Racism.....

Lord help us.

But actual racism is a horrific disease, so don't get me wrong.

I'm just saying that Racism is a powerful tool that can be used both ways.

In my earlier example I would be branded a racist by white liberals. But in fact, I would have just made a judgment call on talent. Sexism, Racism....is a powerful word, whether it is true or not.

What could be deemed "subtle" racism, could just be a white apologist, identifying wrongly with others. Friends of mine, who are not white, tell me it happens to them all of the time, whether they are black, muslim or sri lankan.

It's just as racist as out and out racism.

also, political correctness is very infuriating. an asian woman got promoted over my mother because her school needed to fill their quota of asian teachers, and it just so happens that this woman is utterly incompetent and my mum's basically doing her job for her anyway. me being cross about that doesn't mean i'm racist - OR DOES IT?? I JUST DON'T KNOW??

oh and good call Ronan. may you continue to piss off ignorant bitches like that woman.

WTF? You are equating Oprah to Hitler because of that. For fucks sake!

ronan, you *can't* say that. you know perfectly well why.

Because it's racist?

Hitler is one of those things i don't even joke about as i don't find genocide very funny.

And to address the original point, there is a rather large difference between one black person calling another nigger and white person calling a black person nigger.

OK, i can see why. but in theory at least, this should one day be able to happen, surely?

i have to get back to work now i'm being v naughty.

Well, I think it does. I don't like the word myself, but if the people using it are comfortable with it between themselves, fair enough. But given the amount of systematic oppression and general evil shit associated with the use of the word by white people I hardly think it's suprising that the word still carries a whole pile of extra negative connotations when spoken by a white person. So, I reckon black its perfectly reasonable for black people to get pissed off when a white person uses it.

1. Re: Anthony's comment, I find it ridiculous that any group has "code words". Lenny Bruce made comments that once you use the word repeatedly, you take the power out of that word. You can choose who uses the word, why they use the word - by doing so, you are negating a very valid point.

2. In writing that I forgot my other points.

It's true that with sexual swear words for example their impact lessens the more a word is used. But when a word implies the acceptability of discrimination, if only in the context of its use, I don't know how its impact could ever diminish for those its meaning discriminates against.

however, if black people don't mind being called niggas (i agree this is a better term than nigger, much more pop-cultural!) then who are white people to stop them reclaiming the word and stripping it of its power? surely it's a GOOD THING to do that? the next stage to getting rid of racism is, in my opinion, to FORGIVE - not forget, as lessons have to be learnt from history, but to move on. anyone - black, white, yellow, green bug eyed monsters for crying out loud - who is living in the past and refusing to move on is actually guilty (whether conscious or not) of perpertuating racism and this is where i think Oprah has to step forward.

OK and that was overly poetic, albeit in a kind of grim way.

(a) I think conceptions of Oprah in this thread are moving very, very far from reality. For the past decade or so, Oprah has rarely done or said anything directly relating to racial politics in this country. The majority of her audience is white. She talks about mid- list literary fiction, home repair, marriage, the independence and self-esteem of women, health and fitness, etc., but not race. Honestly, people.

(b) The "let's all get over it" approach to race is untenable and quite near stupid, especially as it relates to the United States. African-Americans as a group simply have less money, less education, less social connection, and consequently less opportunity than their white counterparts. There is one single, obvious explanation for this: blacks have, for a long, long period of time only "officially" ending a generation ago, been denied precisely those things -- wealth, education, influence, opportunity. This cannot possibly be "gotten over" until that history no longer results in relative poverty for blacks and relative prosperity for whites. And this does not simply change; I don't think anyone here can deny that people who come from wealthy backgrounds tend to stay wealthy, whereas people who come from poor, isolated, uneducated backgrounds have a very hard time not ending up poor, isolated, and uneducated themselves. This applies to people of any race, really -- I don't see too much difference between the situations of the poor in rural Appalachia and the poor on the south side of Chicago.

