It works in the other direction, too. My son is about as white as they come, but was largely raised in a multi-Asian cultural environment, and after age 8 none of his friends were white - a few were Korean, Japanese or Indonesian, but the majority were South Asian. His first girlfriend’s mother was South Asian and his current GF is a first-generation American with immigrant South Asian parents.
Now that he’s an adult (barely - he is 22) and in a primarily white environment, one of the biggest distinctions he draws between himself and his peers is attitudes toward parents. He’s said on numerous occasions, “I honor my parents, the people around me don’t.”
It’s a bit weird, and it is nothing I’d want to take advantage of (there was a situation recently where we could have - long story which I’ll skip, but short version is that he unhesitatingly agreed to do something his parents asked of him that he truly didn’t want to do - we backed off when we saw how unhappy it made him). But as his mother, I’m not complaining.
Which is kind of the point, no? That stereotypes exist and are often perpetuated by certain groups and often used as dog whistles, and that pretending they don’t exist doesn’t eliminate racial stereotypes, it just makes you blind to them and the harm they cause.
re: JRDelerious. As to the “meat and potatoes” “bland is best” line. It’s a way of brushing aside nuance “Oh, I don’t need to hear about all that, I’m just a meat and potatoes kind of guy.” Call it good old fashion “folksy ignorance” as an excuse to pretend like there isn’t a problem deserving of attention.
The notion that whites view punctuality and responsibility as “white” virtues is unfounded, and racist to whites. The implication (founded or not) that these things are alien to blacks is racist to blacks. The whole thing is a massive fail.
[quote=“Danny_Hammer, post:28, topic:915636”]
The notion that whites view punctuality and responsibility as “white” virtues is unfounded, and [/quote]
False. This is either denial or something.
False. Another instance of pointing out societal racism as being labelled as racist.
[quote]
The implication (founded or not) that these things are alien to blacks is racist to blacks. [/quote]
Well, yeah. That’s part of the point. Black people have suffered a great deal from being kabaeled as unpunctual. By white culture. Again, part of the point.
Yeah, maybe now some people who are concerned about their public image wouldn’t dare. Funny thing is that for half a millennium or so white cultures did it pretty much continuously without consequence. And there are plenty of people still doing it.
Of course not. Given how much pearly clutching goes on at the slightest bit of criticism of how white people think of themselves, doing the same, but for an oppressed population, would be incredibly shitty of them, and only the deplorables of our nation would not be offended.
Getting quite a bit of a “They can say the n word, why can’t I?” vibe here.
No, they think it is a virtue, full stop, and people who are not punctual are inconsiderate or incompetent (or both). But putting an extreme value on punctuality is sort of a quirk of mainstream White American culture. It’s not the norm most places, and that’s ok. It’s not rude for someone to be late, and you have the freedom to be late, to be flexible. Personally, drives me crazy. Because I am really really big on punctuality. I can list on one hand every time I’ve been late to anything, practically, and each is blazed in my memory because I was so ashamed. But that’s arbitrary. Cultures and sub-groups that put less focus on punctuality aren’t less considerate or less competent. If anything, they are more flexible and resilient (why do we set up our days where someone else being 15 minutes late creates problems?). In cultures that don’t value punctuality, people are absolutely on time when it matters. It just doesn’t matter often.
So treating punctuality as an inherent virtue means you end up judging groups that don’t share it based on your own arbitrary cultural standards.
But why should they be offended? They’d only be explaining how blacks define blackness. This is a completely factual process based in rigorous scholarship, and is in no way dependent on outdated bullshit stereotypes. Therefore, any blacks who’d be offended would just be pearl clutching /s
I think some people use “punching down” as an excuse to promote bigotry and, more often than not, they don’t know where “down” is.
This is a non-sequitur in the context of this thread.
Yes. I value punctuality, but I value it because I respect other people’s time, not because I’m white. I don’t see it as my duty as a white man to be on time. If I’m late, I don’t feel like I’ve let down “team white”. And guess what, no-one else does either. That, like the rest of the poster, is, factually speaking, complete bullshit.
Also, to say that whites value punctuality because being punctual is part of their white identity is to impute to me motives that I don’t hold on the basis of my race. Textbook racism.
It’s also deeply offensive to blacks. If blackness is defined in opposition to whiteness, and punctuality is a “white” virtue, then it follows that punctuality isn’t something blacks value. I know quite a few black people who’d strenuously object to that. Because, y’know, it’s racist
But I don’t think that’s what the poster is saying. As I read it, it’s saying “Here’s a list of the things that white people think make them ‘properly white’”.
Well said. And among people of color (I am Pakistani American) you will undoubtedly hear the phase “CPT” - Colored People Time. In many cultures punctuality simply isn’t valued as much as it in Europe or the US.
I mean in any South Asian wedding it’s rare to find even a quarter of the invitees show up an hour after the ‘start’.
That’s exactly what the poster is saying. Which is why @Acsenray backed out of discussing this with you, I imagine. Because you weren’t attempting to understand that this is how a lot of us are reading the poster.