(Untitled)

[birchswinger3]

In our society, is it possible for black people to be racist or women to be sexist [victimizing whites and men, respectively]?
[can men experience sexism from women, whites from blacks (in US society)? is this whole idea of reverse-racism valid?]No

Comments

[birchswinger3]

condi: that is indeed a very depressing thought, though possible. but if she is buying into the white male power structure as a way to advance her own personal power, than her own ideals and motives toward which she wants to employ that power are identical to their ideals. it seems to me that she has relinquished some of her own roots at some point in the formation of those ideals, and bought into the systemic ideology at least a little.

i find it hard to believe that somebody who grew up in birmingham with white supremacy bombings and blatant acts of racism, as well as all the subtler undertones, staring her in the face, could grow up and be thoroughly true to her family and childhood ideals and be at the head of this government which is doing virtually nothing to improve or even acknowledge the underprivileged state of minorities.

also, from wiki, her having said she felt racial segregation taught her to be "twice as good" as non-minorities sounds as if she's working within their system, buying into it, doing a good job playing their game.

labels: true, there is self-labeling and labels/generalizations in general are just pretty inevitable. but i was just thinking about the labels "black" and "hispanic" in particular; kenyans and zimbabweans don't necessarily both identify as members of a same group until they move/visit/immigrate somewhere where any dark skin color is not identified as the 'norm.' they become grouped together not out of some shared experience or spirit, necessarily, but become defined as "black" by the predominantly white culture that defines and perceives them as such. one of my guatemalan friends also tells me that he never thought of there really being a unity that is "latin america" or an ethnicity "hispanic" until he came here and found people were no longer considered chilean, dominican, guatemalan, but became lumped together in the mass social conscience as "hispanic."

not all labels are bad, but they should come from within and be allowed to be developed and formed by people themselves, rather than by others labeling them from an outside position.