For a good perspective on race, however, think about these two fact:

(1) It was less than 40 years ago (1962) when James Meredith needed a National Guard escort to attend class at the University of Mississippi.

(2) If you compare black people and white people in the U.S. who have the same levels of income and earning, you will find that in every case, the white people have two or three times the level of actual wealth as the black people. All of that wealth is passed through families without much fanfare. But all of that wealth, thus far, was earned in a society where black people were effectively barred from competing for it. To simply say "we're all even now" is a bit like breaking a person's leg and then challenging him to a footrace, claiming you're both running the same free and even path.

That's really all I have to say: discussion about race doesn't always just boil down to people hating one another, but can also have to do with people refusing to acknowledge (or simply not caring about) the fact that certain communities have been put in a position of disadvantage, and certain other communities can credit at least some of the success they think they've "earned" to precisely that disadvantage.

and i would *never* say "get over it" in relation to racism. of course i understand that the systematic repression of an entire group of people is something that cannot be "gotten over" - i am a woman after all! nor was i trying to imply that we're all equal now, when the reverse is so patently true (maybe more so in the US than in the UK? i don't know...) i was simply trying to say that leaps forward have been made and will hopefully continue to be made, and that the past should inform but not overwhelm that process.

She spoke with an almost imperceptible accent, the sort of accent that a lot of Australians whose parents are from overseas speak with (commonly called a "wog accent" - no offence meant) although she may have been born overseas too.

Anyway, she kept on throwing insults at me like "blonde Aussie whore" (my hair is naturally at least as dark as hers and I had about 2 inches of regrowth so "blonde" was a pretty poor insult).

I didn't want to use the words "wog" or "immigrant" as insults because a)I like the fact that my friends and most people I've come across have no objection to the word wog used to describe people of Italian/Greek/Lebansese etc. descent and in fact, many are proud of it (hence movies such as "Wog Boys") b)I like "wog" food, culture, language, people; c)I like living in a multicultural society and think the more immigrants we get in Melbourne, the better; d)all humans in Australia have ancestors who are immigrants, the aboriginal people's came 40,000 years ago, mine came 170 years ago, hers probably came in the last 40 years; e)I didn't want to stoop down to her level of racial insults.

So instead I told her she was so fat and ugly she couldn't be a whore even if she wanted to (which wasn't true by the way, she was slightly plump but certainly not fat and she was far from ugly).

She punched me in the face.

Anyway, the point is that I found it really amazing to have "Aussie" used as part of an insult by someone who is almost definitly either an Australian citizen or a permanent resident and who presumably likes Australia and its people and culture and who wants to live here (I'm assuming that if she didn't want to live here then she wouldn't be doing so).

I dunno, Ronan. Maybe in Ireland. But if you'd ever had some big white guy in a truck with the Confederate flag in the back window shout "fucking nigger" at you as you cross the street, you might think differently.

My sense is that there are two clear ways to use the word -- the way black people use it ("What up, nigga?") and the way white people use it to insult black people ("Stupid nigger.") In all cases that don't fit into one of these categories, I'd like to think it's best to just avoid the issue and use a different word. I mean, outside of black American slang (as spoken by blacks or whites or people of any race who grow up in those sorts of environments), why would you even need to use the word in the first place?

It's basically a code-switching thing -- "nigga" in black American English means one thing, "nigger" in standard English means something entirely different. If you're going to use the black American English version, you'd better do a whole lot of stuff beforehand to clearly establish that that's the dialect you're speaking.

an old thread i know, but i thought that was an interesting point. I think all labels are dehumanizing in some way. Even if it's just that you're labelled by what you're profession is. It's a quick an easy way to forget the complexity, intention and sensitivity of another person so that you in some way justify releasing your irrational anger or hate on them.

I guess racist statements are more popular because they not only dehumanize but they also have hurtful connotations.

I don't think the woman had anything against Aussies but she wanted to forget that you were a person that she probably could have a friendly relationship with and hurt the feelings of, while she abused you for whatever she felt you did wrong. I guess she used aussie cause of a lack of imagination for anything more powerful.

