One of the things the cons like to say, in the hopes of keeping people from looking too hard at their playing on racial fears to win votes, is that racism and the Southern Strategy are either dead and gone in America or just not big deals any more. They’re certainly not being used by the right wing and Republicans for nefarious political purposes, oh no.
Well, in that case, the wedding of (Hispanic actress) Eva Longoria and (black basketball star) Tony Parker shouldn’t be something that would attract a lot of negative comment, right? Right?
Guess again. Check out these comments, left by signed-in AOL users, from the AOL comments thread on this story:
mixspop 06:36:21 PM Jul 07 2007
bet she ends up like nicole simpson they will never learn
x1b78 06:04:56 PM Jul 07 2007
A wetback and a French jungle bunny what a pair
hineddh 04:28:00 PM Jul 07 2007
those mexican american women explode after there forties they are known as four b y fours four foot and three hundred lbs or four
ineddh 04:20:28 PM Jul 07 2007
so what race will there kids be mexfrican americans i
hineddh 04:19:36 PM Jul 07 2007
Just what the world need more mix blood marriages mexfricans= mulato kids
Of course, “hineddh” made the comment about Latinas being “four by fours” shortly after proclaiming himself to be Tejano:
hineddh 04:12:35 PM Jul 07 2007
eva longoria being should have married into her own culture ,dayum there are somany tejanos in south texas sure could use her money why do mexican american girls marry white guys and otms gd nowomder some of us cant find wives of our our blood they are all out to get rich from other races soon our tejano blood will extinct no one marrys in there owneace any more nothing but mulato mix blood kis those kids will be so confused theycant indentify with texas his panics or us blacks they will be mexafricans
Why do I have the feeling that the reason ‘hineddh’ can’t get laid has more to do with his personality (or complete lack thereof) than his ethnicity?
But here are some more charmers:
gasser1188 03:12:20 PM Jul 07 2007
Never marry a mexican broad they will steal the silverware and cheat on you with their brother
a1b2c7 03:11:13 PM Jul 07 2007
Is Eva technically a midget or a dwarf wetback?
x1b78 03:10:19 PM Jul 07 2007
Is Eva technically a midget or a dwarf wetback?
x1b78 03:07:17 PM Jul 07 2007
Eva is a midget mexican she is the size of a Chihuahua. Parker will drink some Colt 45s after losing a basketball game and come home and beat her like a piniata
cheryljim430 02:59:41 PM Jul 07 2007
She is a beautiful woman, why would she want a black man
bebeblisss 02:44:31 PM Jul 06 2007
she finally got the black coc*, she so desperately wanted-
Mind you, this wasn’t on Stormfront or VDare or any other known racist site. This was in a thread on AOL.
And these were just the blatantly racist ones. There were a bunch of other comments in which the commenters posted variations on “who cares?” As several folks later in the thread commented, why are they posting in the thread — often at great length — if they really don’t care? (The answer, of course, is that they do care — it pisses them off to see a black man and a Latina together, but unlike the people I’ve just quoted, they know better than say so straight out.) To be sure, there were also a fair amount of AOLers taking the racists to task as well, which made me feel a bit better about humanity.
By the way: ‘Taint just AOL. The comments thread for the Yahoo version of this story is studded with similar bons mots. I’ll spare you a recitation — for one thing, it looks as if the Yahoo readers who aren’t racist have been voting those comments off the island — and just leave you with a comment left by one of the sane people:
OK-i just happened upon this whole thing and I think that the it’s pitiful that the topic of everlasting love & marriage has turned to comments of racism and hate. Grow up-really. And coon??? As a person who was raised in the South but now live in NY-I can say to you go back to your hole and don’t come out until you’ve learned a little something about respect. This isn’t 1950.
What was that about racism no longer being a big deal again?
Cripes, racism informs damned near every aspect of life in America. Look at the post-war growth of the suburbs, for instance. It was made possible by the car, but the car (especially the Model T) had been in the garages of most Americans by the 1920s; what triggered the white exodus from the cities was in fact the migration of blacks from the South to places like Chicago and New York and other Northern cities. And Republican opposition to the latest immigration reform bill came not from any concern that the immigrants might be exploited by shady employers looking to undercut other workers’ wages, but out of a naked racist dislike of “wetbacks”. You know, like Eva Longoria.
As William Faulkner had his character Gavin Stevens say in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Related posts:
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Zedland?
Double Gitmo!!
Phoenix Woman!
hineddh is a real brain trust, huh? It’s hard to imagine that people think the way these folks do. Good catch, PW.
‘Sup?
I wonder if these are the same people who feel that all life is precious? These comments are just shameful.
welcome to the internet. If you think those comments are bad, you should check out the rants/raves threads on Craigslist.
Stories like this make me want to vomit and make me very sad and scared for my daughter who is half Korean and half Caucasian.
As the parent of two biracial teenagers (daughter and son), I’d say these racists are fighting a losing battle against the movement of History as Hegel conceived it. Globalization is one symptom of this movement.
First off: the US is the most multi-ethnic and multicultural country on earth. And second: Americans under 28 years old constitute the most ethnically diverse (and in some cases ethnically amibiguous) group in the world.
I say all this knowing that hate and loathing are both part of human nature, and are often they directed at marginalized groups in societies all over the world.
Racism in the US is further complicated by the ugly history and slavery and lynching. Racism is not peculiar to the US. But given what is currently happening with the immigrant situation in various countries in Europe and in an Asia-Pacific country like Australia, racism is at least being acknowledged as a problem best engaged by legal, political, and economic institutions, which is certainly not the case in Canada or Brazil, where they’re deluded as self-proclaimed color-blind societies, and therefore where ethnic minorities who are targets of racism have no legal recourse.
Sorry I’m late! (Running a virus scan on the ‘puter.) Did everyone get their zeds?
Bookwoman @ 6: Egggszacktly. ;-)
“Just so long as they are white/They are precious in our sight…”
Good catch, PW.
You (and everyone else on this thread) will probably appreciated the bizarre “logic” of this letter posted in the Anchorage Daily News today.
The hypocrisy of these people is truly, utterly unbelievable sometimes.
Only one of us got the zed. ;)
that’s some nasty sh*t.
to add insult to “injury”, Tony Parker is French – guaranteed to “gaulle” the freedom-fry rightards.
How disgusting! And racism is alive and well in America. Check out this link to a story at Pandagon. “Jena Six” is a story straight out of the 1960’s and I can’t believe this is happening today right under our noses.
