(no subject)
Is it just me or is the future of the 'honey-coloured'* person something that just makes you feel all warm and fuzzie inside? I don't care what term you throw around, 'honey-coloured', or coffee-coloured or any other such euphemism. The idea that one day all people will be above caring about skin tone and race and culture and just love for love's sake is one of the few hopes I still hold for this world.
In away, I support the idea of a 'honey-coloured' future for the same reason that I support Ursula LeGuin's main character in 'The Lathe of Heaven', who, when asked to obliterate racism while dreaming, turned everybody's skin grey.
I've spent the afternoon reading about my countries apparently deeply ingrained hate for Asian countries. A hate I don't think I've ever felt, but then I'm a child in the 90's when the push to 'asianize' in an economic and 'accepting' cultural sense (but only so far as commerce would allow, apparently) really started.
God, I've forgotten how sad literature history makes me. In one class I'm being exposed to the ideas of 21st Century american writing and all the racism and social anxieties that those works betray. And in the other, I'm having to deal with the ideas of 'the yellow peril' and 'white Australia' and 'the anxious white nation'. Anxieties that hit much closer to home, partially because the adults around me (who grew up in the 60's and 70's) often betray many of the prejudices being exposed in the things I'm reading. It makes me uncomfortable in a way I'm not used to because I'm usually able to shrug it off and just go 'silly Americans'.
(From 'Is Australia An Asian Country?', FitzGerald, S. 1997 pp. 71)
In away, I support the idea of a 'honey-coloured' future for the same reason that I support Ursula LeGuin's main character in 'The Lathe of Heaven', who, when asked to obliterate racism while dreaming, turned everybody's skin grey.
I've spent the afternoon reading about my countries apparently deeply ingrained hate for Asian countries. A hate I don't think I've ever felt, but then I'm a child in the 90's when the push to 'asianize' in an economic and 'accepting' cultural sense (but only so far as commerce would allow, apparently) really started.
God, I've forgotten how sad literature history makes me. In one class I'm being exposed to the ideas of 21st Century american writing and all the racism and social anxieties that those works betray. And in the other, I'm having to deal with the ideas of 'the yellow peril' and 'white Australia' and 'the anxious white nation'. Anxieties that hit much closer to home, partially because the adults around me (who grew up in the 60's and 70's) often betray many of the prejudices being exposed in the things I'm reading. It makes me uncomfortable in a way I'm not used to because I'm usually able to shrug it off and just go 'silly Americans'.
(From 'Is Australia An Asian Country?', FitzGerald, S. 1997 pp. 71)