Whiteness Studies

I agree with edgar; confront racism when you see it. Don't let the offender get away with it. c.i.

edgarblythe-



Those are very wise words. When one on one, blacks and whites mingle freely together, then there will be real equality. When black people accept the friendship of whites, and don't expect more of them than they do of their black friends, then there will be equality.

Friendship cannot be legislated..........it has to be earned. Laying guilt trips is NOT a solid foundation for friendship. If equality is DEMANDED, it will never be acheived.

One of my husband's good friends is a black man. What they have in common is their hobby. They NEVER discuss race. It has never come up. We are welcome in his home, and he is welcome in ours. What could be simpler than that!

Edgar, Phoenix, What you say about race and how it's dealt with makes sence. Education makes better friends than the law will. People don't like being told what they must do cos it's the law. Persuation thru education will win more hearts a lot quicker.
Racial history in the UK is different to that of the USA but the hatred, misstrust are similar aanywhere. Segregation was never legal here but it was applied by individuals. We have equal rights for all on the law books but social education has run on equal lines at the same time and proberly achieved more advances. We are a better country racialy now, than we were 10 years ago but there are still improvements we need to make.

oak, I think that's the key; education and efforts to improve. Our personal actions speaks more than words. We have always invited people to our home irregardless of race, religion, culture, or any other label. c.i.

CI, you've hit the nail on the head. You know something ? Nobody on A2K ever, as far as i know, raises the question of anothers race. We treat each other as equals, just how it should be.. We may may know a particular person's background or bits of it

CI, you've hit the nail on the head. You know something ? Nobody on A2K ever, as far as i know, raises the question of anothers race. We treat each other as equals, just how it should be.. We may know a particular person's background or bits of it but it's ignored, it's not an issue and does not create a problem. Everybody is on pretty good terms. Well I damn well hope they are

Phoenix,
...About 30 years ago my best friend and I agreed, that things weren't going to change in earnest, until the older people, of all colors died, and were replaced peope without the experience of the present hatred. The differennce in our thinking, and yours is that we agreed, the legislation is a prod, in the right direction.
...In a related matter, six years ago, my wife and I drove south for a few days. It was my first time, in twenty years. I was amazed at the warmth, and courteousness we encountered from OLDER white people. I'm not talking about the phoney warmth sometimes seen in the north. I'm not talking about shop owners. Just plain people we encountered, at rest stops, or while waiting in line, at a store. I can't figure it out. And I'm not talkin', isolated incidents. It happened on seveal occasions.

Booman- From what I understand, through things that I have read, that the South is way ahead of the North in terms of race relations.

It's very interesting. In my 55+ development, there are only a sprinkling of black people. There is one black couple in the neighborhood who were interviewed for a local paper. One of the things that the reporter asked was how they felt, and how they were treated as a black couple in a predominantly white community.

His reply was that he had been the president of a large company. He said that the only color that his neighbors saw was GREEN, and the neighbors treated them just fine!

This one isolated story illustrates very well what some of the other members were saying. Education, and becoming part of the mainstream, is going to do more for equality than protesting, and anger!

Age has little to do with it. And, in case anyone doubts how I feel about the civil rights laws we have on the books: I think progress would have been much much slower without them. To single out just one way it has helped: Everyone is now allowed to vote. Sure, any time there are elections there is an element of tampering, but by and large everyone gets to register now. It is possible to take each one of these laws and see the positive outweighs the negative. And that is thanks to a strong federal government.

I have long been meaning to start a thread about the necessity for a spectrum of approaches for a social movement to work. Just honey won't do it. Just vinegar won't do it. But when the movement as a whole contains both, things happen.

I am just buzzing through at the moment, but wanted to remind myself to start that thread, and tell Dlowan and Blatham, if they're reading, that they can go ahead and do it if they would like. (Blatham especially has brought this up before.)