Anyways, i think i'm either overanalyzing or stating the obvious with this. Just wanted to get those thoughts out.

http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/images/racism.jpg

Peruvian writer Andrés Bedoya Ugarteche’s has been named by charity Survival as the winner of its Most Racist Article of the Year award.

The 13 June headlined “The poor chunchos and other idiocies” is condemned by Survival as “offensive rubbish” - although Ugartech himself as denied he was being racist.

Describing indigenous people as “ignorant, primitive, violent chunchos from the pre-agricultural age”, a column in Peruvian daily Correo also called the government “butchers and assassins” and the opposition “communist excrement”.

Referring to the police killed in a clash with indigenous protesters in Northern Peru, he wrote that “if the ‘natives’ didn’t shrink the heads of the policemen they killed and eat their remains, it was only because there wasn’t time.”

In the penultimate paragraph of his article, the writer implies a solution to the issue of indigenous people: “I don’t know what keeps Alan [Garcia, the president] from providing the air force with all the napalm necessary.”

Further epithets in the piece described Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as “dung with ears” and opposition supporters’ opinions as “brothel lies.”

Asked about his “win” by Lima newspaper El Comercio, the writer denied he was being racist, saying that it was in fact Peru’s indigenous people who are racist.

He said: “They’re the ones who are racist and I was just drawing attention to it.”

“To be a racist, I would have to be a pure blood and I’m not one,” he said. “I hope they give me a medal, a diploma and a special ceremony.”

The original article is still live on Correo’s website, but Spanish-speaking internet users have formed a Facebook group called “Against Correo and Bedoyda Ugarteche” which today reached 892 members.

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/5502

although Ugartech himself as denied he was being racist

well fucking duh

'dung with ears'!!

tr;dr

'Alan' seems like an odd name for the Peruvian president.

His environment minister is apparently called Antonio Brack Egg.

white people often think they dont have to apologise to non-white people for little things like that (in response to the 1st post). huge generalisation i know but fuck it. obv most people in london are rude cunts to begin with, but that doesnt make my first sentence any less true. though everyones truths are usually only the ones they experience themselves so prob wouldnt know.

"you cannot mak environment without Brack Egg"

"you cannot mak environment without Brack Egg"

― Mark G, Friday, August 28, 2009 12:58 PM (5 minutes ago)

I think I'm going to go on finding this funny for the rest of the day now.

Further epithets in the piece described Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as “dung with ears”

^ this is actually pretty good.

huh

yeah imo discussing something with a kid is always better than not discussing it.

Ha the first page of this article is extremely reminiscent of stories a friend of mine who goes to Austin on business trips tells about the city; he really hates it and asserts it's only considered "progressive" because it's in the middle of Texas surrounded by even more conservative opinions.

I get that part of it, but the stuff about how kids self-segregate socially was the most interesting... altho as a (newish) parent I am kinda perplexed about what exactly I should say to my 2 yo. Pointing out the different skin colors of her friends seems kinda arbitrary and rude for ex...

the "Black Santa" story at the end is funny on many levels

haven't gotten that far yet, but as a black person living in America I find it insane that "white" people think it's rude to notice someone skin color when, for example, noticing someone's hair or eye color wouldn't be

Talking to really small kids about anything seems arbitrary and stupid because you're saying such simple shit, eh? Has anyone heard those radio PSAa with the really sad message of "talk to your kids about the world" that are of parents talking about car colors, the sizes of coins, etc?

this re: What jumped out at Phyllis Katz, in her study of 200 black and white children, was that parents are very comfortable talking to their children about gender, and they work very hard to counterprogram against boy-girl stereotypes. That ought to be our model for talking about race. The same way we remind our daughters, "Mommies can be doctors just like daddies," we ought to be telling all children that doctors can be any skin color. It's not complicated what to say. It's only a matter of how often we reinforce it.

sorry I'm just lol'ing at hypothetical scenarios of me pointing to my daughter's friends and yelling "Kim's skin is yellow!" or whatever

the doctor who delivered her was black, I don't think I'm gonna be at a loss in this city for examples to counteract stereotypes

"A black man pulled you out of mommy!"

