UmkhontoWeSizwe wrote:LOL @ 'if you're born black you've got to work harder'. Acting like they just stepped off the boat in the 60s or something. THINGS HAVE CHANGED, GET OVER IT.
I'm sorry but that right there is the singlehanded reason racism still persists today. Instead of it being the 1960's and people wondering why these people are complaining at all, now its the 2000's and because a few laws have been passed and there are minstrels up in diamonds rappin or shootin' hoops on the television, people think obviously everything is better now and we all need to STFU.
It is *WAY* better than eras before but by no means is racism gone. And giving someone props because they survive doesn't mean that there is no struggle.
Not to use but will use for the sake of argument, I'll use me. I'm a black girl in the US who grew up through the era of the Cosby Show and positive hip-hop as well as all that community-negative gangsta rap. I've never lived my life defined by my race. I have lived my life based on things I like to do and people I like to be around.
As much as I am unfettered by this, I have also noticed that things generally are more difficult due to a combination of being a person of color and a woman. I'm not gonna lie and bullshit you. Its truth. If you're a smart Other, you have to be overintelligent just to be seen as equal and even if you've spent your life inside a classroom or numerous academic structures, instead of being praised for the content or whatever, you're complimented on your articulation, i.e. "You speak so well."
I went to college. Never got a scholarship based on my race. So why is it that when I talk about my college experience, the overwhelming consensus is that without affirmative action, I would have never gotten in, as if to say that if I'm in college, it was merely because of someone giving me a chance because I was black as opposed to actually being seen as being equal to a non-black person?
When I watch television, whenever there is a scene of a black family on tv, there is a black man and son and a mixed race wife and daughter. If this is equality, why do the females have to be half of something else in order to be on television advertising equality?
If racism wasn't a huge problem, perhaps the ratios if black people in prisons would be leveled a bit more, for comprising app 75% of the US prison populations while comprising 10% of the US population seems somewhat off.
And this doesn't even speak for the visual problem of being a black person. I'm 5' tall. Not threatening in the least really. So why do I automatically strike fear in people enough that I've had people cross streets to avoid walking near me, lock car doors, taxi drivers blatantly refuse to pick me up? Last week, I sat with these blond ladies when I was placed there by the waitress. One of the girls looked at me, and immediately put her purse on the ground by her foot. Was that really necessary? But thats my reality, no matter how many friends I have from different races and how many non-black men I've dated. And no, they don't all understand. No they don't all assume this is real because its not their experience. It would be like me telling a kid whose parents were drug addicts that he obviously had a better experience than mine because my parents were divorced and his were still together. My divorced parents have nothing to do with his still-married, drug addict parents. And I can't be so ignorant to tell him he doesn't have the right to bitch because at least his parents are still married.
I mean, yeah, we can all use the same toilets. We can all buy groceries from the same store. And some of us (1-5%) can make it as an athlete or a rapper or even an elected official. But how this translates as "Everything is fine now. Lrn2Race," is beyond me.
Get over it? Even with the best of intentions and applications, I think this mindset is juvenile at best. The rectification of centuries worth of oppression and social conditioning does not happen in less than one. It hasn't even been a full century since the 1960's. Miracle workers you're expecting, which is only slightly personally hilarious because black people were seen as less than for so many centuries but are now chastised for not being superheros in the ability to fix that and surpass in 50 years.
And seriously, why is it a bad thing for such a positive message to go out? Why are people less comfortable with the idea of people being positive towards their community? Would you rather the alternative, where rappers are pumping the community full of "Hate them ho's, hustle, and kill if a n*gga looks at yo shoes too long"?! Ain't this a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
If its a problem with accessibility, and some of the non-black audience feels disenfranchised because the message doesn't directly correlate to them, then I offer this solution:
Do what I do whenever I see a movie with a famous white couple who are surmounting all odds to find love with each other, or when I see a music video about a white woman who misses her child, or about a white man grieving the loss of his parents in an accident: Take the message and apply it to your own life as if it is a human quotient.
I have to overlook the fact that I'm not white all the time in order to sympathize/empathize with the message. And I certainly don't watch a movie starring Angelina Jolie and say, "Well, I wish I could relate to this heartwarming story...but since its not directly about me because she's not black, I guess I'mna have to toss this out with the bathwater."
My probably unpopular $0.02
ps I'm not sure how things are in other countries. I'm speaking merely from a US resident perspective. I've heard racial tensions aren't as high in other lands but then again, perhaps not.
