Political post...
feel free to skip. I've been fairly careful about making blatantly political posts before, but I've come to realize that in *my* journal I can say whatever I want. Friends: If you don't like my politics or what I'm saying, feel free to defriend me.
( An article about Bill Clinton's new book. )
( An article about Bill Clinton's new book. )
But, yes, if it has never been a problem before... I was chatting the other day to an acquaintance who was so bleedin' proud her 21-year old son had been elected as his ward counsellor - isn't it lovely to have a young voice on the city council.
I said yes, that will be good for shaking things up. Then our conversation drifted to the US gov't (her husband is American) and she started on about how 'that black man is far too young to be in government.'
O.o
And then I remembered a previous conversation she had complained about her daughter bringing home a black man originally from the Carribean, which connected a shitload of dots, so after she started on Obama I do believe I stared blankly.
And she calls herself a liberal. You gotta wonder how people can't see what they are saying.
Sort of on-topic: in US politics, you are allowed to be white or black. In both Canada and the UK, you'll see First Nations (Can), Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Sikh, Muslim, you name it. Where do all the people who are coloured in between white and black go? I confess I don't quite understand US race relations, and I've always wondered why two colours are acceptable (one, of course, sadly still much more so than the other) and the others are not?
God, I'm terrible for whittering/thinking out loud in your LJ. Really bleedin' sorry. Although, technically, it is your fault as you raise actually important issues so well suited to going on and on about...
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Here in the US the demographic delineations are white, black/African American (the latter if you're a descendant of African slaves... by this definition Obama would NOT be considered "African-American," the basis of some people's fondness of him; but he seems to have adopted the appellation, anyway), Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic (any Spanish speaker from south of the US border, no matter what "race." IIRC, the term "Hispanic" was coined by the Reagan administration when the census revealed all these brown people identifying themselves as white. Can't have THAT, can we? BTW, Brazilians aren't considered Hispanic, despite coming from that big ol' country down there in S. America... whatever!), and Other, usually used if you're "bi-racial."
Here in the US, if you can *possibly* get away with it, you say you're white. That's the "superior" position. That's where you want to be. In the US all those you named except for Chinese are considered "white" (although I once knew a dark-skinned Indian woman who considered herself black). Asians *look* white from a distance, so they're not likely to be pulled over for driving the speed limit. I can explain that if you need me to. :)
My father has always used experience as an important factor in his decision ... He'd still probably go for Obama - the first American politician that Canadians would actually like to have themselves! But my dad can't be the only one that considers it a perfectly valid concern (and he has raised it against both Obama and Clinton). Perhaps this might be why your normally liberal flist got a bit twitchy at the inference that it automatically equates to racism?
In my experience it is the actual racists who twitch the most at the inference.
A racist isn't necessarily someone who flies the Confederate flag (a symbol of slavery and lynching) or uses the n-word. A racist is a white person who hasn't unpacked the invisible knapsack, nay, refuses to acknowledge that one even exists, let alone on *their* backs. THAT's why they can't see what they're saying.
All white people benefit from just *being* white, no matter how poor, or female, or gay they are. I doubt there is an African-American, living or dead, who hasn't wished at some point in their lives that they were white. Life would be sooo much easier, yanno? (I know for certain that I'd now be employed if I were.) But wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets full first. (LOL Sorry, got that from an in-law a long time ago.)
As for your whittering, pray, continue. I love it! :)
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Dear Unholy Pupa... that made no common sense whatsoever! I would hate to work in social policy etc. in the US - what a bizarre minefield. I guess race is America's bugbear (sort of like religion is becoming here); here, people who are Indian or Malaysian or whatever are staunchly proud of it and insist their label signifies it - i.e. British-Pakistani, etc. No matter how pale, an Indian man would not call himself white here. My concern is really - although they are labelling themselves white, the white community in the US obviously isn't accepting them, because they don't seem represented in public life. I'd just been wondering where they'd gone as you never actually SEE them in the news, you know?
But then, I suppose it is a lot easier to avoid upsetting people if they have to fit into such a small group of boxes...
it is the actual racists who twitch the most at the inference.
It's that little subconscious going POKE POKE, I do believe!
Apols, I don't think I'm being clear enough on what I mean - I'm speaking from Canada's preferred stance of equal opportunities (what we try for anyway, we sometimes fail!) which simply holds us all up to the same standards. Perhaps that is why affirmative action, which makes allowances rather than opens the game up to everyone like equal opps does, weirds us Canucks out a bit - especially as it invariably wouldn't be necessary to implement aff. action if people would actually bother to look at what a person could do instead of their skin colour. What I'm meaning is from that background, if ALL candidates are judged by their experience or lack of it, then I don't think it can necessarily be racism - in Canada, we'd be suspicious of both holding ONLY the black candidate and of excusing ONLY the black candidate. I suppose that kind of blanket application regardless has probably been easier for us to achieve as we don't have that awful baggage attached to race. I guess I was just querying as you phrased it to sound like anyone who said that about Obama was automatically a racist, when coming at it from a more liberal country on race matters, I think that not necessarily, if they also evaluate white candidates on the same thing too.
