The White Default is where White Americans see themselves as the default, as normal, neutral, objective, as blah, as blank, as nothing special.
It is where they think they speak “without an accent” and do not have their own foods, holidays, heroes, music and neighbourhoods like everyone else. The word “ethnic” is the shadow cast by the White Default.
It is where White History Month is the month that never ends.
It is where White Entertainment Television is always watched but never seen.
It is where White American ethnic studies becomes “English” and “history” at high school.
It is where they think they have no culture – and yet think it is a model for the whole world, “universal”, what history has been leading up to.
It is where Arabs “preserved” Greek learning and the Chinese made “contributions” like the compass and gunpowder.
It is where they are the Automatic Good Guys in history.
It is where the word “white” disappears from phrases like “my white professor”, “the white press” and “white crime”.
It is where no one talks about “white pathologies” because they base “normal” on their pathologies.
It is the unnamed centre in an ethnocentrism so blinding that their culture is no longer one culture among thousands but the absolute truth, the standard by which the whole human race, all of history and even the Word of God is measured – and found wanting.
It is where Adam and Eve and Jesus look like the people at a White American suburban mall.
It is where pictures of the evolutionary timeline from monkey to ape to human ends in – a white man.
It is where a stick figure is seen as a white male and the Japanese seem to draw themselves as white.
It is where East Asians have “slanted” eyes and blacks have “big” lips – but white people “look normal”.
It is where black is not beautiful.
It is where IQ tests designed for upper-middle-class white children in the American North are used to measure the intelligence of everyone in the country and the world – and seems like objective, neutral science.
It is where Kodak designed and tested colour film only on white people, where pictures of black people did not look good till the chocolate and furniture industries demanded better shades of brown.
It is where the natural history museum in New York has exhibits on African tribes – but not on White Americans.
It is where NPR is not an ethnic radio station and Starbucks is not an ethnic coffee shop.
It is where putting “American” or “white” in a Google search gives you worse results than when you leave them out – like in “the most beautiful white women”.
It is where Asian Americans are not really American.
It is where someone can read this list and tell me that everyone does this, that seeing yourself and your people so that you have almost no ethnic identity is –
Normal.
Source: Breathing.
See also:
Abagond 
This is a pretty racist article. I am white and I do not agree with alot of this. There are prejudice people in all races. It never comes down to color. I have meet wonderful people from all over the world, good and bad in each race. Whoever wrote this is obviously jealous of the white culture or they would not be spending their time worrying about it! I am white and in canada not all whites are the same. BC hates Alberta, Alberta hates BC, Quebec is french they hate the rest of canada, Ontario thinks they are better than the east coast, ALL of the west hates anyone east of Alberta and I mean ANYONE no matter what color they are even whites! Ontario thinks they are better than maritimers and this goes back hundreds of years- because the east coast used to be the centre of canada and history moved the centre of canada to ottawa. The irish were treated just as bad as the blacks and so were the acadians in canada- in fact thousands of acadians were forced out of canada by the english and they were white. Every race has faced discrimination……..
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@Abagond
I’m glad they do show the evolution chart as a white man. 😀
@Jan
You should visit “broken record department” of this blog.
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Jan just by reading your first sentence I knew you were white but thanks for letting us know.
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@Jan: I highly doubt this article’s intent is to guilt trip white people. It merely details the privileges given to those who are considered “default” and “normal”, which in western culture is white people. They control the government, they control the economy, and most importantly they have overwhelming control of the media. When you control the media, its your views that get pushed out to the masses. Even something like BET (Black Entertainment Television) is just white racial views of blacks acted out by black people and presented to a mostly black audience. There’s no escaping it. White privilege is a very dangerous thing to be blind to.
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The Japanese do draw themselves as white. I’ve been to Tokyo. The majority of the people I saw had full lips, flat noses, and slanted eyes, nothing like most anime characters.
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Sorry, but this is yesterday’s news. The latest shocking controversy: the widespread “Han Default” in China.
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The pic you posted made me think of this:
http://lemonde-emploi.blog.lemonde.fr/a-propos/
The subtitle to this Blog by Le Monde (de l’Economie) the most famous of all French newspapers says this: “Management (An English term, btw) et responsabilité sociale”.
If that’s not racist provocation, I don’t know what it is.
You’ll notice it’s been there at least two years.
Someone says the dark brown color represents “hair”…
I have already written to them to ask them to remove that pic (by mail as well) and other people have reacted on site as well, saying the pic is racist. Others don’t see anything wrong with it and consider that our “political correctness” is “going to far”.
Now that your post reminds me of this, Abagond, I’ll write again.
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Jan. *this* is a racist article ? No, it is referring to racist facts, *it* is not racist. Racists it refers to are.
Some people read things upside down (which is what racism wants you to do, anyway).
It’s like these French people on forums and FB who tells you are racist because you speak about and of racism… If you shut up, it will go away, apparently.
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Btw, very well written article, Abagond.
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All of this!!!
It is so crucial that ALL people understand that this is what non-white people have to forcibly endure every single day. Unless you have parents that are completely aware of this and can counter all of the indoctrination that their children could receive from watching television, Disney videos, white-centered children’s books and toys (All of which should be eliminated from every non-white child’s purview until well past their initial formative years) it will be a cruel road in life with huge sink holes waiting for them to miss a step.
When non-white children enter the primary and secondary school system they will be systematically taught and have it carefully reinforced that white people are default, priority, superior and worthwhile and they are not. Non-white people have an uphill battle to save ourselves in a white-centered society that categorically says with every step that it takes, WE DON”T CARE ABOUT YOU!
That is why this blog and others like it matter because it shines a light on these problems in an unapologetic manner that makes it clear that we will not let this BS stand uncontested.
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I used to enjoy going to the Smithsonian when I was in Washington, DC.
I seem to recall that the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History seems to contain mostly exhibits on white Americans. If you wanted to see exhibits on the History of Black Americans, you had to go the Smithsonian Anacostia Community museum. If you wanted to see exhibits on history of Native Americans, you have to go to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. If you wanted to see exhibits on the History of Asian Americans, you would go to, let’s see, maybe to San Francisco or New York.
I just checked. Because May is Asian Pacific American heritage month, there is an APA exhibit currently at the Museum of American History. But that is the exception. Mostly it is about White History.
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This is all very interesting but, if the evolution chart was depicted with a black man or woman as the last step wouldn’t bloggers like abagond be screaming that it’s a racist comparison of black people to primates?
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Agree that there is no right way to do that without having some racist overtone. Maybe it should not be black, but SE Asian or Native American looking.
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@ Guido
As it turns out, I have made such a chart myself:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/human-evolution-the-last-4-billion-years/
I end it with a Sandawe woman from Tanzania because, as I currently understand it, she would be the closest genetically to Mitochondrial Eve, the woman we all came from.
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jefe:
If a person cannot conceive of a method to visually represent hominid evolution without the expression of a “racist overtone”, then the problem is not with the diagram, it’s with the viewer.
This concept is similar to the last post about Nat’l Geographic nudity. If a person believes that nakedness necessarily implies sexuality, then the “problem” is with the viewer.
People who object to breastfeeding in public also share these the characteristics, particularly:
1. Having a narrow perspective.
2. Feeling so validated in their own opinions that they assume that others either share them or ought to share them.
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@abagond
Word. Thanks for the follow up.
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You sound very naive. Study propaganda. Study scientific racism. Things of this nature are not done by “accident”. The racism is not some skewed interpretation of events. There is intelligent design behind the system. It is made so that you will not easily see it if you are part of the so-called majority. Of course you can’t conceive of it. It keeps you mentally healthy. You’ll make any excuse to dismiss any criticism of the systemic racism. You blame the victim instead of the perpetrator. Funny thing is, you are also a victim.
Wake up, sleeper.
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@ Randy
This might hold if we had an agreed evidence based factual representation of hominids – But we don’t!!!
For example…Scientific evidence suggests that prior to 10,000 years ago white skin, blond hair and blue eye attributes DID NOT exist.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-511473/All-blue-eyed-people-traced-ancestor-lived-10-000-years-ago-near-Black-Sea.html
and this one…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501728.html
On this factual evidence alone it suggests even a questionable theory such as Darwinian evolution is erroneously represented due this ethoncentrically globally imposed white default model.
It clearly does not corroborate the available scientific evidence?
Wouldn’t you agree Randy?
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“It is the unnamed centre in an ethnocentrism so blinding that their culture is no longer one culture among thousands but the absolute truth, the standard by which the whole human race, all of history and even the Word of God is measured – and found wanting.
It is where Adam and Eve and Jesus look like the people at a White American suburban mall.
It is where pictures of the evolutionary timeline from monkey to ape to human ends in – a white man.”
Totally spot on!lol You really nailed it with this one Abagond! I wish I could “like” this more than once!lol
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It is where white people are made into victims and not perpetrators. It is where everyone is “racist” against the oppressors. It is where whites are the authority on all things and all “ethnic” peoples. It is where they profess disdain for all colours yet seek to conquer it sexually.
It is where when whites show their evil publicly, it is excused and made to seem “abnormal” to their pride. It is where whites are the saviours of all brown people. It is where God favours whites because they “look like Him.”
It is where they make other races “white” to increase their numbers for personal gain. It is where they are free to rape and steal from Indigenous peoples and have it written as “discovering things.”
It is where they are free to kill at will for sheer pleasure and have it called a “mental illness.” It is where they and they alone can make up words and have it called a “dictionary.”
It is where they lie and destroy as easily as they breathe and have it called a “syndrome.” It is where they profess their intelligence of all things earthly while white-washing where they got that information. It is never having to own up to an effing thing by saying “It was a long time ago! Get over it!”
It is where losing your huemanity is more important than being equal.
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@Solesearch
In regard to your comment, I think you should take a look at this:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/
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Kwamla:
Sorry, I can’t agree with your statement. There are actually billions of “correct” ways to represent a hominid evolution diagram of that type.
It’s equally valid to have an African Pygmy, Nepalese, Brazilian, European, or Melanesian person in the last panel since evolution is not a linear progression.
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It is where the people who make up less than 20 percent of the world’s human population (including all the groups who only recently counted as white) honestly believe they represent the basic phenotype for what humans look like.
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@truthbetold
It is where they make other races “white” to increase their numbers for personal gain.
This is so true, especially in regards to the US Census. It seems like the Census believes that whites must always be in the majority, even if it has to resort to including other ethnic groups via nebulous and bizarre definitions.
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Miss b, I read that. I didn’t see the logic of it. Anime characters aren’t featureless stick figures.
You can’t just draw a bunch of white people and say they’re Japanese without people going they don’t look Japanese.
If Tyler perry casted a bunch of white actors in his films to play black roles and said they were black actual black people would be upset.
If a white guy throws on some Sean Jean and starts speaking Ebonics that doesn’t make him black.
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@ donatelloturtle
And when they have no more use for them, it is where those same races that were once “white” will go back to being the exotic “other.”
Examples:
Jews
Italians
Poles
Russians
Spaniards
Turkish
North Africans
Southern Frenchmen
Anyone with any accent whose last name ends in a vowel.