(pls note that my daughter can't even talk yet so most of my conversations with her revolve around what sounds cats make and what shoes are, for ex. haven't really worked up to describing the characteristics of people yet)

x-post

also lolz it was a black WOMAN

(who speaks creole!)

I wonder if the parents of the kids who were asked, "Do your parents like black people?" who said "No" actually HAVE any black friends.

Also, haven't gotten that far yet, but as a black person living in America I find it insane that "white" people think it's rude to notice someone skin color when, for example, noticing someone's hair or eye color wouldn't be

Really??? I can totally understand the embarrassment about even bringing it up -- tied to fear that anyone who overheard might get angry and confront me for BRINGING IT UP. I don't know if it would bother me as much anymore, I can remember the awkwardness from past occasions.

*but I can remember...

Then again, kids are embarrassing, news at 11.

What I meant by that comment is that that discussion is a de facto necessity for you as a minority explaining why most of the ppl around you are different, so I can't really fathom a situation where I'd have the luxury of not even bringing it up. I do think oftentimes that white people, particularly those who live in the northern US states, are WAY too sensitive and timid to bring up even blatantly obvious things like describing someone based off of their skin color; my wife and I have massive lols over stories some of our friends have told us when they've met someone else we know and have bent over backwards to describe every attribute they know about us OTHER than the fact that we're black. It almost brings more attention to the fact, like it's a "shhh don't tell and maybe ppl won't notice" type of thing.

lol i love that kind of thing

"he was the guy standing near you....he had...the blue shirt on. dark hair."

cool article. i guess i had always taken the colorblind society thing at face value and hadn't really thought about it, but yeah developmentally it doesn't really make any sense.

"dark eyes. seemed really nice. not too talkative."

Talking to really small kids about anything seems arbitrary and stupid because you're saying such simple shit, eh?

to the contrary, you can talk to kids about stuff way more complex than most adults give them credit for. younger than say five-ish ok it's hard to get much done but seven or so, they're way sharper than adults think they are - their vocabularies haven't always caught up but their ability to deal with ideas is pretty remarkable actually & it's best to err on the side of "maybe they'll remember this conversation later" imo

"the italian looking guy?"

"uhh...no, the other guy....he was just in front of him."

Hahah so true, and yeah I have asked myself the question, "Do I just say, 'You know, the ONE BLACK GUY who was there' or is that...RACIST?" but I'm glad these days the answer is usually a mental laugh to myself instead of crippling anxiety.

It definitely took me a few years in a predominantly black neighborhood to stop being quite as self-conscious, nervous, embarrassed about EVERYthing.

yeah I get that and I don't think we'll have any hesitation when it comes to discussing physical characteristics its just at this particular pre-speech phase it seems like bringing it up would just seem inappropriate, like, done more for our benefit than for hers, y'know? That probably won't be the case 6 mos-1 yr from now

many x-posts

It's just hilarious to me, like for some reason saying "the black guy" is somehow equivalent to saying "the guy who farts constantly" or something similarly embarrassing.

lolz

i think it's a weird self-conscious reaction to years of having the older white generation just really easily say things like, "so i was down at the store and there was this guy in line in front of me, he was you know a colored guy, anyway so i asked him..." etc

We had to have an intervention with one friend of ours and explicitly tell her "Look, when you meet people who you think might know us and you want to describe us, we actually PREFER it if you say we are black; it's not like people who've met us don't know!"

xp: hahahahahahah yes there is that

Yes, there's definitely the idea that it's a disability/liability; you wouldn't bring it up the same way you wouldn't say, "The cripple, with the short leg!" which, and I've never thought about this, but it's racist in a whole new special way, isn't it.

