Comments | gaudior: WWS: On race, on fear, on anger.

gaudior

WWS: On race, on fear, on anger.

Jun 21, 2006 08:32

In a comment to a recent post of mine, homasse described "White Woman Syndrome," or WWS, a phenomenon discussed on a lot of the minority-focused forums on lj. She said that the usual explanation people there come up with for why White women sometimes act like complete, entitled twits is that "White women, being considered the ideal for beauty and such, ( Read more... )

links, race, psychology, commentsversation, navel-gazing, rant, public

Comments 15

khyros June 22 2006, 04:03:08 UTC

This is pretty insightful stuff. When I'm less tired/more coherent, I'llcomment in detail. Meanwhile, permission to post a link to this in my journal?

nucl3arsnke June 22 2006, 17:33:05 UTC

Brava, brava. This is well-thought out and made me think, and I want to read it again. I'm not really certain about letting go of my fear of anger entirely, though. After all, it is a passion, and I think impassioned people tend to think a little less clearly than people of calm emotions.

Of course, I suppose my fear of anger isn't really helping anything. I'll work on that. (Coincidentally, fear is one of my issues this year.)

homasse June 23 2006, 09:52:47 UTC

Very good post. *nods ( ... )

tanatoes June 27 2006, 20:32:20 UTC

I don't want to comment on racism. Having worked retail for many, many years now I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I have reactions to people based on a number of superficial initial impressions. There are types of people that are mroe likely to try to cause trouble, and I concentrate more energy on keeping an eye on those people than on people who are less likely to cause trouble. (Though I never discount the strong likeliehood that the polite white middle-aged gentleman in the expensive suit could be stuffing DVDs in his case when I'm not looking.) Race, age, dress and demeanor all influance how I react to people. But I TRY to be universally suspicious of everybody ( ... )

oyceter June 30 2006, 17:59:52 UTC

Thanks.

I have a difficult time talking about racism as well, but sort of from the opposite end. I'm angry, and I know I'm angry, but I also know that expressing that anger will make people defensive, less likely to listen, and more likely to categorize me as "Angry Asian Chick" and ignore me. It's really weird double-bind, because in some sense, I feel like my anger is being taken away from me.

So yes, totally agree with the whole teaching people that anger is ok thing.