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I don’t see why Whites in this country see themselves as the ”default” or normal. America is made up of people of all races and backgrounds. Sad to say but the racism of this country and a majority White population makes it seem like Whiteness is the only acceptable form of human being in the world besides the fact that Black, brown and yellow people outnumber Whites in the world.
@Jane
”It is where the people who make up less than 20 percent of the world’s human population (including all the groups who only recently counted as white) honestly believe they represent the basic phenotype for what humans look like.”
That is exactly what I mean. Your point is right on!
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@Truthbetold
I don’t see why
Jews
Italians or
Spaniards
see themselves as ”White”. Many Italians, especially from the Southern part of Italy have Black ancestry from the Moorish invaders thus their darker skin and features than the rest of the White population. Same with Spanish, whom many of the Southern part of Spain have Moorish ancestry too. Jews have Semitic roots in their ancestry too.
Even the Irish at one point in time in American history weren’t seen as Whites either. I don’t see why because many Irish people have blond hair and blue eyes and most of them that I come in contact with are very pale people too.
@Donatelloturtle
You are right that other ethnicities have been included in the so called White race to make the White race more populous than it really is. Honestly I don’t consider Italians, Greeks, many dark skin Jews, Poles, Spaniards, Armenians or even Hispanics ”White”. And no, I don’t consider Kim Kardashian White, I see her as a Armenian woman.
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Lol abagond I like how your source is breathing.
I thought you did a post on this before.
Anyway the white default is tiring because I can’t watch most shows without seeing a white character being the hero and saving the poor poc. It seems whites opinion on things is looked at as being unbiased and the truth. It is the reason why when kids did the doll test they said the white doll was the good doll and the black doll was bad. It is the reason why when someone points out the wrongs of someone white we are called anti white. It is why after slavery only whites were allowed to own guns and vote because surely they are more unbiased and equipped to tell who to use the gun on and who is the right person to vote for. Its the reason why everyone else was savages and they were civilized. another thing is if you point out what is wrong with America you are called un patriotic. When michelle Obama said she was proud of her country for the first time people attacked that. Its not only people blinded by white default but also blinded by just supporting their country without question and without looking at things that have happened and continue to happen.And looking at other countries as being wrong and needing to be fixed so they declare war.
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@ Solesearch
The Japanese are drawing themselves as people, not as an American stereotype of how Japanese people are supposed to look. They do not draw their eyes “slanted”, for example, because to them their eyes are just eyes, not slanted eyes. Japanese anime is not so naturalistic or so sunk in White Default thinking that you can draw the sort of conclusions you are drawing.
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@ Jefe
Excellent example about the Smithsonian. Thanks.
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@ Randy
“…There are actually billions of “correct” ways to represent a hominid evolution diagram of that type…
For your point to be valid we would typically see these representations in educational and scientific articles/journals.. – We don’t!
For my point to be valid we would also see, as standard, numerous displays of Black, brown and non-white peoples in these representations too – But we don’t! Why?
Because there is a falsely assumed white default model as Abagond’s post rightly speaks to…
Even the information sent out into space on the spacecraft voyager contained this false representation of peoples on our planet – a white default model!!! – to other potential ET contacts!!!
I wonder what they must have thought of that?
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Adeen:
There are currently over a million Chinese people living in Africa. In how many African countries do you think that the perceived “default” includes the Chinese?
For the African countries which are not on that list, how would you encourage them to embrace diversity to correct this practice which currently marginalizes the Chinese?
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Actually this was the pioneer craft..
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Kwamla:
People tend to draw people who look like themselves. I’m willing to bet that this basic concept applies all over the world. Given historical demographics, I’d be more surprised if a “white default” hadn’t existed in the US.
What do you think the “defaults” in Cameroon, Sri Lanka, and Japan look like?
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Carl Sagan was the head of the team that made the Pioneer plaque. They tried to make the humans pan-racial by mixing different features. The woman has Asian eyes, the man has an African nose, the bodies are based on Greek sculpture, etc. The man was supposed to have an Afro but at the last minute the artist gave him curly hair – no reason given. A shame because they do look pretty close to white.
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Drawing yourself how you actually look is not being stereotypical. They don’t have to see their eyes as slanted to draw them as they are. Eyes aren’t the only feature that differentiates Japanese people from Europeans.
So to be human Japanese people can’t draw themselves how they actually look.
If I drew myself with a long thin nose, thin lips, straight blonde hair and white skin and said I wasn’t drawing myself as a white woman but a human wouldn’t that sound racist. Like a person with my actual features isn’t human.
I’m not saying they’re supposed to draw themselves as racist caricatures. I don’t have to draw myself as mammy to show that I’m black. I have brown skin, I’m going to draw myself with brown skin. I have full lips I’m going to draw myself with full lips. I know not all black people have those features just like I know all Japanese don’t have “slanted” eyes, full lips and flat noses but the majority of them do. there is a whole lot more that goes into the look of a Japanese person that I don’t really have the artistic eye to describe but none of it is present in most of the Anime I’ve seen.
As a black person can I draw those same people and call them black?
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Randy
What do you think the “defaults” in Cameroon, Sri Lanka, and Japan look like?
White 🙂 I imagine anything else would seem not the ‘norm’
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Carl Sagan also designed the record that is on the Voyager spacecrafts. It has music from all over the world, messages in many different languages, and not just the main European ones, and pictures of people from every race. Sagan is someone who certainly did NOT think in terms of the White Default, at least not at this level. He saw the plaque and record as representing EVERYONE on earth, not just 20% of it.
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Randy, what makes you think there is a default in Africa? Can you give some examples?
If there is a default in Africa( a pretty large area to talk about with any accuracy), I’d say the difference between than and America is that Black people are indigenous to Africa but white people are not indigenous to America. Native Americans should be the default but white people killed most of them.
The white default in America has a negative connotation because of how they came to be the default, you know genocide and denying humanity to everyone else.
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@ Randy
The white man in the evolutionary chart by itself is not a big issue. Nor are many of the other things in the post. They are more microaggressive than anything else. But all of them together year after year in a culture than can only see white people as fully human, THAT is an issue. Not just for people of colour but, as Kartina Richardson pointed out in Salon, for white people too.
The root issue is not ethnocentrism, like you seem to think, but in not seeing the difference between being white and being human.
This is the Twilight Zone that goes with this post:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/twilight-zone-eye-of-the-beholder/
This is the “Full Metal Jacket” quote that goes with this post:
The racist slur is not gratuitous but is necessary to the mindset being expressed.
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@ Solesearch
You are assuming the Japanese follow the American practice of always marking race. They generally do not except for characters who are foreign to the country the story is set in. And anime is not naturalistic enough to force them to always mark race. I mean, this is a style where people can have pink hair. And where everyone has huge eyes because that is just the style, one that goes back to Betty Boop by way of Astro Boy, a style that completely destroys the main physical stereotype Americans have about East Asians.
And, being unmarked, they seem white to Americans because in their culture that is the unmarked race, the default.
More:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/the-boondocks-astro-boy-and-drawing-people-of-colour/
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Thank you.
I’ve read your writing before but I guess I’ve never paid much attention or even read the comments because those first two scared the hell outta me. Thankfully there were many others after those that countered them.
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@Omnipresent You’re wrong about the ‘default’ in North East Asia, at the very least. I lived in South Korea for two years and spent a substantial amount of time in Japan. The vast majority of models promoting products; actresses/actors who were idolised by young people etc were Korean/Japanese. Young Korean women aspired to look like Hyuna, not Reese Witherspoon.
I agree with abagond about anime characters, however. If you ignore the obvious phenotypical differences (e.g. the variation in hair/eye colour) anime characters actually look a lot more like Japanese people than, say, the average ‘white’ Australian and American. Most of them have small, rounded noses (a very common feature in North East Asia), eyes that are large but more almond shaped than round (again, a common feature in North Asia, particularly among Korean women) and small but full lipped mouths (again, a common attribute in North East Asia).
This is probably the reason why Japanese cosplayers look fabulous while ‘white’ cosplayers look frumpy and ridiculous.
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No big plot or plan. People draw people who look like themselves and their family – wherever they are. If historically most of what you see looks “white” in the USA, it’s because the USA was mostly white. It doesn’t matter who was “native”, people draw themselves.
I have been told by both someone from India and someone from Japan that fairer skin is higher status than darker in their countries. I can’t say if it has always been that way or has been a result of British India and the Japan occupation. The answer probably isn’t all that clear. Typically in European societies fairer skin was higher status because it was an indicator of wealth and not needing to work outdoors.
Amusing aside for me, my Grandmother of Cornish background once said my grandfather was the only non-white she ever went out with. He was of Czech background.
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Like 🙂
I posted this to my FB page. Def truth w/o helpless victim overtones.
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@joshua
That is not always true, at least in the USA. You have seen all the studies where black children learn to draw white persons as default humans? Perhaps they are drawing themselves, or at least what they wish to be.
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It is where IQ tests designed for upper-middle-class white children in the American North are used to measure the intelligence of everyone in the country and the world – and seems like objective, neutral science.
The problem I have with this statement is that IQ predicts better than anything else we have at the moment. I am Asian and I have a high IQ. In effect what you are saying is that non-whites don’t have what it takes to succeed.
I have high hopes for nutrition and schooling raising the IQ of the world. I am on my phone right now so I can’t write a better comment.
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When I was growing up (white guy in majority black neighborhood), my black classmates would always complain about how bad their yearbook pictures were. I could never see anything all that bad about them, until one year, we had a black photographer, that specialized on black portraits. The black students’ pictures looked great, and the white students pictures looked overly bright, washed out, skin glowing white in a bad way. White classmates complained that you could barely see the white students’ facial features.
From then on I could see what my black classmates were talking about. Being photographed as a dark formless shadow on the wall, and being photographed as a bright formless light bulb, both look bad.
In response to the Kodak part 🙂
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@namehere I’m going to try to respond but I’m definitely not an expert and I’m white. What I think abagond is saying is not that non-whites don’t have what it takes. It’s that the tests are biased towards a particular regional subset of whites. That the tests are one size fits all and they really need to take into account a lot of other factors (severe understatement) to be accurate barometers of intelligence.
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So an unmarked person has white features or white people are unmarked? If the characters had full lips instead of thin ones, they would be marked? If they had wide noses, instead of narrow noses, they’d be marked? If they had slanted eyes instead of round ones, they’d be marked? If they have brown skin instead of white skin they are marked? See you are saying white is the default. The people they draw have features that fall within normal human ranges and are typical of white people. Not all of it, but most of what ive seen. They aren’t stick figures or aliens.
How are slanted eyes a stereotype? It’s no more a stereotype than brown skin or full lips. Do we draw black people with white skin to avoid stereotypes? Plus there is a whole lot more to Asian features than slanted eyes.
When they made The Last Airbender they had to cast all white people to stay true to the look of the characters. Doesn’t that say something.
The stylized thing sounds like it has some merit but all anime( I could be using the wrong terminology) isn’t stylized with the big eyes outside of the human standard and they still look white. However if the point of it is to avoid the western “stereotype” of slanted eyes then they need a “slanted eyes are beautiful” campaign. They can depict slanted eyes without drawing caricatures.
What also may contribute to them being perceived as white is that they use white actors to voice the characters and sometimes the characters are supposed to be white which my husband had to point out to me.
