You could also create a new forum topic to continue this discussion, or I think one of the moderators could even un-lock the thread after the 5 days has passed and let the conversation continue. Hopefully I’ll be able to toss my thoughts at you somehow when I have time to read the book; I’ve been a bit busy moving the last couple of days.
As I understand it, cis is literally just a latin prefix that’s the antonym of trans, not too much interesting etymology there 
Gave it 5 more days.
Good morning, PhasmaFelis.
He gets it all right except for the third sentence:
“See, the white woman feels all liberated and not-a-bigot for even sitting down with someone outside her race.”
I don’t know how she felt. I just know we would have gone home with two different stories.
Actually, if l hadn’t said anything, SHE would have had a story.
I did try to free her with laughter, though.
More energy than l cared to use. Ha.
That’s because - for the benefit of someone who didn’t get it - I’m not trying to be funny.
Being on the autism spectrum means I occasionally need the clue-by-four. That seemed called for this time, and it’s worked out OK I think.
Thank you, tekk!
Both books are quick reads. You will get around to them.
If anyone is interested in the feedback on “Letters from Mrs. Grundy,” which l uploaded somewhere in this thread, here is some:
Serena Maria of Tostada Magazine
Amanda Rahn, BLAC Detroit
Carly Simon called. She said you’re the best.
I am not sure; I have seen several white people attempt to shed their whiteness in various ways (dress, comportment, political affiliation, rejection of society). I don’t think these were successful attempts at being “non-white”. I think this is a difficult project for individuals to undertake; ultimately your power to change how others perceive you is limited. It would be as impossible to imagine that black people could successfully shed their “blackness” by assuming different habits or comportment; we hear this lament regularly.
Race is a social construction - individuals are pulled into it whether they want to be or not. I think, therefore, we can never fight this at the level of the individual. The way to fight this is at the level of the social movement, the community, the family. Integration is a great unrealized dream that I think would really help to destroy this. One of the things that always upsets me about modern race dialogs is the oft-repeated notion that “white people are always the beneficiaries of racism” - this is patently false unless we believe that white people have no investment in the well-being of non-white people, and therefore are not wounded when racism hurts them. But many white people DO have these investments - in friends, family, children, lovers, co-workers, etc.
I think this is the essential core of rejecting whiteness/blackness - to extend the circle of those you care about and depend upon to include those outside your “race”. This means building de-segregated living communities, building mixed-race families, building diverse work places. We have some tools for doing these things already, and I think they can work if we give them space.
This touches on my personal pet peeve with all social activism, ever.
Shedding our whiteness would be a desirable goal The desirable goal, if racial oppression were the only bad thing going on. Sexism, able-ism, transphobia, age-ism, stop me if I reach the end of this list… There are so many ways to cheat other people out of their birthright, besides white supremacy.
Its’ like in art class when we were being taught that the negative space has its own importance, that you can manipulate the background to just as much effect as the objects in the foreground… Whiteness is the delusion that one has been born into the tribe of “normal”.
And the planet is too damn small for the USian experience to be the only frame here: Han Chinese VS Tibetan, Hutu VS Tutsi, Norse VS Skrealing, semite VS arab, white South Afrikaans VS everybody… Humanity needs to outgrow this… Getting hacked by racial manipulation. It even infects the way we define our entire species, as somehow being exempt from the rules that animals must follow.
Someone with a pale complexion who manages to stop being white… Its like a man who’s a feminist. Hooray for taking the first step, no you don’t get a medal, there’s too much more work to do to stop there.
I have to get that book! Thank you for mentioning it. What else are you reading?
A lot, this has been the best lately:
https://us.macmillan.com/whentheycallyouaterrorist/patrissekhancullors/9781250171085/
More soon!
If black people get to use the n-word with each other, white people should be able to tease other white people about their privilege showing. I have been in that woman’s position, several times, having overestimated my own open-mindedness. It’s only ever funny after the fact.
Browsing Dr. Woodson’s stuff, you do me too much credit, I am nowhere near this erudite: https://www.amazon.com/Oragean-Modernism-literary-movement-1924-1953-ebook/dp/B00DOL63OE.
Also, 
the Archy and Mehitabel reference!
Hold up there. Hear tell some black people, for example, are proud to be black.
Colorblindness isn’t all that a lot of white people want it to be.
Ethnic nationalism is a personal bugbear for me, so I bristle at the idea that race pride is ever positive, even for oppressed people. I also think I tend to look for end states and become impatient with intermediates. Fanon talks about how the process of decolonization (not exactly the same here, but some folks talk about black America as a “colony”) is a violent one involving change in both the colonizer and the colonized’s understanding of themselves; I think a lot of my understanding of the need for catharsis, above, is drawn from this. The necessary intermediates to get from here to there might not look like “there”. So, nationalism/race pride is maybe a necessary, and therefore perhaps good/healthy, reaction to the space we’re in right now, and especially if you don’t believe we can jump ahead to the future without going through this unstable intermediate.
That said, I’d want to poke at what “proud to be black” means - it might mean, proud to have an African heritage, proud to have beautiful dark skin, proud to have an African-American cultural heritage, proud to be part of a culture of resistance - but probably NOT proud to be an oppressed or hated person. We could keep our pride in those other things - as separate pieces - without holding onto race.
I am interested in more Syndrome stories from Boing Boing readers. Here is how l define the “Syndrome”:
Someone comes to a conclusion about you when they know nothing about you.
Someone communicates the idea that you are not exactly where you are supposed to be.
Someone communicates the idea that you are outside of the context to which they think you belong.
I could easily write “Newspaper Columnist Syndrome” because people made assumptions about me because l was a member of the mainstream media. Or l could really do a number on the idea of “Single Mom Syndrome.”
One time l offered to buy a sandwich for one of my Pulitzer Prize-winning former colleagues (white, male, married–American Drean-type dude). He refused. “No, O, you’re a single mom.” He shut up and took the sandwich after l lit into him. “I probably have more disposable income than you,” is how l began. “You’re probably right,” he told me. “I know l am.”
I have zero tolerance for Whites lecturing to me about being Black in America and related topics
I am also tired of the latest narrative in White America which demands that because a White person is not an overt bigot or racist I need to affirm and congratulate them
Fuck that shit… I don’t owe any White person anything for being humane and civil. Today in Boston there is an uproar because Black folks resented the Boston PD for acknowledging Red Auerbach during Black History Month just because he was White and Jewish and did the basic humane thing towards Black Folks
It is Black History Month not White American Good People Month nor White Jewish American Month on the souls of Black Folks and good deeds
Drive By White Entitlement Syndrome strikes again
BLM
In a nutshell, it usually means that we are not ashamed of being Black, despite most of ‘civilized society’s’ insistence that we “should be,” ever since bringing our ancestors over in chains.
Hey, Thrasher.
Care to share any Syndrome stories of your own, my friend?
I know you have a quintrillion.
It is critical for Black creatives to ignore the angst of Whites especially those who are envious and suck your verve and essence of being timely and premature on the ethos of American culture and art
Black Americans have always been the most progressive bandwidth in America. We often forget our own needs to refuel and acknowledge our flow origins which begin in our Black spaces in America
White sports agents and marketeers have made zillions off of our creativity and to be candid we have allowed this reality
Oneita is one of the most profound Black creatives in America… Those of us in the Diaspora must fuel and affirm her and this well of Blackness elsewise this Black genius will not produce
BLM
Awww. That’s so sweet. Thank you, Thrasher.