I emailed the story to all my contacts and urged them to sign the petition. I guess at this point these kids’ only hope is an enlightened appeals process. What is happening in this country????
http://pandagon.net/2007/07/11…..#more-5707
oh, and Happy Bastille Day, aux enfants de la patrie.
It’s amazing the establishment level of denial of the strength of racism through all American culture these days.
It’s mostly in code, but of late, it’s getting more naked, just as you point out, PW.
Tony the Shitheel Snow said racism was dead. That should be enough.
-GSD
The examples you cite are bad, and sadly typical, but anti-African American and anti-Hispanic racism in the MSM is an everyday issue too. And even more blatant is the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim crap that you can witness, not daily, but hourly, whether it is on CNN – Glenn Beck – or C-SPAN – the callers who routinely use racist terms to describe Arabs, Palestinians, Iranians, and on and on… MSM hosts often get in trouble for anti-Black or anti-Latino comments, but are rarely disciplined for anti-Arab slams, no matter how egregious.
Biodun @ 9
Oh, yes. And it’s even worse in places like France and even England to an extent. One of the biggest (if not THE biggest) reasons for the unrest among Muslim populations in Europe is that they are shoved down to the bottom of the economic ladder and kept there. By contrast, Muslims in America (with the exception of the newer Somali immigrants) are usually in the upper-middle-class, if not higher; that’s one reason that they voted Republican until fairly recently, when they dropped the GOP and voted Democratic (something about being used by BushCo as a scapegoat, y’know).
punaise @ 13
Yep. Right with you on that one. As you know too well, Americans in general have always had a love-hate relationship with France. And in all fairness, vice-versa. Chirac only exacerbated this phenomenon with the War of–and Occupation in–Iraq.
Priscilla, Queen of the Beach @ 14
An all-white jury a couple of weeks ago convicted one black kid of 2nd degree assault–a prosecutorially reduced charge from the original attempted murder. the other five are still awaiting trial.
I’ve blogged about it last week and the week before.
The good news out of this is, these fine Republicans have derailed Karl Roves plan for GOP majorities forever. The “Hispanic” voter was crucial for the “plan”. If the Republicans had been able to pass, even a moderately fair plan, and avoided the “Brown bashing” racist crap..we would be screwed. The best thing LBJ did was run these cretins out of the Dem party.
Re: the picture.
I’d say that is one beautiful young couple.
perhaps I’m having one of my occasional “dense days,” but I am struggling to understand why this post is anything but a waste of time and bandwidth.
It is hardly news that there are still far too many bigoted idiots in this country. It also is hardly news that ours is not the only country so afflicted. Tony Parker faces far more bigotry in his hometown than he does in the city in which he currently works. As will Eva if they settle in Paris when Tony’s career ends.
Do you categorically deny that we are making progress on this issue? Or is that progress too slow for your liking?
That’s a handsome couple … and I do mean that.
I feel sorry sometimes for those who think that skin color/religion/ethnic origin is all that a person is. (Yes, I feel sorry sometimes for Benny-the-pope. He’s limiting himself, in trying to tell Ghu how to run things.)
punaise:
Happy Bastille Day to you too, mon vieux. We always celebrate this at an exquisite French restaurant in whatever city in the world we find ourselves in le Quatorze Juillet…
punaise @ 15
Important post, PW, thank you for writing it.
In honor of Bastille Day (& in case no one has already posted it here), a memorable rendition of La Marseillaise, from Casablanca:
Casablanca- Marseillaise Scene
I grew up in the mid-south and have considered myself a liberal for my entire adult life. My hometown handled integration about as well and quietly as it could be done. Even with that, I know that there are large segments of the coountry where the racism is virulently alive.
For me, it was during the years I was stationed in Hawaii that it all really became most clear to me. I was in the minority for the first time and experienced in some small measure what the ethnic and racial minorities experience every day for their entire lives. One thing to know things intellectually, quite another to experience them in your own life.
Racism is NOT some loosely related class of deeds.
Racism is a system of interrelated acts, practices, policies, and ideas based on the idea of the inherent superiority of the racist culture over any represented by any minority of its citizens.
Racism isn’t “bad” for everybody. It’s good for those who benefit from it: in the US, that’s the majority of the mediocre middle of white culture which has to reconcile their acute inability to actually succeed with the advantages they alone enjoy to promote that success…
Racism persists because it is in the interests of the majority that it persist.
Me @ 9:
I meant racism in the US is at least acknowledged as a problem…
Speaking of racism, has anyone figured out what Tom Tancredo was doing at the NAACP GOP “debate” — all alone? How much dog-whistling was in his speech, about immigrants taking good jobs?
Rove said that he and Cooper were working on a Welfare Reform story – but they talked about Niger.
hmmmmmmm…
It was St. Ronnie who said [ referring to the “race problem”
that had been cooked up by a bunch of liberal troublemakers ] ,
“When I was a kid, we didn’t even know we had race problem in this country.”
Needless to say, the facts say otherwise, but of course the facts have a liberal bias.
Biodun @ 9
What specific legal recourse against racism do American minorities have that Canadians and Brazilians do not have?
Pachacutec @ 16
Yup. It started back in the 1980s, under Reagan. In fact, during a TV interview with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, the former First Lady pointed out that Reagan had made it acceptable for people to be racists again (this is a wild paraphrase of something I saw a quarter-century ago, but that was the gist). And really, with his deliberate choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers — as his campaign kickoff, Reagan and/or his handlers were dog-whistling to the religio-racist right, letting them know “we’re on your side” without having to actually do a white sheet.
awesome (and depressing, because true) post. thank you pw.
merci, Biodun et Marie Roget.
there’s plenty of racism in France. The Marseillaise, with all its patriotic fervor, is often appropriated by the xenophobic Front National:
Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
…
To arms citizens
Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows
Phoenix Woman @ 19:
Somalis in the Twin Cities are moving gradually up the economic and educational ladder. Give it another generation or so. Their influx into the US, and especially into the Twin Cities (which, BTW, has the largest Somali population in the US, and second in the world only to Mogadishu!), began only in the early 1990s.
Steve-AR @ 22
LBJ — a Texan and a Southerner himself — did so knowing he’d lose the South to the Republicans for at least the next generation. But he knew it had to be done.
Now, we’re starting to reap the rewards of his courageous stand. The Republicans and their big-business backers are beginning to find that they are going to be left behind if they continue to seek power solely by appealing to the base parts of us.
Marie Roget @ 27
La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People) by Eugène Delacroix
Priscilla, Queen of the Beach @ 14
democracynow.org did their whole program on that,last Thursday I think.
