Negro's Riot

No, Synonymph, our gender is at least spared that indignity. I am sad to have to inform you that you and Lash share the same basic physiognomy.

Snood, where can i meet these "negros?" Are they anything like Negroes--i thought all of them changed into ordinary Americans during the Civil Rights era. Am i missing something here?

I was referring to Snood's Freudian slip, y'know.

I know, i just can't resist the cheap shot . . .

cheap shots are all I can afford.

This was kind of funny, wasn't it?

Snood is always the first, and often justifiably so, to warn white posters about the instinctive ethnocentrism they carry in them and makes them consider their (white) perspective the "normal" one, and which they express whenever they perceive those 'strange' ways in which some blacks and others might get upset about their choice of words as "exaggerated" or "whiny" or generally something "I just cant understand" and therefore "dont see why I should take it into account".

Again and again he's called people on the need to realise for a second that things look distinctly different for another group, a minority group, who hear a continued arrogance and insensitivy resounding from a long history, when a white now again refuses to take their feelings or perspectives into account, because he or she "doesnt see why he should".

To realise, in general, that "we" "white", period, and that one's own perspective, even when shared by the majority, is not simply "normal".

Yet the realisation that here, "we" "American", either - never registered in his mind. That the same moment has to be taken to realise that others here are talking, and feeling, from a wholly different perspective or experiential frame of reference - even if they look (or sound) "just like us".

Just goes to show that blinkered cultural or ethnocentrism - not even talking about the actual derogation of other groups, but simply not seeing the Other - comes in people of all races.

And thus also, in those who are at least corrigeable, the experience of feeling that hey, "I've just never had a reason to consider the difference", what, being from the majority group in this case and really, "am having some problems with all those inherent land mines". Suddenly, Snood sounded a lot like white posters who wanted to avoid being insultive to other groups, but also kind of feel overwhelmed or even a little resentful about having to do so.

Of course, re: ethnocentrist blinkeredness coming in all races, the poster of this thread had already shown that too. In Britain, the virulence of prejudice and distrust and aggression that's bursting open in violence like now in Birmingham is as often as not between Asians and Afro-Caribbeans. Guy who posted this thread, with his mixed neither/nor Arab/African background must have gotten lost and taken a very wrong turn in that landscape.

Meanwhile, here's one follow-up on post-riot developments:

Pirate stations face inquiry over race riots

2005/11/01 · The Guardian
Pirate radio stations accused of spreading the rape allegations that sparked race riots in Birmingham are being investigated by police under incitement to racial hatred laws. Five of the pirate radio stations under suspicion have closed down since the riots just over a week ago resulted in the murder of 23-year-old Isiah Young-Sam.

Thanks for the update, I've been curious.

I wrote that after reading up till page 21, btw.


Heard and seen "Desi" used by Surinamese in Holland too (Surinam -> in Latin-America), probly cause one of Surinam's population groups are Hindustanis, who originally came from India (there's Chinese and Javans alongside the Creoles and native inhabitants too).

By the way, I've read the whole thread now, and considering with what an outrage it started, thought there was actually much stuff said that made a lot of sense - even when people were arguing against each other, I often thought both made good points. <nods>

From out of all that, I also wanted to thank Lash for her story. There's a lot of stuff in the A2K past thats made it kinda hard for a lot of us to muster up the patience to be civil and appreciative even when Lash does make a good point, but here she's sharing stuff, personal stuff (and that sure doesnt come as easy for her as for emotional exhibitionists like me, I dont think), and people still cant get beyond insults. Kinda sad.

I was intrigued myself actually - its not often you get the story of where someone's from - and tho you'd told us before about the "early-teen-rebellion-years" everything after that's new. Would almost ask for a life-story thread or something, would be interesting, but then even I would be hesitant to make one like that, and I dont have people gunning for me.

LOL, just spent a few minutes reading Google caches of a thread on the "Sangam Online" forum, where a poster triggered an 10+ page discussion by positing that "Surinamese, whether they're of Indian origin or not, are no Desi people..."

Got flamed right in the first post by a (Dutch-)Surinamese Hidustani (I'm guessing): "who cares? and why do so many indians and pako's wanna marry us, then? .. o yeah ... cause of the [residency] papers!"

And one Amar writes:


But The Poll Master retorts:


The whole thing escalates into a nice confusion... you gotta be proud of your roots!, say those who call themselves desi. But my roots are in Surinam, thats the only place I feel at home - its the people who call themselves desi who seem to feel ashamed about where they're coming from (Surinam)!, say the others...

Ashanti says he's got more in common with other (non-Indian) Surinamese than with Asian Indians, which gets him some flak:


So he does:


LOL! It just never stops, this kind of thing... and it goes on everywhere, from Amsterdam to Sarajevo, from Chicago to Paraguay...

(also: see, you dont need a degree to be able to explain what community means, or identity, or what all dilemmas are involved...)

(also: i wonder what Dutch Integration minister Verdonk would say, if she knew that Dutch-Hindustani-Surinamese are in a identity-shaping conflict of loyalties: between that to Suriname or that to ... India ... ;-))

(To add to the intercultural mix, btw, you gotta know that the above was translated from dutch, but a bunch of words were english from the start, like "people", "who cares?", "British Asians" and "asianhood"...)

I'm still wishing we could have heard more from the creator of this thread.

His perspective was very different from anything I'm normally exposed to. I don't have to like his opinions to realize I need to hear/read them.

Over sensitivity is like a fart.


We loathe the smell of everybody's but our own.

snood has serious anger management dysfunction--and when he can't piss me off, he devolves into calling me "him", and such.

Generally, when he can't piss someone off well enough to get whatever pay-off he's going for, he says something really slimey and gets banned for a while. <looks at watch....shouldn't be long, now>

snood,

How can a American black man, with all that entails, justify oppressing gay people? Doesn't that strike you as incredibly hypocritical?

I think it was Socrates who mentioned that first. Earthy little bugger he was.

On the ethnocentric thing. I've got an Anglo-Irish racial and cultural background and I don't possess the ability to see the world in any perspective except from mine. Very unempathetic I know but I'm aware of it.

Don't you try, though, goodfielder? That's really all we can do. We don't do to others what we don't want done to us--and when you've HAD IT DONE to you, aren't you even more sensitive? Or shouldn't you be? You (the collective you) surely can't claim innocence.

I claim, and it's easy to do, total innocence. I was just coming home later officer, I didn't see a thing.

Shut up, cracker.

OK, talk, cracker.

But officer I saw nothing, just some catholic stumbling done the sidewalk with a knife in his back, seemed perfectly natural to me. I assumed it was ritual.

cough

just some catholic looking for a manger

or stranger

I guess I'll have to put Leonard Cohen on the macchina again.

I hate to do that since then he chants in my mind for the next two weeks, and much as I appreciate him, stop already.

I'm stunned by that, goodfielder. Here, I thought I was the only person in the world that couldn't see the world as a member of any group except my own. Well, lots of others who can't, but don't even realize there might be a different perspective. We do have the occasional perceptive moment, though. Don't we?

Anyway, glad you said that.