May 7, 2015, 4:32 PM
It's as if different individuals have differing opinions, experiences, and means of expression.
[Ethnicity Thread] Who Do You Think You Are?
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@Cirno - I am a huge mutt. I'm white, and my ancestry as far as I know it includes the Irish, the French, English, possibly some Scottish blood, Native American (Cherokee, Blackfoot) and a general smattering of 'European countries'. I don't know if I have any black blood, but it's possible. (Someday I am going to get one of those DNA scans that traces your ethnic origin. My history seems so bland and boring. Nothing exciting like my husband's - he came from Vikings!)
I actually really wish I had some kind of ethnic heritage to claim, other then "Generic Midwestern American". But I wasn't raised around/in the Native cultures I have the bloodline for, and nothing else is so strongly present that I could say "I have an Irish heritage."
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@Thenomain said:
Can we please, as the Human Race, drop the 'skin tone' part of it and focus on the only part that matters: The culture that provides fuel to that bullshit? Like Chris Rock says, "The niggers have got to go.."
(n.b., I just love this bit, and this thread suddenly gave me an excuse to share it..)
I've never heard this bit before, and I didn't like it. (In fact, I skipped through the rest after three minutes, mostly because his delivery grates on me.) To me, his conflation of a racial slur with a set of behaviors that are markers of institutionalized poverty and racism is neither smart nor funny. Or, as someone smarter than me once said, "[Nigger] is a word used to describe our own wretchedness.".
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It's as if different individuals have differing opinions, experiences, and means of expression.
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@Cirno said:
There are black citizens of those countries. Shocking, I know.
At that point I was joking. I mean, a black SwissFrenchEnglish? With the way you reacted they might as well be white, amirite?
(n.b., still making fun. So is Chris James. Watch it through to the end. click click.)
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Follow-up!
@BetterJudgment said:
"[Nigger] is a word used to describe our own wretchedness.".
Maybe this means that all Black American satire is Richard Pryor.
I can't say this is a bad thing.
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Pretty sure that my dad's side of the family, well. My grandfather is German, first generation, came to the US with quite a bit of wealth just after world war two. Grandmother is British. On the other side of things is a mix, predominately Irish, Welsh, and Dutch; according to our ancestry trail of things, we started English, went to Ireland and went native, then came over and were dirty Irish for a good long while until we came out west (at which point the Dutch got involved).
I'm white. I don't think we have owned slaves, but I am pretty sure my grandfather's wealth was earned in very awful ways.
I will also throw out as a point of note relative to this discussion is that up where I live, the nasty racist crap you hear on a consistent basis is far more against Hispanics than anyone else.
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I am usually put in a weird position. Here, in my home country, I'm privileged; I'm light-skinned, descended from Italians and Spaniards for the most part. I am not a Bolivian, Paraguayan, or Peruvian immigrant or descended from them. To be explicit, they are our version of the racially/ethnically disenfranchised. When someone in my country complains about "them there peoples stealing our jobz", that's who they mean. I'm not that.
But when I lived in the U.S., I lived in San Francisco's Mission District. I hung out with cholos, Mexicans, Venezuelans, Colombians, and the sons and daughters thereof. But you know what else there was tons of in the Mission (a predominantly Hispanic area of S.F. at the time)? African and Asian-American people. Did I get along with all of them? No. But my first crush was this gorgeous Fillipino girl, and for a while I didn't have any white friends, and the people who were my friends saw me as Hispanic, because I was.
I guess what I'm getting at is that context matters so much when you're talking about racve, ethnicity, nationality, and the segregation of class though economic, racial, and ethnic delimitations. I wouldn't understand the reasoning behind the way my own country and city's segregation works if I hadn't lived on both sides. I've been called all the things and am mostly toughened against it on the outside, but it still stings, regardless of which.
Now that my verbal diarrhea is done, I have a perhaps interesting annotation to make to this thread, continuing on my train of thought regarding context:
In my country, especially in my city, like I said, the disenfranchised are Bolivians, Peruvians, and Paraguayans. We have very, very, very little black people. Most black people here are from Brazil, the Carribbean, Colombia, or actually from Africa (the majority, actually). But they are rare. I see perhaps two or three a day if I take a long bike ride through specific streets.
One time, a friend of a friend started a conversation that got me thinking, because they were talking about the Bolivians stealing jobs or whatever (some racist bullshit, he was an asshole) and after some talking I brought up these actual black people who lived among us. (Black is a very common slur here, one over which I have gotten into a lot of fights.) And I wonder why they aren't included in this complaint, in this worry. I didn't have to think about it long.
I just had to look around. There weren't that many of them. When it comes to the privileged class's fears, quantity matters. The privileged class here will never be scared of these people because they are too few, they pose no threat. But the Bolivians? The Peruvians? The Paraguayans? Holy shit, they are the Devil. Because there's enough of them. They might stop being vegetable store owners and start having money-making jobs, and wearing suits, and marrying our women, and aaaaaah, ohnoes, we're doomed.
Anyway, that's my tangent: context is king every single time. In the U.S., black people and other ethnic minorities are seen as the threat (which is also why the atrocities committed against them are so downplayed). Here, it's people of neighboring countries (and the same thing happens with atrocities committed to them here--one headline of a rag down here read: "Building catches fire, deaths include 2 people and 3 Bolivians", and I am not even fucking kidding).
Argh. Okay. Spam over. Sorry!
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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I'm lucky enough to live in Toronto where... well, there are some racial tensions in some parts of town I guess, but for the most part no one gives a shit where you're coming from (or look/sound like you are). The city is packed with Asian people, no shits are given. I went to the annual Greek festival on the Danforth and expected to see mostly greek people there - nawp! People from a bunch of ethnicities were all over the place, just having fun slapping tzatziki over their souvlaki sticks like nobody's business.