Priscilla, Queen of the Beach @ 14
I don’t know how long pandagon has been following this, but I do know that elle, PhD has been since it began.
I echo — they look gorgeous together.
As for the “tejano” quoted in the article, that just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh…if he’s tejano, he’s mestizo six ways from sunday. I concur: he’s grouchy cos he can’t get laid (and I guarantee it’s not cos of his colour).
I do hope #9 is right. I am so sick and tired and cranky at all these subneanderthals who pick the most inconsequential things to discriminate about…
I think that nobody but your family has a right to say anything about who you want to marry, and even your family should only care if the person loves you enough and not their color or race or gender.
a “little” racism is like a ‘little’ plague, or a ‘little’ HIV.
even the varied States, through unequal application of drug laws, and the like, are still free to practice racism, though ‘we’ve’ devised rhetorical ways to avoid calling it that.
W.I. Thomas, America’s first internationally acclaimed sociologist said of reality: “That is ‘real’ which is real in its consequences.” The same can be said of racism.
Fern @ 33:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 for starters. The Voting Rights Act. Equal Employment Opportunity. Brown V the Board of Education. (Oh I know SCOTUS is now trying to roll this back.) Numerous state and municipal ordinances around the country.
TeddySanFran @ 31
Aunt Betsy has a picture of that.
Excellent diary PW. I currently live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and have, as an adult, also lived in Shreveport, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia. I can attest that these three cities have lots of good non racist people, but also have lots and lots and lots (that’s 3 lots) of racists. I’ve known some personally and every one of them was either a republican or voted republican.
I believe this will play out in the 2008 election if Obama is our nominee. Don’t get me wrong. I like Obama and I’ll vote for him if he’s our nominee (though I’m for Edwards in the primaries). But I do not think America will elect Obama. That’s just me being real, for all of my experience at living in the south. I’m sure others who’ve lived in the South will agree with me, and others will disagree. Fine. I’m just relaying my experience.
I want to believe America is actually better than that, but I don’t. I just don’t see it. Not yet.
OT It will probably come as no surprise to anyone – Gilmore has dropped out of the prez race. Can McCain be far behind?
Interracial marriage is the best weapon against these knuckle dragging, knucklehead racists.
Live with it.
If humanity lives another two-thousand years there will only be one race.
Biodun @ 38
Yup. I like the Somali presence if for no other reason than this: They’re making pant suits perfectly acceptable attire for women at all levels of the business ladder. During the 1980s, the Cities (along with much of the rest of the country) suffered under the tyranny of John “Dress for Success” Rosemond, who didn’t like seeing women in slacks. Now with the Somali women — who have no problem at all with slacks and jeans — such a big presence, I don’t have to wear dresses to work ever again!
GOP’s finest moment ~ Race Relations 101
Lou Costello @ 50
That is the same pic.
Racism is another “lizard brain trait” that unites all of humanity. At the moment, I can’t think of a country where, if I was there enough time, I didn’t see it or here it. Fortunately the “thinking” part of the human brain can move past our bio-programs and do better.
Biodun @ 9..Even Australia is making progress..isn’t ‘07 the 40th year since the native people were re-classified from “local wildlife” and given human status?
eCAHNomics @ 41
Tuesday. A dynamite program about a newly re-emerging Jim Crow horror story in the deep South.
Biodun @ 45
We’ve actually got pretty good human rights legislation (federally and provincially) and employment legislation here as well.
SnarKassandra @ 52
This picture says everything that needs to be said about the Repugs. Sickening!
SnarKassandra @ 46
He was the only GOP nominee who showed up. There’s that point.
There’s the picture of him ALONE on the stage with all those EMPTY podiums with names on the tippity top of the podiums denoting the absent ReTHUG. There’s that point.
Other than that, I’d be interested in what the NAACP had to ask Mr. Tancredo.
Oh, and just a teensey (how the f*ck do ya that!) little FYI….all the Democratic nominees showed up.
MmHmm!
Phoenix Woman @ 35
This is apropos here as well as other threads I’ve posted it but:
Jimmy Carter tried to force us to live up to our professed ideals while Ray-guns made people feel good about their hates and prejudices. Carter’s way required much more work and was much more difficult. Ray-guns offered the path of least resistance.
punaise @ 36
Yes, lots of racism in France & throughout Europe. Canada has a goodly share too, as does the good old US, witness the post above. And this is 2007, not 1907 or even 1957.
There are many ways out there to interpret the lyrics of La Marseillaise. I tend to look @ the French National Anthem more as a call to physical action against tyranny when all else has been tried & failed. Mais, chacun a son gout…
Also, thanks, john in sacramento @ 39 for the Delacroix link. That particular painting is always an inspiration.
Are there any countries that don’t have racism? Do people always care what color your skin is?
SnarKassandra @ 58
Cassie: The simple answer to this one is no.
Biodun @ 38
Progress can be so slow, human nature so quick to look for someone “beneath” them so they can feel superior.
I have African-American friends who dislike Somalis (they’re lazy, they steal, etc etc). When I hear remarks like this I usually point out that my Swedish immigrant grandmother said the exact same thing about the “shiftless Irish” who arrived later. I will admit to strong biases but mine are against certain white people of a certain immigrant group (not irish) due to the atmosphere in the town i grew up in. I try not to hold it against them. And when people from that group make racist remarks, especially against Asians, I go on a rant about the good ol USA nuking the wrong country at the end of WW2. Totally snark as my friends know, but it leaves the racists with mouths hanging open as they try to find a way to refute my snarky arguments. (To be very clear, I have dearly loved relatives & friends in that group of people and my bias is SNARK)
dakine01 @ 28
Weren’t we just discussing this? ;-)
SnarKassandra @ 44
Amen.
newdealfarmgrrrlll @ 63
I just added you to my facebook friends.
Rayne @ 64
Yes, I believe we were!
OT but for those who followed the thread with Darcy Burner today, the Rs must be really concerned for her chances given the number of sock-puppets and concern trolls that were popping up.
Miguel Garcia @ 47
I know what you mean. I’d like to think he could win, and much of the time I do, but I suspect that even with the Perfect Storm coming up next year he’d have a hard time beating a mediocre Republican, and the polling so far bears this out. (If he were in the VP slot, that’d be a different matter. I can see an Edwards-Obama ticket doing really, really well.)
The deal is that people tend to underestimate the impact of racism in America. They think that racism was kinda bad for a while, but it’s not so bad now. The reality is that it was horrific for centuries, and is still bad now: There has indeed been progress, but we still have a loooong way to go. Racism is still very real, but people no longer dress in their Sunday best to attend public lynchings, even in places like Dallas.
