Dinner with Dad 2
I have the dubious reality of being both of mixed blood (part Japanese) and “white” enough to enjoy White Privilege.
No. Stop. I know some of y’all white motherfuckers want to rage about the concept of White Privilege. Argue that you never got any real privileges, yadda yadda.
Stop. Don’t post that. Unless you’ve actually studied white privilege, and aren’t just shooting from the hip with your incorrect assumption of what the term means, we will not have a good discourse or debate. You’ll get shitty, because you think the term means you’re rollin’ in a Cadillac and eating steak while people of color scrape for pennies, and you think the term implies guilt. DO NOT GO DOWN THAT ROAD WITH ME. Especially DO NOT argue with me that Affirmative Action is “reverse racism”. That is some ignorant fucking shit, and I will school you hard. And I don’t want to do that.
Fact of the matter is that racism, and racial relation issues, are still alive and well in the US of A as of the time I post this. Having a black President does not change that there are still racial issues in The United States.
still doesn’t change the fact that people are freaking out over the lion because she’s a white chick. who know who else was white? hitler, jeffery dahmer, charles manson… well he technically still is white.
That statement is no more true today than it was when you said it yesterday. Class does not equal race, and the issue is that she’s perceived as a wealthy American who killed Mufasa.
The second part of your statement is a red herring; assholes exist in every color (as do saints and everybody in between), although it’s true that whites have generally been in a better position to be assholes widely and with lesser scrutiny.
you know what? i think i’m right. yep.
Clearly the solution is to make the lion look more like Scar.
I never understood the concept of ”reverse racism”. All people are racist, it’s just that some individuals are more and some less.
The way I’ve always understood it is the assumption that one’s actions are being carried out for racist reasons, regardless of whether or not there’s any evidence. I had a coworker for a while who always accused me of having problems with her for racial reasons (I’m extremely white and she was black). Granted to believe her you’d have to ignore the fact that she barely did any work unless specifically directed to, showed up late and would frequently tell me stories about how she’d managed to avoid doing work in previous jobs.
Reverse racism is technically being racist against the predominant race in a given society. Not sure if there’s a term for what you described. Personally, I call them raceholes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHKIMOgoJoU
Racism is racism. The reverse of racism would be ‘not racism’, not “black people prejudiced against white people”.
There are all types of peoples, who all can be racist against any other type of peoples. Several Asian peoples are racist against each other, well often other peoples (benignly) can’t tell them apart.
Me, I hate everyone equally.
I grew up thinking that the whole ‘racism’ thing was highly overblown…until I got stationed down in arkansas. Having someone who wasn’t of my race (I’m white) be shocked that I was polite to them just about broke my heart…as did the fact they had a *public* kkk office in the next town over. It’s been about 15 years now, and to this day, I still have *NO* clue how people can be that stupid…but no way in hell will I ever again think it’s not a serious problem. I do feel some of the ways Affirmative Action and the like are implemented are racist, but I also can’t think of a better way to deal with the problem, so ’tis the lesser of two evils, IMO.
I am technically about 1/64th American Indian.
Death to the White Man!
You can always start by killing of the white portion of yourself. đ
Racial purity Ăźber alles.
CIB card or GTFO
Why you gotta draw lines, man?
I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally.
Damn, beat me to it-
was a toss up between that one and the “Racist? I can’t be Racist. I’m not done hating all the white people yet”
I always find race such an interesting concept. It’s both extremely important and unimportant at the same time. I also feel that if people stopped being sensitive about things, we’d all be able to get along a little better. Jokes and not taking those jokes to heart are a good way to deal with things for me. If you laugh at something, it’s hard to really let it dig its claws into you.
My previous job was in the ‘administrative support’ branch of a large company. We did a lot of the scutwork; running scanners for document archival projects, re-typing things, etc. It was an outsourced part of the company, both my department and the mailroom were hired through the same staffing agency, so there was a sense of camraderie amongst us all. I was the only white person in either area, all the rest were varying combinations of black and hispanic. Around Christmas time someone gave our supervisor a huge goddamn block of cheddar cheese from Wisconsin. He brought it in to show one of the women I worked with and she jokingly asked him “Okay, where are the crackers?”
I raised my hand and said “right here”. Cue laughter.
Now I’ll have “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from Avenue Q stuck in my head all day, thanks đ
Oh good. i didn’t want to be the only one đ
I just linked it, 3-4 comments up from here.
Oh dammit, now I will too. Thanks for the laugh anyway!
Bigotry has never been exclusively whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!
