A U.S. White confronts his fellows about skin colour
When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it? Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status20of equality with non-whites?
Written by Andrew M. Manis, associate professor of history at Macon State College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.
For the full article, see the link at post #3
Thanks for this martin.
Actually, I find that this helps me think through male responsibility - and blocks - in ending ingrained sexist, misogynist discourse and actions.
Here's one of many links on the internet to this article
Although the sentiments in the article are valuable, and much of it has at various times formed part of my own views surrounding responsibility, a further analysis might reveal another centre of the universe' screed about how it is all up to us and that things will change if we ourselves collectively will it. Our own importance appears to require centre stage in order to carry the act through or else change has no hope for success. Instead, the premise of eventual change occurring in our minds and in society despite ourselves doesn't seem as obvious as it should if we can still consider that it is primarily about us and our need to rescue people like us who will never arrive at some far flung destination unless they're dragged there. Meanwhile, while we're caught up with all of that, events and gradual change bypasses us unnoticed, and if the re-incarnation of hate yet again to the south of us is any indication, leaving fear and the bitterness of the existing sensibilities in its wake.
I see no sense of "it" being all up to us in Manis' piece. He is clearly focussing on the racism of Whites so there is no patronizing involved. And he is talking about confronting, not "rescuing" anyone.
But thanks for the memories: it had been a long time since I had read the "I used to believe this, but" trope...
LMASO!
Why does everything have to be a competition, and what is wrong with admission?
Good questions. From Improving Interactive Techniques in Groups (Moyer, Tuttle & Pomerantz, 1977, reprinted in Off Their Backs - understanding & fighting sexism: A call to men overcoming masculine oppression in mixed groups, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C., 1983.
(...)We have too often learned to function based on hierarchy, control, and other authoritarian structures, which are only destructive to us. Our goal here is to rid our work, our play, and our society, when possible, of these forms of domination.
COMMON PITFALLS
These behaviors slow down or erode the sense of building a group of equals and can detract significantly from the group's progress toward its other goals. Having a common vocabulary allows one's participation in the group to be more constructively discussed afterwards (or during, with proper timing and gentleness).
Hogging The Show: Talking too much, too long, too loud.
Problem Solver: Continually giving the answer or solution before others have had much chance to contribute.
Speaking in Capital Letters: Giving one's own solutions or opinions as the final word on the subject, often aggravated by tone of voice or body posture.
Defensiveness: Responding to every contrary opinion as though it were a personal attack. "People obviously didn't understand what I was saying. What I meant was..."
Nit-picking: Pointing out minor flaws in statements and stating the exception to every generality.
Restating: especially a man restating what a woman has just said perfectly clearly.
Attention Seeking: Using all sorts of dramatics to get the spotlight.
Task and content focus: Excluding the nurturing of individuals or the group through attention to process and form.
Put-downs and One-Upping: "I used to believe that, but now..." or "How can you possibly say that...?"
(...)
What do you mean by 'used.' A few seeds here and there doesn't amount to a bumper crop without cultivation.
Gesundheit.
What does that contribution mean anyway?
martin, I have edited the OP to insert quotes around the text, otherwise it reads like they are your words.
Please type [ quote] before text and [/ quote] after text (without spaces) that you wish to quote.
And if you've quoted the article in full I will also have to delete some of it due to copyright thingies. Please let me know if I need to do that.
Yes, it's the full text. I had received it by e-mail and didn't know it was online. My bad, I should have checked. Please abreviate it and insert the hyperlink found by M.Spector.
Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
This article has been reproduced in over 80 places on the internet, in full, since it first appeared last December.
I do not think we need to abbreviate it at all.
ETA: Nevertheless, it got abbreviated. I guess the moderators need to justify their existence by finding something to do besides closing threads.