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@Kiwi
“I know of Chinese-Americans who were turned down for English teaching jobs in China because the school wanted to hire a white German to teach English instead. The administration said the parents wanted a teacher who “had no accent”. Irony abounds. CNN even talked about how random white people are hired by Chinese companies to appear at social events in order to give the company the appearance of being high-class.”
This reminds me of one very expensive, private school in Nigeria. Many Nigerian teachers who have traveled abroad to get an advanced degree in education are not hired because the school wants to hire teachers from Britain, despite the fact these Nigerian teachers can speak not only English but many other languages. This practice takes place because the school’s administration wants to attract as many white children as they can. To a majority of Nigerians, especially the rich ones who can afford the tuition, the school must be high-class, better, refined, and only for the elite because white children are enrolled there.
What’s worst, non-Nigerian, specifically the British and European, teachers are given reduced and very spacious housing accommodations on campus. For the very few Nigerian teachers who are selected to live on campus, they live in self-contains, which are basically tiny, one room apartments. A self-contain is not even one-fourth the size of the apartments non-Nigerian teachers are provided.
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@ Abagond
Concerning Carl Sagon….
It seems to me the idea of blending different ethnicities to produced a composite Earth man and woman maybe well intentioned. But like all compromises ends up pleasing no one and equally offending everyone. Its just as well he omitted the curly hair!
A far better approach would have been to show people as they actually are. Which is the approach reflected in the record of different languages he later went on to include.
The main problem with trying to define a standard human default model is that there isn’t one! There are many!. This planet has a diversity of peoples and body types and has done so for millennium. However, this diversity has evolved over time and did not suddenly just spring into being! This is the main reason why Darwinian evolution and its associated charts do not make any sense!
Any attempt to imply a default human type would obviously be a deliberately imposed false representation. Particularly if it was left unchallenged.
The “white default model” therefore has to be seen in the same context as the imposition of global white supremacy on an already diverse planetary population.
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I remember a young Asian man by the name of Hugh Tran. I was reading Kiwi’s comments and it made me remember Hugh Tran. Hugh Tran hated being Asian. So much to the point that he got blue contact lens that looked very weird. A Puerto Rican young woman made the remark “You still look chinky”. It made me wince. I thought how prevalent racism was. And how fucked up it is. The Puerto Rican female who made the racist comment about Hugh Tran didn’t like looking Black even though if you asked her if she was black it made her very angry. That’s when I learned a lot of Puerto Rican’s don’t like blacks. Even though there is African blood in a lot of Hispanic people. She loved white men with a passion. It pissed me that people could be so racist. Myself included. I was reacting to the racism directed toward me from the white people and other races. The world is a messed up place.
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I am understanding what this white default is about. To just sum it up briefly it means that white is right. That’s what they want us to believe anyway.
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I was responding to kiwi’s comments about being a self hating Asian. I remembered that young man. The young Asian guy buying the blue contacts. It was very sad to me that he hated his Asian features. My previous comments are stuck in moderation. So I decided to retell this incident.
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Reblogged this on The Racist and Unoriginal Anglo-American Entertainment Industry.
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This is a long, rambling comment, but Re: anime characters, I don’t have a problem seeing them as Japanese. They have weird cartoony eyes (which come in a variety of shapes not found on any human) because they are cartoon characters, and the style was originally based off Disney works. Honestly, when it comes to reading stylised/not detailed works, the setting is often enough to clue you in to what the characters’ ethnicity is supposed to be.
I’m not saying the prevalence/hegemony of white people has not affected and does not continue to affect other groups around the world in the beauty department.That is undeniably true. But going on about how a style that was never based on realism in the first place is totes white is too far a stretch. And the notion that anime characters look white, while widespread, is not a universally held view. I’ve encountered my fair share of people who’ve said they think anime characters look like Japanese people. And to me, anime characters do have a Japanese look, particularly around the shape of the face often being smooth and having a pointed chin. The stereotypically white brow, cheekbones and jaw are more prominent and don’t give a smooth line. For a Disney example, check out Mulan’s face vs Ariel’s or Sleeping Beauty’s.
I also don’t see why the Japanese should be obligated to depict themselves with racial markers in media by and for themselves. It would be like if I said a cartoon character can’t be white unless they have a square jaw and a big nose, which is incidentally is often the way white characters are depicted in anime to differentiate them from Japanese characters.
I can even use myself as an example here. I have lips that are thicker than a white person’s. But do they seem thick to me? No. If I was drawing a stylised cartoon version of myself, I wouldn’t feel the need to draw them at all. I’ve got a nose that’s wider than a white person’s. But does it look wide to me? No. Neither of these things seem prominent to me – maybe they would to other people, but not me. To me they are unremarkable. So I am unlikely to bother depicting them in any sort of detail, particularly if the style, like anime, focuses on big cartoony eyes and crazy hair over other features. (There’s plenty of anime out there where differing hairstyles and eye colours are more or less the only way to distinguish between characters).
You know what, the craziest thing happened to me once. I was looking at a photo of a sign in an African country. And it had a black woman drawn on it … but … she wasn’t coloured in! How could she possibly be black? My mind, it is blown! /sarcasm
@ Solesearch
/When they made The Last Airbender they had to cast all white people to stay true to the look of the characters. Doesn’t that say something./
It says that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your insistence that ATLA characters all look white is … disturbing, but I’ll try and discuss this briefly.
-If you are referring to the eyes, generally the kids had cartoonishly big eyes, and the adults were drawn with narrow eyes and more realism in general. Not all the kids even had big eyes. Mai, Azula, Zuko, Jet, did not. Eye colour, btw, depended on each nation’s elemental affiliation.
-People from the water tribe (meaning two of the main heroes) are brown skinned. Tell me how hiring pale whites to play them was staying true to the look of the characters.
-The movie also made the genrally pale skinned Fire Nation a race of brown people, and cast the main Water Tribe characters as the only whites in a group of Inuits.
Also what is up with the full lips comments? Since when were full lips ever a thing, even in Japanese traditional art? In cartoons it’s just easier to draw a mouth.as a single shape and not draw lips at all, which is often what ends up happening. Anime is not the most detailed style, it it rarely features the mouth prominently in any case. (Incidentally, Japanese people never looked like they had particularly full lips to me, but then I don’t use white features as a barometer).
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Reblogged this on Perfidious Albino.
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@Kiwi; At least you are trying to make changes and you realize your past mistakes. We are all works in progress.
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You have a point about seeing ethnic groups as not being fully American, but really, what’s wrong with assuming that the majority race is the default in that nation? What country doesn’t do this?
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Some very good reasons against the idea of multiculturalism. Maybe it is best if we separate, let each race build their own communities without interaction. I’m sure everyone would be much happier then. Yes, of course they would. There would be no one desperately trying to move to white countries, to white neighbourhoods, to white schools etc. Yup, everyone would be happy.
The white default is a small price to pay for the privilege to live in civilised white societies. As much as you complain, all of you are better off for living in countries that are founded on the principles, ideas and ingenuity of Europeans. Yet gratitude is always in short supply.
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@ mcheng
South Africa under white rule did not have a Black Default. Nor does Nigeria. To the degree Nigeria has a default culture it is heavily Western.
California and metropolitan New York are no longer mostly white and yet remain the cultural heartland of the White Default in America.
This idea that it proceeds naturally from whatever the majority chances to be is false. It proceeds from power not simple demographics.
A good example are Hollywood films. Most of its heroes are white men – yet only a third of the country is white male. The important “demographic” here is not the country as a whole but who the producers and distributors are. Just ask George Lucas, who had to use his own money to distribute “Red Tails” (2012). This is how the White Default gets constructed.
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@ mcheng
What makes the White Default particularly bad in America is how it cannot see anyone who is not white as fully human.
If I moved to China and saw a Chinese man at the end of the evolutionary chart I would not be surprised nor all that concerned. They got to put someone.
But if on top of that the Chinese said that you cannot be fully human without being Chinese and that part of being Chinese / fully human is looking like that guy at the end of the chart, then that would be an issue. That would be wrong and screwed up. That would move beyond “understandable” ethnocentrism into racism.
For all I know China is JUST like that – but that hardly excuses what goes on in the States. Wrong is wrong. It does not depend on what Chinese people do.
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@ Abagond,
Thank you for making those responses.
Yeah, I suppose I don’t see quite as much problem with in places like Japan and Korea, where over 99% are from one ethnic group and they actively prohibit immigration. They are likely to have a “default race”, although that still does not excuse them from having a default human. I would have a problem with a place like Brazil. The last time I went to Brazil, I watched a beauty contest, and 95% of the contestants were fair, European looking women. Seemed very strange after traveling around Brazil.
Singapore, which is now 74% ethnic Chinese (down from 77% in 1970) does seem to make some effort to keep Chinese from being the default human, maybe partially because they are surrounded by Malaysia and Indonesia. But still, it is an ongoing process, and they have to work at it, but at least they recognize it.
Malaysia, on the other hand, is a complete mess. The government treats nearly half the population as though they are not Malaysian. Their model is totally unsustainable.
Growing up in SE DC and in PG county, Maryland, with my non-white extended family living nearby, from age 5-6 I started questioning the white default model. Even from an early age, I questioned why there was a white default especially since over half the people I saw on a daily basis were not white. Our school textbooks did not explain, so I had to go to the library. When the school library was inadequate, I wend to the local library. When that was inadequate, I went to the one downtown. There was no internet back then. For my high school US history assignment (when I was 15) , I did a research paper on the difference between ethnic white assimilation and non-white assimilation in US society. I learned a lot of things, e.g., that 90% of blacks were part European and 20% of whites were part African and both were part native American — as well as plenty of other stuff not taught in our US history textbooks (eg, US policy towards Native Americans, Asian exclusion acts, even Jim Crow — NOT in my US history book).
Even when I went to visit my mother’s hometown (in Alabama) or my father’s (New York City), I still saw that over half the people were not white. Even many of the white people in NY were “ethnic” at that time. The confirmation I received that America had a white default was on television. My first real life confirmation was when I went to university near Boston, Massachusetts. I could ride my bicycle all day and see only English-speaking white people. It was an eye opening experience for me — I finally realized why white people think they are the default. They have to make a special effort to experience anything else.
I never stopped questioning it, and by the time I was a teenager, I decided that it was simply wrong. Even as a teenager, I realized that US history class taught white history (and white Anglo history at that), the encyclopedias treated white as the default and something was not quite right about the American history museums and what we saw on television. Decades later, I still question it, although now I condemn it.
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@ mcheng
Another aspect of the White Default that goes beyond mere ethnocentrism is in how it sees itself as “universal”, as what history has been preparing for, as what all humans desire to be and should be: “inside every gook there is an American trying to get out.”
That is a quote from Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (1987). It both sums up how White Americans see themselves as culturally universal and yet at the same time will never accept certain people as fully human. This is not “natural”, this is not what “everyone does”. This is racism, straight-up.
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@ Jefe
Yup. Same here.
Yup. The thing is, they have gone out of their way (genocide, white flight, etc) to achieve that level of profound isolation – in a country soon to be less than half white.
