co-workers any more but for many years, I would pick an assistant to take on jobs with me. I would introduce them as my partner, or co-hort or whatever. His/Her job was as insanely pressured as mine, but the job title was “Assistant Cameraman/woman”. I took a woman with me on a job to far western NY to a golf course very close to Lake Erie. She’s a Chinese woman, a brilliant excellent technician who speaks with an almost unintelligible accent. I knew she could do the job, I offered it, the Production Company said yeah, and so off we went to a golf resort to shoot.
Every single person on the crew ( all of whom were male ) assumed I was sleeping with her. A few really crude and crass racist Asian remarks were made but most were mingled with sexist remarks. It was maddening. I had to curb my temper in the moment, and hated having to do so ( who screams at a person they’re working for in the middle of a work day that cannot be recreated, such as a location t.v. shoot? Not I. ).
I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your son too, Cartooniverse. Do your kids have access to trusted adults who’ve experienced racism? Your post also made me think about your last thread on race, and I was wondering how your kids were doing dealing with their own racist feelings?
Wouldn’t the first definition fall more under the term “stereotype”? The term racism falls more under your second definition up there imo.
IME, a stereotype often encompasses positive characteristics of a specific race. Though I know that in our over the top PC world this is BAD, Very very BAD to point out any of these positive race-based (or thought to be race-based) advantages.
Well obviously often enough in the experience of several in this thread for me to not have been the only person who thought the racist in the OP was a redneck. And again, from my post (from which you only posted part), I’m speaking of the old or original meaning of redneck, before the PC fanatics got ahold of the term. Not the cutsiefied Jeff Foxworthy meaning.
Jeez, you actually managed to quote the whole post and STILL didn’t read it. But you’re right, drunken idiot + racial slur isn’t limited only to Deliverance type inbreds, it can be used by any drunken idiot.
The term “redneck” as I’ve stated several times here, has recently been all prettied up by the PC brigade. In my experience, growing up with a white southern man as a dad, it has never meant “white southern male” it referred to what we are only now allowed, by the PC police, to call “jerry springer” types and so on.
Yes, Jeff Foxworthy came along twenty years ago and made the term all cute and funny. I don’t happen to think drunken idiocy of the toothless inbred type IS cute or funny, nor do I equate it with merely being white, southern and male.
So get off your “oh so offended” high horse and actually read the entire thread next time.
To be very honest, it has not become a hot topic. I talk now and then with them about incidents but since they’re a different race than I am to start with, I don’t need to reach to get to the topic in the first place.
r4nd0mNumb3rs, you mentioned the “blaming the victim” syndrome. I’m aware that people regard my kids in a racist, albeit positive yet racist light. My kids are expected to be highly intelligent, good at math and music, hard working students, and so on. If they do not fulfill that image in someone’s eyes then the question is not why did that person have a checklist, but why do my kids not fulfill that preconcieved notion? Racism veiled as intelligent discussion. Bullshit, I say.
I can’t tell if you’re saying what I’m saying is bullshit or agreeing with me, but I do think that any stereotype (even ‘good’ ones), ultimately hurt the people being stereotyped. Hippy Hollow used basketball as an example for Blacks waaay earlier in the thread and I think he did a good job explaining it.
In a similar vein, if I’m good at math it’s because I’m Asian and that achievement is undermined. If I suck at math, then what the hell kind of Asian am I?
It seems like what happened to your son caused him to raise up his defenses and try to push you away. It could happen with biological children too, (“you don’t understand what I’m going through!!!”) and I think the best thing to do is still try to talk him about it if it comes up again. Don’t let race deter you from reaching out to your children in their time of need. In the end they still want/need your support.
I’m wondering if you have difficulty making all the letters coalesce into words. I did not quote the entire post. Go back and look at it again. I’ll wait.
There. See? If you take your time and sound out the words everything gets Much More Shiny, doesn’t it?
I’m right? About what? Did I say that? I didn’t, did I? Come on, Boopsie, you *know *I didn’t.
Oh, you don’t? OK, go back again, and read it verrrryyy slowwwwwwlyyy. No need to rush. I’m here for you.
OK now. Whew! That was cathartic, wasn’t it? Everybody? Lets give **Canvas ****Shoes **a big hug up!
And yet, when all you know about someone is that he was a drunken racist, you immediately label him a redneck. Methinks your words are all atangle. Which indicates that your thoughts are all atangle. How very disconcerting it must have been for you to discover that the offender was actually not a redneck at all, but an African-American.
And while I think that, in the main, you’re right–there are ups and downs to being everyone–the ratio of ups to downs depends in large part on which “everyone” you are and on what your individual circumstances are in relation to everyone else. For instance, if I were a slave, while I don’t know if I would’ve hated being Black (though I’d guess that I wouldn’t–it’s be horrible, sure, but…hmmm, it’s actually an interesting question), I do believe that my station in life would’ve afforded me many, many more downs than ups.
