here's an idea: the narrative from this angle

[autodidactic]

Okay, think of a family, born in a neighborhood where they've come up for a few generations. Supposing, like, your name is O'Malley, and you're from Boston. You identify with being Bostonian, and you're very prideful of where you're from, because of that drive we have inside of us to identify with where we're from

Comments

[dr_pipe]

I doubt modern attitudes can really be a result of 100 thousand year old migrations... I think that every group of people has the potential and even tendency to consider themselves superior to others; history is rife with this happening in all societies. But with the industrial revolution and colonialism, Europeans are the ones who have, at the current time in history, actually spread out and forced their will on everyone else. Now colonialism is mostly over, but it's a long slow decline from that peak period where Europe and Europeans were dominating everyone else which leaves many aftereffects we are still living with.

Give it another few hundred years, we'll probably be trying to figure out if there's an inherent quality in the Chinese that makes them feel superior to everyone else, cause they'll be the ones dominating the world.

[autodidactic]

I like this broader perspective. Maybe white people are just trendy during this point in history, and it's particularly virulent because we've got television and cargo culture and all that crap...

I like this idea a lot. Thanks for your perspective.

[dr_pipe]

Cool! :)

[chipnic]

How do you scientifically prove this hypothesis, particularly now what with white attitudes being that you cannot even describe the race of a suspected burglar to the cops without fear of being labeled a racist? Racist is almost the worst thing a white person can be labeled as in the US today

[autodidactic]

I can't remember who said it, but someone said that people are NOT created equal, but we must act as if they are. I'm pretty much behind that idea. I think we're assigning deep and personal emotional value to certain concepts of success.

Like, check it. My kid's gonna graduate high school, which is more than what I did at his age. Generationally, he is a success compared to me (by broader society, I guess), just as I am a "success" compared to my Dad, who dropped out in 8th grade. I dropped out in senior year and I got my GED a week later. (It's what you do when you're out of psych pokey and the world is crazier on the Outside. But I digress.)

But, I don't think anything bad of Europeans for not coming up with the concept of zero first, same as I don't expect people to feel bad for Aboriginal or African people choosing to live closer to the earth. It's a choice as much as it's a tool thing, know what I'm saying?

[chipnic]

@ "people are NOT created equal, but we must act as if they are." With that, I don't think a scientific study can be conducted relying on testimony from people, particularly whites. Being labeled a racist is The Scarlett "R." It's too loaded.

Post racial, my ass.

[autodidactic]

Can I ask what may sound like a very stupid question? Why are white people afraid to admit they're racist? I'll admit in a heartbeat that I've got a bigoted soul, and that I fight against my own lazy assumptions about people every single DAY. It doesn't make me any less of a good or bad person. I imagine I'm somewhere in between, like a lot of folks.

Why are white people so fucked up about it, though?

[ladynine]

Read this and thought of you...

Robert E. Howard, 1964, 'Untitled'

You have built a world of paper and wood,
Culture and cults and lies;
Has the cobra altered beneath his hood,
Or the fire in the tiger's eyes?

You have turned from valley and hill and flood,
You have set yourselves apart,
Forgetting the earth that feeds the blood
And the talon that finds the heart.

You boast you have stilled the lustful call
Of the black ancestral ape,
But Life, the tigress that bore you all,
Has never changed her shape.

And a strange shape comes to your faery mead,
With a fixed black simian frown,
But you will not know and you will not heed
Till your towers come tumbling down.