Night of Power by Spider Robinson makes an interesting attempt at addressing this and an attempt at a solution in an alternate reality of U.S. history.
White privilege is real even if you’re not rich. My first job was on a construction crew and even though I was the new guy guess who got the shit jobs? Not the young white kid.
And I’ll half-way agree with you about Affirmative Action too – it’s not “reverse” racism.
“Be the the change you want to see in the world”. Offer to take up some of the shit jobs. Equality’s got to start somewhere.
Heck, the shit jobs should be rotated, or jobs assigned by personnal strengths/weaknesses.
My first job was picking strawberries with migrant workers. You know who got all the shit jobs? The young white kid. Because I was the new guy. Your boss was a twat.
Can we argue affirmative action is just plain racism? đ
I really hate how the racial issues in our country as portrayed by the Media are too simplified. The issue is more than just black and white…. and Mexican. They also portray it as one-sided, white versus black, or whoever else we hate at the moment. Plenty of racism towards whites, though liberals hate to say it’s racism, and make excuses for it because there’s no institutional authority behind the racism blacks express.
And Jews….I shouldn’t get started on the topics, for time reasons and because it can be a fucking minefield of a discussion. As an ethnic group, they’ve come to this country, buckled down and worked hard to assimilate with the dominant culture and be productive. Many Jews would fall into a racist’s “white” category if only it weren’t for the Jewish cultural distinction.
Thomas Sowell, in his “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” discusses those ethnicities that’ve done this. Hate to post and run….
Affirmative action might, in itself, not be racism, however it has facilitated racism further than even before. “We already got us three of them (n-word)s. We don’t need us another.” It’s actually become an easy way to cover racism. Now they have a number. They don’t have to hire more than that. Having grown up as half Japanese and apparently looking more Japanese than jl, I will say that racism was alive and well in my youth. BUT there is a difference. Rather than let the racists define me, I worked harder than them. I pushed myself harder. I decided I would not let myself be okay with not succeeding. The biggest issue I see is people who use racism as an excuse NOT TO TRY. You can’t tell me that the Japanese were somehow hated less than blacks. Heck in the 40’s Japanese were rounded up and placed in internment camps HERE IN THE USA. The difference is that Japanese didn’t roll over and let themselves be victims. Japanese don’t reward thuggery and punish the educated.
My step brother and I were raised by the same people. He’s black, My step mom is black(and she was more my mom than my own mother). He would have had his college education paid for by my parents. I had to enter the military to pay for mine. He turned down his college education, got involved with a gang, did drugs, and then got arrested. THAT my friends is what ruined his life. NOT some lack of white privilege. He did it to himself, and blames everyone else for him doing drugs and getting arrested. The cop was racist because he “assumed” he had drugs on him. Well, you did, the cop was right, and knowing my brother the way I do, he probably assumed he had drugs on him because he SMELLED THE POT SMOKE. We can argue whether weed should be legal or not(I personally feel weed should be legal), but the fact is it is illegal NOW(in Texas).
Yes, there is racism in America today but all of it that I see is coming from the Black community. I know that we’re not supposed to speak of it. It’s not politically correct.
> but all of it that I see is coming from the Black community.
Really?
I think this is someone who hasn’t been in the South recently.
Or Los Angeles. Or much of the Midwest. Or NYC. Or Seattle. Or San Diego. I could go on…
Then I think you need to get out more. There’s plenty of racism out there and it comes from a lot of different people.
Er…are there two of us Williams? ‘Cause this one did NOT leave that comment. đ
That’s because you have the privilege of not noticing it
Howdy folks. Writing as someone who is an immigrant to the US and who has lived and worked in the US for over thirty years I have to say that no matter where one goes you’ll always find racism in one form or another. Hell I’m white and I’ve been on the receiving end of racism simply for not being American born and raised.
I’m all for recognizing ones ancestral roots and all that and having pride in those roots but I think it goes a bit far with the labels/names that people here are given or give themselves. By that I mean “African American”, Native American, and so on, I mean WTF is that? If you’re born here you’re an American, doesn’t matter what color your skin is or what your ethnic group is, you’re still an American.
Way I see it those labels/names are half the problem, get rid of the labels and you’re halfway there. Who’s fucking idea was that anyway? So far as I am aware the US is the only country in the North Western hemisphere where one is asked the the color of ones skin and ethnic background when filling in forms for employment or any type of government form. I mean why do they need to know that? One is either qualified for a job regardless of skin color or isn’t qualified, ethnic background shouldn’t even enter into the equation.