Ken Burns’ Baseball series shows this really well. Both how bad it still is, and how really, really, REALLY horrible it was.
For example: Many of you probably knew that Ty Cobb once stormed the stands and nearly beat to death a handicapped man who was heckling him. His teammates didn’t like Cobb that much — when he died, only three people attended his funeral — but when he was suspended for a few games for his deed, his teammates benched themselves in solidarity as they felt the provocation from the handicapped man more than justified Cobb’s reaction.
What did Cobb’s victim say, that the players all felt was so heinous that it justified being beaten nearly to death?
He called Cobb a “half-n*gg*r”.
That, at least, has improved in the intervening century.
SnarKassandra @ 60
“Racism” is only one sub-set of a more general human thought process. I guess it began with the view that there was “your family group” and then the “others”. The you looked at things that made the “others” other. It is really amazing the small differences that people can see to distinguish the others. Maybe 500,000 years ago it was useful, today it is not.
Hey Dakine – where in the mid-south – anywhere near Memphis?
SnarKassandra @ 66
Thank you! I’m honored.
Steve-AR @ 67
But my family group has several colors and differences. But I know what you mean. My dad’s family hates my mom and they aren’t very nice to us.
Biodun @ 61
And the nature of the racism can sometimes be surprising. In Canada, Aboriginals bear the brunt of racism in this country. But then I’ve heard Aboriginals trash talking Pakistanis and filippos. And there are issues between between first nations and Inuit…
And in Japan, mixed race people, mostly the children of American servicemen and Japanese women, have a very hard time of it.
Everyone’s got someone to look down on.
Well I look down on racists.
newspaperbrat @ 70
Small town in north central Kentucky 35 miles north of Lexington, 60 miles south of Cincinnati.
My biggest memories of Memphis (besides it being the home of one of my most favorite record companies – not Sun BTW) is sitting on the field at Memphis memorial stadium 7/3/74 at an Eric Clapton concert looking up and seeing myself reflected back in the mirror’d sunglasses of John Law while puff puf passing. Fortunately, there were something over 50K others doing the same thing so he just glared at us all.
Twain @ 49
I can’t wait to see Senator John Warner’s (R-VA) 2nd quarter numbers. He raised $500 in the first quarter. If he’s still at that pace, he’s not running for re-election. Maybe Gilmore will run for his seat, which would set up a bruising GOP primary with Tom Davis. Leaving the field clear for Mark Warner to take the seat for the Dems in 2008.
Jesus was a Capricorn
He ate organic food
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes
Long hair, beard and sandles
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon we’d just nail him up
If he came down again
Chorus:
‘Cause everybody’s gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin’ somethin’ dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me
Eggheads cussing rednecks cussing
Hippies for their hair
Others laugh at straights who laugh at
Freaks who laugh at squares
Some folks hate the Whites
Who hate the Blacks who hate the Klan
Most of us hate anything that
We don’t understand
Chorus
Fern @ 72
Yup. As my Chinese friends point out, even in China there’s some friction between folks from different areas, or of different dialects, and even between shades of skin. One of my friends is very beautiful, but she’s darker skinned than other Chinese working for the same company HERE in the U.S.; they keep their distance. Weird.
And then the folks who move to the U.S., even if they might have been born in the homeland of their parents and are fluent in their parents’ tongue, are treated differently, too.
More strangeness.
dakine01 @ 74
I grew up 50 miles south of Memphis.
Crazy about Beale Street.
Steve-AR @ 68
I think we were probably all tribal at some point back in the dim reaches of time. And your tribe/kinship group was who you relied on to survive.
quite frankly the racism is explained by jealousy.
I’m guessing those aren’t women by and large posting hateful racist messages.
it’s white guys who see her on ‘Desperate Housewives’ and photo layouts and she’s pretty hot.
They are jealous of what they can’t have.
I was recently looking for an apartment in Berkeley. I was on the phone w/the lease agent who I had spoken to several times, but had never met. This was the first day this unit was being shown and she was literally directing me to the building b/c it wasn’t easy to find.
Another agent from the same office was waiting at the building to show the unit and she couldn’t have known that I was talking to someone from her office on my cell phone.
When I finally arrived, the other agent was just leaving the unit. She asked if she could help me and I explained that I wanted to see the unit for rent. She said, “it’s already rented”, and closed the door and walked to her car. I asked her how it could be rented so quickly, since it had literally been showing for 10 minutes. She repeated, “it’s rented”, started her car and began to drive away. The agent on the phone was yelling at me on the phone to tell the other agent that the unit WAS NOT rented.
I tried to tell the agent that I was on the phone with her co-worker who was assuring me the unit was available, but she just drove off.
The woman on the phone was very confused and apologetic. She said she couldn’t understand what just happened. I couldn’t bring myself to explain to the woman who had been so nice and encouraging on the phone that I knew quite well what had just happened. I’m a black man and , unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.
I look at those two people and think, “Gosh, they’re beautiful. I bet their kids would be gorgeous.”
How on earth could anybody hate them for being in love?
TRex @ 80
Yeah!
The good news seems to be that today’s youth are growing up in a much more globalized culture, and rascism is fading fast amongst them.
Fern @ 73
Mixed race Koreans also have a great deal of difficulty, especially the children of service members. When Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl a couple of years ago the topic got forced to the front page as the SB MVP was a mixed race African American/Korean.
GordonM @ 82
Lots of kids at my HS are racist. A bunch aren’t but a lot are. And everyone, even the teachers, expect the white kids to be in honors classes.
mods:
it’s hard to take part in a conversation when any remarks i make are withheld for upawrds of five minutes, until the conversation has passed on, and left whatever relevance my remarks might have had in the dust?
gnowattahmean?
i know3 this is not par for the course for everyone, cuz it’s not even par for thecourse for me, most days.
Wassgoinon?
TRex @ 82
Hawaii has a large mixed race population and some of the msot beautiful people I’ve ever seen.
During WWII, my dad was stationed in Alaska. While there he married an Ingalikmiut woman, who had been ‘transferred’ to Nome because of the war. My older brother, Dan, was biracial. Somehow my father ended up with Dan alone, who was then moved in with his grandmother & lived with his grandmother in Diomede until he was about 6 and then they moved back to Nome so he could go to school. He came to live with us when he was 15 in Boise; we were little, I was the oldest at 6 myself. Later when I read his journals after he was killed while in the Navy, he wrote about how he was treated. He felt at home in New Zealand and Japan. In Japan, he wrote, some Japanese thought he was Japanese. I also remember his funeral (I was 11) and how we were all sobbing our little eyes out and some ‘christian’ woman standing behind us asked another why we were crying because “he was just their half-brother, not even a real brother.” I’ve NEVER forgotten those words; I’ve never forgotten that woman nor her name. Because it was my older brother who, if anyone, shaped how I view people.