xp Yeah, I heard some shocking stuff from adults and I was EMBARRASSED for them, at their ignorance...I can remember the awkwardness still....

my dad seems to think it's okay to reference the black men in his anecdotes as "brothers"

racism is bad, imo

Ha J0hn D. I was thinking more about talking to three- and four-year-olds. Used to teach Sunday school (lol) to four-year-olds and it my MO was makes sure they get in one big concept (ie what is obedience and why does your mom think it's so cool?) and then it's crayon time. "AH yes we have indeed established that ducks go 'quack quack,' this has been a productive and important conversation."

this guy i work with calls the two black guys at work either "man" or refers to them by the other's name (one is very dark skinned, the other is super light skinned....they think it's hilarious)

What I meant by that comment is that that discussion is a de facto necessity for you as a minority explaining why most of the ppl around you are different, so I can't really fathom a situation where I'd have the luxury of not even bringing it up. I do think oftentimes that white people, particularly those who live in the northern US states, are WAY too sensitive and timid to bring up even blatantly obvious things like describing someone based off of their skin color; my wife and I have massive lols over stories some of our friends have told us when they've met someone else we know and have bent over backwards to describe every attribute they know about us OTHER than the fact that we're black. It almost brings more attention to the fact, like it's a "shhh don't tell and maybe ppl won't notice" type of thing.

― RETARTED (HI DERE), Monday, 19 October 2009 19:54

yeah, but it's catch 22 because even if it doesn't bother you, it might bother other people who wouldn't like to be described primarily in terms of their race.

i worked with a black guy who would wince and/or frown if anyone mentioned anything even remotely related to race or nationality, which is understandable if he's been a victim of racism in the past.

I'd think that as soon as children were old enough to understand the idea of the world being big and having lots of different places in it, it'd be simple to start a discussion about the basic, simple aspect of race: people from here looked like this, people from there looked like this, then everyone moved around a lot and here we all are. (Sometimes people weren't nice to one another because they came from different places and looked different ways, but that was dumb.) This doesn't get into explaining anything complicated like how race works in America, but it does the basic work of explaining what race even is.

yeah that sounds pretty basic

i think these conversations should wait until your kids are at the eye rolling stage

i worked with a black guy who would wince and/or frown if anyone mentioned anything even remotely related to race or nationality, which is understandable if he's been a victim of racism in the past.

haha um I hate to break this to you but pretty much any person who has lived in an environment where they are a minority has been treated differently, sometimes negatively, due to their race; I am an upper-middle-class snot from the suburbs and I have:

- been accosted by park rangers when in a state park well before closing under suspicion of dealing drugs (I was not)
- been n-bombed more times than I can count
- been made to wait for tables at restaurants when other parties of the same size that walked in after us without reservations were seated
- been intentionally seated around corners, behind pillars, by the kitchen and/or bathroom, etc at mostly-empty restaurants as opposed to tables by the window, even when other white diners were sitting by the window
- been followed around stores
- had one teacher manipulate my grades to "teach me a lesson about humility"

By and large racism has not kept me from doing what I've wanted to do but I've had plenty of experiences with it; I don't believe the solution is to pretend I'm not black.

just as a warning of what happens when you don't explain to your kids about race, and how it can wind up way more embarrassing for you than if you tell them something they misunderstand, I will offer the little girl who once came up to my brother after a soccer game and poked his arm and said "wow, you got REALLY dirty!"

hahaha yes, this was also said by one of my pre-school classmates to her mother about me; this gigantic embarrassment led to the mother befriending my mother and said girl becoming a close acquaintance from preschool on through high school

recently a guy i work with was a bit drunk after long pub lunch and was telling a bizarre/horrendously lame anecdotal joke to the room something like "there was this guy on the bus, of a somewhat darker tone (*interrupted at this point for some 'laughs' of bewilderment, then continues*)...and on the phone he was saying "i'm staying on the westside...no, eastside!" and i was like "look, if YOU don't know...!"

