OK, dviss, hope you are still reading but would understand if you're not since a lot of shit was posted here. Interesting when you said person of color almost everyone thought Black and then thought poor. Funny, no one when they thought Black thought Barack Obama, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Alice Walker, Misty Copeland. And a lot of whitesplaining about what's wrong in the African-American community (they have bad families and Democrats give them too much free stuff so they became lazy, you know, like prima ballerinas and astrophysicists). To answer your question - give me more information. Would this be a "Black Like Me" experience, where I would have a different skin tone/features but everything else the same? Same life to this point? Well, I'd be a fish out of water, for sure. Transgender people have tried to explain their feelings by asking how would a cis person feel if he/she woke up one day in the body of the opposite sex, but nothing else had changed? That's about how I'd feel. Born and raised white and Jewish and all of a sudden something else? Because "person of color" is not just about skin tone or features. If it were Misty Copeland would not be considered "Black" (look at her). I went to college with, and now work with, a number of Asian women who were always totally focused. They, in college, had no social life, did not date, were not politically active, they were laser beams focused on their work and they are the same as adults. They are often rather insular. I wonder sometimes if they feel happy with this intense focus? Was it what they wanted or family/group pressure? I don't claim to know. So is the "person of color" I become a Chinese woman with a Ph.D. in biochemistry leading a research team at Genentech? Or a working class Black lesbian? Or my Filipina dentist, African-American primary care doctor, Latina eye doctor (who I started going to when my Chinese eye doctor retired)? Did I suddenly become a "person of color" or would I have been born and raised in a different culture? I think if you asked most African-Americans if they'd rather be white they'd say no. They have their own culture and identity they value and would probably not want to give it up. As a feminist I was often accused of wanting to be a man but I never did; I just wanted the same economic, social, cultural, political, sexual rights as men and a society that did not differentiate. And whatever straight men claim, I have never wanted to be hetero. With no alternate universe, dviss, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't know. If I suddenly became another "color" I would NOT like it because it would be like the cis person suddenly becoming the wrong gender; it would feel wrong because it would not be the culture/identity in which I have lived. Aside from how others treated me. OTOH, if I were born/raised in another culture, would I be happier? And which one? I can't say because there is no alternate universe. I know my experiences would definitely be different and I'd have more/different barriers. Dviss, in another conversation I mentioned to you that when I, a midlife white woman, see a cop, I can figure he/she will either ignore me or politely greet me while you, a young African-American male, feel quite differently. But you can walk into a sports bar and see the Blazers on big screen TV; I, a woman, cannot. I'm not sure if I'm being clear. I will not, like some, deny racism exists and it is NOT just the prejudices in people's heads, it is institutionalized just like discrimination against women is institutionalized. Would I want to experience racism? No. I do not enjoy sexism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism, not to mention the prejudice against older women and people with disabilities. I mean, dviss, don't I have enough headaches already?
Oprah, Barack Obama and any astrophysicist are to the black community as Bill Gates, Robert Redford and Stephen Hawking are to the white community. What a joke. Hmmm, weird that people with money out the wazoo aren't out there destroying Milwaukee. Wonder why that is? I can mansplain it for you.
Oh my, I just saw EL PRES eviscerate the shit out of this thread. /fatality Well done sir... /golf clap
No, Milwaukee was "destroyed" by being one of the most segregated cities in America, one of the most unequal, and with one of the highest rates of police brutality. Funny how whitesplainers never bother with facts. No wonder dviss gets irritated.
Does Dviss think that El Pres is white? Here is my response to this thread: I'm glad that I don't go through life seeing everything through a filter that makes me constantly angry at the world. If you want to call that white privilege, so be it, but I guess you can also call it hetero privilege, and man.... privilege? But I'm not well off.... so I can blame the rich for everything, right?
You do realize that using terms like "whitesplain" only makes the matter worse? Disregarding someone's opinion because of the color of their skin is discrimination. If you want to call them an idiot, or an asshole, go right ahead, but your use of that term is not helping.
Haven't you been paying attention? The hetero rich white man. Actually..... that's probably true. They shipped our jobs overseas.
If i woke up as a woman id immediately take pics of my tits and send them to myself for the spank bank. Then id probably play with my cooter for a while before finding a nice girl to scissor with.
I've been avoiding posting here, mainly because this is a toxic waste of a loaded question. No way to handle it without getting some unwanted crap on you. Are we to assume that there's just one way that blacks are treated in this country? We all know that's not true. Black athletes, musicians, actors, politicians, etc. are all treated pretty darned well by society. Blacks working white collar jobs and living in middle class neighborhoods are generally treated fairly. Black government workers, police officers, firemen, and members of the armed forces get a pretty even shake, from what I've seen. So, I assume that we're primarily talking about the lower income black communities in the major urban areas. I would also assume that the question in this thread is mainly aimed at the interaction between those folks and the police. Framing the question that way, I think it's pretty clear that I would prefer to continue to bask in the glow of my white privilege, thank you very much. The last time I got pulled over by a cop, I was clearly in the wrong, having had a mental brain fart. The cop came to the window of my car, I just laughed and apologized. Told him I just got confused about which lane I was in. I showed him my license and registration, he talked with me enough to see I wasn't drunk, and let me off with a warning. Do I think that the interaction would have been the same if I was black, driving a beater car and wearing clothes that don't fit in the white suburban Portland area? Probably not. I probably would have been more fearful and the officer probably would have been more on guard. It sucks that that's all too often the case and I don't pretend to have the answers to this problem. More education for police officers, more working with black communities to improve relations with cops, and definitely more work to root out whatever racists there may be in our police forces. One thing that concerns me about the Black Lives Matter movement is that it's just being framed in the context of blacks being treated unfairly by police and the legal system. I'd like to see a broader meaning to the statement. Black lives matter: meaning the way blacks get to live their lives matters. Better availability of jobs, education, loans for business start-ups. More help for drug addiction and gang problems. It's going to take people working together to make things better and it's going to take time.
I had a situation where I was driving in Hillsboro. I was going to take the onramp to get onto 26 but my friends asked if we could swing by their house so I changed lanes at the last minute. I used my blinker. I wasn't speeding. A cop pulled me over. My friends were drunk. I hadn't had a single drink that night. The cop pulled me out of the car, treated me like a criminal from the moment he got there. As I was talking to him away from my car, another cop car pulled in. Eventually they let me go because I hadn't done anything wrong, but they made a huge deal over me switching lanes. They clearly thought I was drunk. I just wrote it off as cops being assholes and went on my way. If I was Dviss, I would say that they did it because I was black. I would honestly hate to go through life thinking that everything negative that's done to me is because I'm black, or a woman, or gay, or poor, even if maybe that wasn't the case. These cops were just young guy assholes on a power trip. I guess, if that's white privilege, the ability to see things without that filter, then so be it.
Yeah, I don't agree with the last sentence, but otherwise using "whitesplain" or "mansplain" is pretty irritating. The inference seems to be that whites or men, depending upon the situation, state opinions on things where they're not qualified to know what they're talking about. I kind of thought that was the purpose of a forum like this. People state what they're thinking and others can react to that. Seems like a pretty good way for us all to broaden our horizons a bit.
I personally would rather have someone call me an idiot, rather than have them tell me that my opinion is irrelevant because I'm white or a man.
I hadn't thought of it like that and I think that's a pretty good point. Because I'm a middle class white guy, it's not often that I have to wonder if some crap that's just fallen on me happened because of my skin color.