As an aside, a sister who was a baby when Dan came to us and barely remembers his visit as a 3 & 4 yr-old, ran a daycare. One day, one of the kids told her they didn’t want to sit by so-and-so. Upon enquiry, it was because “they’re brown.” A discussion ensued at that point, and then it was brot to the attention of the parents (who both just happened to show up that day). They swore they didn’t talk like that at home. The very next day, these children return and inform my sister that our little brown children were “half-breeds” because their parents were Hispanic and Shoshone-Bannock (NDN). My sister said she got this visceral response and she absolutely knew it was because of our older brother. She just could not tolerate any language that defamed him.
Boy, they are both beautiful people. I hope it works out for them. So few celebrity relationships seem to. It must be a incredibly difficult to live under so much pressure all the time.
SnarKassandra @ 85
We are wasting so many of our young people because we don’t seem to recognize that your intellect has nothing to do with skin color. We must find a way to help all children reach their goals.
dakine01 @ 86
I am mixed race. At least two. Maybe three. And I will be pretty if I stop getting zits and get my hair to stay where I put it.
Okay, this is kinda funny, but shows how pervasive stereotypes and expectations are.
I was in a meeting with a Japanese man who spoke with a heavy german accent – except I didn’t recognize the accent until he explained that he had grown up in Germany. Click. But it totally disoriented me for a few minutes.
PW:
do you think Obama’d accept the VP post?
he wants the whole enchilada, n’est pas?
VPs don’t have a sterling record getting the top spot (w/o the assassin’s intervention)…
me? i’m dubious
Mod note: As you have mentioned before this is not the only site you have troubles with being moderated. Perhaps you should wonder why.
Fern @ 78
Yes, and to some extent even today, it’s how minority groups protect themselves from abuse by a majority culture; they “circle up the wagons”. African-American folks, for example, rely heavily on their church as an organizing structure; you’ll receive the most trust from your own family and secondly from your own church. You’ll be received less readily by other churches until you’ve become part of a family and therefore part of their own church. It’s extremely important to understand this when doing community outreach, that depending on the ethnic group, there are different cultural structures that one has to understand in order to make real progress.
What boggles my mind is that we are all of us a polyglot of genetic mutations and yet we all come from the same roots. Look at Spencer Wells’ work for the Genographic Project and how our genes have criss-crossed the planet; look at the faces of Inuit and Philippino and Polynesians, First Nation and Mongols, and see the same features appearing across their peoples. Amazing; all races are differentiated by less than 1% of the genome, and yet they discriminate against each other?
Agh. Madness, madness, madness.
Rayne @ 77
In the US the racial dynamic has been black/white. But as you point out the same underlying “thought process” is expressed very differently and can be very subtle. In Japan, a family will have the background of a possible spouse investigated for as many generations as possible to make sure there is no Ainu “blood” in the family. Ten years ago, I traveled off the beaten track by train in China. They could make group distinctions that were very subtle. Han were very proud to be Han.
TRex @ 82
How could someone hate someone else for being a different ethnic group? Answer that question and you answer yours.
I keep flashing back to something Dr. Craig Venter, one of the people who helped catalog the human genome, said on Charlie Rose’s show a while back. I can’t recall exactly what he said, but it was basically that genetically, white people and black people are no more different from each other than they are from other individuals in their own ethnic groups. The external appearance represents so little of what we are that it’s almost laughable to divide ourselves up that way. And yet, we do.
What’s not to love- from Berlin last September, Equipe Tricolore singing w/fans:
La Marseillaise- Berlin 9/06, La Finale
TRex @ 91
Yeah. It’s grimly hilarious to see all the people calling her out for allegedly robbing the cradle because she’s — gasp! — seven years older than him! Meanwhile, Fred Thompson marries a woman younger than his kids and nobody bats an eye.
SnarKassandra @ 86
They keywords are “a bunch aren’t”, and that is very different. Todays kids don’t buy into homophobia (a huge statistical shift). Racism is harder, because of the visual difference. Most racism actually boils down to blaming a group for your economic anxieties, so rascism erupts in financially troubled times. We’re living in economically difficult times, so it is unfortunately expected. But polls show that todays kids feel vastly more connected to the outside world than ever before.
Much as I hate to say it, many melanin deprived folks such as myself are very large a**holes.
Aw. You know, I had really, really bad acne as a teenager. I still get the occasional really hideous monster zit (like today, oddly enough, or rather, like the last few days), but it’s not like it was.
Just wash your face twice a day, Cassie. Drink eight glasses of water a day. And don’t put anything on your skin that isn’t recommended by your dermatologist. A lot of those commercial acne preparations like Clearisil just make the problem worse by killing surface cells and blocking up your pores.
And take comfort in the fact that oily skin means you’ll stay younger looking longer.
I hear it from all sides being in a mixed blood ethnic diverse family. The El Salvadorians make terrible comments about the children who have a white mother and El Salvadorian father – really hurtful comments directly to the children. Go figure! The whites mixed with black ridicule the Cajuns mixed with American Indians. The whites mixed with black make the most awful anti-Semitic comments about the members of the family of Jewish background. The whites are wry of all of them as only a very few are of European ancestry. These are all their relatives. The Italian members are Dego by the non-Italians. The non-Cajuns refer to Cajuns as Coonass along with other local terms, and on and on and on.
When called on it they all say exactly the same thing, “I don’t mean nothin’ by it. Just havin’ some fun. Lighten up.”
I must have come from unusual parents. If I said anything nasty about a person I’d get Louisiana hot pepper put on my tongue. It hurt so much even my ears burned. I got no pity, just the same comment, “You think that hurts well what you said hurt that person more.”
Tross @ 79
You need to get a hold of the DFEH (California Department of Fair Employment and Housing)
http://www.dfeh.ca.gov/
dakine01 @ 84
The most gorgeous child I have ever seen in my whole life was born to a Japanese woman and African-German father. They were beautiful people, but that child was a knock-out. I’ve always wondered what happened to them, they made such an impression on me.
dakine01 @ 87
Flatterer. ;-)
Fern @ 93
I had a very fey German friend who learned English in Ireland.
That was a very strange accent.
