(Untitled)

[goodnighttexas]

yesterday i went to the fiesta flambeau parade. it was three hours long and there were about half a million people watching. anyways, a majority black high school marching band from dallas was in the parade, and my friend's father commented, saying "don't you wish you were black sometimes?" i was highly offended. by his question. and my friend

Comments

[ultimatehandler]

Yeah, that doesn't really surprise me. I mean, why think about and analyze what you or a group of people does when you can just enjoy who you are?

Point blank, this is exactly why I've been avoiding a lot of my white friends lately. Usually, I bring this up with a white friend in the hopes of moving toward a dialog where the friendship can be maintained and strengthened. What happens, though, is those friends disagree with everything I say and then suggest that I keep my mouth shut, because I talk about race too much as it is, and if I keep talking about it, I'll just get even more angry. You aren't the first. Or even the tenth.

Well I apologize for inconveniencing all the white people in my life by asking (because I, as you say, generally like them) that they open their eyes and stop saying or doing things that hurt me and other minorities. I applaud you on having the ability to decide when you're going to work on that "race/...whatever" thing and when you won't, but, you see, I don't have that luxury. I'm too busy defending my existence as a (newly) proud black man.

As Val said, I'm angry already. I'm mad at myself for shunning a whole race of people because I listened to (a large portion of) my white friends and internalized their fear and misunderstanding of anyone different from them. I'm mad because my UU friends are leading the "Kenny, SHUT THE HELL UP and Go Back To Singing Gold Digger For Us" charge rather than heeding my call to think a bit more about what they say and think. I shouldn't have to put up with three black jokes when I go visit Houston Rally, or listen to people from my so-called "Palace of Acceptance" whine about how racist the black kids at their school are. But I do.

I am tired of my friends fashioning themselves as accepting and inclusive while simultaneously telling a former leader and a good friend to calm down and not worry so much about the friends' own hurtful behavior.

[sertcake]

in the ongoing conversation about race, you must remember to keep it a conversation. you must remember that lecturing is not going to change people. and yelling at them will only make them shut down and shut you out.

i've been trying to keep talking back. to respond to your notes and such, silly and serious. because i know that's what you desire. but sometimes i feel that just because i'm not one of the people who simply accepts what you say as gospel, that i get singled out.

i understand that you're just now finding pride in yourself. and that's a good thing. but simply getting angry and mad at the people who've allowed you to distance yourself from your heritage for years does not change things.

the angry way that you react simply makes me feel bad. you don't seem to make it "easy" for me to figure out what i'm doing wrong. or what others are doing wrong. you just say that its wrong.

fighting racism is a long, slow, painful process. and its particularly difficult when its within yourself, hiding. the most dangerous racism is the kind that is subconscious, because its the hardest to fight.

but you have to make it easier to find. easier to WANT to make myself better. you have to make me feel like if i participate in the conversation, that it will be a conversation, and i won't immediately get attacked. and that's what i've been feeling.

it makes me want to just ignore it and leave it, like most of your white friends.

and then you would just be talking to yourself, and that does no good.

[goodnighttexas]

ellen,

while i understand your response here, i have to disagree with you. i don't know that kenny has yelled at anyone via livejournal or facebook posts. it's hard to yell through the internet.

i think figuring out this racism thing often elicits a lot of very strong feelings from people when their new understandings aren't reciprocated. how am i supposed to call you (or anyone) out on a racist comment or action without sounding mad or upset about it? an inherent fact of pointing out someone's faults is that you disagree with those faults. those faults aren't going to make you happy. that's why it's so hard to nicely call someone out on a racist action. couple that with the fact that most people shut down PERIOD when confronted on any issue, and the fact that we don't have to think about race everyday because we have a privilege.

and i don't want this to come off as a personal attack, it just happens that you were courageous enough to express this view, when i know that many many white folks feel this way...
feeling bad is a fact of life, especially feeling bad for something that hurts others and not doing anything about it. it is not kenny's job/place, or any person of color's job/place to gently break the news of racism to white folk so that we can better understand our own faults. personally, i feel that no person of color should initially be accountable for helping me understand my own racism. it is not fair to ask the people we have oppressed and marginalized to tell us what we did wrong, and tell us how to fix it, so we can be better person. i think it is important that people of color call us out on fucked up things we do, because white people may not always notice it. i think it is more important for white people to call out other white people and help white people understand what it is that is wrong, and what we can do to fix it. once a basic understanding of race and the experiences of other races has been built, then we can start being accountable to each other in our fight against racism.

what is hard about acknowledging racism is that the acknowledgment becomes a call to action. very seldom do people embrace that call, it's inconvenient and it's difficult to deal with... i think that's where it all comes from, all the denial of race. unitarians are pretty good people, i feel most people are pretty good people, and so when we acknowledge racism and still don't want to do anything about it... that, that is what makes us feel bad. that is what makes it not easy. that is what makes us live in denial.

i encourage you to take up educating yourself. once we start educating ourselves, we are doing something and all of the sudden tackling the problem of race doesn't seem as big as godzilla. it will seem increasingly attainable and desirable after you take each step.

[soozymom]

Valerie Vied, you rock!

Thanks for saying this so well.

[colotexan]

Valerie, this was unbelievable. I feel that either way, I become the spokesman. And yes, in YRUU (and elsewhere) I took that role but as my dad reminded me last night, I can't dominate, go to law school AND change all my friends.