I’ll drink with anyone regardless of skin color, the only thing I ask is that they treat me the way they want to be treated, do that and I’ll get along with anyone.
I suspect your question was rhetorical, but in case it wasn’t, here’s the answer. They ask about race and ethnicity when hiring (or applying to school, etc) because they’re supposed to have demographics data. It’s expressly forbidden to use those data for determining whether to hire/admit (with some wiggle room for affirmative action; see Grutter v. Bollinger but also Gratz v. Bollinger), but if somebody wants to know how diverse your company/school/organization/whatever is, you need the data to show it.
As for your policy on drinking? I’ll drink to that.
Vyk, thanks for the reply mate. See now to me that’s another thing that is wrong. Keeping demographics data, WTF is that all about? Hey if it’s your company then you should hire who the fuck you want and it shouldn’t be anyone’s business except yours. To me the whole thing is just another form of control.
I don’t actually think it makes sense either, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate. There are two reasons to worry about being demonstrably diverse. One is the possibility of losing a good candidate to somewhere else because they fear they’d be the only member of their ethnicity in that organization. The other (especially seen in higher education) is the belief that a more diverse group is a stronger group because of their mix of backgrounds.
I hope to one day see a world where skin color, eye color, and hair color are all viewed as irrelevant trivia as far as job/school applications go. Maybe we’ll even get to the point where skin color is utterly irrelevant. Oh, wait; we have preconceived notions of people based on hair color too. Never mind.
These darn Rastafarian Americans and their eirie privilege…
I think I spelled at least one of those wrong, but I’m not motivated to go look it up.
Jamaican patois is a spoken language rather than a written one. People who speak patois write the Queen’s English. However when I’ve seen it transcribed I’ve commonly seen it written as “irie”.
I can buy that. I may have inadvertently referenced the Irish… Possibly.
“Original sin” is still stupid.
Mother moved me out of a small, shamelessly racist town in Texas when I was five. Once I started school in California, she gave me the list of words never to use again. I chose to believe a teacher over my mother on the topic of whether race was a dead issue, and got my ass kicked.
Weirdly, the ass kicking girl’s frustration was the most solid proof of White privilege I’ve ever had.
By white priviledge do you mean racism against whites? If not could you elaborate on what you meant?
For what it’s worth, my girlfriend is Jamaican-American (both parents born in Jamaica, she was born in the US) and describes herself as “Black” rather than “African-American” as well.
Joe’s bit is based on a friend/coworker I knew 8 years ago, from Jamaica. The first time someone referred to him as African American, he objected. “I’m black,” he kept saying. “Not African. So messed up that you think all blacks come from Africa.”
Didn’t everyone come from Africa, originally?
That’s a matter of opinion.
A friend of mine with a noticeable amount of melanin in her skin has been asked “where did you come from?” uncounted times …
… if she feels like it actually merits a response, she answers “Detroit!”
I’ll grant your OP. But racial issues would naturally decline, if we didn’t make legal distinctions on the basis of race. Racism costs racists money, which is why it had to be legally enforced for darned near a century in order to stick. It’s interesting that the rate of growth for Blacks in the professions actually declined after passage of the EEOA.
Nearly any resistance group will become a protection racket over time. Examples include the Sicilian Mafia, the IRA, some of the Triads, the Vorovskoy Mir, and the Moros. I challenge you to find any resistance movement more than one generation old which does not demand payment from victims in return for no longer being targeted and threatened. ACORN and the Black Panthers, which did start as legitimate resistance groups against Jim Crow, which was real oppression, have more or less morphed into protection rackets, because that’s a major method of fund-raising for them.
So you’re saying this is a trigger for you? LOL
I’m curious: When you say “Especially DO NOT argue with me that Affirmative Action is âreverse racismâ.” are you declaring that affirmative action is NOT racist, or that it IS?
First, I’d note that there is no such thing as “reverse racism,” a term that honkies cooked up to try to feel like their bitching is equal to that of people with color.
Erm, it isn’t? Speech of one group is better than speech of another? Sorry, but I believe in the content of character, not color of skin, thus seeing things like “Must have 10% African-American workers” or the like is racist to me.
The objection there, in my opinion, is “reverse”. Racism is racism. Personally, my biggest problems with affirmative action are, first, its typical basis, and second, the message people incorrectly derive from it.
The message is the easy part, and you just showed half of it. Affirmative action, as generally practiced, is institutionalized racism. As a side effect, it makes whites feel they’re being discriminated against, and it also conveys a message that people who benefit from affirmative action wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without it. (Both of these are wrong, mind you.)
