I think in my enthusiasm my wording was too zealous, so yeah, I’ll cop to that mistake, which I will never make again! However, I refuse to believe that there is anything intrinsically wrong with recommending books, TV shows, podcasts, or whatever. I would have thought that it goes without saying that “if you have the time and interest” is part of the recommendation. Since it obviously doesn’t, I will watch my language in the future.
That’s what I got in one of the chapters where the link sent me.
Living as a “non-default person” in a society that grants privilege to a default person is already exhausting and tiring, and the degree of exhaustion increases with the distance from privilege that any particular person has.
Given those circumstances, it can be further terrifying to be recruited as a spokesperson for any particular group.
First, one may not know how to play the role of spokesperson.
Second, one might not have the kind of personality that is comfortable being put in the spotlight.
Third, one might be afraid of stepping afoul of invisible traps while playing this role. It’s one thing to ask an anonymous internet person to explain. It’s another thing to be called out in front of your colleagues and other people who can affect your future and be asked to explain things, some things of which might create problems for you.
When I was in fifth grade, I had an English teacher who constantly asked me questions about being non-Christian. The one I recall in particular was she was asking me why Hindus worship cows. I was 10-11 years old!
I didn’t understand religion enough to answer adult questions. And for several months afterward, she would bug me about whether I had asked my parents to explain why Hindus worship cows.
Plus, I was a very shy kid. I couldn’t stand being the focus of attention in a group. I found the whole situation so uncomfortable that I never even wanted to mention it to my parents.
Three years later, my brother was in her class and she was actively trying to convert him to Christianity.
Now, you might say that you’re not asking questions of a child, but you might be asking someone to play a public role of spokesperson who isn’t prepared and is already at a handicap in terms of fitting in to the majority culture, not like a child, but disadvantaged in some way analogous to a child’s disadvantages.
Thanks … probably there are more episodes out now. She who “highly recommends” that people listen to the podcast should keep listening herself.
My two cents: there’s nothing wrong with what you did. People get annoyed when someone posts a blind link with no description. Or when someone uses a reference to a source as a substitute for an argument, essentially “if you just read the book/watch the movie, it proves I’m right!”
There’s no formal or informal rule against recommending something you liked and explaining why you liked it, which it seems to me all you did.
@CairoCarol, thanks for telling us about that series. The first episode is off the chain and had me cracking up (the silent temper tantrum of the PTA president at the fundraising gala, in particular). The words from the little white boy who kept on going on and on about “statuses” really did encapsulate the problem with these particular “nice white people”. When people are more concerned about preserving their individual “statuses” than providing good education for all, you’re going to have massive inequality.
Didn’t you just love her? I could feel my blood boiling on her behalf.
I cringed for her when that lady at the gala was lecturing her on how being bilingual gives you entré into another world of class and sophistication. But not at first. I mean, I consider myself a woke person who knows something about privilege, but initially I felt my head nodding at what fancy gala lady was saying. What she said wasn’t totally ridiculous if you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. And then I remembered she was lecturing a bilingual person, and the cringiness of what she was saying sunk in.
The school was full of bilingual people. Trilingual, in the case of Maya. But the nice white people weren’t holding them up as specimens of sophistication to be emulated. A Spanish emmersion class is 100% more useful to the average New Yorker than a French class. But they weren’t fundraising for that. They were fundraising for a class that would stroke their own desire to maintain “statuses.”
I listened to the second episode this morning and it was even better than the first one. The interview with the parent who wrote a letter to the school board calling for more integration but who changed her mind once she toured a public school was very poignant because it laid bare how a bunch of people making rational decisions for their children can just make the problem worse for people who lack the same freedom, which of course only justifies others to make those same “rational” decisions 10, 20, and 30 years later. Also, I had no idea that schools in NYC were segregated as badly as they were. We hear about segregation in the south so much that it is easy to forget that it was normal everywhere else. It’s just that the schools in NYC weren’t explicitly labeled “Colored”.
She actually uses the word “entré”?
I gotta listen to this podcast now.
She uses entré half a dozen times, at least! It was clear that she wanted to impress both the reporter and the PTA president with her mad French skillz, but she just came across as hilariously extra.
Everyone in this thread should listen to the series. The first episode pokes fun at the nice white people, admittedly. But the second one helps to understand where some of the nice white people are coming from. I can’t wait to listen to the third episode.
True. In much of the Industrial North upon the “great migration” a de facto segregation arose through redlining, combined with White Flight.
I think I see what’s happening – in “Apple Podcast” both the first-posted chapters are dated the same day, so someone could listen to them in either sequence.
Clearly there is a bug somewhere. But I love the idea that a post will be automatically withdrawn in “876000” hours, which if my calculations serve is equal to 100 years.
QuickSilver.
Warning issued. Keep this up and you’ll end up banned from GD and PE. We’re all on edge, but we can remain polite. Do so.
They still are. Believe me.
It’s an ongoing issue. I’m familiar with it, because I have a child in first grade, and I go to all the neighborhood/school meetings. And my child’s school is on the border between a predominantly affluent, white neighborhood and a much poorer, predominantly Black neighborhood. The population of the elementary school in that neighborhood comes almost entirely from a very large public housing project.
The school there is very much under-capacity. It’s beautiful, physically, and in great shape. It’s not fantastic academically, but it’s improving.
The school in the whiter, more affluent neighborhood (where I live) is very overcrowded. The school district wanted to move some of the incoming classes into the other school, which would effectively desegregate that school (although that wasn’t the reason for the move towards combining the two schools).
Howls of outrage from my (very liberal – this is brownstone Brooklyn) neighborhood.
Plenty of outrage from the other neighborhood, too.
The schools are still segregated.
Years ago there was a Reddit thread asking, “What’s classy if you’re rich and trashy if you’re poor?” My favorite answer was being bilingual.
The South simply adopted the Northern model after segregation de jure was no longer legal.
It is several orders of magnitude better than being a trump supporter.
Sure, one can always do more. But you should do only as much as you feel comfortable doing.
"Don’t wanna live in the inner city? why not? great bargains on housing to be had in the inner city. you could double your square footage? "
Nope, smaller and more expensive around here.
I listened to the first episode of the Nice White Parents podcast. I also cringed at the lady extolling the virtues of speaking another language to a bilingual Puerto Rican. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the podcast. I appreciate the recommendation.
I listened to the entire series. It was really good. The bonus fifth episode was quite a surprise.
This is really an important subject. Eliminating structural racism is difficult precisely because it requires white people to surrender their privileges, and their children’s privileges. It’s exactly “nice white parents” who are keeping racism in place in our society.