i think he expected us to laugh with at that point rather than just make collective o_O and in my case continue typing and pretend i hadn't heard any of it :[

My mom is still embarassed by me yelling "Mom, those people are CHOCOLATE!" in the middle of a busy mall when I was like three or four. xp

she could've bought you a milky bar, that would've set you straight

I assume a lot of what people fear with talking to kids about race is that younger children, in addition to having no social tact, learn a lot of stuff categorically, and people don't want to try and say anything in particular about race out of fear that (a) what they have to say could be considered racist, (b) the child won't be able to understand the dynamic of stuff that's often true about a group but you should never assume is true of individuals, (c) the child will misunderstand/repeat something you said and make you look racist, etc. I mean, these are the same fears people have as adults, about what's an acceptable way to describe a racial group generally and whether it's racist or not. And if grown people have trouble sorting out the complications of it ... etc. But really your kids are going to pick up your feelings about race and other people either way, whether you spell it out or not, and at least if you make an attempt to explain it you'll have to examine what you think and at least try to explain the world in a fair-minded way, so it's generally only going to help.

My uncle and aunt, who are very progressive but live in an overwhelmingly white town, told their 7-year-old that he would soon have a baby brother. They were talking about what the baby would look like. "I hope he's white, because everyone in our family is white," big brother said. They laughed and then my uncle came back with, "Well, it would be a big surprise if he wasn't."

"AH yes we have indeed established that ducks go 'quack quack,' this has been a productive and important conversation."

pretty much any meeting I attend ends with exactly these words btw

i worked with a black guy who would wince and/or frown if anyone mentioned anything even remotely related to race or nationality, which is understandable if he's been a victim of racism in the past.

haha um I hate to break this to you but pretty much any person who has lived in an environment where they are a minority has been treated differently, sometimes negatively, due to their race; I am an upper-middle-class snot from the suburbs and I have...

― RETARTED (HI DERE), Monday, 19 October 2009 19:40

yes, ok i realise that. i'm not that naive.

my point anyway is that some people like to talk about it and some people don't. so it's not totally absurd for well meaning whites to be a little apprehensive about hurting someone's feelings by describing them as "the black guy" or whatever.

My friend (in Idaho Falls) (at age seven) saw a black family in the grocery and excitedly shouted to her mom, "Look, it's the Cosbys!" This is my favorite "what happens when parents don't explain race and also lol Idaho" story.

by the way the greatest part of that newsweek story is the cover which says in HUGE SENSATIONALISTIC BLOCK TYPE

IS
YOUR
BABY
RACIST

Oh wait I saw that cover! It made me laugh hard.

ha, you know, that's not bad, if you were in a super-white place and a kid's frame of reference for black people was that her family watched the Cosby Show

Yeah that's why it's my favorite story, most of the rest are really ;_;

and are about my relatives ;_; ;_;

"I personally would buy that child some Jell-O pudding and tell her about the jazz music"

Bill Cosby impacts everyone; when I was 7, one of my closest friends used to call me "chocolate Pudding Pop" and I called her "vanilla Pudding Pop".

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5857/daddyo.jpg

o_O

although thanking u for the username

merrill doesnt close his eyes a lot eh

My dad is classy.

'Colorblind' and 'tolerance' remind me that it's neither that I want. I want to be treated and other people treated with basic respect, first off, and then appreciated or deplored or leaving indifferent over something deeper than skin or culture or ethnic identification. Something like character or spirit or something. The voyage away from racism in my own life has constantly been one of encountering people who would easily fit a stereotype and having them not meet that stereotype. It doesn't surprise me in the least that humans start out desperate to categorize and discriminate, it's the subtlety and refinement of their discrimination that separates good people from brutes.

I can just about remember encountering race for the first time - my brother and I aged 5 and 3, going from whitest Hertfordshire to visit our family in Africa. My brother solemnly staring around him before pronouncing "These people have been in the sun too long!" It seemed a sensible explanation, that they had simply gotten burned. How he turned into the flaming racist he is now, I don't entirely know.

my default position since junior high has been "people, in general, are horrendous assholes; however, individuals are fantastic"

How he turned into the flaming racist he is now, I don't entirely know.

