Blog Against Racism Day
Here's a link to my post in honor of Blog Against Racism day (today's the 50th anniversary of Rosa Park's arrest, for you Canadians in the house).
posted by landismom @ 8:41 AM
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3 Comments:
At 3:22 PM,
Tammy said…
Great post, landismom. It made me really think about my own (multi)cultural reference points.
Growing up in Nowhereville, Ontario, the only black people I had any experience with were, in order, Gordon and Maria and Jon-Jon from Sesame Street, Willis and Arnold from Diff'rent Strokes, TC from Magnum PI, and the Cosbys. So while my reference points weren't negative, per se, they were extremely limited. I basically thought that black people were all pretty much exactly like me, except cooler and funnier.
This would be all well and good if the world were actually the shiny, happy Benetton ad I've been programmed to believe it is. It's interesting how popular entertainment tries to whitewash (whoa... pun not intended) racial issues with this I'm-okay-you're-okay kind of imagery.
I know and work with lots of people of different ethnicities, and I've always considered myself colour-blind. Other than filing away someone's ethnicity among the other descriptors I use to keep track of the people I know, I tend not to think about race. I'd always thought that was a good thing, until I read your post and realized that I could be invalidating important and significant differences between us.
Hmmm... food for thought. It definitely makes me feel uneasy with myself, which is probably a sign I should think about it some more.
At 7:33 PM,
Cataclysm said…
Hey Landismom,
Great post! Reminded me of a Vietnamese Amercian guy (a refugee family who'd settled in the midwest) and when I asked him how he felt during our year in Singapore, he told me to read Maya Angelou's "All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes" (where Maya goes to teach in Liberia - awesome book!)... not to stumble into Doppelganger's territory here or anything...
All I remember by being around so many Asians in S'pore is a self-image of being very tanned - then whenever I saw my reflection anywhere, I was nearly blinded. The next year, I moved to Harlem, NYC trying to make it big in international politics, where life is hard for a lot of people. There was a sign in the laundromat asking people to take out their pens, coins, bullets, keys before using the dryers.
In Harlem though, the line between the shit that just happens to people and the whole racism thing got blurred for me.
My Mom said a couple of years ago that we are all racist and, well, yes and no. I still haven't really worked that one through whether I agree with her or not.
So thanks again for this thought provoking post!
Kris
At 7:33 PM,
Cataclysm said…
Hey Landismom,
Great post! Reminded me of a Vietnamese Amercian guy (a refugee family who'd settled in the midwest) and when I asked him how he felt during our year in Singapore, he told me to read Maya Angelou's "All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes" (where Maya goes to teach in Liberia - awesome book!)... not to stumble into Doppelganger's territory here or anything...
All I remember by being around so many Asians in S'pore is a self-image of being very tanned - then whenever I saw my reflection anywhere, I was nearly blinded. The next year, I moved to Harlem, NYC trying to make it big in international politics, where life is hard for a lot of people. There was a sign in the laundromat asking people to take out their pens, coins, bullets, keys before using the dryers.
In Harlem though, the line between the shit that just happens to people and the whole racism thing got blurred for me.
My Mom said a couple of years ago that we are all racist and, well, yes and no. I still haven't really worked that one through whether I agree with her or not.
So thanks again for this thought provoking post!
Kris
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