Comments | infoape: race (xposted to fb)

infoape

race (xposted to fb)

Feb 20, 2009 04:10

Living in Portland I am not often exposed to deliberate acts of racism or hatred. I can say that I am not often exposed to subtle attacks thuogh they are relatively more frequent. What is frequent yet largely difficult to detect are acts of racism concealed so deeply that even the person behaving in this manner remains unawares. As far as they are ( Read more... )

welcome to my mundo, lame, brown like me., whatever, necessary

Comments 12

astorrachel February 20 2009, 13:31:10 UTC

I think in the West it is largely pushed under the rug. Growing up in Atlanta you tend to see a lot more open racism. I have had the unfortunate experience of having to stand up for friends to people of my own race for their racist attitudes. It is interesting for me to also see, albeit subtle, the racism here in Seattle towards Asian groups. Such a history here with the internment camps, ect. I have had a few unpleasant experiences with people here who seem to do a 180 with their views once they discover 3 of my kids are Asian.

Something that I think about too.

Have a good flight home!

infoape February 21 2009, 02:32:42 UTC

Yeah. We do push it under the rug here in the west coast. Good for you for standing up to it. And your context has all sorts of good culture-bending things going on with it... which as you can imagine I think is a very lovely thing. The trick is to get people to think about it and not assume they know everything or know the deal with "others". Discussion would be better than passive feigning of everything is "ok". But it seems like it's really hard to get to that point.

Made it home in one piece.

(The comment has been removed)

infoape February 21 2009, 03:29:02 UTC

yes. I do remember having a conversation like this at some point. Paul Anderson continues to do the good work.

kashma February 20 2009, 15:59:05 UTC

Great post ( ... )

thewronghands February 20 2009, 18:09:01 UTC

one of the things my privilege brings me is that other white people are much more open and honest about how they feel with me, than they would be when talking to a person of color. And what I hear is, a lot of times, rather shockingly racist.Yeah, I get some of that too. I try to use that to be Ambush Ambassador of Clue, but it doesn't always work. (That, too, gets into creepy territory. I try like hell to show them a larger world and a different perspective, but some of the most effective methods of doing that involve explicitly not saying "dude, that's racist and completely fucked up, perhaps you don't realize". Saying that is straight to defensive not-listening on their part. "Yeah, but what if $perspective_bomb" works better... but that slimy feeling of trying to gain the sympathy of someone who's being awful and racist, gah. Even if it's for the purpose of trying to get them to not be racist ( ... )

kashma February 20 2009, 19:21:18 UTC

It's a tricky situation, trying to disabuse people of their notions. Most of the time, it comes up rather out of the blue, at least in my experience, so it's often in the context of some emotional thing going on with the other person ( ... )

thewronghands February 20 2009, 20:42:49 UTC

I've had pretty fair success with "your argument would be so much more effective and likely to be listened to if you hadn't $said_racist_thing". And then go on to discuss whatever their root issue was. It seems to help in establishing you as sympathetic and caring, while still pointing out that you just should not act like that. It's less blatant than would make me ideally happy, but is more likely to effect change.

My family is really aware of our relatively recent immigrant status, and makes a big deal of trips back home. So even though I'm third-generation, I still think of myself and my family in the recent immigrant camp. It is helpful in arguing with people who bitch about it. "Oh, do you mean me? Because it sure sounds like you mean me. Or my family. Or my partner." shocks them when coming from a white girl, and they will sometimes shut up. But I don't know if I've actually changed their minds, or just made them shut up for now.

Thread 5

thewronghands February 20 2009, 20:37:57 UTC

I'm so sorry that that happened to you. Ick. I try to do what I can to squish racism (being white sometimes helps, in that I'm more likely to be listened to when telling other white people that their actions are not okay), but if there is anything more I can do I would be happy to try and help.

It's a pity that some white folks have such a sense of entitlement. Every space has to be open to them or OMG discrimination. (To which I can only say "I do not think that means what you think it means".) But yeah, places where minority folks can speak frankly about these issues without fear of being dogpiled on by all the majority folks is a good start.

altaego February 20 2009, 22:31:40 UTC

Like someone said above, I think on the West Coast racism is different from East Coast racism. Some people I've talked to prefer the East's overt racists to the West's non-racist racists.

What I try to do is to be aware of my own biases so that I remember that being racist (or sexist or ageist or mocking of Mormons or Scientologists) is not the same as being evil. I've been the target of racism and I know how it hurts, but I've also made racist assumptions just because I am part of our culture and sometimes find it useful or interesting to talk in generalizations about various social and cultural sub-groups. I think a lot of people got defensive during the late 80s/90s when it seemed like the worst insult you could make would be to call someone racist or PC depending on what side of the debate you were on and therefore the dialogue broke down with people sulking in corners feeling misunderstood.