Solved: Why White Ppl are Assholes

But I don't want to set up a double standard here: there are just as many bad reasons for minority groups to chase after the majority -- status and self-loathing are two not-uncommon ones. I'll admit that I'm slightly less bothered by the idea of someone sitting in the center of an ethnic majority being attracted to it, and this might be unfair or hypocritical of me -- I'll have to think about it. But then I understand the Otherness attraction in either direction -- majority/minority or vice versa -- and I don't think it's some great blameworthy moral wrong: I just think that often involves seeing people as things they're not, in ways that are likely to be hurtful or offputting to them.

(The funny thing is that when white people do this misperceiving to black people, black people largely just get annoyed; when black people do it to white people, white people sometimes don't even notice and just assume that wow, black people must lead really different lives from us!)

It was confessional, yet dishonest. Jane pretends to be horrified by the sexuality that she in fact fetishizes. She subsumes herself to the myth of black male potency, but then doesn't follow through. She thinks she 'respects Afro-Americans,' she thinks they're cool and exotic, what a notch he'd make in her belt. But, of course, it all comes down to mandingo cliché, and he calls her on it. In classic racist tradition she demonizes, then runs for cover. But then, how could she behave otherwise? She's just a spoiled suburban white girl with a Benneton rainbow complex. It's just my opinion, and what do I know?

I certainly do.

I grew-up in a very rural county - population 29,000 or so - only traffic light was over a one-lane bridge, but then the bridge was washed away in a flood and there was no need for the signal anymore (I wonder what they did with it, come to think of it.) The county was predominantly Caucasian, with a healthy representation of Italian, Chinese, and Slavic immigrants from the time of the California Gold Rush. There was also a small Native American population, but they seemed to be segregated, though I didn't realize that at the time. My entire educational time, (K-9th grades) I had a total of two classmates who were African-American. I don't remember there being any racial tensions, but, then again, I wasn't aware of racial problems anywhere - we were that kind of isolated.

Anyway, when I finally escaped that county and made it into the big city ("big city" = any community with more than 5,000 residents), I was fascianted by African-American culture and men and women and everything - it was completely foreign to me, in so many ways - I couldn't comprehend the world that they were living in and they sure as hell couldn't understand Amador County. I dated several African-Americans at this time, and I know that at least some of the attraction was the fact that they were "different" - but not necessarily racially different but culturally different. Sheesh. I am mangling this. Anyway, I wanted to learn from them - I was amazed at their upbringings and family arrangements - it was like being exposed to a completely new world.

I wasn't aware of any stereotypes about African-American males (or females, for that matter) at that time - and I do not think that those tales would have made a difference to me, one way or the other.

Following that period in my life, I moved on to a wonderful romance with a young man from Ghana (whom I still miss and would love to track down, again) and when he went back home I ended-up living with a Persian woman for a while - each of these relationships so broadened my horizons - I liked the fact that we were different - and that therefore we could learn so much from each other. Of course, there were some cultural issues that were difficult to overcome, in each case, but those were on both sides.

Anyway, the odd thing that happened to me, when I first made it to college, was that I didn't realize that African-Americans were the people referred to by the "N -word" and so forth - I'd been so isolated that I had missed all of that socialization. Therefore, I was able to see them as people, and only as people - not as a "group" or a bundle of stereotypes or whatever - they were (and sill are) to me, just people who had a different background from me, the same as my Caucasian and Asian and Slavic and...etc. classmates had.

I am still shocked, sometimes, when I hear someone referred to by their racial grouping. I worked with a Laotian-American woman for six months before it dawned on me that that she was of Asian descent - I just figured that she had dark hair like I did, and the smooth face of my father, and so forth. It's odd - I just so do not get the big deal. I am attracted to people, not their race or their gender - just them.

Having said that, I do find that cultural and such differences create an added appeal, because it's something else to talk about and learn. This was true of my South African girlfriend (who was white, but it would have been exactly as true had she been black) as the woman I talked about upthread, and only slightly less (because the culture is less distant) of my latest girlfriend, who was Italian. (Actually the South African woman was also a wheelchair user, and that was another not dissimilar area of interest, and again I couldn't imagine thinking in terms of whether I like women in wheelchairs. I just liked her.)