GordonM @ 84
This seems to be true in my daughters’ large groups of friends. They don’t hesitate to call anyone to task for any type of racism, sexism, etc.
Gosh I miss having a large living room full of wonderful teenagers.
Tross, that’s a horrible story. Did you follow up at all?
Rayne @ 105
’s Truth! Being a hetero male, I was going to say “most beautiful women” but then realized that it would pretty much have to include the males as well…
it’s true here too that racism and homophobia are very unacceptable to the majority of teenagers- no way schools would tolerate it either-
Our house was like that. My mom’s house was a safe haven where the gay kids could be themselves and the nerdy kids could be themselves and we could listen to our music and hang out.
Thank god, though, my mom never tried to be “cool mom”. Drugs were off-limits, alcohol verboten, and sex would wait until we were 18 at which time we could do whatever we wanted.
Of course, none of us made it to 18 with our virtue intact, but we had to be really, really sneaky. It wasn’t easy.
It is sort of funny, that all of the “lizard brain” things that humans share in common: ie magical thinking, “racism”, fear of the other, etc., show we are one people and started the journey at the same starting point. The fact that racism is ubiquitous sort of puts a lie to the racist notion of “uniqueness and superiority”.
Rayne @ 64
dakine -
I went to a community college in Astoria, Oregon for a semester….long enough to meet some folks from Maui (Paia) who one day while we’re walking downtown told me, ‘today is Kill A Haole Day’. I think all I said was ‘oh, great.’ However, I was a cool haole – thus, I’m still around. What an education.
Thank god, though, my mom never tried to be “cool mom”. Drugs were off-limits, alcohol verboten, and sex would wait until we were 18 at which time we could do whatever we wanted.
Of course, none of us made it to 18 with our virtue intact, but we had to be really, really sneaky. It wasn’t easy.
my mother found my ‘dirty’ magazines and replaced them with _________ County Health Manuals for Young People.
What a ‘treat’ to find between the mattress and box spring!
SnarKassandra @ 91
Sweetie, having seen your Facebook pic, I can tell you the truth: you are already gorgeous!
In my family, I have cousins galore, and we’re every color under the sun. It’s a running joke in our family that we’re out to homogenize the world, one child at a time.
Which might be true, because the 1st member of the 5th generation is – no kidding – Caucasian-African-Japanese on his mom’s side and Navajo-Caucasian-Hispanic on his dad’s.
TRex @ 83
Exactly….
AND, why would anyone care unless they’re related to them? It has to do with hate (spite) and insecurity (fear).
My mom was an early AIDS educator, so there were stacks and stacks of literature everywhere with safe sex protocols and pamphlets about the importance of HIV testing, and on and on. It was an education. Her best friend died of AIDS when I was 15, and that had a profound impact on all our lives.
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 95
Are you from AOL? Dubious??
I’ll take #3 for the whole amount, Alex.
Phoenix woman upstairs on another group of new age robber barons
john in sacramento @ 105
I second this!
new age robber barons?
Sandels that correct your aura?
Magnetic bracelets that heal your pet’s past life?
Racism exists no matter the area or the country one is from. There is racism in the northern part of the United States. And there is racism in the West, the East and the South. How to get rid of this insidious thing, I do not know.
TRex @ 110
Good for her. No wonder you’re the great Theropod that you are. Give her my compliments! (and also compliments for some of the great recipes she allowed you to share.) I tried to be a real mom to all my daughters friends (takes a village :) but had rules about alcohol, smoking etc. But they all knew I would (and did) come pick them up in the middle of the night if stranded.
dakine01 @ 67
Just went back through the whole thread.
Her biggest issue is the biggest employer: Microsoft.
And Microsoft has hired Ralph Reed as a lobbyist in the past, not exactly good to defend them, and not exactly a company one would want to piss off if running in that district.
I wonder if she couldn’t use help navigating all the issues that come with that 800 lb. district.
Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 115
SNORT! *wipes coffee off the monitor* bwahahahaha!
I offer up the perfect example of this technique used almost verbatim as you described by none other than the estimable Tony Snowjob. Bush’s own Press Secretary.
Tony Snow on Racism – Video at the bottom of post.
American Indians were the first victims I suppose, of racism in America.
Racism is not confined to the south. I dislike regionalism intensely.
SNORT! *wipes coffee off the monitor* bwahahahaha!——-
newdealfarmgrrrlll
*********
heh. dear old mom.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 129
Or the people who preceded them…
Maybe James Baldwin was on to something when he observed that three centuries have welded african and european heritages into what is the real american heritage that cannot exist in the absence of either root.
The Times on Sunday had essayed on Baldwin (before the Rupert Murdock cancer consumed the broadsheet), referring to his later, european writings, showing Baldwin’s growth through and beyond the anger and rage of racism. There are many gems of wisdm contained in these works, hidden and removed from those who need them most – americans.
Arnie @ 133
I’ll seque into the DNA reports I’ve heard about showing that most of us have combinations of racial heritage that might surprise us ‘mightily.’
newdealfarmgrrrlll @ 125
My folks would be arrested for child endangerment these days but were considered enlightened and ahead of the curve in the 60s. I was the youngest and when I turned 14, they told me the same thing they’d told my brother and sister, if I was going to smoke (cigarettes) or drink, to do it in front of them rather than sneak around and hide it. Consequently drinking was no big deal so I wasn’t tempted to go get myself killed on a back country road. And if I had a party, all car keys were collected at the door.
“I’m not black, but there’s a whole lot of times I wish I wasn’t white”
Wish I had said it but it was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
Going back to read more pup wisdom. Keep on.
I have done my fair share of asserting my rights. And I did think about making a bigger deal. But at the time I just really wanted to find a place. I’ve just moved to the Bay Area and was staying w/friends and going a bit stir crazy. I didn’t have the energy for “another issue”, but maybe now I’ll look into it. It was just a month ago, and I am now in a nice, new place.
Steve-AR @ 132
I thought of that. And figured someone would bring that up. ;0)
Oh God, great post – we pretend so much in this country that racism doesn’t exist anymore. But, of course, it’s the very basis of the Republican’s party’s power over two generations.
Some of the American Indian tribes had slaves from other tribes.
Racism? Tribalism?
Tross @ 137
Do it. Not only for yourself, either. Think of all those folks without a law degree!
Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 134
Go back upthread to that link I posted to the National Geographic Genographic’s Project. That’s the very work I mentioned; if it wasn’t for my concerns about privacy, I’d have mine checked to see what shows up. My parents are French-Finn-Irish-Native American and Hawaiian-Chinese-Tahitian-Pilippino-and some other mystery PacRim.
