I would love your input on the comment to me below by Shane. Thanks!
You dismissed the accomplishments of people like Beyonce because sheâs pretty, her skin is light, and at times chooses to dye her hair a color that usually only white women have. The comment below yours, by AshleyYakeley, asserts that Obama is President, and Jesse Jackson is not, is because Obama doesnât act black. The less said about that, the better, IMHO.
Thatâs rich. You pooh-poohed the success of those women because theyâre attractive by white standards, at least according to you. When I hear Beyonce or Rihanna on the radio, I canât hear what they look like. Hell, the first time I heard Amy Winehouse, my mental picture was more of someone who looked like Precious than a white English girl, and I didnât care. I donât think a significant percentage of people saw a picture of Winehouse and said, âWait, sheâs a white girl? Well, now I can totally listen to her!â
And Hallie BerryâŚif anything, I think sheâs been held back. Iâve seen her in things where she shows some decent acting chops, and sheâs known as the pretty black girl. I donât remember who did it, but I remember the ugly comments when she got an Oscar for Monsterâs Ball, relating to her being pretty by white standards.
Youâre right, pretty people have it easier in life, and people still judge each other on looks and how they act. Source: redheaded guys donât tend to be seen as ruggedly handsome, and a lifetime of trying to convince people that Iâm not about to fly off the handle just because I have red hairâŚonly to validate their prejudice if I let myself get annoyed. And of course, being at the ass-end of Illinois, having northern Illinois people move down here to straighten us yokels out, and to have to work three times as hard to prove myself because I have a drawlâŚand I know how BB readers tend to feel about people with drawls⌠I am so not looking forward to the pervs who will be lining up to date my daughters, either. You can frame it as how patently unfair it is to ugly or black people with heavy African features, or on people who ac but you end up saying some pretty awful shit in the end IMHO.
âŚyeah, no. You are reading things that are not there.
[quote=âAshleyYakeley, post:14, topic:8471â]
And what is racism, if not a pervasive raising of the status of white people over black?[/quote]
Iâm raising my kids to believe that anyone can be a racist, that itâs not something specifically directed only at blacks or emanating only from whites.
I apologize for ripping the quote out of context, though.
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I am sure you are misreading things, Shane. Iâm sure youâll agree itâs not racist to point out there is racism against black people, even though it involves understanding which people count as âblackâ according to that racism. Nor is pointing it out dismissing the accomplishments of white people.
What Ashley and Missy were doing is talking about how there is even more racism against people who are regarded as even âmore blackâ, and to understand that problem you have to understand how people are defined as more or less black according to that racism. It doesnât equate to endorsing that awful division, but just like the white-black divide in general, if you wonât see it you canât oppose it. Nor is it dismissing the accomplishments of any black people, who after all still face racism regardless.
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Thank you.
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Fair enough, but you also have a responsibility to show your kids that racism against black and brown people is a major social force which causes a âa pervasive raising of the status of white people over blackâ, whereas racism against white people has essentially no traction as a social force, and therefore is pretty much a whole separate category of thing.
This is why people object to you describing both phenomena as âracismâ. It implicitly conflates two situations which are so radically different that you have to distort your worldview to even begin to see them as comparable. You can stick with your definition of racism if you like, but be aware of what it unintentionally communicates, and take care to specifically dispel that message.
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I regret being rude, but I regard such distortion of the language as complete racist bullshit, and dangerous to my family, which is multi-racial. Believe me, my children are getting the whole picture.
I have to teach my children that my daughter canât afford to be alone in a certain nearby small town in Maryland, and that my son canât afford to be alone in certain neighborhoods of (also nearby) Philadelphia. This is grim reality, not rhetoric. My kids had their first personal contact with overt racism against us when the oldest was about five years old. Can you imagine explaining what an anonymous racist death threat is all about to a five-year-old looking at one?
People who object to accurate use of the word âracismâ are saying that only the hatred directed against my dark-skinned loved ones really matters, and my pale-skinned child can never be called a victim of racism, even if a coffin is being lowered into the ground. Itâs only something worth the highest disapprobation if thereâs a dark-skinned victim? Milder words are called for if a pale-skinned person suffers or dies? This callous disregard for real situations and real people, in favor of high-minded talk of âsocial forcesâ and âstatusâ, honestly makes me viscerally angry so I will stop typing now.
Edit: the first cut of this was aimed unfairly at zikzak, who was not specifically endorsing the stance I abhor. Hopefully nobody (especially zikzak!) saw that one before I cooled off a little.
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Your personal experiences are valid and worthy of empathy and consideration. Iâm sorry to hear that your kids have gotten death threats because theyâre white and/or black. I could also tell you stories about how I and people I care about have been discriminated against for being white, and how it hurt them or made them feel bad.
The reason I donât do that is because although I care about my own experiences, I also care about society at large. You may feel itâs callous, but I try not to regard your experiences too heavily because I know from both study and direct experience that there are many other people dealing with race-related problems, and I care about them too. The thing is: almost all of those people are not white.
Thereâs a much bigger race-related problem in our society than discrimination against white people, and I want to make sure that it gets the focus that it needs. I donât want to inadvertently confuse the issue and give the impression that preventing discrimination against white people should be a social priority.
It would be nice if I didnât have to worry about that. It would be nice if I could complain about how sometimes itâs annoying to be judged based on my white skin, and have faith that everyone still realizes and agrees that the major social priority is ending the widespread and systematic marginalization of black and brown people. But thatâs not how the world works, unfortunately. While it might not be fair or make much sense (and might sometimes make one viscerally angry!), the right thing to do is to complain less and empathize more.
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Iâm glad this is still around, because I thought this article about the longer history of the appropriation of black culture by white performers, specifically women, was relevant to the discussion. In this case, he compares Joplin and Cyrus (I know, but it makes sense). What do you guys think? Madonna is easy to point to (also, she was appropriating gay cultureâanyone seen Paris is Burning?), so is Elvis, but I think Joplin is rarely called out for her use of blues music. Does this transcend the use of black bodies and spill over into black musical forms as well? What are the implications of that? When does cultural borrowing or sharing become racist appropriation, and when is it respectful embrace? And is there any such thing as âpureâ music anyway? More popular musical forms (by this I mean across the 20th century, and across genres, as promoted and sold by the recording industry, not in the older term of popular as in from the people, though many popular musical genres came from popular musicâmaybe it should be mass v. popular?) are hopelessly mixed and fused, with the mixing going all which waysâthink Afrika Bambaataa and Planet Rock. What are the differences between that and Joplin singing a Big Mama Thornton song?
BTW - I am not sure aesthetics and tastes is relevant here.
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