K

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PUSSY SENSITIVITY TIME
This is racism 101. A group of people with white guilty on the internet!

So. I know the classic racist cliche is "all those people look alike." And the inability to distinguish people of another ethnicity from each other is a fairly standard marker of prejudice.

That's because all people of a given ethnic group are likely to look alike.
There are only so many standard deviations a face can have, you know.

I have moderate to severe difficulty telling faces apart in general; I tend to run with context, haircuts, and broad categories, and if those change or are too close to someone else's, I can't tell people apart without a lot of familiarity. (I've occasionally mistaken my sisters for each other, or not recognized them immediately, after not seeing them for more than a year. I only have two.) And this difficulty gets worse with PoC, especially if my brain keeps categorizing hairstyles I'm less familiar with as roughly the same thing.

"Oh shit I'm sorry."
Problem solved.
You've admitted this is a problem you have with people in general.

I do not want to be the person doing the "all you people look alike!" thing to PoC. Even if I'm not phrasing it like that. Even if it's true for white folks too.

Does anyone know a way I can fix this, or work around it better? "I'm terrible at recognizing faces and remembering names" may well be the simple truth, but if there's a way to fix this, I'd really rather do so, rather than keep assuring PoC that, hey, it's not my fault I'm confusing them with other PoC.

Only have one friend of a given ethnic group.
Problem solved.

The police brutality you are just now noticing is what we call business as usual.


Signed,

People of color

K.
I've never been brutalized by the police.
And I try to keep it that way.

Dear White People:

When a person of color critiques a problematic statement by a White person, the thing NOT to do is respond by explaining its literal meaning or historical source, particularly if nobody asked. When you do this, you are not adding a necessary perspective.

THAT'S THEIR WORD
All right I get it, fuck.

This is in response to some claims I've seen - that the white mainstream is appropriating from geek culture, that metrosexuals are appropriating the markers of gay culture. I'll comment/edit with specific examples as I find them.

How do you all feel about these claims?

I can see how it can be argued that calling "mainstreaming" of subcultural markers "appropriation" can actually trivialize the experience of appropriation when people of minority cultures attempt to discuss the matter, so I can see how it would be silencing. But I'm white, so I'm taking a wild stab in the dark.

GEEK HIS CHIC
TEE HEE
If I see another one of you high school sluts in a Mario shirt and big nerd glasses trying to be cute--
PREPARE FOR A VIDEO GAME QUIZ MADE BY ME.

Can anyone point me towards some resources on respecting people of color in romantic or sexual contexts?

Are you fucking kidding me?
You date a brown girl so you don't have to do research in how not to offend her.
Might as well date a white bitch at this point.
Also offending people in sexual contexts?
How?
Why?
Might want to keep your sex slave fantasy a secret until you're sure she's cool with that kind of shit but I'm pretty sure that applies regardless of color.
Or gender, really.

I have been googling and looking at the tags of various LJ communities, but so far I have not found any resources written from the anti-oppression stance. I would be elated to find something aimed at queer women, but I will appreciate all suggestions.

What?

Hello, white girl here. One of my old friends from college is Chinese. Occasionally, she would say things about Chinese people and Asians in general which struck me as...not right. As a white person, I didn't feel like I had the right to tell her she was wrong, but what she said made me feel uncomfortable. She said that all Chinese people had two basic personality types--they were either obedient nerds who did nothing except study, or they were rebelling against the obedient nerd type.

Sounds like a cool chick.
Why are you bitching about her?

This, she said, was because of how they were raised. She said that this was why she didn't really like Chinese people, and why she definitely won't date any.

Heck yeah.

I'm aware that there are culturally ingrained parenting techniques Chinese parents tend to follow, but I find it hard to believe that there are no exceptions. I also find it hard to believe that there are only two ways that these methods can be responded to.

Surely someone with enough personality to distinguish between stereotypes doesn't fully conform to one.
Have you ever heard of something called a joke?
I'm pretty sure when people say shit like that they aren't being serious.
Or, if they are being serious, they're not totally serious.

If I heard a white person saying these things it would be very easy for me to call them out on it, because it's stereotyping. But it's her culture. I went to high school with a lot of Chinese people and observed a variety of different personality types which contradicted her statement. Her personality contradicted it!