Manque de lumière

(Sorry)

Dan is obviously right. It's sad but I'm not sure how else to bear humanity.

basically whenever I hear a story about a large group of people coming together in a positive, productive manner, I tend to think they either are all exceptional or are actually pod people from Mars

you left out "there was money involved"

Martian pod people are known to be very fiscal-minded

Actually, Dan, that reminds me why some large gatherings like marches and concerts make me nervous. They represent a temptation for miscreants to show off and also a kind of moral get-out-jail-free card for people to lower, collectively, their standards. Not always, of course, but it makes me nervous.

The town I grew up (and still live in) was extremely discriminating: they would just make it VERY difficult for non-Caucasians. I don't think there were any living in Bruges when I grew up. Though we of course welcomed any nationality as a tourist cause they spent/spend money. Hypocrites. Actually they even made it hard on out of towners moving to the city.

To my dad (from Ghent):"Why do you even contemplate opening a shop here? How will you make a living???"
My dad: "I like to do cultural development."

Assholes. They even pretended they didn't understand us when we talked in Dutch (instead of Bruges dialect.)

Thank god we have all cultures living here now. I am actually very happy about that.

- had one teacher manipulate my grades to "teach me a lesson about humility

I need to know who this was

Just to weigh in with stuff about small kids and race; way back when I was in my teens, my white friend's little sister, who was about six or seven at the time, brought up a perfectly reasonable point "Why do you say that Jason is black? He's brown!"

have you seen/read Malcolm X

Just to weigh in with stuff about small kids and race; way back when I was in my teens, my white friend's little sister, who was about six or seven at the time, brought up a perfectly reasonable point "Why do you say that Jason is black? He's brown!"

― Stone Monkey, Monday, 19 October 2009 21:35 (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, i remember asking my dad why we didn't describe white people as pink and black people as brown, he said "well, it's just a saying, isn't it".

28 years old i was

OTOH I had a class with a crazy dude who would cite graveyard patrons of Denny's as sources, who said he physically could not bring himself to call backgammon pieces "black" and "white" (because it felt too racially charged, is the reason I got from context), and instead could call them only "cream" and "brown."

Backgammon pieces that literally are black and white in color.

is the phrase/concept "chinese whispers" racist?

historically/etymologically probably yes but i'm not sure it's commonly used to advance a concept

not these days anyway, unless preschools are rife w/ orientalist conspiracy

the concept is shit gets distorted as it's mediated (or s.thing liek that idk, chinese whispers in effect am i right people?)

but why chinese?

Ballaster, Rosalind (2005). Fabulous Orients: fictions of the East in England, 1662-1785. Oxford University Press. p. 202–3. ISBN 0199267332. "The sinophobic name points to the centuries-old tradition in Europe of representing spoken Chinese as an incomprehensible and unpronounceable combination of sounds."

right on roz

I was gonna speculate it was to do with the gap between the Emperor and local bureaucrats in Chinese society but that makes more sense tsk

ive been kind of amazed at how the world cup has seemingly provided this safe space to be casually half-jokingly pseudo-racist in public for ppl. maybe cuz it's like only borderline metonymic...certainly "the [x]'s are such fucking slimeballs," etc. (big etc.) sounds pretty close to the same sentence without the "the", and i'm pretty sure the sentiment is coming from the same reserve of prejudice in a lot of cases.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/miss-middle-school-bars-black-students-running-class/story?id=11498343&cid=ESPNheadline

you've sure taken your time with it, but as we enter the 1970s I'm sure pleased that you've finally WAIT WHAT?????

OMG.

Soccer / football probably also involves scary issues of class / global poverty / international conflict issues that are enough to scare me off unless the match is in the Americas.

and people wonder why the south spawns such angry rappers. geezus christ how was such a fucking policy allowed to remain in effect for so long?