It’s funny–what you do WRT “being a girl today,” I sometimes do WRT being Black. Sometimes, at the end of the day, when I think back over the previous 16 or so hours, I say to myself, “Okay, Li’l Pluck, today wasn’t a bad racial day, thank goodness.” Unfortunately, it is, more often than not, a mixed-bag kind of day, where it’s like, “Okay, today was not *that * bad, because not too many people clutched their purses, patted their wallets, or looked at me askance when I was in proximity to them.” And though I’m fortunate that I am very rarely called “nigger,” (this actually hasn’t happened to me in quite awhile), I do tend to be aware when someone’s thinking, “Nigger” (again, the purse-cluthing, wallet-patting, wary looks).
What’s really frustrating about this (well, frustrating beyond the fact that I have to have these conversations with myself) is that, when you mention it, even here on the SDMB (as you may already be aware–hell, just look at this thread), people are always trying to tell you that, at the very least, you’re imagining things (observer-expectancy effect, or some other bullshit). (Props, BTW, to Ensign Edison, for post #'s 154 and 168. No surprise, though, since I recall from his previous posts that he seems to “get” this stuff.)
This, by the way, is why I’m ceaselessly frustrated that the word “racism” retains it’s classic black/white (no pun intended), either/or place in in our society. For years I’ve thought of racism, especially as it is practiced in America, as an illness of gradations, and not of extremes. (As I’d reckon that **monstro ** does, given what she’s said in this thread. And I’m betting that I don’t even have to guess that **Hippy Hollow ** does, too.) unfortunately, what the either/or understanding of racism does is, it forces people (and because it’s relevant here, I’m speaking for the moment strictly of White people) into denial about those little things that they do everyday (again, the purse-snatching, wallet-patting, wary looks) to Black people. (I think that this is related to that phenomenon of denial–and I think someone else may have pointed it out in this thread–wherein someone will claim that what a beloved relative, friend, or random person does/says is not racist, because they do/say that same thing, and if that other person were racist, then that means that they’d be racist, too.) When this happens, when White people (especially White liberals!) have so much invested in thinking of themselves as “non-racist,” well, shit, of course we’re not going to have an honest discussion about it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have such discussions with some very honest White folks (and I know that there are others out there), but, unfortunately, such people are not legion.
Uh…let’s see, I think I kinda got off track.
Oh, yeah, I agree with you that, while we’re not where we need to be (not by a long shot!), things are getting better. I mean, even though racism hasn’t disappeared since the Civil Rights Movement, but has gone underground and become much more subtle (White Northerners have always been masters of this, which is why I do a million :rolleyes: 's when they self-righteously rebuke the racism of White Southerners as if they, themselves, are any more morally pristine), I know that things were better for my parents than they were for my grandparents, and things are better for me than they were for my parents, and I believe that the trend will continue. Mind you, I think that several aspects of this country’s progress in this regard are glacial, but at least progress is not quite static.
Wow, even though part of me thinks that it might be helpful for people to know what others think about them in this regard (kinda complex, but, basically, I think you really do need to be aware of the world aroud you, even the unpleasant shit), I can’t help but hope that she was totally oblivious to the racist goings-on. Fuckin’ assholes!
Progress in baby steps, indeed.
Oh, and you’re quite welcome re my regards to your son!
(And yeah, I’ll be the older gentleman in a few years. Not better-off, mind you (not in this lifetime or the next), and hopefully relatively attractive, but definitely older and probably in search of a catamite. Okay…several. Sigh.)
I think one reason for the White Denial effect is that after a lifetime of being steeped in privilege invisible to them, many white people have a reflexively negative reaction to any suggestion that there’s a club we can’t join. The very idea that all this racism might be going on right under our very eyes and we don’t see it drives a certain kind of white American totally batshit insane. Add the suggestion that white people might be (gasp) collectively responsible despite the best intentions of most of them, and that type’s fucking head explodes. Same with all the anti-slang nonsense, it’s mostly whites getting pissed off that they’re not included in every goddamn thing. That’s why in all these threads, we get outright denials of the experience of racism by black people alongside assertions of racism against white people, with the strong implication that it’s racist for a poc to accuse a white person of racism unless that white person is actually wearing a white sheet and holding a noose, and even then some white people would try to say it might have been “just a stupid joke”.
I’m so fucking glad to see a growing contingent of black posters addressing these issues here. I try to be supportive but take the advice I wish more white people here would take – just shut up and listen. Stop analyzing, stop rationalizing for assholes, stop being defensive and accept that maybe you are in fact part of the problem while having the best intentions in the world. Stop conjuring images of some scary black woman you saw in a McDonald’s trying to get a free burger by playing the race card. Stop trying so hard to dig up just one black person who agrees with you then hold that up like it’s evidence against the statements of countless other black people. Just fucking stop and listen, because what if you’re wrong? How can you risk being wrong? What if what they’re trying to tell you is all true? (Hint: It is.)
Ensign, hey I ain’t Black and I started this thread (and went through a lot of shit just to get this conversation going), can an Asian get some props too?
:eek:
We’re discussing racism, in The Pit, on the SDMB, and it’s been a respectful, understanding conversation?
Maybe there is hope after all!