Who
Cares
 What I want to know is--was that the right response?
I've had black people and Asian people do this shit to me and I tell them straight out:
"no matter what I say here I'll look like a racist honky so I'm just not going to say anything at all."
Then they laugh and we all lighten up.

I feel guilty about agreeing with her that all Chinese people are basically the same--it feels like I'm dehumanizing a enormous and varied group of people.

All people are basically the same.
Calling all Chinese people the same isn't racist, then. It's a subset of the above logic which is colorblind by definition.

I've been talking with some POC buddies who are active with online social justice circles, and we shared similar observations and frustrations when it comes to White people in social justice, especially when compared to POCs in social justice.

I am prepared to bring the Emperor's Justice to everyone.
I don't think anyone on this planet is fully prepared for it.
It will be sweeping
It will be swift
It will be characteristically brutal.

Right now I'm tutoring at an ESL school where most of the students are Korean and Japanese. Often in conversation I'm complimented by students on my looks - my blonde hair, blue eyes, large eyes, large breasts, tall, whatnot. When I was in Japan I got compliments like that all the time - which I usually don't mind that much, but one day I had a conversation with my host mother about makeup - I said I never bothered to wear makeup, and she said that's fine because I didn't need it - Japanese women need makeup to make their faces more contoured, but white people already have that. 

OH BOY LET ME GO TO A COUNTRY I UNDERSTAND NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT
It's a manners thing. Ego is a big deal in Japan so they'll never say YEAH I'M FUCKING HOT AS FUCK they'll call themselves ugly.
Here we'd call it false modesty but it's a big deal there.
After that conversation I became really uncomfortable getting compliments on things that basically boil down to racial traits.
"No I'm not pretty, I'm really ugly."
They won't know how to handle that shit.
They don't expect you to know their bizarre system of manners so it's like this weird double down thing.

And sometimes I want to pull out my hair talking to Korean girls - so many beautiful girls want to get plastic surgery, especially eyelid surgery so they can get double-eyelids. On the one hand I recognize that they don't see eyelid surgery as being racially loaded - it's just something that loads of people do in Korea (look at Korean celebrities; 95% of them, men and women, have done it).  

I'll agree that is a sick practice and should stop immediately.
Unless they're ugly.
Speaking of Asian girls with big eyes, have you ever seen Anna Tsuchiya?

How should I respond to compliments like this? I just usually change the topic or avoid answering. I always tell Korean girls "you're beautiful the way you are, you don't need surgery" but I don't know if I'm just being patronizing.

Fuck it, man.
You do realize Asians are on par with white people in terms of ease of offending, right?
They don't really offend.
Well they might, but it will be over stuff besides racism.

At the end of the day I'm the only one reading racial politics into it; Asians in Asia (as opposed to immigrants, that's another can of worms) don't seem to see this stuff as racially related at all.

That's because it isn't.
You're making this about you and it isn't about you.
People are genetically attracted to things that are different yet familiar.
Blue eyes are different for a country that is almost 100% brown eyes.
But I tell you guys who actually have the most luck in Asia are guys with dark eyes and hair because they have similar coloration (at least in passing) but their faces look different.

So should I say anything, or should I just suck it up and stfu?

You should definitely shut the fuck up.

Is anyone aware of any good resources about whites teaching in primarily minority schools? I come from a pretty homogeneously white area. I'm hoping that the summer training will go in-depth into cultural and racial sensitivity, but I don't want to depend on them to provide all the necessary training and support. 

God
You are so many levels of fucked.

I want to prepare myself as best as I can to be as sensitive and aware as possible of the issues my underprivileged students will be facing. I've been collecting journal articles and related book lists, and the fellowship program has provided me with a list of possible resources, but you folks are so great and helpful that I thought you might have suggestions too. 

All right let me break this down for you.
I'm willing to go through this as many times as you need to understand this but I will not accept any whining or whinging because this is the honest fucking truth and I will not have you puss out on me.
So basically 80% of the kids there will refuse to learn.
5% will try but are so fucked they kinda give up
10% will try sometimes but then they'll not try other times. These are your problem students because only rarely do they acknowledge this is of their own doing and they'll try to blame you for why they're failing.
3% don't belong in your class. They belong in a special needs class but either are completely undiagnosed or are technically of average intelligence but are borderline illiterate they just seem to have a learning disability.
1% have a diagnosed learning disability but are being mainstreamed.
1% are actually there, trying, and will succeed.
HAPPY TEACHING~

Anyone have any advice? I know I'm going to make a lot of mistakes, probably multiple times a day, but I want to do right by these kids, to the best of my ability.