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@Abagond
I questioned the white default ever since primary (elementary) school (after I realized that there was one, but it didn’t match the reality I saw every day). By the time I was about 12 or 13, I was moved to learn the truth myself. And it is quite possibly this very topic – The White Default – that I questioned and which moved me to delve further.
By age 13-14, I started to reject it.
Were you already moved to learn about the The White Default when you were young?
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chestmomster, the full lips comment was based on my observations of people during a trip to Tokyo.
Like, I said before the stylized thing could have some merit. Although it being based on Disney is really not encouraging. They don’t draw themselves to look like themselves which seems problematic depending on how ubiquitous it is.
You are right about the last Airbender thing. I was too general when I said that. I barely even remember the movie, just my impression of it(not good). I really just meant the main characters. The good guys were white, the bad guys were not.
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@ Abagond When you can pass ten years living as white man I can take as serious, you never has in the “another side of the bridge”. I will try do the same, oops! I already do… living many years in an trailer park and without governament assistance because I’m white.
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Despite Europeans being viewed as being more worldly than Americans and more well-travelled, there are still plenty of them that share this view of their race (and often their home country’s culture) as the default. It is so tiring and annoying to have to talk to someone like that.
Also, if anyone is interested in reading a book where the race-mentioning is reversed (they mention the race when it’s a White character and leave it blank when it’s a POC), try Zadie Smith’s NW. I’ve yet to read it, but I enjoyed reading White Teeth.
@ Solesearch
Are you sure you mean for them to draw themselves how they see themselves, or how you see them? This is not an accusation, I just think you might want to consider that.
There is a lot of variation among East Asian people. Not everyone’s eyes are tiny or even slanted. My eyes are down-turned and yet, since I am of East Asian descent, they magically become `slanted’ or `up-turned’ to others. One of my relatives has large eyes with big double eyelids and White people are always so shocked to see him, as if you can’t officially be East Asian unless you fit White people’s stereotypes about people of your race… `How can he have such big eyes?’ they wonder aloud. And yet, if they actually looked at people instead of allowing stereotypes to influence them so heavily, they would see big eyes are not as rare as they think. I live in Asia and have travelled to several countries and have seen plenty of eyes that do not fit the western stereotypes.
`Asian eyes’ are not one thing. There are many different eye shapes:
http://bunbunmakeuptips.com/eye-makeup-tips-for-14-different-types-of-asian-eyes/?replytocom=605
And there are also different kinds of eyelids that occur naturally, not only the monolid. Many people can have double eyelids. Some are parallel to the eye, others are tapered (crease gradually meets inner corner of eye).
When East Asian people look at themselves, they do not see themselves in comparison to White people as the norm. They are `normal’ and the White people are the ones who are different. They are seen as freakishly pink-skinned, massive-eyed and big-nosed. Little kids seriously ask how the foreigners can kiss each other with such big noses in the way. Babies and young children stare at White people constantly like they are trying to figure out what is wrong with those people’s faces.
I have seen cartoons the locals draw of themselves. Not only anime, but designs on buses, posters, clothing, advertising, etc. They draw eyes much how everyone in the world draws eyes in cartoons: circles with dots in the middle (unless they’re supposed to be really happy: ^_^). But if you look carefully at the rest of the features, you can see racial markers White people don’t see because they’re too busy thinking `slitty eyes, yellow skin, straight black hair’. For example, the eyebrows of men and boys are drawn as triangles (some of the hair grows down at an angle, creating this shape). Eyelashes drawn straight and growing downwards (this is how Asian eyelashes grow naturally, without the help of an eyelash curler. An anime example: http://moe.animecharactersdatabase.com/uploads/1-1758292199.png). No depth to eye sockets, they are more or less level with the forehead and cheeks when seen in profile. Emphasis on tip of nose, no evidence of a high nose bridge.
Japan is a very insular country and society. No foreigner can ever be considered truly Japanese, even if they have lived there for decades, have a Japanese family and speak the language fluently. White people’s images are not plastered everywhere. I’ve only seen White people on posters advertising English classes, European designer products, gyms and spas. Everyone else advertising clothing, make-up, toys, etc. is East Asian. I just find it hard to believe that there is barely any exposure to White people, they are never considered equal no matter how long they’ve lived there, and yet all of Japan’s comics and animations are supposed to be exclusively about White people.
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@Iris, I have Zadie Smith’s White Teeth on my reading list have always been curious about that.
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[…] Abagond linked up this Salon article from Kartina Richardson, who is half-Chinese/Malaysian and half-black: How can white Americans be free?. I particularly liked what Abagond says here about The White Default: […]
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@Solesearch (Iris has kind of beaten me to it but I’ll respond as well)
But anime is a cartoon style, not a realistic style. By that logic, when whites give themselves cartoony big eyes or eyes with a shape not based on strict realism, they are not drawing themselves to look like themselves. If you take a good look at white people, you’ll see their eyes aren’t that big or round, and are generally way smaller and squintier than typical cartoon/anime eyes, like any human. There isn’t a reason for them to have a monopoly on big eyes in cartoons. It’s completely unfair. And like Iris has pointed out, there’s a lot of variation among eyes on Asian people (like everyone else) and there’s no reason why they should be associated with only one shape.
What’s more, by the logic you’ve used, when white people *don’t* draw themselves with bony/angular facial structure and big noses, then they’re not drawing themselves to look like themselves. Thus you could say that whites drawing themselves anime style with tiny/non-prominent noses and smooth face lines is indicative of their desire to not look white and their need to appropriate more ‘Asian’ features instead.
So to say that general anime style all looks white seems like a case of defaulting to white. It seems like you aren’t used to Asian features and thus need some sort of universal stereotype marker for drawings to look sufficiently Asian to you, otherwise they’re just white. The perspective changes a lot, depending on who is assumed to be default and who has to be stereotyped to be visible.
Basically, if you draw a stick figure and give it two circles for eyes and an arc for a mouth, it should look like a simplified ‘person’. If you start reading racial characteristics beyond this basic depiction of a face, then it’s a sign of bias. If you have grown up surrounded by Japanese people, then you are probably going to see a Japanese face before anything else. The same principle applies to other stylised depictions of people, like anime.
And regarding The Last Airbender again …
Yeah, I felt I had to point that out because I’m a fan of the series and followed the whole casting controversy. And believe me, it was controversial. You could say they inverted the skin colours of many of the characters, resulting in pale heroes and brown villains. A real disappointment given one of the great things about the original series that it had heroic brown-skinned protagonists. M. Night Shyamalan who directed it was a real douche about the objections raised to the casting as well. Though in retrospect, the fact the movie was awful couldn’t be blamed on having non-white heroes, so there’s that silver lining I guess.
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[…] symptom of my own white privilege. I was suffering from a form of White Blindness, or worse, as the Abagond blog points out, White Default. I had taken it for granted that being a woman mattered far more than being Asian when it came to […]
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[…] symptom of my own white privilege. I was suffering from a form of White Blindness, or worse, as the Abagond blog points out, White Default. I had taken it for granted that being a woman mattered far more than being Asian when it came to […]
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[…] of my own white privilege. I was suffering from a form of White Blindness, or worse, as the Abagond blog points out, White Default. I had taken it for granted that being a woman mattered far more than being Asian when it came to […]
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[…] The White Default […]
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[…] The White Default […]
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[…] ‘white culture’ and its pervasiveness within the United States. Whiteness is the ‘default,’ the dominant culture against which others are compared. White folk consider themselves […]
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It is where African Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans are in the index of a history book but European Americans or White Americans are not.
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“It is where African Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans are in the index of a history book but European Americans or White Americans are not.”
Nice.
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The Empire of Default :
Racism in part is the economic domination of one group over another. If you want to end racism then you need to do way with Empire and the monopoly of the State.
Racism acts a kind of protectionism and replicates the image of the ruling group as the standard by which all things are judged. It is the geo-centric image of beauty within society.
It is not possible to have social justice within a society who’s Empire dictates the political, social and economic values based upon the image of the ruling group. Social justice can’t be bestowed upon a people by a benevolent State because the State represents a monopoly on violence.
Justice can only exist in societies where the custom of seeking justice originates within the community. The law within Western culture is a Anthropocentric reflection of the Empire and it effectively protects the ruling group, the Corpratacracy and those who play Empire.
It is through Western Law that economic rents, privileges and coercion of some groups, become institutionalized within society.
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Both Santa Clause and Jesus Christ were White.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/fox-news-host-megyn-kelly-says-jesus-and-santa-are-white-193322244.html
Facts!
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Bwhwaa santa is white if it was a black santa he’d be killed for climbing down people’s chimneys they would call it breaking and entering. white santa does it and he’s spreading christmas cheer hooray. Not to worry they have black elves in the Netherlands called black pete, so we are not left out. smh.
as for jesus being white lol…
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You’d have to be pretty detached from reality to believe that Santa Claus is real.
The white Jesus has been reproduced ad infinitum as a white man so much that people, including nonwhites see Jesus as a white man when you mention His name. And Santa is the same way.
Yet, try to cast either of them as a person of color, and you will get an uproar from white folks as if O.J. was suspected of killing another white couple.
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@ brothawolf
I know santa isn’t real lol, I’ve known since I was young my parents told me straight up. I will tell my kids this, there is no santa, there is no white man coming down the chimney to bring u presents and if there is a man trying to he will have his arse whooped and if there is any stranger offering u candy or presents run. I don’t think jesus was white, at least not the look they have him painted as being straight haired because we know his hair was wooly. and i’ve read that leonardo painted jesus that way to fool ppl and it was inspired by his alleged lover cesear borgia.I think at the very least jesus had some black ancestry as that sounds like something they’d do to a black man kill him for no reason even for doing good because no uppity n344 should be healing ppl and telling others what they doing wrong. There is no way a black man could be the messiah no only a white man could be that especially a white man from a royal background.
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@BrothaWolf
I agree with you completely. Santa is not even real at all. He is a fictional character made up. Second of all, Jesus, if he existed, was most likely not White. A verse in Revelation describes him as a man with wooly hair and burnt skin. Tell me what race has those characteristics.
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@ Legion
Yeah, my understanding is that Jesus was truly Semitic, and therefore probably looked much closer to an Arab than to a European Jew. In the U.S. we are generally used to jews of Ashkenazi descent, but 2000 years ago Jesus would have looked more Sephardic or Arabic.
At least that’s what I remember reading when I was looking into Jewish history some time ago. Others may know better than me. Bulanik would probably have some insights, don’t you think?
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Is there any way to know definitively the complexion and features of anyone living 2000 years ago, given
– there has been considerable human migration since then
– there has been significant genetic drift
– there was probably more genetic variation within a single group then.
– we are trying to surmise the look of someone whose DNA we don’t have access to.
The modern population of Egypt or Spain might not look exactly like they did over 2000 years ago. I am sure that the people that occupied Southern China or the Philippines changed considerably in “look” between 2000 and 1000 years ago. Why wouldn’t we expect the same for people from THAT area!
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supposedly 23andme had some type of issue
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@Adeen
“A verse in Revelation describes him as a man with wooly hair and burnt skin. Tell me what race has those characteristics.”
I don’t think it’s that simple. Descriptions are relative. When you are interpreting them you can’t forget who did the describing. For example, where I’m from, when people say someone looks dark, 95% of the time they mean Mediterranean, not dark dark.
