Why would I allow them to have a say in my mood, you ask? Well, I don’t. Or I try very, very hard not to let it affect me and I am very successful at it.
But when you see a thread full of black people telling you how they act extra nice to strangers and don’t eat fried chicken in public-- shouldn’t that say something about how perfect strangers can and do affect a large number of blacks. Telling me and other blacks that we should just ignore it, shrug it off, not let it bother them, be above such emotions is pure poppycock.
Perfect strangers treat you shabbily without even knowing you on a daily basis and the answer is “it shouldn’t bother you”. Yeah, right.
So, the “shabby treatment from strangers” thing…does that only come with being black? Or can that apply in other areas? How about being overweight and nerdy? I guess I have no place telling how how you should act when you get shabby treatment from strangers because you being black.
But as for shabby treatment in general from strangers, I still say grow some skin. I did a long time ago. And, while I’m sure you’re scurrying now to paint me as some emotionless andriod like you did Tax and lez, I assure you it’s not the case.
I just don’t waste time with people who aren’t important to me.
And what is it that I do TaxGuy, that you presume to tell me as if you know me better than I know myself? As if I haven’t told you more than once what it is I do when these situations do occur. Seriously. I stated it more than once.
And yes, I see that you really do live in a cold, controlled emotional landscape where you think you have control over your emotional reactions. I’ll admit to having control over my physcal reactions. I control whether I smile, ignore or mug the cowering little old white ladies. I do not have any control over the emotions that I feel when little old white ladies cower in my presence.
Be careful how you react to a complete strangers words on a message board. Some may think you have no control over your emotional responses.
What it is that you do is this: decide to feel “unearned shame” when you see an old white lady look nervous when she sees you. I’m saying that that is what you do. I haven’t said anything about what you should do; you can decide to feel this way if you want to, I’m just pointing out that it is a decision you make and not just the invetible consequence of events outside of your control.
You act like your feelings about a situation have the same relationship to the situation as a rock’s relationship to the situation of being thrown from a building, but I don’t believe that’s the case.
Are you seriously arguing that a person can decide what emotion to feel? Why don’t we all just turn our switches permanantly to “Happy” if that were the case? Even the idea of “free will” itself is controversial enough that insisting something as instant and primal as emotion is under our complete control is insane. If you believe that you’re deciding what emotions to feel after each event in your life, you’re deluding yourself. All you’re doing is rationalizing afterwards, or maybe consiously trying to subdue an emotion by distracting yourself.
Uh, people cross the street all the time, big deal. But old ladies clutching their purses when they see her. Sorry, but that does mean something. And she has every right to feel like she does.
And I love how you trivialize her feelings as “hang-ups.” Nice.
How you dress is for the most part, completely under your control. If you don’t dress well, and people stare at you, it’s because of something you did. If people stare at her, it’s because of nothing she did or can control. There’s a difference.
Oversimplification.
Yes, there are times you can ignore negative responses, but then again, there are times when they will get to you.
Maybe there are some people who can always ignore what strangers think, even if they’re getting treated like shit by strangers on a regular basis, but not everybody can. In fact, anybody who gets treated like shit on a regular basis for the way they are born, even if they get to a point where they can ignore most of it, it’s still going to get to them at times. It’s only human nature
Ahhh, logic and emotion. They’re too separate things. Yes, one thing that sets us apart from the animals is that we can have logic and reason triumph over emotion. But we still have emotions and we can’t totally control them. And even though we can keep our feelings under control, we still have them. And if you know how to pick and choose what upsets you, please share the secret with the rest of us. I’d like to know how to turn my feelings on and off like a light bulb. I think most of us would.
I’m pretty white, not tan except for my arms from wearing short sleved shirts. When I was in my teens, people would allways tell me that I needed to get a tan, but I prided myself in not having one, not being like everybody else who had one. Nowadays though, I’ve been thinking of getting one. I’m curious to see how dark my sking can get, but I don’t tan, I burn.
A co-worker (yes, there is a point, and I’m getting to it ) took a week and a half vacation in mexico and when he came back, his skin is farily dark now. He told me the secret is to use a good sun block, and don’t try to get the tan all at once. Go out a little at a time and build it up.
I’m going to try to remember that for when my diet is over and I try to get a tan in public without embarasment
I totally got misunderstood and since so many of you misunderstood, I’m assuming I didn’t convey my feelings well enough.
Sorry about that.
I was more referring to people getting angry about how someone else is making them feel. I dated a black guy for a couple of years with a bit of a persecution complex. Anything negative that happened to him was “because I’m black”. He would get upset because he was convinced someone was giving him the hairy eye or some such thing “because I’m black”. It got to be a bit ridiculous. He would insist that people were feeling negative feelings towards him because of his color, when there was little chance they actually were.
That’s why I gave the “your hangups are your hangups” argument.
It’s funny because there are people complaining about the New York centric reporting of this now old news blackout and yet in New York the only place where I could find extensive reporting about it was on Spanish televisiion.
Now I need to go to my room and practice not feeling anything when white people judge me without even knowing me. It’s OK. I’ve got a lot of practice and I’m very good at ignoring it. Yay for me. That’s why white people love me so much. I’m not like most of “them”. I know how to hide my anger and hurt so as not to scare them. I can control my emotional responses enough to not be threatening.
) took a week and a half vacation in mexico and when he came back, his skin is farily dark now. He told me the secret is to use a good sun block, and don’t try to get the tan all at once. Go out a little at a time and build it up.