Comment

Comment by Ralph Dumain on March 30, 2009 at 2:21pm

Your situation is a familiar one. Perhaps the dirtiest secret isn't the stuff that got the news media to create a big hullabaloo over Bill Cosby's public comments, which are actually quite uncontroversial. The unpublicized issue is certain aspects of the way black people treat one another. By this I don't mean sensational incidents like black-on-black crime, I mean daily commonplace occurrences in child-rearing, social interaction, business interaction, the enforcement of conformity and the punishing of individuality, etc. This stuff nobody seems to discuss publicly, though privately yes. This also relates very much to the plight of the black atheist.

Comment by Razrback11 on March 11, 2009 at 11:43pm

Ahhhh I apologize for the spelling problems. I am extremely tired and my brain is trying to keep up with my fingers. Cheers!!!

Comment by Razrback11 on March 11, 2009 at 11:39pm

After reading your last two blogs, I would have never guessed you're only 16. Keep up the thinking and keep putting it down for us to read and ponder!

As for stereotypes, I have red hair and quite a bit of Irish in me. Even though it has been over a hundred years since any member of my family was in Ireland, I'm still proud of that heritage. I am proud that I have the hair that clearly identifies where a lot of my blood came from, but with it comes the Irish stereotype that I'm a drunk that likes to get rowdy and be loud. Well I do have an affinity for a beverage or 6 on occasion, but I'm a very docile drinker. Also, the Irish were treated like dirt when they came over. Many of the Irish were fleeing the famine and were coming here searching for something a little better. They came only to forced into the Civil War, or sent to do back breaking work on the the railroad and in the mines. Things were hard and the Irish overcame it, but the stereotype persist.

Ida, do those same people question Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because he spoke well. The word well doesn't even cover it. In my mind, his speeches move me more than any speaker I've heard. His voice had the ability to pick a person up and fill them with hope. It still does even from the grave. Those same people that give you a hard time would need to see the hypocracy. Those same people look up yo Dr. King for the same reason they look down upon you. Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Dr. King, Representative Lewis, Barack Obama, General Powell and so on and so on, prove false the theory that persisted for so long that the black race is inferior. Those people were/are some of the best our society has to offer. I cant only imagine how many great people we have had that just never had the opportunity to shine because that just didn't have the same chance as people of other races, but also, there is no telling how many great minds we have missed because of the stereotype that if you speak well and strive for betterment, you're just trying to act white.

I know our nation isn't perfect, but at least the scales are moving faster and faster toward being balanced. Although, we still have a ways to go and we will only get there through dialogue and acknowledging our differences.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on March 11, 2009 at 11:12pm

Manic Depression: I pondered why people tell blacks to get over slavery, which lasted 400 years, and yet nobody tells Jews to get over the Holocaust, which lasted 6 years.

I do. Repeatedly. I keep saying its not the holocaust, its a holocaust. The only difference is it was the first case of modern industrial technology being used for it. The end result is the same. Death is death.

No one has the monopoly and suffering. Not the slaves, not the Jews. There is a difference between "never forget" and picking at something like a scab so it never heals. Constantly throwing past suffering in peoples faces does not promote tolerance - quite the opposite. It breeds resentment and in extreme cases hostility.

As a case in point - I am the first member of my family in 4 generations that is not a refugee. My family members went through the Russian revolution, Stalin's purges (my great grandfather was paraded around his town square with a noose around his neck before being shot for the crime of being bourgeois) and famines, fled to China into Mao's waiting hands and the Japanese invasion.

Eventually, they were grateful to find asylum in Australia.

Now, all these years later, the local indiginous population, after decades of campaigning, are demanding that my family, as Australian citizens, apologise to them for something the British did centuries ago.

You tell me - what would you expect them to think ? There are no memorials to the millions of Russians and Ukrainians (amongst many, many others, including Jews) that were slaughtered and starved. There are no museums. There is no activism to inject this into school classrooms. No apologies, no reconciliation. Not even any acknowledgement.

The Slavic diaspora that has been scattered throughout the planet neither want nor need an apology. They don't want pity, they don't want regurgitate spilt milk. Why ? Because they've gotten over it and moved on. Is there a lesson here ? I think so.

Comment by Ida on March 11, 2009 at 8:32pm

I'm not the stereotypical loud black person either. I'm quite the opposite. A lot of my black peers have resorted to calling me 'oreo', because they feel that I'm trying to speak like a white man, when I speak properly. It's quite daunting, so sometimes I have to stoop to their level(slang) just to have something in common with them. I don't like the fact that many stereotypical blacks think that speaking properly is a white trait. The education system here has failed.

Of course, slavery shouldn't ever be forgotten. It's a part of history that explains how many blacks got to America in the first place.