Also, I’m 80% sure the passage you are referencing described Jesus as a guy who had white woolly hair, but I’m too lazy to check. 😀
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@Legion, sorry, didn’t mean to ignite a spark. we know why white people think jesus is white. that is how he appeared in all their sunday school books, their church figures, in the art museum and in hollywood.
i think u should respond just as u did – with an educated gues,s reasoning as u did. i was only speaking for me personally – i don’t even try to guess what jesus looked like, but i am turned off by how FOX handled it.
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@ King, Legion, Mstoogood, Adeen
Imo, I feel eco and Jefe have it right. We can’t access the DNA of these individuals and definitions vary a lot.
One thing is certain, though: the layers of white-washing, what Abagond said was the — unnamed centre in an ethnocentrism so blinding that their culture is no longer one culture among thousands but the absolute truth, the standard by which the whole human race, all of history and even the Word of God is measured — is breathtaking in its stealth, and sheer scope of penetration.
Take the example of Santa Klaus:
Certainly, Santa is made up but he was based on St Nicholas, and he was real. The article that King posted says that St Nicholas was “a white man”, but the author of it is also pretty sure-sounding about St Nicholas’s whiteness, too.
Why? Because the original St Nicholas was a Greek.
We simply don’t know whether, or how much, St. Nicholas was “white”.
I’d speculate though, that he would NOT pass through airport in security in Western Europe or the US without being eyed suspiciously.
I doubt if he would be mistaken for a “Nordic type”.
Further, where St Nicholas came from — Anatlya in the Mediterranean SW of Turkey — only gives us a clue to how “white” he was. That’s because these days a lot of people think that Turks are some kind of “dark white”.
Nicolas is a Greek name and many Greeks are and were –inconveniently — DARK skinned, sporting big, curly black hair.
Many aren’t that “white” or culturally “western”, either.
And this is the problem with stamping down modern and white-washed ideas about race and colour onto everywhere and everyone and everything during all time periods…When St Nicolas lived, Turkey didn’t exist — he lived more than one thousand years before the Ottoman Sultans conquered Byzantium. Long before “Caucasian” as a by-word for white people was invented and applied to them.
But isn’t ancient Greece also the birthplace of white and Western civilization?
So, Greeks must be white, mustn’t they? How could I forget!
That means Greeks are some kind of “darkish” European, then!
(Say nothing about the French, German, British colonization of the Greeks and the appropriation of their ancient culture — just create white identity and white superiority around it instead and cover up those details…)
I’ve even heard that historians in the West believe that ancient Sumerian poems were the first “western” poems. So that places us in White Iraq, too I suppose…
I’ve missed a lot out, and I am being deliberately absurd in a couple of remarks, but, that’s because the white default depends on an uncritical acceptance of some things that though taken for granted, are in fact arbitrary, at best.
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As for Jesus:
King, Legion, I can only speculate about any of this (in my obscure way) 😀
What we think of as Ashkenazi and Sephardi probably didn’t even exist in the 1st century. Jesus was from the line of David. That only tells us about his clan. Also, I don’t think we should underestimate that when we talk about Jews in the modern context, a lot of what we see and call things will be distorted through a white racist lens. That’s because it’s skewed by Israel’s racist idea of itself and subsequent projected image. This idea of Israel is dominated by what I would only call the “whitest” of defaults, because it is the European Jews — the Ashkenazi — which have dominated public institutions.
Perhaps Jesus — to our eyes — might’ve been ethnically inseparable from an Arab Palestinian? I do not imagine him as a Ladino-speaking Sephardi (Spanish or Portuguese Jew), though. As a group, traditionally, the Sephardi minority clung tightly to their “pure” Spanishness, and refused intermarriage.
Also, this: because most people believe that if you are not Ashkenazi, then the alternative is that you MUST be Sephardi. Not so.
What I believe the Sephardi did, in keeping themselves “pure” and acquiring a measure of material security to go with it, was to use their privileges by placing themselves just under the “protection” of the dominate, and much whiter, European Ashkenazi. This way they could keep the other non-white, non-European, but non-Sephardi Jews — the Mizrahim Jews — in their inferior place whilst promoting and maintaining the the power/hegemony of the majority white-European Ashkenazi above them all. That suited minority Sephardi and the majority Ashkenazi. It didn’t suit the other minority groups Jews — the so called dark “Orientals”, and this is the group I believe Jesus may have come from.
The Mizrahim, or “Oriental” Jew can be Farsi-speakers (Persian) from Bukhara (Uzbekistan). Or a Kurdistani Jew (modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Armenia), with a type of old Aramaic as his mother-tongue. They are are often perceived as “foreign” or Arab among the majority of Israelis.
Mizrahi Jews talking about being mistaken for Arabs:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAakeI0ftIg)
For a white default to flourish, a society has to make its references “white”, that means the elements that smell of “ethnicity” have to be santized, the people, “de-racialized”.
There’s an astonishing piece of white-washing propaganda from the 1950s:
it shows the “dark”, supposedly animalistic Mizrahi Jewish children from their “dark” and filthy countries ascend into white Israel! Their de-raciaization and BRAINWASHING was “justified by their new country’s militarism and the need for disciplined soldiers”. It was legitimized racism in its crudest visual form, cultural colonization.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5VTgOUUKQA)
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@ Abagond. Thanks!
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There has been lots of talk about what color is Santa Claus, Megyn Kelly and her foot in mouth incident, and the black kid who dressed up as Santa, and his teacher making racially insensitive remarks to him.This goes under the discourse about the white mindset in America. White people are tripping about what race is an imaginary character. Although St Nicholas was European, so that would make him white. But, it in this so called post racial America we live in with a black man in the highest office in the land, and people are still stupid.
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St Nicholas was from Asia, from the town of Myra on the southern coast of what is now Turkey.
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Google says Patara, Turkey.
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@Legion: It says Patara is in Antalya Province.
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Legion, Mary 🙂 The joke in Turkey is that Santa Klaus comes from the sweltering south, not the North Pole! In the town of Kale, there’s a recently-renovated Church dedicated to St Nicholas and the grounds have a statue of him: http://www.pbase.com/andrys/image/36658889
Turkey is now overwhelmingly Muslim population. In my view, it’s not a comfortable or a safe place for Christians as religious force.
Most of the churches are left to ruin. it’s easily forgotten that it used to be a major centre of Christianity.
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Aha! I told you Bulanik would have something.
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@Bulanik: Thank you.
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…there are many, many things that are not in Wiki. 😀
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The ‘Santa’s race controversy’ generally seems moronic to me. I only hear about St Nicholas when religious leaders complain about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas. Maybe that’s a local thing, but it doesn’t seem so to me.
The Santa kids believe in is a happy fat grandpa who has got elves and flying reindeer. He exists in the same realm as the Easter Bunny, evil witches who eat children, and the tooth fairy. If you want to analyze his origin story you need to research old coca-cola commercials, not hagiography.
He already gives presents to kids all over the world and understands every language on the planet. I do not see any reason why he shouldn’t come in different colors too. So, yeah, IMO every ethnicity should have their own Santa if they want one. I do not see any reason why adults should care about this. The kids definitely wouldn’t. They mainly care about the presents anyway, not about who brings them.
I can’t really relate to the Jesus controversy, but that at least is truly about religion and God, things a lot of people take very seriously.
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@Iris, I don’t know who you are but can we be friends? ^_^
I guess we should also add to white default “it’s when they have the monopoly of certain features” e.g small straight nose is a “white” feature, fair skin? Must have a bit of white in ya, non deep brown eyes? yup whitey juice, your hair is not tightly coiled? You must be mixed! What’s even more frustrating is when it’s African Americans that spew those things. Just as Iris mention East Asians are diverse, so are Africans! or as the West really want to separate us “sub-Saharan” Africans, we are NOT all the same, not all of us have broad noses, round noses, big eyes, “big” lips, we go from gorgeous skin so dark it looks deep blue to fairer than Beyoncé (couldn’t think of another example) with no white mixture help, round eyes, almond eyes whatever shape eyes we got it. Google Khoi or San heck even Dinka people, they’ll give an East Asian a run for their money on the “slanted” eyes department. Yes we have coarse hair but we also have soft curly hair once again no admixture needed, my aunt has piercing honey eyes that sometimes appear green, not mixed… The most important thing though is that all beauty is celebrated, one feature does not stand above the other. A Luba queen isn’t queen regardless of being chocolate or caramel, round nose or sharp nose. Anyway… rant.stops.here
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^^^ I meant to say a Luba queen is** a queen.. Tired, it’s 3am in Turkey -_-
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There is one more aspect of ‘the Santa controversy’ that is IMO very interesting. Listening to this:
(http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harris-perry-responds-to-megyn-kellys-santa-remarks-no-wonder-u-s-has-a-racial-divide/)
reminded me of this:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WdQ8Yotpww)
How many, out of those who think Santa should be raceless, would oppose that idea if Santa was traditionally depicted as black?
IMO people who think like MHP would call it ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘culture theft’. It’s interesting to watch those, who supposedly oppose the “white default”, accept it and say that some aspects of white tradition and culture are universal, in order to justify assimilating or copying them.
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In the racial context that Dr Harris Perry means it, a black man descending a chimney would be reason alone to get a gun and stand your ground…
I believe Melissa Harris Perry’s point was that the VALUES shown by Santa Klaus — such as kindness, good deeds, etc — should not be exclusively the behavioural norm of whites. I am not sure how seeing a non-white person’s generosity and gift-giving at Christmas time could be some kind of cultural appropriation of white people. For this reason, I don’t think your reasoning stands up to inspection.
However, being a thief, a bogeyman or a demon, etc., IS associated with blackness — isn’t it?
Isn’t THAT the Black Default? That is quite different from black art forms and the cultural theft of them.
As we’re talking about Santa Klaus, I’ve heard that Black Peter (Santa Klaus’s companion or servant in some European traditions) might be symbolic of the Devil. Is that some kind of crazy coincidence? For the Dutch, Black Peter first appeared in the 1850s, when that nation still had black slaves. Black Peter was the punisher of naughty children and, later, he went from being black to just being dirty. Such a harmless figure of fun, right? As harmless as white people putting on black face to play this black character, what do you think?
Racial profiling and cultural appropriation are 2 different things and drawing them as equivalent and interchangeable shows a strange understanding of white racism and how the White Default operates…
Black Peter in Holland:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vXFkIkYEx8)
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“I believe Melissa Harris Perry’s point was that the VALUES shown by Santa Klaus — such as kindness, good deeds, etc — should not be exclusively the behavioural norm of whites.”
Who said they should be? This isn’t about the values Santa represents. It’s about his identity. MHP clearly asked: “Are you white? Are you black? When you come in from the North Pole, do you have a legal visa or are you undocumented?”
” I am not sure how seeing a non-white person’s generosity and gift-giving at Christmas time could be some kind of cultural appropriation of white people.”
If that non-white person is wearing a Santa Claus costume it is culture theft. Santa, the fictional character based on a real person, is a product of white culture. I think that’s undeniable. Whether he is more European or American is debatable, but he is definitely white, His whiteness is as deeply ingrained in his tradition as his gender and BMI. POCs who are saying he should be raceless are attempting to appropriate white culture. If one considers cultural appropriation a bad thing, than they should be against the concept a non-white Santa.