I actually think we’ve moved from r4nd0mNumb3rs’ OP, which was about the lack of recognition of racism towards Asians. As stupid as people can be about racism towards Blacks, they tend to be 100 times stupider when it comes to Asian folk. And it’s not just White people doing the stupid shit, as r4nd0m notes.
Ensign, I think you’re on to something there. I appreciate you sticking your nose in the fray on the board re: racism, I’ve noticed it and I know you get shit for it at times.
I think we should start a thread, “How ordinary folks can help kill racism.” The first thing on my list? White folks (and people of color as well), stop decrying every request, happily delivered, or angrily stated, and every mode in between, by a person of color about changing language or behaviors, with the term “I’m not gonna be PC.” Nothing sets off my Potential Jackass Racist Alarm than a comment like that.
Cartooniverse, sounds like you are being a great parent. I think it’s great that your kid came out and “made it plain” about the experience of being racialized. I think that’s incredibly perceptive and it means you can talk on a deeper level. I remember seeing a show about a woman who was adopted by a White family at the age of 3 or so from a Korean orphanage. The family seemed to be loving and wonderful in every way, except that they essentially said that the daughter was White, she had no ethnic identity as a Korean person or as an Asian person. The sad thing is that the woman knew this wasn’t right, but I think she had a real challenge reconciling something very natural to her - being connected in some way to people who looked like her - and being a part of the American family. Sad thing is, I think it could have worked, her parents acknowledging and embracing her racial identity, and being part of the family. But the family saw it as her needing to be raceless to be in the family.
(BTW, Contrapuntal, I’m on your side re: eradicating terms like “white trash” from polite conversation. I think Ensign is too.)
What a coincidence - I just had to read that book for class this quarter (I think it’s Takaki, btw ).
This whole “if you don’t laugh at a racist joke you’re too PC” thing makes me wary. On one hand, sometimes I feel like my Caucasian friends are more sensitive about the whole thing than I am. I remember one of my friends made a joke during a drinking game, where we had the rule that you couldn’t call anyone by their first name - he was explaining the rule to this other girl and used me as an example: “So, instead of calling her HazelNutCoffee, I’d have to call her something else, like ‘my spicy little eggroll’.” The minute he said that he looked horrified with himself and apologized - which was silly, because I was laughing the hardest at what he’d said.
On the other hand, if some random guy at a bar decided to call me that as a term of endearment, I might have stabbed him with a spoon.
This also reminds me of the whole Oriental debate that went on here awhile ago. I was actually amazed at the amount of people who insisted that it was a perfectly fine term to use and that those of us who found it insulting were being too PC. I suppose I’ve been sheltered most of my life in this regard, because in academia that term has been discredited quite thoroughly, mostly by Edward Said’s Orientalism and the post-colonial studies that followed afterwards. But even on an everyday level - why would you use a term that offends the people it addresses? Honestly, the mind boggles.
First off, because enough Asians in America find the term Oriental offensive if applied to a person, so regardless of what one’s personal belief around the word Oriental should not be used.
Now I first learned on these boards about 6 years ago that Oriental had become a bad word. I was truely shocked as I like to think I’m pretty up on things Asian, especially Chinese. I was also quite the ass about it, and have spent a reasonable amount of effort since then doing web searchs, emailing University Asia studies websites, and these boards. I have always used Asian predominantly, and honestly can’t remember back when I was in the US if I had ever used Oriental to refer to a person. My half Japanese girlfriend in college thought it was really cute when I called her an “Ornamental”. But, that was 20+ years ago and I’ve come to realize that times change. With all that said, I haven’t seen a lot of stuff that makes *sense to me * on how Oriental morphed from being a not so commonly used kinda archaic term into a bad word sometime in the last 20 years. Said’s Orientalism, at least from the massive excerpts I’ve read, doesn’t really cover East Asia. I’ve been meaning to get Orientals by Robert Lee. If anyone’s got some recommended reading, please list it.
HNC, don’t assume someone is being a jerk if they say Oriental in the US. It’s not quite as pervasive knowledge as you might think. That or I’m pretty dang slow.
Here is the cite for where the Oriental should be Asian movement started in Berkeley. Interesting read.
Directed at no one specifically, but perhaps to several in general:
I really find some of these posts hard to believe. It just is NOT cool to go around making racial jokes and then try to defend it with “we only make these jokes because we like you!” or because “you are one of us.” When people know each other very, VERY well they MIGHT have the sort of relationship that wouldn’t suffer if racial jokes were casually tossed around. But I think that sometimes a person THINKS it is okay to make fun of a friend’s or a co-worker’s race but the receiver of the joke doesn’t think it is okay at all. You know that big black guy at work that you always make those oh-so-funny fried chicken comments to? Well, just because he smiles and refrains from smashing you in the face doesn’t mean he likes you.
I have a few friends that I could make racial allusions to, but they would be fairly mild allusions, fairly good friends, and I would still have to “make the call” on a case-by-case basis. You think you know someone from an anonymous internet message board well enough to drop serious racial epithets on? Well, then I think I can see why you are spending so much time on an anonymous internet message board. It’s probably because you lack the social graces to have any face-to-face friends other than the imaginary ones that live with you in mom’s basement.
