would you find yourself afraid to see?
today, professor zaragosa was saying that "racial victimization is easy to portray. focusing on the vocabulary of obvious racial discrimination individualizes practices and reduces systematic problems to an issue of whether or not a store owner can have a no coloreds sign in his window. it is not enough to create legislation that says we should integrate schools. it is not enough to take down the whites only, or no women signs, if we refuse to try to understand where these practices came from and how the continue to evolve."
this entry isn't about that quote. i'm not going to elaborate or even explain what this means to me. but i'm sure you'll see a relation of some sort in there somewhere.
every time i try to dig into what i really want to write about in this entry, i freeze up and erase what i had just typed. that's what tells me that i really need to write this.
several months ago, i happened upon a Facebook note by someone that i don't know. they were talking about racism here at Cal. it was talking about how the person had been waiting to cross the street in front of the school and a car with several white guys in it came by and they yelled all sorts of slurs that i choose not to repeat. it didn't surprise me [considering all the just plain ignorant and condescending comments i'd already heard in my few months here], but it somehow still surprised me. i thought about it long and hard for a few days, and then let it go. because i individualized the event. i allowed myself to push it aside as an isolated event.
when i was younger and we were learning about slavery and the quintessential "Civil Rights Movement," i didn't understand. didn't understand how they had waited that long to fight back. didn't understand why there were people that actually didn't participate. just plain didn't get it. i got older and was told that it was more complicated than that, but i don't think i ever really had a real grasp of what exactly that meant. if something was going on that was wrong, why wouldn't you do everything, give everything, risk everything to fix it?
my parents don't like the fact that i'm taking femsex, because it's from 6pm to 8pm, and they don't like me walking at night. also, femsex was really intense tonight but i suppose that's a story for another time. tonight after class a few of us stayed so monet and michelle could tell us more info about the facilitator applications, and i'm so excited to apply but the questions on the app are hard >:| . when the meeting was over we were walking towards raleigh's and hadn't even left campus when we saw this guy yelling at this girl who was passing. she didn't seem to know him, so i wondered what he was yelling about, or if he was just crazy [we have our share of insane people here in berkeley, but it keeps life interesting. you never know when someone's going to start yelling about fuck parties and cell phones and iPods.]. so i was looking at him tryign to figure him out, and also worried about the girl because he seemed to be saying rather derogatory things to her as she passed. he looked directly at me [from maybe 20 feet away?] and started screaming at me, asking me what the fuck i was looking at [little nigger bitch or something along those lines], and i glared at him in confusion [he couldn't really be saying what i thought he was], and the he asked me what the fuck i was going to do about it. he yelled something i didn't quite catch, then flinched at me [by this time, i had passed him and i was looking at him over my shoulder and he was looking at me over his] and said, nothing!.
i didn't know what to say, what do do, although a large part of me felt i and the 3 i was walking with could take him. but i knew that they wouldn't have, and probably had no idea what i was thinking. part of me wished that shit had happened in long beach, because there would be no way for the posse to let someone talk to me like that. of course, that logic is flawed in so many ways. but the end of it is that i said nothing, did nothing, and kept walking. it was dark, he was a big white guy. insert some bullshit about picking one's battles here.
a few weeks ago i was walking home from yuki's place, where we gather every tuesday to watch House M.D. i was crossing the street and this car wanted to turn into the lane that i was crossing at that particular point in time. so instead of waiting, or going around me, someone inside the car yells, "get out of the fucking street, hoe."
it's all too easy to call these isolated incidents, to say that sexism and racism are things of the past, or of "backwards rural places". but it's not. it's the same shit as always, sometimes in news forms, and sometimes not.
there isn't an ending to this entry.
this entry isn't about that quote. i'm not going to elaborate or even explain what this means to me. but i'm sure you'll see a relation of some sort in there somewhere.
every time i try to dig into what i really want to write about in this entry, i freeze up and erase what i had just typed. that's what tells me that i really need to write this.
several months ago, i happened upon a Facebook note by someone that i don't know. they were talking about racism here at Cal. it was talking about how the person had been waiting to cross the street in front of the school and a car with several white guys in it came by and they yelled all sorts of slurs that i choose not to repeat. it didn't surprise me [considering all the just plain ignorant and condescending comments i'd already heard in my few months here], but it somehow still surprised me. i thought about it long and hard for a few days, and then let it go. because i individualized the event. i allowed myself to push it aside as an isolated event.
when i was younger and we were learning about slavery and the quintessential "Civil Rights Movement," i didn't understand. didn't understand how they had waited that long to fight back. didn't understand why there were people that actually didn't participate. just plain didn't get it. i got older and was told that it was more complicated than that, but i don't think i ever really had a real grasp of what exactly that meant. if something was going on that was wrong, why wouldn't you do everything, give everything, risk everything to fix it?
my parents don't like the fact that i'm taking femsex, because it's from 6pm to 8pm, and they don't like me walking at night. also, femsex was really intense tonight but i suppose that's a story for another time. tonight after class a few of us stayed so monet and michelle could tell us more info about the facilitator applications, and i'm so excited to apply but the questions on the app are hard >:| . when the meeting was over we were walking towards raleigh's and hadn't even left campus when we saw this guy yelling at this girl who was passing. she didn't seem to know him, so i wondered what he was yelling about, or if he was just crazy [we have our share of insane people here in berkeley, but it keeps life interesting. you never know when someone's going to start yelling about fuck parties and cell phones and iPods.]. so i was looking at him tryign to figure him out, and also worried about the girl because he seemed to be saying rather derogatory things to her as she passed. he looked directly at me [from maybe 20 feet away?] and started screaming at me, asking me what the fuck i was looking at [little nigger bitch or something along those lines], and i glared at him in confusion [he couldn't really be saying what i thought he was], and the he asked me what the fuck i was going to do about it. he yelled something i didn't quite catch, then flinched at me [by this time, i had passed him and i was looking at him over my shoulder and he was looking at me over his] and said, nothing!.
i didn't know what to say, what do do, although a large part of me felt i and the 3 i was walking with could take him. but i knew that they wouldn't have, and probably had no idea what i was thinking. part of me wished that shit had happened in long beach, because there would be no way for the posse to let someone talk to me like that. of course, that logic is flawed in so many ways. but the end of it is that i said nothing, did nothing, and kept walking. it was dark, he was a big white guy. insert some bullshit about picking one's battles here.
a few weeks ago i was walking home from yuki's place, where we gather every tuesday to watch House M.D. i was crossing the street and this car wanted to turn into the lane that i was crossing at that particular point in time. so instead of waiting, or going around me, someone inside the car yells, "get out of the fucking street, hoe."
it's all too easy to call these isolated incidents, to say that sexism and racism are things of the past, or of "backwards rural places". but it's not. it's the same shit as always, sometimes in news forms, and sometimes not.
there isn't an ending to this entry.