I’m skipping the rest of your comment because I think that part is based on the false idea that Santa’s values are seen as exclusively white. I haven’t noticed anyone making that point and IMO you are constructing a straw man. It’s Santa’s identity that’s claimed to be white, not the values he represents. If you are against cultural appropriation and you are not a hypocrite, you can give people Christmas presents. Just not in a Santa costume.
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Have you considered that the reason you haven’t noticed anyone else making your “very interesting” point, is because it isn’t one?
This may simply be an over-simplistic mis-reading of your own linked article about Melissa Harris Perry and Santa Klaus. The article begins this way:
Perhaps you have missed something? The identity (and its associations) that Dr Harris-Perry refers to is far more than the basis of melanin. Words such as “black” or “Latino” are shorthand for more than skin colour in the US.
You may wish to disregard that factor, but it rips a large lacuna in your argument.
***********************************************************************************************
Lol! That’s so funny.
I loved seeing Idris Elba playing a Norse god. And I really enjoyed the last time I saw a woman play Hamlet…
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^^ Out of curiosity, what colour is the Devil usually depicted as in Poland?
I recall a Polish friend of mine saying that there is a black colour association the name of it.
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@Bulanik
“Have you considered that the reason you haven’t noticed anyone else making your “very interesting” point, is because it isn’t one?”
I think I’ve clearly stated that it is interesting in my opinion, not objectively.
Have you considered the possibility that I like to read well though out counterarguments to my point of view more than opinions that simply agree with me?
“Perhaps you have missed something? The identity (and its associations) that Dr Harris-Perry refers to is far more than the basis of melanin.”
When I was addressing her comments I said: “It’s interesting to watch those, who supposedly oppose the white default, accept it and say that some aspects of white tradition and culture are universal, in order to justify assimilating or copying them.” She is the one who is missing something and so are you. Santa is not universal. He is a product of white culture. MHP does not recognize that (it seems you do not either) and considers Santa virtually synonymous with “benevolence, and kindness, and intimacy” as if he belonged to all of humanity and it was white people who tried to hijack him and the values he represents. She might as well believe that the creators of blues tried to claim ownership of the concept of sadness by saying they have a special connection with the style of music they have created.
Megyn Kelly was not saying that only white people are worthy of being Santa. She claimed ownership over the concept of Santa, not over the values he represents. If one believes that cultures can create unique, original things and that other cultures shouldn’t copy or appropriate them for their needs than it is only reasonable to take MK’s side. MHP telling white people how they should think of Santa is like Adele lecturing Aretha Franklin about soul music.
“I loved seeing Idris Elba playing a Norse god.”
What about Johnny Depp as Tonto? Did you like that one too?
“Out of curiosity, what colour is the Devil usually depicted as in Poland?
I recall a Polish friend of mine saying that there is a black colour association the name of it.”
Would that be the same Polish friend you lied about in our earlier discussion? You know, the one who couldn’t use his (supposedly native) language and used the same mistranslations that can be found on translate.google.com?
Is that him or is this one real?
Anyway, the oldest, traditionally Polish depictions of Satan and demons I can think of show them as shapeshifters (like Boruta or Rokita), who could take almost-human forms and blend in amongst people by hiding their horns and tails. Some were clearly associated with blackness (like Czart), but that’s not a rule.
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I was going to bring up Black Pete, which I think is so offensive and those horrible golliwog dolls. Those are hideous, this just goes to show how Europeans view black people. They see the darkness of skin as something ugly.
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I have a question: what about the elves? Why the silence on them?
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@ Mary:
I don’t know about that. Many europeans pay a lot
for any amount of tanning.
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@ eco, thank you for the information about Black Devils in Poland.
You say: “I think I’ve clearly stated that it is interesting in my opinion, not objectively. Have you considered the possibility that I like to read well though out counterarguments to my point of view more than opinions that simply agree with me?”
Yes, of course^^ But, that’s not at all unusual in conversations!
We can all read here. It’s as if others lack these basic abilities, or can’t see that you cherry pick/skip over those arguments you didn’t expect or are unable to counter. Altogether it’s quite unsatisfying to read and not that nice of you, eco.
You say: “When I was addressing her comments I said: “It’s interesting to watch those, who supposedly oppose the white default, accept it and say that some aspects of white tradition and culture are universal, in order to justify assimilating or copying them.” She is the one who is missing something and so are you. “
Again, wrong. Because we CAN all read here and some of us also have cultural sensibilities which you may not have considered due to your thought process.
Personally, I’ve never read the works or watched Melissa Harris Perry’s tv shows. I only took the article you linked at face-value (this article is not even written BY her, either). Therefore, your extrapolation is more indicative of your comprehension than Dr Harris Perry’s thinking.
What’s more, in saying she’s “telling white people what to think” aren’t you, a WHITE person, eco, putting words into Dr Harris-Perry’s mouth.
It would be nice if you didn’t do that, and you are white person, aren’t you?
Moreover, you don’t even know whether I, in fact, agree with her, which is also not polite. You simply do not know whether Dr Harris-Perry believes Santa Klaus is “universal”. You’re only speculating what she believe about that figure, so again, your argument doesn’t stand up to reason and is only an indicator of your own presumption rather than Dr Harris-Perry’s worldview.
You say: What about Johnny Depp as Tonto? Did you like that one too?
How is that RELEVANT to Idris Elba playing a Norse god?
Do you believe Tonto is a Native American invention, but played by a white actor? Tonto is not an invention of Native Americans.
Tonto is not part of the Native American mythological canon.
Tonto is a white invention. Like Santa Klaus, the saint, and Heimdall, the god. What Tonto is, is a degraded and stereotypical “racial type” who speaks pidgin English. The real lone ranger, Bass Reeves, was a black man who lived and rode with Native Americans.
*
As for your remark about the Poles I know here in Ireland. May I suggest you stop accusing people you don’t know from the internet about things you don’t know about? Poles are not rare in Ireland.
There are even more of them here than in the UK. Check it out: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/british-overtaken-as-polish-population-doubles-26837812.html.
Just because no Poles I know wished to personally write here for me, or write in Polish, or comment about Poland, or wanted to engage with you, isn’t the same thing as not existing in real life. To the Poles I know, you are not real or important. Because Ryanair has dozens of flights to and from Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Lublin, Poznan, Rzeszow, Szczecin, Warsaw and Wroclaw every week, it’s really not a big deal to go to Poland or be around Poles. Strange as it might seem to you, having Polish friends, colleagues and neighbours is NORMAL in Ireland.
Please accept that and resist being rude.
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Now it’s a brouhaha about Santa being white, I remember people not to long ago,people were having and issue with Idris Alba playing a Norse god in the Thor movie, then there was a nasty thing going on twitter with the character of the young black actress who portrayed Rue in the Hunger Games, there was lots of nasty things being said about the young actress, by teenage twitter users. Anytime people of color are included in anything whether it’s a real or imaginary character in fiction there always seems to be a problem.
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And the Latino spiderman didn’t go over to well either.
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@ mary, Legion
A series about his adventures would be cool.
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@Bulanik
“It’s as if others lack these basic abilities, or can’t see that you cherry pick/skip over those arguments you didn’t expect or are unable to counter.”
I explained why I skipped a fragment of your comment. IMO it relied on false assumptions. I also explained why I consider them false. I’m not sure what else should I do.
“Because we CAN all read here and some of us also have cultural sensibilities which you may not have considered due to your thought process.”
Huh? “Cultural sensibilities”? Do you mean the
‘white people oppose a POC Santa because they don’t see POCs as generous, kind, etc.’
point?
I feel I addressed this and you haven’t presented a counterargument. IMO the ‘white people can’t imagine a POC Santa because…’ point is a straw man. It’s an attempt to shift the topic of the discussion and replace the points the other side of the discussion is making with an artificially constructed one. The argument that is actually made is that Santa is a product of white culture and a lot of white people do not want that to change. There is no automatic implication that they believe POCs are unworthy of being Santa.
If I said that POC would like to change Santa because they do not believe white people are worthy of portraying Santa, and POCs are the racist ones in this case, wouldn’t you point out that I’m misrepresenting POC voices?
“What’s more, in saying she’s ‘telling white people what to think’ aren’t you, a WHITE person, eco, putting words into Dr Harris-Perry’s mouth.”
I feel you are nitpicking, but OK, what I said wasn’t completely accurate. She didn’t directly tell white people what to think, she addressed them indirectly.
“You simply do not know whether Dr Harris-Perry believes Santa Klaus is “universal’.”
I believe she sees him as universal because that seems to be the only logical conclusion. She questions Santa’s identity by suggesting that he may be a member of different ethnic groups. Such cultural revisionism can only be justified if one believes Santa doesn’t simply belong to white culture.
Especially this part:
“if we still doubt that you can embody every possibility of racial being, it is because we do not yet believe that every racial body is capable of making our sugar plum dreams come true.”
IMO implies she sees Santa as universal. She seems to be thinking that seeing Santa as raceless is the default state.
“How is that RELEVANT to Idris Elba playing a Norse god?”
I believe Marvel’s version of Thor is about as culturally sensitive to the original Norse mythology as Tonto is to Native American culture. Both were created by foreigners and in both cases calls for cultural accuracy were dismissed. That’s why I wonder if your outrage about cultural appropriation is honest or selective. How is it OK for Elba to participate in a story that’s really just a bastardized version of Scandinavian culture?
“it’s really not a big deal to go to Poland or be around Poles. Strange as it might seem to you, having Polish friends, colleagues and neighbours is NORMAL in Ireland.”
I bet it is. I just think you blatantly lied when you spoke of your links to Polish people and culture during our earlier discussion. The samples of Polish language you provided couldn’t possible come from a person that actually understands the language.
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There’s a new Russell Crowe film release, “Noah”, but some people who’ve all ready seen said that it’s an all-white cast. The film-makers were questioned about it, and reason given to it is that the template for humanity is white, colour-blindness is possible if everyone is white.
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/04/ari-handel-casts-all-white-people-in-noah-film-to-respresent-stand-ins-for-all-people
I thought Noah’s wife who was an Ethiopian, or from Cush.
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@ Bulanik
If race does not matter, then why not make everyone black? Because it DOES matter.
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@ Bulanik
On the subject of the recent Hollywood Noah re-creation film…
I came across the article and comment you referred to and this is what I had to say commenting on my own FaceBook page:
Its clear that having a white default image matters for those in positions of power able to sanction the budgeting and financing of such movies. Otherwise, they would never get made or make it to the big screen.
This is important to realize. Whether looking back into the past or peering out into the future. The white ethnic default model must be seen to be the most dominant racial group that survives – at whatever cost!
To me this is a clear reflection of how the dominant controlling white elites envision and perceive of themselves. To think of or challenge this alternate perception of reality in any other way would immediately invite the inevitable notion of themselves as “weak”, “powerless” and “delusional”. It would call into question, as false, their perceived, inherited from generations, abilities as the chosen rulers for domination and control of all peoples and resources on this planet.