Booman I saw some of what you are saying. I was down in Arkansas and Tennesee in the late 70s. People were openly friendly to each other, irrespective of color. or so it seemed to me.
We stopped at an all night cafe and we were having coffee. The staff were white. A police car pulled up outside and the cop was a big black fellah. He had a quick look round, a mug of coffee and chatted to the staff. All was friendly and relax. It seemed how things should be in a perfect world

Sozobe,
...Good perspective... "Balance is the esscence of life"-Book Of The Boo, of course. :wink:

It has been suggested that perhaps I think everything should just be given to people of color for the asking. Wrong. What should be allowed everybody is a fair shake. It was wrong to dismantle programs for the poor on the grounds that helping them makes them dependent on government from generation to generation. All that was necessary was to reform the way the programs were run, to make vocational or academic courses available and to keep accurate records of who could work and who could not, and who could benefit from education and who could not. I myself grew up on welfare and had never a thought about continuing on the dole all my life. There has to be enough of a net to catch people and help them get back up. I don't want to kick off a debate on the topic, thereby hijacking the thread, but I just wanted to vent my outrage that they threw out the baby with the bath water when Clinton and congress "reformed" welfare and so many social services.

edgar, boo, dlowan, mamaj, c.i. - thanks for thoughtful responses.

...and if you ever see me in here tryin' to "catch flies", slap me!

No, no Edgar,
..the baby is alive and well. trust me. I still see to many healthy badies, on the dole.

edgar, That everybody is able to register to vote is only partly true; I still have many questions about how blacks were treated in Florida during the last election. I was really surprised that more people did not investigate the truth of what happened, and shared what they found. It's very bothersome that that kind of thing still happens in this country. c.i.

Having spent a good deal of my life in the South, including much of my youth, i would like to point out that the era of the civil rights movement poisoned relationships in the South. I don't mean the SCLC, or SNCC, or the ordinary marchers--i mean the KKK and their ilk, who made many ordinary decent white folks sick, but frightened, as well. There is no more racial hatred in the South than in the North. When the pressure was off, as Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department began to get at the white supremecists, those ordinary white folks began to peek out from their windows, and wonder if things might not be normal again. And eventually, it was. The ordinary social mode of the small town in the South is to speak to everyone--in an unspoken kind of enlightened self-interest, the average southerner of any skin color wishes to be pleasant with those around them so their own path in life will be pleasant. When Wallace was no longer standing in the doorway, when freedom marchers, Jewish college kids, northern housewives were no longer being murdered, this natural tendancy rose to the surface again.

I am always proud of how the ordinary southerner has adjusted to the effects of the Civil Rights movement. Sure, you could accuse them of moral cowardice during the bad times--but would you want to? Is it not better that there is peace now, for whatever anyone failed to do in the past? When i am in the north, i see a racism stronger than the residual of garden variety hateful creeps that one finds in the South as is the case anywhere. I was struck to this by Boo's recollection, and in particular his comment about the phoney bonhomie of some northerners whose "best friends are black." Southerners of any hue still face a deeply seated prejudice when in the north. While watching the Learning Channel with a friend here in Ohio a few years back, a very erudite and knowledgeable gentleman began to speak on paeleoanthropolgy in the program, with a heavy South Carolina accent--which is difficult for other southerners. My friend commented frankly that, although he understood intellectually that this man knew his subject very well, just hearing the accent caused him to automatically dismiss what the man said, and take him for a rube.

My brother Steven first moved to the South a little over 20 years ago. He had not lived there, as i had (strange family, long story . . . another time . . . ), and one of the things he commented on was how strange it was to see a black man on his tractor in his field, and to see black and white people moving on the sidewalks of small towns--you just don't see black people on the streets of most small towns in the North. I say the number of bigots, of the hateful, is the same North and South--but there is a vast difference in the South. Their culture is such that one not only politely acknowledges strangers, one looks to speak to them or to be spoken to; were you to walk down the street and greet no one, they'd think you odd, and wonder what your problem is. Because blacks and whites are familiar with one another by long association, they are able to understand one another in ways that Northerners don't. I'm not painting a rosy picture here, there is still economic injustice, neighborhoods segregated from the bad old days that remain segregated today--but these things describe the North as well--and that understanding, one of another, is not there in the North the way it is in the South.

Do Social Movements Need an Extreme Edge?

Phoenix,

I think I get what you have been trying to say all along with "guilt trips" and "When black people accept the friendship of whites, and don't expect more of them than they do of their black friends, then there will be equality". You laud not talking about it.

I now am getting a very good picture about why your posts in this thread are so irritating and pretentious (you claim snood is forcing his opinion down people's throats when to me you are far worse) if you don't want to talk about race and feel a "guilt trip" why not just stay away? I'd appreciate it as it's painful to read you.

Setana,
...Your post is Windex

Sozobe.
...Do popes need a catholic background?