Re: Interesting Article
 

It's interesting to see how little kids deal with race. Some kids notice it and ask questions. Some kids (clueless ones like mine) don't seem to notice or even mention it.

I see a child's obliviousness to it as a good thing. I have no intention of ever discussing the subject unless it's forced on me. My thinking is the more a kid sees no difference, the more chance there will be no artificial difference observed later. This is probably naive, as society will interfere and force the child to consider the bizarre tribal distinctions exclusionary sorts insist on making. But maybe we'll get lucky and that baggage you note will become exceedingly rare in the next few decades.

Re: Interesting Article
 

Ah, the good old sign-'o-the-times argument. I think this argument is bullshit. I think people who cut people slack because of it are lazy and don't like confrontation. It was unacceptable then (and I don't care how you were raised), just as it is unacceptable now. My mother never had those ideas. My mother was disowned by my grandmother. My grandmother changed very quickly when she visited my mom and me at the hospital when I was born. When I was young and I asked my grandmother about her racism, she said simply, "I was wrong." No, "It was a different time," "I didn't know any better," "That's how we were raised," bullshit. There are no excuses for it as far as I'm concerned.

Progress is black people voting for white people? We've been doing that shit for centuries.

TM

Re: Interesting Article
 

Yes.

So, I'm still having a hard time believing that there is actually someone named "Richie Incognito."

Re: Interesting Article
 

I am not sure I was making excuses, I was tring to explain what the person who said that to you meant.

when the white person was running against a black person*? Detroit was an early city to elect a black mayor. That was early 70s. There has been no white mayor elected since. In fact, it's been a while since one has even ran. It my not be as remarkable as Obama winning, but it is something.

*centuries?

Re: Interesting Article
 

I'll take a crack at answering this. I haven't STP'd so apologies if I'm repeating people.

I grew up in the 70s in a liberal part of the NYC suburbs -- as a barometer, people there voted for McGovern in droves. It wasn't Alabama. But it was racist as shit, in (almost) all ways from the very subtle to very explicit. People didn't burn crosses and were duly horrified by that. But people told racist jokes constantly. Assumed that any black person in any role of even minor influence or success was a product of affirmative action and didn't deserve it. People -- friends -- talked about not selling their house to a black family because "I couldn't do that to my neighbors." A kid I grew up with was visibly worried when he got the name of his college roommate and thought "he might be black" (with the word "black" whispered in a scary way) -- when I first talked to him at college, he told me in that first call that he didn't really like his roommate, though "he's white and all."

And so on and so on.

A lot of this shit was more acceptable then. There were things I could say or jokes I could tell among a group of friends or family that I would never say now, even among the same group of people, and that if I heard from someone else I'd be pissed off and wouldn't want to be around that person again.

Maybe this is just us growing up as individuals -- but I don't think so, because there were too many adults who did the same stuff. It was the water we were swimming in.

The water has changed, a lot, and that is good. It hasn't changed enough. And people are afraid to admit that we're all -- white people all -- still a little infected, even the best-meaning of us.

For a number of years I was very close to a black muslim who was raised in Brooklyn (my jiujitsu teacher). Once he said something to me, along the lines of "You aren't racist, not even close. But you still have some shit to get over, and you need to remember that and deal with it." And he was right -- you live in shit for 20 years, you're going to need more than a few showers before you smell ok. Sometimes, looking in the mirror is hard, and making up excuses for ourselves is easier.

So, using one of your examples -- I hear people disrespecting the President. I know I had no respect for Bush, so why is their disrespect racist? But it is, or is in many ways motivated by it. The tone is different, nastier, the reactions are starker. And finding the lines are difficult.

Re: Interesting Article
 

Tying this with the PB thread about dumb people buying luxury cars, the first article about Incognito I found discusses how he had a black Ferrari delivered to his home on the same day complaints against him were made.

Another shit for brains redneck who'll have $4,000.00 in assets when he retires.

Re: Interesting Article
 

How is what you describe anything BUT racism?

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

Neither.

Who are these people?

Re: Interesting Article
 

It's laziness. If I go to a foreign country and find myself talking to fellow tourists who speak English because it's easier to get directions that way than it is to fumble through a conversation with a local in a non-native tongue, am I a xenophobe? Do I think foreigners are inferior to tourists speaking my language? No. I'm lazy.

Re: Interesting Article
 

We just reelected a lesbian for the third time. I can guarantee that homophobia isn't over in Houston, Texas.

Re: Interesting Article
 

It's very interesting seeing that with kids. My experience is that kids notice skin color, not as "race" but as a feature, on a par with hair color.

But you will end up having to discuss it, and you should. You don't live in a bubble. Your kids will hear things -- they'll hear racist comments, they'll hear history, they'll hear the world around them -- and they should have a framework to understand it.

First time I confronted this was when we were in France, and after a night with a baby-sitter my son said "I bet you don't like Chinese people, because they eat whales." Which led to a whole long discussion (only a small part of which was "it's really in Japan where people eat whales") about, as I put it, "the most important thing I can teach you" (which wasn't the part about who eats whales).

I don't want my kids to have that lingering voice in their head that says "This person is black/gay/Puerto Rican/whatever, which means...." My parents pounded that voice into my head, but they weren't the only ones so it's not just a matter of not doing that to my own kids, but of keeping the infection rooted out.

Re: Interesting Article
 

Inapt. Everyone likes lesbians. It's the gay men the homophobes don't like.

Re: Interesting Article
 

I'm sorry, you somehow read what I wrote as saying racism is over?

Re: Interesting Article
 

No, but that elections are weird, especially municipal elections.

Re: Interesting Article
 

If you find yourself talking to people who speak English when you need directions, it's because you want to actually understand the directions.

Are you saying that a white male partner in a law firms will gravitate to white male associates because he's worried about his fluency in ebonics?

The "laziness" stems from something, Sebby. If there weren't a barrier there, an obstacle of some sort, then laziness wouldn't matter.

It's an assumption that "someone who is my race (and sex, and sexual orientation) is more like me, which is good." When the assumption should be that the ways in which that person is most like you are ways that don't matter.