Loo Hoo. @ 141
As a Berkeley resident I’m appalled to hear what happened to you.
Tom Watson @ 139
The end “fruit” of Nixon’s southern strategy “tree.”
Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 140
Civilization!
they were known as the ‘five civilized tribes’ for the expressed reazson that they DID keep chattel slaves.
Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasha, Creek and Cherokee
dakine01 @ 144
Strange Fruit, indeed.
Rayne @ 142
okay great. I must have missed it. or else my memory is so bad that’s what i’ve ‘heard about.’ :-)
oh geez. sorry. i forgot that ‘preview’ is my friend.
[Mod Note; does it look better now?]
Hi Mod: The ‘okay great’ sentence should actually follow the ‘go back upthread’ sentence.
ty.
[ModNote; hope we got it right this time.]
Loo Hoo. says:
July 14th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Tross @ 137
I have done my fair share of asserting my rights. And I did think about making a bigger deal. But at the time I just really wanted to find a place. I’ve just moved to the Bay Area and was staying w/friends and going a bit stir crazy. I didn’t have the energy for “another issue”, but maybe now I’ll look into it. It was just a month ago, and I am now in a nice, new place.
Do it. Not only for yourself, either. Think of all those folks without a law degree!
True enough. Will make the call Monday morning. Sometimes it get tiring fighting this fight. Thanks for the “wake up call”.
Marie Roget @ 99
French sports fans are a strange lot. In September 2003, I was in Paris on business, and ended up watching the semifinals of the European Championships in basketball in a bar. With a berth in the Athens Olympics on the line, a French team with clearly superior talent got out-hustled and out-thought by Lithuania.
My French isn’t all that good, but I heard enough sentences that began with “Les noirs” (for non-sports fans, that’s a racist pun, a takeoff on the fact that French national teams are commonly referred to as “les bleus”) to get the drift.
Tross @ 150
One of my childhood memories is the passage of the Rumford Act in California. Google it.
I know; weird Bay Area childhood.
not sure if it’s still in common usage, but it’s always shocking to hear the French term for ghostwriter: “un negre” …not the equivalent of our n-word, but not so far off either.
dakine01 @ 89
About 1960 my grandfather holidayed in Hawaii, he was about 85. He reported exactly the same thing. My fortune was to grow up in a family that was not threatened by anothers ancestry, and the seeds of bigotry, hatred, (and ignorance), were never allowed to take root.
It is the failure of both school and church that allows bigotry, hatred, and ignorance to take root and flourish, sowing as it were, the wind. Not a single child is born with these defects, the defects of character are entirely learned and can be forestalled if properly treated.
thank you moderator. that was sort of ‘magical!’
punaise @ 153
that’s odd isn’t it? I can’t see the link.
Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 140
African in Oklahoma..Oklahoma Kiddo probably knows about the current issues resulting from that.
Eva worked on Kerry’s campaign and is proud of it. From her bio on ABC’s site
Longoria currently lives in Los Angeles. She is actively involved as the national spokesperson for Padres Contra El Cancer, helping Latinos with cancer. She also works with the Special Olympics and worked with the John Kerry-John Edwards campaign, educating Latino voters about the presidential candidate. Pastimes include salsa dancing, cooking and reading Latino literature and history.
Eva Longoria
I’ve noticed some of the local right wingers on a radio station here in NJ trash her when they get a chance.
Canadian friend of mine is married to a black woman. Had one marriage ceremony in Florida (she has family there). Said that when in public he was constantly aware of being a biracial couple while he was there, which is interesting, because he almost never notices it in Toronto.
He said the other really striking thing was the segregation. He remembers in particular walking down one busy street where on one side there were nothing but whites – on the other, nothing but blacks.
Being a mixed-race couple in Toronto wouldn’t cause most people to bat an eyelash.
Wait, let me correct that. Within certain ethnic communities there might be older generation resistance to mixed race relationships.
But as a ’social issue; i.e. ‘on the subway’ or ‘at the pub’ no, not so much.
Mabel’s Wig Shack @ 155
as in, doing all the real work behind the scenes, unacknowledged. a master/subservient thing I guess.
as in, doing all the real work behind the scenes, unacknowledged. a master/subservient thing I guess.
ah.
sometimes ‘we’ are a little slow!!! :-)
Ironic, isn’t it? All these mouthbreathers are supposed to hear the dogwhistles, write the check, pollwatch, vote, and disappear until the next time they’re needed.
Who’d’ve thought they’d be bitter and ignorant enough to actually interfere with their masters’ plans?
Shame they don’t have jobs or futures to protect any more. Maybe Karl would have some leverage then.
I guess he missed that part.
tross at 137 says “I have done my fair share of asserting my rights. And I did think about making a bigger deal. But at the time I just really wanted to find a place. I’ve just moved to the Bay Area and was staying w/friends and going a bit stir crazy. I didn’t have the energy for “another issue”, but maybe now I’ll look into it. It was just a month ago, and I am now in a nice, new place.”
think about it, tross…..just like when i hear someone say something racist, or gossipy, i call them out on it, i could keep my mouth shut, but that is saying it’s ok to do it……..so, if you are able to take it on, think about doing it…..
and to the topic of racism?
i had a good friend who was a dj on a large rock station, noone knew he was black……should have seen people when they realized who they were talking to…downright hilarious…he loved yankin’ people’s chains, they would recognise his voice, but couldn’t place it……he was also the only there who didn’t drink or party or smoke…….
my sister’s first boyfriend was black…..alan, really nice guy…..6th grade…….
my mom always said she would accept anyone i brought home, as long as he was ‘educated’, meaning, not a piece of paper educated, but that he wasn’t a redneck……
LetterMan @ 11
How did it so happen that you were reading my hometown newspaper?
I live in Fairbanks
Oklahoma kiddo @ 129
Not necessarily. Many of the crew on Columbus’ ship were Jews who were escaping the Inquisition which had expelled Jews from the combined kingdoms of Spain and Castille in 1492.
LetterMan @ 167
Well, then I am caught exaggerating again. Yesterday, Ed*ward Teller and I met, and I was talking it up as the “All Alaska FDL Meet-up”
Steve-AR @ 157
By Heather Williams, HEATHER WILLIAMS is a Cherokee citizen and an Indian freedmen descendant.
July 10, 2007
“I’M PROUD TO BE a Cherokee citizen who is also descended from black slaves, and the Cherokee Nation I know is one of the most diverse, welcoming societies on Earth.”