Save yourself.
In a parenting debate community, someone just brought up Huck Finn and the original version versus the censored version (where the n-word has been completely replaced with "slave").

Should classic works of literature that have racial slurs be changed for school reading?

Are you out of your fucking mind?
Of course it should be uncensored.

Does it matter the age of the students (middle school versus high school)? Should those books just not be read in schools? Should a teacher avoid reading the book out loud - 

Is it less offensive written than it is spoken?
Also yes you should avoid reading anything out loud. You read at home so we don't have to do it in class.

First, do I, as a white woman, have the right to butt in when I hear one minority making what I interpret to be a racist comment about another minority? I have one experience where an acquaintance (who is Latino) made a disparaging remark about blacks; I didn't say anything, but was silent and visibly uncomfortable. He replied with "It's okay, I'm Latino, I"m allowed to say that." I had no idea how to reply.

What, is it just white people who aren't allowed to say racist things?
Fuck.

This guy at the place I volunteer seems to have a real vendetta against Chinese people - he's gone off multiple times, but "dirty and rude" about sums up what he usually says. I'm not sure where he's from, though I know he's Asian but not Chinese.

Shit, he could be anything. Asians sure hate other Asians.
He might be Chinese, actually.

I know I can't really know a lot of what goes on in relations between different Asians (and I've known people before who resent China for pretty valid political reasons) and I don't know whether it's my business to say anything or not, not to mention I think he's spent time in China, while I haven't, so I haven't got a leg to stand on even if I did counter him.

Soooo shut the fuck up.

The second one is a bit easier - I keep hearing people say that Chinese drivers suck, and I really have no way to yea or nay this through personal experience as I don't drive myself, but it smacks of a racist stereotype to me. Does anyone have some statistics that can shed some light on it? I've searched but had no luck.

In the US if you hold a valid license from another country (except one) you can get a temporary license in the US if you're a tourist.
That one country is China.

Sometimes, the presenters can be pretty condescending to a majority-Latino class. Little things that add up -- instead of counting "one, two, three", they'll say, "uno, dos, tres"; when calling on a student, they'll call him "senor". The sort of thing that you can be easily dismissed for overreacting about when you call 'em out on it, but which amounts to something more significant when it happens over and over again, and -- most importantly -- which the students in the class are certainly picking up on. 

Finding cultural common ground?
Fuck that shit.
YOU SHOULD BE AS UNRELATABLE  AND ALIEN AS POSSIBLE.

Now, when it's the white presenters doing this stuff, my wife has no problem pulling 'em aside to talk about how it's unacceptable. But it's not just the white presenters who do it. The challenge is -- how does a white lady talk to a person of color about how he or she is marginalizing people based on race in a way that's effective? Obviously every presenter of color she works with has more firsthand experience with racism than she does, but that doesn't mean that they're not also capable of acting in a discriminatory fashion. 

Why the fuck do white people have to police everyone about racism?
I kind of liked it when an angry black woman was calling me a racist, actually. At least then I knew what was what.
Now I don't even know what the shit. White women are calling black women racist over comments about Hispanics--
The only thing I can think of now is a cleansing conflagration that will purge the world.

i everyone,

So, I am thinking of going to Paintball with my work colleagues and a friend. It sounds like massive fun, and a great sport to play.

But.

At Action Paintball, there are battlefields named after countries (granted, not all of them are). But it bothers me that they're named after real life countries / battlefields (Like Long Tan, Cambodia, La Drang. There's even one called Gallipoli, as well. Which seems to trivialise the sascrifices made by brave soldiers at Gallipoli). Would you consider this to be racist/an example of cultural appropriation? 

If there's a Khe Sanh I'm so there.
There isn't.
FUCK THIS NOT DOING IT
NO BATTLE OF THE BULGE
NO KHE SANH
WHY BOTHER

(Note: Originally posted at ONTD_feminism, but it quickly got buried under a lot of more recent posts. But if you're a member of that LJ comm, it would be great if you posted there too.) 

Wait, stop. They're giving me targets to review now.
These guys are clearly allies.
Anyway, LOOK FORWARD TO FRIDAY.