One thing I've always loved about my hometown of Lexington, KY (which has given me lots of reasons not to love it) is that we've got a very strongly mixed population ethnically...African-Americans, Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, Euro-Americans, Arab-Americans, etc...and thus I grew up with kids with names as diverse as Lateesha and Alvarez and Phong and Mahmoud and Dave and Hamish and so forth. I think growing up with such a cornucopia of flavors of human existence helped me fully embrace the variety of Earth's humanity.

I don't like to act like I don't acknowledge people's race/ancestry, I prefer to embrace differences...not just ethnic, but also differences in faith and beliefs and class and everything.

If you is a human, the nickalicious is down wit cha. Unless your name is Dubya.

Beaver Harris is dead, so no mo' Blue Humans.

Live in london 1994 with an extra drummer and also clear to higher time. charles gayle does play drums.

also there's a blue humans with rashied ali on drums and sauter on sax. The main live track is v fine.

but the very best blue humans ('Incadescence' on shock and 'Live NY 1980') has beaver harris on drums.

dope thread

So, if I was the white woman in an interracial relationship, that means I'm unattractive? THANKS A LOT, ILX, I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIENDS!!!!

Dueds I am probably going to sound like a weirfo/naïf/backwoods jackass here (classic intro, I know), but here goes me:

I had a hell of racist dad (and still do, haha); grew up in a pop 480 town in rural Idaho. I remember being in elementary school/middle school (mid-'90s) and the fruit stand STILL advertised with a big plywood cutout of a red-lipped black woman with bowed pigtails biting into a slice of watermelon. Mormon, too, not exactly 'diversity-friendly' area/culture. Which is terrible, of course, and I'd seen enough Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow to know this was bad & wrong. But being a six, seven-year-old kid, I still felt I had to "respect" my dad. Not so later on---junior high on it was O NO FITE O NO every time my dad even mentioned black people (never kindly of course). My mom put a moratorium on even telling my dad he was racist because she was tired of fighting at dinner every night.

SO at any rate, I knew it was bullshit and although he was that way, that didn't mean I was. HOWEVER, I couldn't help but be paranoid just passing black people on the street: not because I was afraid of them by any means, but I thought they'd be able to sense a "member of racist family" aura or vibe, or smell it or something.* So I'd of course probably act all weird like a thirteen-year-old shoplifting for the first time or something. I was friends with all the (three, haha) black kids at my high school, I got along with everyone on a personal level. I was just worried strangers could sense this! I saw an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine says she's figured out just how long to look at strangers to not make them feel ignored or stared at. holy fuck that's what I'm doing, I thought.

Well, later on, I realized that no one could "sense" things on me like that but I still feel like I have to "prove," somehow, when I am walking by a black dude on campus that I'm not a dick and I don't hate them, like my dad. I'm just fine with people individually. I just realized yesterday I still this and I feel foolish about it.

*NB I wasn't born with a sense of smell, so I'm not ascribing Super Smell Power to anyone; I just never knew what was smellable. ie I thought my parents might be able to smell it when I lost my virginity and the game would be given away.

sesame street was pretty damn great at the whole "everyone of every colour is cool and shit" thing, but it got me in a shitload of trouble when i was about 4... there'd been an episode about japanese people, and that same day we walked past this asian dude and i yelled out at the top of my lungs "LOOK MUM IT'S A JAPANESE PERSON!!!"

asian dude got very angry; he yelled back that he was "KOREAN, NOT JAPANESE!!" and looked like he was ready to throttle me.

Sesame St oughta hip the kids to the fact that azians all hate each other

remember when Hank Hill and Khan bonded over their mutual dislike of Russians

honestly Abbott I think that's a pretty normal experience, feeling feverishly committed to not being one of your parents in a dimension in which they are particularly offensive. I think you're being kind of hard on yourself about it.

also this:

I wasn't born with a sense of smell, so I'm not ascribing Super Smell Power to anyone; I just never knew what was smellable. ie I thought my parents might be able to smell it when I lost my virginity and the game would be given away.

is amazing!

and the aside from the opening post (not in a P Larkin way, altho that too, have sex w/ me & I'll tell you all about it) is the best aside ever.