Yeah west coast rap would be so much better if those dudes didn't spend so much time in student government.

starts wit the kids man

i saw a real-life OMGWTF example of racism early this morning. i went to a local convenience store/bodega to by some stuff (small items of food, cigs, milk). the owners of this bodega are Indians. anyway, at the checkout counter there were two drunk douchebags -- one was on his cellphone berating the customer service rep for his credit card company, the other was standing around silently while his bro' was berating the customer service rep. i was able to suss out that they'd tried to pay for their stuff with a credit card but it had been declined. the bro' on the phone was yelling drunkenly at the customer service rep, asking her questions like "are you in New Delhi?" and "maybe you can't understand that i have money on my credit card b/c you don't speak English." the Indian dudes behind the counter were standing there silently -- even though drunken bro' wasn't speaking directly to them (at that point anyway) and their grasp of English is actually kinda iffy (I've known them for several years now), they definitely knew that THEY were as much the target to the drunken douchebags' ire as the credit card company rep was.

anyway, i left after i paid for my things so i don't know how it all turned out. it was very unsettling, to say the least.

hope ur ok

Did John Quiñones show up?

I was getting a pedicure the other day and there was a dude in there waiting for his wife. He was clearly a little nutty and generally loud and obnoxious but he kept saying shit that was so uncomfortable. First he took the bananas off the buddha shrine they had and started eating them. Then he would speak to the women in a mock accent. Then he actually said to one of them, "Oh I know I'm annoying Rose but you love me long time, right?". I'm not sure how good any of their English was but it was really uncomfortable. Oh he also made reference to them not taking lunch breaks but just eating rice in the back. Anyway the entire time I was just waiting for dude to leave. It was pretty awful.

he took the bananas off the buddha shrine they had and started eating them

lol

oh god

yeah I know

that was pretty funny at first because it was just so unbelievable but then I just felt bad for them cause he was such as asshole to them THE ENTIRE TIME.

was he a white person

curb yr xenophobism

yes he was a white person

u are one of my favourite wite ppl tho deems

wite ppl are the worst tho

i had this out with elmo only last night.

do u know many white ppl nakh, what are yr observations on them

I work at a call center & every once in a while a call starts out with an offshore representative transferring a call to me because the customer requested to talk to someone in the U.S. It starts the call out with me thinking the customer is a bigot, but whatever, try not to judge people. So a call started out like that today, an 84-year-old woman asked to talk to a person in the U.S. It was a really easy problem anyone could have solved but she made it take a long time by being a grumpy grouch. At the end of the call:
HER: Can you register a complaint with those higher above you?
ME: Yes.
HER: Will you tell them the people outside of American can talk to the people outside of America, and Americans can talk to Americans?
ME: I guess that's a diplomatic way of putting it.
HER: Well, what I wanted to say is: "I wanted to choke the shit out of that stupid bitch from ching-chong nowhere."
ME: That is really not a diplomatic way of putting it. Types "customer would prefer we not employ offshore representatives" in formal complaint typing zone.

I mean, whaaat?

need a one-way ticket to ching chong nowhere tbh

I hung up on any racists in my call centre days. Dad being a latin american refugee was always my alibi,both putatively and actually.

i don't see why, if black people have claimed back the word nigger (like gay people and queer - does anyone gay object to being called queer?) and are happy to use it, everyone can't use it!

OK, i can see why. but in theory at least, this should one day be able to happen, surely?

― katie, Friday, 21 September 2001 01:00 (11 years ago)

so many whites desperate for the day when they too can enjoy using the n word

You dont think itd be a good day?

11 years probably satisfies the 'one day' qualifier so i presume she is calling herself a nigger by now

other than being able to do "Real Muthaphukkin' Gs" at karaoke i don't see the practical value

not gonna lie tho it was dispiriting when i noticed there were actually five letters in that username

No i in TEEEEAMMMMMMMMM