I do go around the houses a bit, don't I?
But, yeah, if like that woman I know, they think it is fine for someone else to be inexperienced and it is only the non-white they are concerned about, then yes - there's something buried nice and deep in their subconscious. I should really email that invisible knapsack link to her - I've seen it before (lost link tho, so thanks) and it is the perfect explanation of how it isn't these surface-level actions we think it is; it is much deeper and ingrained in people's minds. Like apartheid, which although no longer legal is still alive and well in the culture. There's this idea that because laws have made us all equal that it has magically fixed itself, and it hasn't. Laws are easy to change; ideas in people's heads are not.
I might post it on my flist, I have a very strict Republican who took me to task for my posts on Abolition Day as he thought everything was well and fine and good and the few black people in power (he mentioned Obama) were proof that it is all shits and giggles for black people now and that we shouldn't feel bad for benefitting from white priviledge as we didn't put it in place.
GO TO PART 2
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As an aside to this - was rereading the knapsack article
and she highlights perfectly how, thanks to the racial baggage, whites in the US have still managed to gently tweak the possibilities of equal opps (which, in its most basic form, is the ideal situation - a level playing field for all) so that it very quietly maintains the basic power structure behind any surface-level changes.
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I think affirmative action benefitted black people for approximately 5 minutes. After that, affirmative action was about promoting white females.
Affirmative action was instituted *precisely* because of that invisible knapsack, and was a good thing, I don't care what anyone says. It was supposed to level the playing field, giving blacks an advantage to counter the invisible, unspoken advantage whites in this country have always had. Somewhere along the line (I'm thinking when Reagan got into office) it was decided that affirmative action wasn't doing any good, that black people had to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" like everybody else. They decided that everything really WAS "shits and giggles" for blacks and they discarded the reality of the invisible knapsack, without ever acknowledging that it was there. These days nobody feels they *have* to give a black person a job. It's okay to cherry pick white employees, there are so many more of them, anyway, and lord knows they *deserve* the job.
(30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.)
No white person can EVER say that "things are good for blacks." How the fuck do THEY know? They're not standing in those shoes. Yet they don't hesitate to make such statements, and get all bent out of shape when a person of color disputes them. Racism is a hard thing to endure. Maybe I'm not getting hired because I'm fat. I can lose weight, but nothing can change my skin color (or my age, for that matter, a bitch for another time). And the fact that I'm getting absolutely NO feedback from anyone as to why I haven't been chosen for the job tells me that the reasons are spurious.
And they wonder why black people as a group tend to have hypertension. A broken heart doesn't pump blood very well.
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Anyway, should I recommend my flist friend perhaps make some friends who weren't also white Republican Catholics and find out what life is like in America from their perspectives?!
sooo much easier, yanno? (I know for certain that I'd now be employed
For what it is worth, if I ever need an administrator before you hit retirement, you'd be a shoo-in with me (if you can cope with the mud that seems to follow a geoscientist). You've got buckets of experience, are intelligent, and would be a likeable person to have in the workplace. I think I'm just too pragmatic to understand how someone could pass up a person who would be an asset because of something as bizarre as their skin not looking like they crawled out from under a rock (you oughta see me!). This is why I find it hard to get into fights with bigots of all kinds - I really struggle to put it into words that can convince them as their mindset just doesn't make sense to my mind and I don't know how to put it in words they could understand. I get so fucked off reading your journal entries about interviews and seeing a perfectly capable woman bounced back all the time for bullshit reasons that are obviously hiding more sinister concerns over things THAT DON'T ACTUALLY IMPINGE ON HER FUCKING ABILITY TO DO THE JOB.
safjlkafjlskdjgljdslgjsdljglsd. Oh, now I'm all irate. So much for my bp, eh?
Apologies for any obscenities. Um, and I've been in the Bailey's this evening, hence the ranting on various topics. Soz. But I'll leave this as it is, if only to provide you with a drunken irate white girl's rantings about shitty people.
A
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:) Thanks, Anna, and no, I wouldn't mind the mud. I had an interview once with a small company that did geological surveys. I didn't get THAT job, but only because a previous agency had failed them, and they offered the company a body free of charge, an offer they apparently couldn't refuse. I'm sure I would've loved that job.
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