Race and racism anon meme thing

[dreamer_easy]

International Blog Against Racism Week begins tomorrow, 6 August. Before the week officially starts, I'd like to try something a bit dodgy.

For the next twenty-four hours, you can leave an anonymous message here with any questions you have about race or racism. IP logging is off and there are no LJ Toys or other IP-capturing stuff to worry about.

I know many people are afraid to say or ask things about these subjects, for fear of looking stupid or causing offence. I'll delete anything that's obviously just supposed to be abusive, and anything that uses insulting words, but otherwise, anything goes. POC, please be warned: that means there may be annoying, frustrating, or offensive material - you may prefer not to read the comments left here.

I can't guarantee answers to questions that are posted, but I will try to respond if I can. I won't judge or lecture anyone for honest curiosity or confusion. (Keep in mind I'm just a well-meaning White middle-class liberal, and no expert on racial issues.)

The twenty-four hours is up, folks! You can still post anonymously, but IP logging is back on. Thanks for your comments!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

POC, please be warned: that means there may be annoying, frustrating, or offensive material - you'll probably prefer not to read comments left here.

To be blunt: the second half of this sentence comes across as incredibly condescending, in a paternalistic, "I know what's best for you, PoC" sort of way. A better phrasing might be, "POC, please be warned: that means there may be annoying, frustrating, or offensive material - please take this under consideration and make your own decision as to whether or not you would prefer to read the comments left here."

To be even blunter: I think setting yourself up as some sort of information resource about race and racism is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. However, I encourage you to point people to sources where they can do further reading and research, such as the links being collected on the ibarw community.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Edited - thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

.... It still comes off as condescending. Why emphasize that they "probably" or "may" not want to read? Why don't you seem to think PoC can draw their own conclusions about the type of question likely to be in your comments, and make their own decisions about whether to dive in or not?

signed,
The same person.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

To be honest, it's because I cringe at the thought of frustrated, weary POC encountering yet more crap because of my dubious idea for an anonmeme.

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

People who choose to define themselves by their race, who have selected just ONE facet of who they are as the only part that matters, seem to presume that everyone else does too.

We don't.

The goal isn't to ignore the differences of skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Those differences exist, and they DO matter -- but to some people, they're the ONLY thing that matters.

If you don't want skin color to matter to you, that's fine. If someone else does decide it's the most important thing, there's not much you can do to shake them of that stupid point of view -- and they're going to interpret EVERYTHING you say or do in whatever way suits their extremist viewpoint.

You can't reason extremists out of their viewpoint, because it's not grounded in reason. And people who see everything in terms of race -- either because they fear what's different, or because they've decided to make their race the most important thing in their identity -- are extremists.

I think however, the distinction is this: The idea is to NOT let obvious physical (but essentially cosmetic) differences get in the way of treating individuals fairly based on who THEY are and how THEY choose to act.

If someone chooses to get their feathers ruffled by your honest attempts to deal with them in a fair and unbiased manner, fuck 'em.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I personally haven't encountered any of these extremists who "see everything in terms of race", so I can't comment on that, but I'm reassured by Racism: a Very Short Introduction, which argues that racists are not necessarily irrational or extremist, and in fact can be argued round. The author gives a remarkable example of a British National Party candidate who campaigned on the basis that Asian people in her area were getting more than their share of local resources, was elected, and resigned when she found out the resources had actually been fairly allocated.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

I personally haven't encountered any of these extremists who "see everything in terms of race"

There are a minority of Aboriginal students at my school who come to school just to hang out with their friends in class and don't want to do any work. If they are reprimanded for their disruptive behaviour, the first thing they'll say is "You're only picking on me because I'm black." It's really frustrating, because it makes the rest of the Aboriginal students who do the right thing look bad.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

They don't sound like extremists to me; they sound like brats!

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

If you are going by the "see everything in terms of race", those particular students do. While I'd say about 2/3s of the student and staff population is of Anglo/European descent, the other 1/3 is made of people of other ethnic/skin colour groups (Chinese, Arabic, Aboriginal, African, African American, Indian, Vietnamese etc) and that small (and vocal) group of Aboriginal students are the only one that pull the 'skin colour card' if things don't go their way. They may be brats now, but they're growing up into extremists.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

A lot of teachers would be discombobulated by White Guilt if students pulled that trick on them. How do you handle it, when it happens?

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

hear hear. I spent a lot of words trying to say this (but not as well as you did).

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

Are all these issues based on skin colour or does ethnicity or culture come into play? Is the prejudice I experience, because I am of Serbian origin, of any relevance to this discussion?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Fuck yeah. Tell us something about that.

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

Having a surname like Prekodravac, people do tend to ask the origin of that name and its been difficult especially during the 90s to say that its Serbian. People, sadly more often than not, don't know how to respond to that... I describe it as a certain look on their face as if I'm about to commit genocide on them :-)

And over the years, I've said half Serbian and half Slovenian, or that I call myself Camperdownian (born King George V in Camperdown). But I feel sometimes its me apologising. It gets more interesting when I talk about the village were my father is from, to say that its a Serbian town in Croatia (Trpinja)... gets a look of wierdness too. As nationalistic people go, the Serbs must be perceived to be in the top 5?

Which I think is funny in your entry on redheads, that one can sense discrimination because this ethnicity is perceived as genocidal people wanting to tear down Europe. The Serbs were lined up for cleansing in WWII too... I imagine Germans experience that sort of discrimination.

In Doctor Who we had representation through Tegan.. and i guess the odd character in a Dave Stone novel :-), but with Tegan there was the double cringe... because that hard J in Jovanka was as painful as her accent. Though more recently the Serbs got a mention in Family of Blood... it took me by surprise, I don't know how I feel about that.

Trpinja in Google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Trpinja&sll=45.604431,18.671265&sspn=0.814729,1.675415&ie=UTF8&ll=45.469762,18.901978&spn=0.816683,1.675415&z=9&iwloc=addr&om=1

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm always embarrassed that I know so few countries as anything besides grim headlines. At least if I encounter an American I can ask what state they're from or something. (Of course, then they feel that they have to apologise for George Bush.) South African emigres must have gone through the same thing (probably still do, for that matter.

Should the J in Jovanka be a Y, or the "Zhh" sound as in French?

*has a look at Google's satellite view of Trpinja* It's one of those quilts of farms you see, flying over the countryside!

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

It should be a Y as the way Jana Wendt has taught us, but thinking on it, having the hard J for Jovanka, tells you what kind of Australia she came from.

Belatedly

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Dude - you should write this up in your LJ, and notify the ibarw folks that they should link it.