It would effectively mean the unfathomable – their own contemplated extinction. This is truly what such films made in this way subconsciously project whether they realize (I think they do) or not.
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White default is right. It gets tiresome when white people question my being Canadian because I’m not white. To them, Canadians equal white. Even European immigrants have told me I’m not Canadian. Excuse me? I was born in Canada which makes me Canadian. 😐
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Our education and language is white default in America. Even if we draw or write under a black,asian,etc. It become stolen,claim ,white wash and turn into white point of view. The history of hockey started by a black team aka black ice. look it now
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[…] a character is Caucasian unless otherwise noted, many authors have played with the assumption that Caucasian is the default ‘race’. Professor of African-American Studies, Carlyle V. Thompson recently made waves suggesting that […]
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Ari Handel, to investigate why there was plenty of diversity with the animals but none when it came to the people in the film.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
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It is true that white people see themselves as just “normal”. It is why both male and female blacks are stereotyped as hyper-masculine and why both female and male Asians are stereotyped as being hyper-feminine. I really don’t understand the Asian women being stereotyped as hyper-feminine when stereotypically Asian women lack curves and I associate femininity with curves. Similarly, Latinos are portrayed as being knife wielding, hot blooded and hypersexual while whites are just plain old “normal”.
What I think is weird is that there are many pathological behaviors that are more common among white people despite the illusion of white normalcy. For example, whites disproportionately represent the face of drug addiction and drug abuse. Over 90% of new heroin addicts in the last ten years are young white people in the suburbs. Cocaine is a drug mostly associated with upper and upper middle class whites which is why powder cocaine sentencing in the courts is much less severe than crack cocaine sentencing. Ironically, even most admitted crack users were white even in crack’s peak in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Meth is also dominated by whites. LSD and mushrooms are completely dominated by whites in use. Prescription pain killer abuse is also a white affair. Opiate addiction has been called a “white disease” in recent years by medical health professionals.
One of the hardest things about being a minority born and raised in America in minority-majority areas is that the culture I grew up around is considered abnormal by white people. Especially the non-stereotypical aspects of that culture. I would occasionally get drunk and post good underground Rap videos on Facebook featuring artists from my native Bay Area and some of my “friends” on Facebook are white people born and raised in the Maryland suburbs. These people had the audacity to tell me I was posting “weird” stuff on Facebook. As if the thought of Asians and black people living together in the city, getting along and having a good time making music together was “weird”. As if it is no way possible for Asian Americans to live in inner city areas and engage in the same self-destructive behaviors caused by oppression factors.
But in the white default mindset, stereotypes of us minorities are facts. We are expected to play our position in regards to stereotypes if we want their respect. This is why I can’t hang around too many white people who were born and raised in very white environments. To them, the white default is what they live by without even knowing it.
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Bang on! Politically,I refuse to have white paintings in my home.
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I’m white and I agree with this blog post. Reading more and more about history and the lies that white American elite/European white elite have done to exploit the rest of the world (like colonizing and wars to conquer non-white societies) makes me sick and furious. I am sick of other white people denying that racism still exists and that America and Britain never did anything wrong with wars and colonizing/occupying others. The majority of white people deny white default and whites being racist to other races and it makes me mad because I constantly see racist stereotypes in hollywood being made even to this day (and whitewashing stories), and I constantly see racist comments all over the internet where white people make fun of other ethnicities (especially Asian men and Black women which are considered by white default the least desired for dating by their standards).
I as a white female admit white privilege exists and whites still are and probably always will be racist to other ethnicities. I feel I can’t talk to any family member or white friends about this because they just don’t understand and won’t admit it and will call me a race traitor but the truth hurts that is why most white people are in denial and refuse to admit it because they want to be at the top of the pedestal without letting anyone else on it.
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Thank You Managing for confirming I wasn’t crazy or living in an alternate reality my whole life. Everything you write on your blog about race issues is scarily on point and accurate. Now, how do I function being African American in this cultural climate?
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Kiwi, when he was honest: “When I thought of the word “human”, I ALWAYS imagined a white man or woman or child. When I drew stick figures, I ALWAYS pictured it as a white man. As I got older, the porn actors I watched were ALWAYS white. Somehow, I was turned off by non-white porn actors, even Asian ones. I secretly desired white girls and thought they were the most beautiful. Asian girls to me looked gross and I thought they were like yellow monkeys.
All the while, I encountered white racism in its subtle and overt forms, but I ALWAYS brushed it aside (whites are individuals!). Meanwhile, I formed my own white racist thoughts of blacks (blacks are all the same!), Hispanics (same here!), and Asians (ching chong!) despite never encountering racial hostility at their hands. I came to look down on blacks and Hispanics, while giving whites the benefit of the doubt, and I loathed Asians, especially being Asian.
I looked in the mirror on many occasions, and my self-esteem came crashing down as I thought “Ewwww, I’m not white, I’m Asian. Look at those ch*nky eyes.””
No wonder he couldn’t go to his parents’s village to get himself a nice Chinese bride.
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Sometimes it is quite a revelation how much of a head trip the White default is for non-Black and non-European folk.
I remember how much time and effort it took for me to move past the White Is Right mentality. It is so unhealthy.
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It took me about ten minutes the first time I was called the n-word at three. I couldn’t put words to those feelings until much later of course.
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@ Herneith
Hmm. I guess there were some advantages in being a Black child in the segregated South. I wasn’t around White folk on a daily basis until high school.
I didn’t face that kind of in-your-face bigotry until well after college.
“Polite” Canadians, indeed….
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@ Afrofem & Herneith: It’s even more disturbing to me when black people internalize white supremacy hatred of all things black. I had to sever ties with a person i was friends with that had such a visceral disdain for blackness. This was a very unhealthy and toxic friendship that i regret I hadn’t deleted sooner.
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@ Mary Burrell
Been there. You know you are on shaky ground when they say things like:
You are different from the others (?!?)
Black children are such a nuisance (really! I started life as a Black child)
Oh, [Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, etc.] are way worse than Black people when it comes to… [name your trait] (you just know if they are trashing other non-European people around you they are trashing Black people to others when you are not around.)
With friends like that who needs enemies.
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@Afrofem: I had no problem with the fact that she only dated white men. But she would make statements like when she was in high school how her white high school English teacher said to another darker skinned student how she because she is light skin and is articulate will be more acceptable in society.
She would always say something that her white boyfriend said. “Black people have a strange odor, “Black people are lazy and think the world owes them something.” I would try to talk about a book i was reading by a black author i.e. she never heard of the Harlem Renaissance because she went to a white college and they didn’t study Black literature. I am glad she is leaving Texas
and going to Seattle there she will find the non black community of her desire.
I have been friends with this person close to ten years and i know she looks down on me because she lives in a gentrified area of the city and likes to rub it in my face how I am in a “sketchy “ neighborhood, and how much money she makes. I feel this woman has some serious mental and emotional issues. I know am tired of being angry and should just be glad she’s gone.
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I’ve met people like that and if I didn’t recognize this self- loathing trait initially, I give them a wide berth once I do.😫
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@ Mary Burrell
“…when black people internalize white supremacy hatred of all things black.”
I goofed. I responded upthread as though you were writing about a White friend, when you clearly wrote about a Black friend.
face palm
Responding to what you actually wrote… Yes, your former friend’s self hatred is disturbing and very sad. I wish it were less common, but we’ve all met scores of Black people like that. (As an aside, I wonder how many of her White boyfriends have taken her home to meet parents, siblings and friends? Likely zero.)
From what you wrote though, she has more issues going on than just internalized racism. Colorism, emotional insecurity and tone deafness also seem to be in the mix.
Her claim that “she never heard of the Harlem Renaissance because she went to a white college and they didn’t study Black literature” is bunkum. There are Black Studies departments in nearly every college and university in the USA. She would have been more honest, if she had just said, “I didn’t care about Black literature” or “I lacked intellectual curiosity”.
Seattle may be just the place for her. There are a lot of Black men and women just like her in this area. For example, when I first moved here, I looked up an old high school friend. Lena* was tall, with smooth chocolate colored skin, lovely classical African features (including high cheekbones) and a regal posture. She invited me to her home in a southern suburb of Seattle. There, I met her White husband and biracial child.
Her husband was a child of German immigrants. His father was a German veteran of WWII and still a proud Nazi. During the first visit, her husband spouted all manner of anti-Black nonsense and Lena just sat there smiling and nodding with approval. My husband and I were pretty shocked at their behavior.
My husband was so offended, he refused to go to their home on subsequent visits.
I visited Lena several more times, during the day to avoid her husband. On one visit, I asked Lena why she approved of his anti-Black invective. I reminded her of her own family’s accomplishments and standing in the community back home.
Her parents were the children of sharecroppers who pulled themselves out of grinding poverty. Her father was a esteemed high school principal and her mother a teacher. Lena and her siblings grew up in a comfortable Black subdivision, went to Catholic school and all graduated from universities.
I asked Lena point blank why she allowed her husband to tear down Black people when she knew from her own experience that his words and attitudes were based on falsehoods. Lena told me that she was confident she could change him someday. She told me that their shared Christian faith required her to be a supportive wife. Lena topped off her rationalizing with an off-handed comment about how his words were true for some Black people. [SMH]
It was incredibly sad to hear an otherwise intelligent Black woman wiith her background rationalize her White husband’s ugly attitudes and behavior toward Black people—-people who looked just like her.
You just never know who grapples with internalized racism. Sometimes it doesn’t show up right away. Some people can move past it. Other people carry it around for a lifetime.
Mary, your former friend may have a life-altering experience in White Seattle or she may go to her grave believing White is Alright. I’m glad she is out of your life, so you can heal.
*Lena is not her real name.
P.S. A lot of young Black women in Seattle move to Texas in search of Black men to marry. The Black men here go out of their way to date and marry White and Asian women. In Seattle, Asian women are considered the Gold Standard.
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Is this what Kiwi has been up to? https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/21/he-suspected-his-roommate-left-racist-graffiti-he-didnt-know-about-poison/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c660861e1e11
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNloJk-DteE)
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If Royal had been of European descent, Yang would have been a supplicant instead of an agressor.
Classic “kiss up – kick down” behavior with an insidious twist.
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Royal is “of European descent” based on his skin color, he’s just not white. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePhFd8Lu-sQ)
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@ gro jo: Kiwi did come to mind when i read that article about the Asian roommate trying to poison his black roommate.
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I often had major objections to some of Kiwi’s assertions, but why is he being likened to “an international student from China” who “got his student visa revoked”? Kiwi is a native born American.
This is in no way an apologism for Kiwi’s behaviour, but an expression of extreme disgust at the resurgence of the perpetual foreigner trope. It has no business being promulgated on this blog and contravenes the message of this very post. Another Roissy syndrome incident displayed here.
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jefe, your lack of a sense of humor never fails to surprise me. I posted this comment as a joke. The YouTube link of the guy sniggering was a dead giveaway. I’m surprised that Abagond didn’t reject it as off topic.
“Another Roissy syndrome incident displayed here.”
You kinky devil, why are you dragging the “Roissy Val d’Oise: The Story of O, or Histoire d’O’ is an erotic tale of female submission, written by Anne Desclos under the pen name of Pauline Réage.” into this conversation? Shame on you, this is a clean blog.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNloJk-DteE)
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@ gro jo
I think jefe means this Roissy:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/the-roissy-syndrome/
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@ gro jo
“Royal is “of European descent” based on his skin color, he’s just not white.”