Yet today, my tribe stands accused of racism and is the target of legislation introduced by Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) aimed at cutting off our federal funding because we amended our tribal constitution to affirm that, in order to be a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, you must prove by-blood descent from Cherokee Indians.
The constitutional amendment is a recent chapter of a long history. In 1906, a census called the Dawes Roll was created, listing by-blood Indians along with non-Indian residents of Cherokee Territory. Some of those residents were former Cherokee slaves or their descendants, known as freedmen, and an 1866 treaty with the U.S. government called for them to have “rights of native Cherokees.”
Watson and others have tried to paint the Cherokee Nation’s repeated attempts to make Indian descent a citizenship requirement as discrimination against blacks. As a freedmen descendant who looks black, and who is also a by-blood citizen, I’m offended by that. There was no racial issue when the Cherokee Nation welcomed me 14 years ago. In 1993, I received my citizenship card, which affirmed my connection to the tribe by blood through my great-great-great grandfather, Daniel Tucker — just as I am connected to my freedmen lineage through his wife.
treasure my African American roots, and I also feel fully a part of the Cherokee community. Some of my fondest memories are of participating in wonderful Cherokee traditions, and the Cherokee tribe accepts me regardless of my racial appearance. When I look at our schools, religious organizations and communities, I can see that this is the rule, not the exception. Multiracial and freedmen-descendant Cherokees like me are living proof that the nation welcomes all Cherokees equally.
http://www.latimes.com/news/op…..;cset=true
punaise @ 13
Even on Bastille Day?
She’s Latina and he’s black?
Really?
I thought they were both just very tan.
Oh, well.
My new granddaughter, a week old tomorrow and unable to protect herself from these creeps, is Chinese-Japanese-Italian-Polish-Lithuanian-English-French-American and can trace her roots back almost to the Mayflower. May she grow up to be a kick-ass kid!
Let’s knock off with the hyphens. Damn, she’s entirely American, and if you can’t deal with it, I’ll punch your lights out.
[Mod Note; on an otherwise lovely Saturday, we’re going to presume that’s a metaphorical punch. But future references to physical violence may be deleted.]
lowly grunt @172–I myself am kinda pinky-beige. No albinos in my end of the genetic pool.
Am jumping in here (late as usual) to add a little detail courtesy of Marie Roget’s fine link to the Casablanca scene on YouTube.
I played the clip, then happened to begin reading the comments.
There are quite a few comments written in German — native-speaker-type German (not the kind of mangled stuff uttered by American neo-Nazis who throw German phrases around so they can feel close to their hero Adolf) –
German native-speaker comments supporting the Nazi “ideals” — neo-Nazi crap spouted freely in the YouTube comments. As a former German instructor I was able to read the detail of these remarks with ease — and with horror. Many of the English-speaking commenters have apparently no idea just what ideology is being saluted in the YouTube thread.
Disgusting.
In the same way that American bigots feel free to spew their hatred in public Internet forums, German neo-Nazis feel free to litter the Internet with their hideous hatred and devotion to fascism.
This is truly an international problem.
To be fair, I should add that there are also a couple of native German-speakering commenters who take these Nazis sharply to task in the Casablanca thread as well.
Not all the German posters over there are Hitler-lovers.
Uh, “speakering” in my last comment is not a neologism. Should be “speaking” — was editing the first choice, “German speakers” to “German-speaking commenters” and got sloppy by going too fast.
Sorry. Although “speakering” sounds like a word the Deciderer would use, no?
So many of the posters PW highlighted in her wonderful post expressed concern about any future kids from Parker/Longoria’s marriage. Funny how the lizard-brains project.
Anyone who can look at a couple of newly-weds and unleash such angry bile, racist or otherwise, should do the world a favor and not have children. How can they possibly be entrusted with the safety and well-being of a child?
The point of racism is to keep the peasants fighting amongst themselves as the political wealthy steal from the taxpayers trough.
You know, there was no need to insult the intelligence of hineddh. It’s just that kind of uncivil discourse that places the vicious bloggers of the left so far out the American mainstream.
/sarcasm off
I have to say that in the last couple of years I’ve grown very distressed about the volume of racism online like this. Not the intensity, that’s always been there, but rather the pervasive volume of blatant racism. Just watch for the number of commenters who, inappropriately and needlessly, bring up Sharpton’s name in every possible context, as if his mere existence justifies their outright racism.
My family is bi-racial, which is so normal to me that even to use such a word feels stilted and old-fashioned, like referring to someone as a “homosexual”. I’m at ease being in a room where the only white face is mine. And yet, living in a white, white place, I rarely if ever detect any specific racism.
I can really only assume that the racists are so backed into a corner, so aware that they are losing the battle, and so afraid to speak out loud the evil in their hearts, that they are going online to spew and vent.
And when you look at the attitudes of the under-30s, it should be a cause for hope, and a sign of why the racists are getting desparate.
AOL has had tons of racists as long as I have been a member — since 1994. At least, back when you had to PAY ($3.00 an hour after the standard 20 hours a month), there weren’t as many — just those whose mommies paid the AOL bill, or hackers who could get on for free. When the flat rate come along (unlimited hours for $29.95 a month), surprise! The number of racists grew to unbelievable numbers! (Who says stupid racists are also dirt poor?)
Yes, I am still a member of AOL, and yes, it is still as racist as it has been since the flat rate. But also, AOL management itself, encourages it, by never kicking blatant racists off AOL. Yes, those members are all SO valuable! Well, not so much. Those who fight the racists get kicked off all the time.
AOL is both racist AND money-hungry. A hideous corporation.
Let the racists rant away in public, at least we know where they are.
Someone said earlier our kids don’t pay as much attention to race…I agree…and for the same reasons. The more you see folks that are “different”, the less threatening they are, and the more accepting you are.
If it weren’t skin pigmentation, it would be something else these folks choose to say is inferior, sub-human, dirty, or just plain wrong.
The best thing we can do is teach our kids:
1) They aren’t any better than anyone else
2) Differences make us better
3) Keep an open mind
What interested me was the illiteracy in many of the comments directed at the couple. Funny that those who were trying to pretend to be classier than the ones they were posting about couldn’t even manage a coherent sentence.
While all of it is blatant racism on it’s face, these same people are basically just prejudiced. I mean it is not exclusive to race. They just as easily can slur an overweight person, disabled person, elderly person, muslim or jew ( because they are easier to pick out). They probably harass neighbors. They teach and allow their kids to learn hatred. So it’s a bigger problem than most consider when first reading this story. The big picture is very very ugly and people of other ” distinctions” are feeling it , very much.