The idea behind affirmative action is to level the playing field. If I went to an expensive private school, had the best teachers money could buy, and got 1500s on my SATs, and somebody smarter and more capable than me went to an inner-city shithole with the only teachers the city cared to scrape up, and got 1300s on their SATs, should I get in to a university and they not just because I was lucky enough to be able to go to a school that could afford schoolbooks and paper? Where a person was born should have no bearing on their ability to succeed in life. (It always will, but it shouldn’t.)
Now, here’s the part that bugs me about affirmative action. You’ll note that my example above did not include race. Race-based affirmative action typically makes the implicit assumption that any white person will always be in a more-advantaged position than any member of a racial minority. This is both incorrect and fundamentally missing the point. Malia and Sasha Obama will not need special consideration to get into universities; Marshall Mathers (hypothetically) would have.
It’s worth noting that some affirmative action programs do look at economic or class advantages rather than race, and I’m not referring to those. I also absolutely do feel that, at this time in American history, there should be affirmative action in place to try to put future generations on a level playing field. Basing it on race, however, is a mistake.
(For the record, a race-based and a class-based affirmative action system would have had the same effect on me; I’m not arguing from personal benefit.)
*golf clap*
Damn, ya beat me to it.
Is this a joke, because I’m not laughing.
You’re right.
Really, race is a false construct. There’s just one race: the human race.
Anything else is just mere ethnic bigotry to give people something to yell about.
Affirmative action is not racism, therefore (unless it were applied to, say, klingons.) It’s just a species of ethnic bigotry.
I had this guy who worked for me, and I once referred to him as “this African dude who works for me.” A person I barely know became UN-FREAKING-GLUED at me. “It’s AFRICAN AMERICAN! It’s SO RACIST of you to call him an African dude!”
I replied, “He’s from Gabon. He’s lived in the US for 6 months on a green card. He’s not trying to become a citizen. There’s nothing AMERICAN about him.”
I knew a dutch south african who joined the navy, and gave the MEPS guy an aneurism when he checked off “african american”. The guy said “that’s not what that means” and he replied “On the contrary, it IS what it means, otherwise they’d have said ‘black’.”
All I would say is that it seems like the racial issues are perpetuated by the minorities now much more than whites. We just seem to be very afraid of what people will say about us so we feign outrage at some pretty innocuous shit i.e. The Redskins
Curious: What makes you think the outrage about the term Redskins is feigned?
I have no doubt some people are truly offended, but the real question: why do they care? Why does everyone get in each others’ business? I mean, heck, you used the term “honkies” up above in response to me, and that’s a racial term, but I’m not up in arms about it.
> I have no doubt some people are truly offended, but the real question: why do they care?
Because the use of racial slurs only has power when used against, stay with me: those who are demeaned and oppressed. I used Honky on purpose, and yeah, led you to that question. Honky is a ridiculous term – it has no power. It does not inspire fear, it doesn’t cause feelings of inferiority.
Redskin, on the other hand, does. That’s why they care.
A term only has power if you give it such. To some people, honkey could be very offensive, just as to some redskin is offensive. I myself choose to ignore it.
I think of it this way: If some person is completely opposed to me, hates my views, etc, then why should I care what they think? Either getting offended at them, or getting angry, or other responses just validates to them that they have some power over me. I just let it slide like water off a duck’s back and move on.
I find myself agreeing here. Everything relies on context. I’d totally wear a shirt that says “Cold Ass Honky”, because that’s my sense of humor. I personally find nothing offensive in the term. But there are those that if you call them a honky, they WILL kick your ass over doing so as it’s incredibly insulting.
Know your audience.
So it’s ok to be racist if you make racist decisions about what is and isn’t offensive/intimidating/oppressive?
Not sure if you realize this, but many schools on the rez have their team mascot as Redskins.
I suspect we’d care more if they could throw the fucking ball.
Re: the Redskins. I understand why the Redskins get crap while the KC Chiefs get a pass. Naming a sports team after something is supposed to be a form of respect. Team names usually come from something strong and respectable â something to be admired. The Bears (bears and strong and fierce). The Buccanners (pirates were strong and ruthless and powerful). And so onâŚ
So if someone names a sports team after something Native American, USUALLY Native Americans take that as a compliment.
But Redskins is essentially a racial slur. Itâd be like a team calling itself the âCleveland porch monkeysâ or something like that. So I get it. I do. I understand why it is offensive.