That's exactly what I like, the fact folks in general aren't homogenized or forced to conform to a general identity - they're happy identifying as whatever, but they're (also in general) happy participating in their neighbor's funtimes while there're at it.
If it wasn't for all the fucking cold, this city would be so great.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said:
If it wasn't for all the fucking cold, [Toronto] would be so great.
Quoted for truth. Working downtown in the midst of -20'F weather and being FORCED to use the underground tunnels to go 4 blocks was the suck. TEH SUCK.
That lake wind needs punched in the face.
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@Coin said:
We have very, very, very little black people.
Did anyone else immediately picture black Lilliputians? With or without Coin tied to the ground as Gulliver?
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@TNP said:
@Coin said:
We have very, very, very little black people.
Did anyone else immediately picture black Lilliputians? With or without Coin tied to the ground as Gulliver?
A very small amount.
(Because they're so tiny.)
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin said:
@TNP said:
@Coin said:
We have very, very, very little black people.
Did anyone else immediately picture black Lilliputians? With or without Coin tied to the ground as Gulliver?
A very small amount.
(Because they're so tiny.)
New thread: Why does @Coin talk down to black people?
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How many generations back does each person owe a reporting of violence, exploitation, oppression?
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@Coin said:
I am usually put in a weird position. Here, in my home country, I'm privileged; I'm light-skinned, descended from Italians and Spaniards for the most part. I am not a Bolivian, Paraguayan, or Peruvian immigrant or descended from them. To be explicit, they are our version of the racially/ethnically disenfranchised. When someone in my country complains about "them there peoples stealing our jobz", that's who they mean. I'm not that.
I spent a couple years living on the US/Mexican border. My home on the US side was a fairly dumpy little place, so I ended up spending a lot of my free time in the much larger and more metropolitan Mexican city. It had a pretty big population of Chinese immigrants and their descendents, along with the standard anti-indigenous-people racism that's common. It was interesting in an, 'Everywhere is racist but everywhere's racism is different' kind of way.
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@HelloRaptor said:
New thread: Why does @Coin talk down to black people?
He talks down to everybody. Why are you singling out the blacks? Are you racist?
This reminds me of the joke most likely to get me downvoted:
If I were the new Hitler, I would kill all the Jews, and one clown.
(response: Why the clown?)
See? Nobody cares about the Jews.“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
This reminds me of the joke most likely to get me downvoted:
If I were the new Hitler, I would kill all the Jews, and one clown.
(response: Why the clown?)
See? Nobody cares about the Jews.I have to admit I actually laughed.
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1.). Your Polish forbear need not apologize; he's Polish, and, thus, an uninvolved party.
I don't know why white people always collapse with fear at the idea of having to apologize for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade(TAST); subsequently, they say silly things like this.
"OMG, maybe EVERYBODY might hafta apologize for slavery!"
No. No, they won't.
I hear this argument a lot, HR.
2.) I have some familiarity with Medieval Poland, but @BetterJudgment is the Tenured Medieval History Professor, and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to usurp his position.
Maybe you could pay for me to go to Uni and get a Ph.D. in medieval European history, though. Perhaps you could all pitch in; this appears to be a forum chock-full of Rich White People.
I think Poland had serfs. I think that; it may not be true.
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It's cute that everyone is pretending hating black people is a disease only found in the USA/countries with large subsets of black citizens, but this is a Lie.
The Chinese government displayed their fangs by ruthlessly executing a black female.
So how do you guys explain that? Is Finland chock-full of blacks? Is China?
I'm sure a number of convincing arguments will be set forth, all of which will exonerate the aforementioned countries of all ill-will towards my people.
No, actually, the plight of black people is totally different. There is a sign hanging on the door of the rest of the world that isn't Africa, and it says "No Niggers Allowed".
That is why I have no intention of going to Germany or Japan, fond though I might be of their females (and males).
Why should I? So that I can be called a Nigger in German(Die Schwartzen) or in Japanese (Kurombo da!)?
All the world hates and despises black people. While I'm sure other peoples experience racism, it is not to the truly dire extent that black people experience it; or, rather, our situation is rather unique.
Being black means being trapped in the country of your birth.
Being black means not getting a job, a car, a house, or an education, without hideous amounts of difficulty; if you complain about the difficulty, people call you a "lazy nigger with a Gibs Me Dat attitude".
Being black means people hating you irrationally, then lamely making excuses for it ("You just did something wrong!" "I disagree with your opinion, not you!" "I...I don't like your personal life...").
Being black means people laughing and making jokes about racial tragedies that befell your people.
Being black means people bitterly opposing you in nearly all your wishes and decisions.
Being black means being killed in cold blood, at any given time; even now, a protest is under way in Baltimore over this.
Being black means people not letting you in their house.
We now return to your regularly scheduled thread. Thank you for reading this; if you didn't, that's okay too, as many regulars here insist that I'm just a troll, and whatnot.
I've been thinking about making a separate thread for people to share their experiences of racism, as @HelloRaptor mentioned earlier, and, in spite of people's posts (including my own), this is not The Racism Thread.
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@Cirno said:
We now return to your regularly scheduled thread. Thank you for reading this; if you didn't, that's okay too, as many regulars here insist that I'm just a troll, and whatnot.
I haven't seen anyone call you a troll since you stopped being one.
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I'd started to write a longer post in response to this, but in the end, I've decided to just address two things.
- Don't hide behind the troll tag. Admin hasn't called you one or treated you like one and, as @Coin mentioned, you haven't been acting like one.
- If you care at all about a discussion, don't dismiss all possible responses with some trite garbage about how any response is a defense of some poor countries, bullied by a lone person in a tiny MU'ing community.
That's all for me. Feel free to ignore the second point at your leisure.