Royal’s ‘European descent’ is very evident in the article. This is the author’s description of Royal:
Thanks for the seasonal humor. LOL!
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“Royal’s ‘European descent’ is very evident in the article.” Yes it is, that’s why I included a link to his youtube page.
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I see both Kiwi and Yang’s behavior as part of a Global White Default.
I have long witnessed an acceptance by people of Asia, Africa, The Americas and Europe of Whiteness as the human default. The strength of that acceptance varies from place to place and from era to era. To me, this acceptance (and the corresponding beliefs, attitudes and actions generated by the Global White Default) is a result of global invasions, brutality and colonialism by Western Europeans over the past 500 years.
That belief in a Global White Default is part of the worldview of both native born Chinese and the Chinese Diaspora. I see Kiwi and Yang’s obsequiousness to visible Whiteness (and corresponding hostility/vitriol to visible Blackness) as part of of their acceptance of the Global White Default.
Moreover, assertions of the “perpetual foreigner trope” and Kiwi’s “native born” status are interesting because the country with the stongest belief in a Global White Default is the USA. Anti-Blackness is deeply ingrained in American culture and worldview. Very few Americans are immune to the Global White Default———not Mary Burrell’s former Black friend, not my Black high school friend, Lena——and certainly not Kiwi.
It was easy to see a bit of Kiwi in Yang, not because a “perpetual foreigner trope”, but because of the ease with which Yang (and Kiwi and his co-ideologists) swallowed the witches brew of anti-Black tropes, beliefs, attitudes and actions that is pervasive in American culture.
The attitudes which led Yang to the extreme action of attempted murder are the same attitudes which (in milder form) lead to White people and others calling the police on Black people in public places for Sitting While Black. Yang’s attitudes are the same which lead to the real murders of Black people by police, White private citizens and (unfortunately) by other Black people.
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@ Afrofem
Going to try to express a thought I just had, but I’m not sure I’ve got it figured out to the point of being able to fully articulate it.
Kiwi obviously had some major internalized oppression going on when he first came here. The white default had led him to hate his looks, hate his name, hate being Asian.
We talk about white fragility. The thought I just had was that maybe Kiwi had Asian fragility. Maybe his newfound acceptance of his Asian self was still so fragile that he couldn’t handle the arguments that broke out shortly before he left.
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“I often had major objections to some of Kiwi’s assertions, but why is he being likened to “an international student from China” who “got his student visa revoked”? Kiwi is a native born American.” – jefe
“This is in no way an apologism for Kiwi’s behaviour, but an expression of extreme disgust at the resurgence of the perpetual foreigner trope. It has no business being promulgated on this blog and contravenes the message of this very post. Another Roissy syndrome incident displayed here.” – jefe
@@@
Naive Realism – describes people’s tendency to believe that they perceive the social world “as it is”—as objective reality—rather than as a subjective construction and interpretation of reality.
https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/decision-making/naive-realism/
@Jefe, … to me, your post seems reeks of a bit of deflection and a splash of naive realism. You are projecting your personal beliefs onto other people. Not one commenter mentioned that Yang, due to him being Asian or as you put it: “why is he (Kiwi) being likened to “an international student from China?” Well, they are both Asian, … aren’t they?
From what I could extrapolate, there were comments referring primarily to Yang’s CONDUCT, who happen to be Asian secondarily. Not as you’re inferring about others, that Yang is being singled out and his actions or motives were because he is Asian. That’s not true. You need to flip the axis of your scenario 360 degrees and look at things from the other angle. Perhaps that would be helpful.
Furthermore, none of the comments posted alluded to the fact that Yang, who is of Chinese descent, attempted to poison his Black roommate because was is a “foreigner.” Nope! You are promulgating an argument that doesn’t exist. Perhaps to get away from Yang’s factual conduct as we know them to be. The attempted murder of his Black roommate, who once wrote on the dorm’s wall that he shared with his targeted roommate Royal: “NIGGER!”
Referring to someone as a “Nigger”, in most instances is the default language of white Amerika. Yang just happened to be mimicking the historically default vernacular of simple-minded white people, for the most part.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/21/he-suspected-his-roommate-left-racist-graffiti-he-didnt-know-about-poison/?utm_term=.2b6ea87311be
Yang is Asian and so is Kiwi. Yang is a Chinese national and Kiwi is in all likelihood, an Asian American citizen. Therein lies Yang’s link with Kiwi, his IDENTITY, or as you would say “likened.” Nothing less and nothing more!
Carry on jefe, with your bad self!
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Jeesus, I was making a cheap, stupid and malicious joke at Kiwi’s expense, how the flock did it expand to this deep debate about race?
Yang is probably crazy, no need to do a deep analysis of his actions. What he did wasn’t different than what Ms. Sinedu Tadesse, an Ethiopian student did to her roommate, Trang Ho, in 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/29/us/harvard-student-stabs-roommate-to-death.html
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar or a murder or attempted murder is just a murder or attempted murder.
Afrofem will disagree and do a existential phenomenology of that incident. I can’t wait to read it.
“You need to flip the axis of your scenario 360 degrees and look at things from the other angle.” Er, blakksage, you do know that if you turn something 360 degrees you are back where you started, right?
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@ gro jo, thanks for the correction. For once, you are correct about something. Make that 180 degrees instead.
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@ Solitaire
Interesting thought.
There was quite a bit of fragility around Kiwi. Perhaps it was that fragility that fueled his rage.
Or it could be as simple as he displaced his anger about the unequal treatment of Americans of Asian descent in US society from the dominant group to a more socially acceptable target.
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@ Afrofem
“Or it could be as simple as he displaced his anger about the unequal treatment of Americans of Asian descent in US society from the dominant group to a more socially acceptable target.”
When he first started commenting here, he was placing his anger firmly on the dominant group.
It isn’t easy to take criticism of one’s own group well, even if it’s the dominant group. It took a lot of work for me to get to the point where I didn’t feel personally attacked or obliged to give a kneejerk defense of my people. I still have my moments of white fragility, even with the amount of work I’ve put into getting beyond it. I would imagine taking such criticism well is even harder for someone like Kiwi, who is struggling to overcome a negative opinion of his own people.
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Yang could be crazy but crazy and racist are not mutually exclusive.
https://www.theroot.com/n-word-get-out-of-here-black-student-targeted-with-r-1831322803
He defaced Royal’s property with racial slurs AND tried to poison him even though they were roommates for years. The racial component was made a part of the crime by the perpetrator; it’s not being inserted into a random act of violence.
It is fairly obvious the the “white default” has established a world that is anti-Us. When “white man” becomes “man” those who they consider to be most different from themselves – black men and women – become “not man”. It is not fundamentally untrue to say that we are encircled by enemies, including some black people who’ve completed their program of “mentacide”.
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@ Solitaire
“It isn’t easy to take criticism of one’s own group well… It took a lot of work for me to get to the point where I didn’t feel personally attacked or obliged to give a kneejerk defense of my people.”
Understood. Some of that ‘work’ is developing emotional detachment——and maturity. I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties breathing fire and raging against the machine (system). Several things changed my approach:
◉ I learned on an emotional level that social change is an intergenerational project; more a relay race than a sprint or a marathon. Even when there a setbacks and regressions, it is up to the runners to get up, dust themselves off and resume the race. To give up is to not only fail now, but also to fail future runners.
◉ I learned a great deal of African history. Learning about the great trading cities on Africa’s east coast, the university cities of west Africa, the Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa and the use of mathmatical abacus’ by ancient Congolese over six thousand years ago shattered the Euro worldview I’d been taught.
I then dove deeper into the history of ordinary Africans, from the urbanites, to the farmers, pastoralists and hunter-gathers. I became aware of the ways they used their human intelligence to thrive in their local environments. I developed a special regard for hunter-gatherers, such as the San. Hunting and gathering requires such keen awareness and intimacy with your environment. The word, “primitive” no longer has the same meaning or negative emotional power it once had in my mind.
◉ I learned more world history: pre-colonial/pre-contact cultures of the Americas, Asia, the original people of Australia, pre-Christian Europeans and the fearless Polynesians. All had amazing societies and human achievements. All were flawed in predictable human ways.
◉ The study of history helped me to see cycles in human societies: striving leading to mastery; the inevitable hubris and decay——-giving way to a birth of new social forms. Understanding cycles can give a person a bird’s eye view to history, current events and future possibilities. Seeing cycles has helped me not be so wrapped up in the moment.
The reading, learning and greater understanding of cycles is an ongoing project. It is the well of understanding I draw on when I encounter anti-Black criticism on blogs, journals, newspapers and other media. While not every criticism is invalid, most are made by people who don’t know any Black people or how they navigate US society. They are willfully ignorant of systems of inequality that produce unequal outcomes. Most of all, they simply don’t care.
I found that observing, extracting value and tossing the garbage to the side is one way to stay grounded and detached. It can lead to fewer personal affronts or kneejerk defenses.
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re: Solitaire
re: Afrofem
My impression about Kiwi relates to a phenomenon I saw back when I was in university (but I imagine it is much much more prevalent now than it was then). We used to call it “Born-again Asian”. It refers to those Asian Americans who grew up in the non-black suburbs or smaller towns away from the major urban areas, and who grew up without any major racial incident affecting them personally. When they got to university, they met other Asian-Americans, learned about Asian-American issues and history, maybe take an Asian American studies course and then suddenly they realize they are Asian.
Prior to the 1960s, I think most Asian-Americans grew up with a heightened sense of being Asian, white was indeed the default (there are exceptions), but by the time they farmed out in the 70s-80s, a new phenomenon became more common. White is still the default, but they grew up in it, instead of apart from it.
This newly found identity affects different people in different ways. But as it is new, it is indeed fragile.
One challenging step in the process is learning how to deal with other people of color. That is a challenge for all POC in the USA, but especially difficult for the “born-again” crowd. And at the end of the day, after years or even decades, you just might realize that there are some areas of collaboration and others where it just won’t work. Or maybe there still needs to have a lot of education on multiple sides. But we still need to find ways to have dialogues.
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I can’t believe it! Jefe, the humorless, wrote something I agree with! What the hell is going on here?
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eh, kiwi was ok, i kinda liked him but he started thrashing at the end for who knows why
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Speaking of “Born-again Asian” some people have a their own idea what that means.
US congressman Ed Case says he’s ‘an Asian trapped in a white body’, sparking an online backlash
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2182433/us-congressman-ed-case-says-hes-asian-trapped-white
Democratic congressman says he’s an ‘Asian trapped in a white body’
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/17/politics/ed-case-hawaii-comments/
I don’t think that many Asian-Americans take very kindly to a white man who claims to be an “Asian ‘trapped’ in a white man’s body” after he marries an Asian woman.
Did movie critic Roger Ebert or NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio become a born-again black man after they married their wives?
Again, I don’t think that being married to an Asian woman and learning something about his concept of “Asian” or “Pacific Islander” values makes one an effective advocate on API issues. He needs to stop talking like this now.
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I am glad this is being talked about.
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