But I wouldnât approach it the way that its currently being approached: showing outrage (whether it is feigned or not), acting angry, demanding changes be made. It would feel like I was allowing the racists to win by showing them that they were hurting me. If youâre taking flak, it means youâre over the target, so why give them that satisfaction?
I rather like the way that the Gay community co-opted the hateful terms used to describe them by owning those terms and thus declawing them. They call themselves queens, for cripes sake, why do you think it hurts their feeling when you do it? You know what I mean? If you donât allow a term to be shameful, it loses its sting.
There is another, perfect example of this that I can think of, and it even deals with a sports team mascot. The mascot is a drunken, pugilist leprechaun that goes with a team called âthe fighting irishâ. It comes from the stereotype that Irish immigrants were drunken, ill-tempered brawlers with short stature and red hair. It should be really, deeply offensive to any Irish person that this team is called that, but they love it, generally, because theyâve co-opted the hateful term and made it their own.
We still call large vehicles designed to haul people off to jail en masse âpaddy wagonsâ and donât think a thing of it, when in reality, it should be considered horribly offensive. But it generally isnât, because the Irish have co-opted the term, made it their own, and wear it proudly.
I suggest that any person offended by the Redskins name do the same. Sort of a âhell yes, Iâm proud to be Native American and have Red Skin, bitches! Whatâre you gonna do about it?â
But Iâm a white guy of Germanic descent, so what do I know about it? Seriously. I mean that last thing I just said, it wasnât sarcasm.
So….why does “fighting irish” get a pass? Suggesting the unlawfulness of an entire group of people who are stereotypically known for drunkenness and fighting….
I ask because by this logic and the fact that “fighting irish” is ok, why is the University of North Dakota under fire for “Fighting Sioux”?
Ah race. Somehow I knew that we’d get here on these pages.
Where I went to school in kindergarten and first grade, there were far more Mexican kids and far more black kids than white kids. I found the term ‘minority’ quite confusing at the time. Starting second grade, my school was lily-white. That was more confusing than the term ‘minority’ had been previously.
I have a first cousin who is 100% Japanese by blood. He was adopted into the family as a baby. I like him at least as much as my other first cousins, and really have more in common with him than the others. We tend to like all the same kinds of cars and guns. đ
In high school, I heard the term ‘anglo saxon’ thrown about a lot. When the term was thrown at me in derision, I had to counter that I was not actually of English descent, but thanks for playing.
People have always asked me where my wife is ‘from’. She’s 1/4 Filipino (her paternal grandfather immigrated) and looks more pure-blood than even her dad. Ironically, she’s probably as ‘white’ as me by blood. Once we were hanging out with a neighbor in our back yard around the fire pit with some beers. The neighbor told my wife “you’re not right if you’re not white.” For a few minutes there, I was pretty sure there was going to be a fist fight. We don’t hang around with him anymore. The only person I know who is more of a mutt than my wife or me is our son.
I used to work at an auto parts store in an economically challenged area. I got unfairly accused of racism more within the first six months there than I had in my combined lifetime before then. Homeless dude would default to that when I busted him for shoplifting lug nuts. True story. When people automatically assume that you are racist because of your white skin, what does that say about them?
At another job, I was friends with a white South African lady that I worked with. When we first met, she asked me where I was from because she thought that I was another immigrant for some reason. She jumped through all the legal hoops to become a naturalized citizen here. We had a little party at the office for her when she became official. She had a rather passionate disregard for illegal immigrants given how hard she worked to become an American the legal way. She didn’t much appreciate it when I jokingly referred to her as an “African American”. We were still friends afterwards though.
My wife is honestly my best friend, but my other best friend is black. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it’s true. He’s my brother of another color. When we went to his mother’s funeral, his family members kept saying, “oh, you must be his white friends that he talks about.” I’d prefer to just be his friend, instead of his ‘white’ friend, but that’s okay.
Yes, racism is alive and well, but there are plenty of proverbial eggshells laying about as well. Some of us refuse to allow it to have any power in our lives. Being creatures of free choice is kind of a mixed bag though. Even as people like you and I can choose to disallow racism in our lives, others can choose otherwise, even if that makes them bigoted a**holes.
Damn, wish I’d seen your ‘african american’ comment before I posted mine above, I’d have put it here instead.
Part asian with white privilege? So you’re telling me you can’t drive your Cadillac? đ
Damn, that was funny. XD
One generation removed from Poor White Trash. You can stuff your “White Privilege” where the sun don’t shine.
Thank you for posting this.
Just curious, though, how did you even become aware of white privilege as a thing?