RACISM IN "WHITE" AMERICA

Jared Diamond, who is considered to be an expert on the stone age people of Papua New Guinea (or, at least, advertises himself as one) says that when tribes encounter a different tribe for the first time, they immediately attempt to murder one another. It should be noted, though, that Diamond and The New Yorker have been sued by citizens of PNG for defamation of character.

You think all the little kids in the world think they're in the same group?

Of course they don't. That's why we have gangs.

Thanks. I know you didn't mean write more here, but you asked about the Brewster kids' parents. I never heard Zona mention a father and never saw any visiting relatives. That describes about all the kids. It probably didn't take more than a few months, and I'm just guessing, to forget our parents. We were not up for adoption, but kept for the parents. Everybody just seemed to fit right in. It was all paid for.

Concerning Zona's mother, she was asked, at 16, by the office to sign some papers that would allow wherever she (the mother) stayed (mental institution) to giver her that special treatment doctors used to use on mental patients -- lobotomy. When we were in our 50s she told me this. I suggested to her that her mother probably had postportum depression, nothing more.

To be honest, we didn't talk about parents and in fact used to make fun of them, joke about them. My dad was OK, kids there liked him, but I don't recall feeling the same about anybody's parents. The Venable sisters -- Alisha, Elaine, Nora, Billy, and Greta, their dad was in Huntsville Penitentiary and the mother I never heard them speak of, I never saw. We just became whoever and whatever we ended up being in that enormous sort of family. The Venable sisters could all sing together like the Andrew sisters or better. Greta took piano lessons. It was whatever we were good at, excelled at. Everything was paid for by all those churches.

Music and sports were BIG, and I didn't exactly excell in either though I was always on the different teams. Hey, Osso, I was never an athlete, we all played sports together, some excelled. No, I won all the spelling bees in my class, was asked one year to compete in spelling at district (or regional?) competition. But, I flubbed that. I also wrote the papers (stories) that were read aloud. I also was in trouble constantly because I just had the wonderlust disease.

I'm trying to imagine what life would have been like for me, all the other 180 kids, in foster homes. Oh, God. I don't think our lives were headed in such a pleasant direction with our dad either. I do recall one babysitter, Annie, a black woman. We loved her, she sure could cook. But, she couldn't make enough money babysitting. One day she just didn't show up. The man next door invited me over. Ah, all I recall is his huge hairy thing, there about head-level. He did nothing when I ran screaming, but he could have. It was many years before I attached any feeling to that little incident. My dad's friend. What a buffoon.

I completely agree with you here, snood. I was brought up with lots of parents and 180 other kids. Nobody ever mentioned race to us, as if there was no such thing. We looked, we saw, but there was never a disctinction made that people are different colors, therefore like or don't like each other. I don't remember disliking someone to the point I was uncomfortable around them. We were not taught to discriminate, and I have no feeling of difference between people. It just was never stuck on my brainwaves. It isn't really necessary to mention these subjects to kids short of a problem arising.

The children's home (Quinlan TX) is now, seemingly, equal white, black, and Latino. They also take in young mothers along with their children, counsel them, teach them a skill, or whatever, and build up their self esteem so they're OK on their own.

If that's so, why then did Obama refer to his mother as "that typical white woman"?

They don't appear to know there are groups, until they grow older.

I once knew an Irishman, born and raised in Dublin, by parents who were not native Dubliners. When speaking of his family, he invariably referred to his mother as "the Donegal woman."

Geography is not the same as race.

Would it be too much to ask you to supply us with a link or reference to this statement? I don't remember him saying this, and you did use quotation marks, as if these were his exact words.

We routinely call our mom "the little Filipino woman".

I think the comment referenced his grandmother and that she was "a typical white person."

The reference was related to the issue of race.

He made a point that he didn't think she "harbors any racial animosity," but the "typical white person" comment was uncalled for...particularly from the president speaking about racial prejudice.

Imagine the reaction if George Bush had ever commented that Condi Rice or Colin Powell were "typical black persons."

I don't mean to suggest that this is evidence that Obama is a racist, but it's not crazy that someone else might.

The general reaction to this comment is evidence that there is far less sensitivity to racism when it is applied to whites as opposed to blacks, or that sometimes decent people say stupid things that shouldn't be blown out of proportion...or both.



SOURCE

Y'know, that's just nonsense.

If someone asked me what my mother was like, I could very well answer, "Oh, she was a pretty typical immigrant woman. Eastern European, you get the picture."

Would you interpret that as a xenophobic anti-immigrant statement?

Unfortunately, when the question of 'race' enters the equation our sensitvity shields go up and we are liable to read into a simple statement worlds of unintended meaning. And, of course, if one has a bias against the speaker to start with, the feelings of suspicon will be intensified.

Personally, I find nothing offensive or sinister or "uncalled for", to use your own phrase, Finn, in Obama's statement regarding his grandmother.

He wasn't simply describing her: "She's a typical white person."

The comment was made in the context of a discussion on race. He was discussing her reaction to people not like her. Try reading the linked article before you reflexively respond.

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in the poorest section of Akron Ohio, a tough, grimy industrial Rubber factory with roads. I lived with my mother who was an entertainer and I was about the only white kid in my general area I had no interest in sports, instead caring about music and movies and such.

So here's how it went down for me.

Blacks called me a white punk and a bitch and beat me up.

Whites called me a white nigger and beat me up.

School officials called me a latent homosexual because I didn't care about sports and was one of the first to grow Elvis hair and wear cleats and
"cuban" heels on my shoes. Once I told a 7th grade teacher who had been on my ass all year to **** himself and he beat me up. He got away with it of course.

They also said what do you expect his mother is a whore who sings for a living.

The beatings stopped one day when I cut a kids throat who had been rolling me for my lunch money and beating me up all year. I was also labeled a psychopath, but I wasn't. I'd just had enough. I was happy not be fucked with anymore. That's when I learned that bullies are like balloons. One good pop and they disappear.

Then I had the bad luck to move ( actually I was forced to leave ) to Lynchburg "Jerry Falwell" Virginia in 1964 and spent some time getting beat up just because it was the Centennial Civil War year and I was a Yankee.

Everyone's a ******* bigot if they can get away with it or nobody's looking.. Everyone. Period.

Thank you for sharing that, Bear. Awesome.

Man, you were messed up.

Wasn't there any group that would accept you?

Greasers? Appears you pre-dated the Heads.

Did you do juvy time for the cut throat?

I don't necessarily disagree with you but who falls to your bigotry when no one is looking?

A little time in juvy yes, eventually made to leave Ohio to prevent reform school until I was 18. I spent many years being self destructive because of my childhood. I got the last laugh though. All those pricks are dead, I'm here and I have spent my life doing, even as I've met my family responsibilities, what I please and **** you if you don't like it. I learned to channel my anger positively, and make it work for me but I do at times wish I had more faith in humans and human nature. I don't dislike people, but I don't expect much from them.

In Quebec, after another lost referendum, then premier Jacques Parizeau blamed his downfall on the ethnics and foreigners. Ever since then it's been a running joke in my family, aimed especially at my mother. I think people can say things about their own families that they would never say about another's, many times there is more to the story that we as observers will never understand, a familiar nuance if you will.

You . . . you person of Irish ancestory you!