Do you people assume I'm white because I'm non-ignorant behaving? Discrimination, judging. It's all built in the human psyche. Humans are designed to assume, to classify. That's why my fellow Africans get pulled based on skin color automatically. They assume we're up to no good. I'm not ghetto, talkin lik dis, or saying slang racist terms, or cussing up a shit storm. I don't love rap and R&B over any other music. I'm truly a completely different thing. I love everything else differently.
I love people I hang out with to death.
But every time it seems I meet people and get close to them, they disappoint me with their habits. I meet people, we are separated for a time and they turn up completely different.
I am an African man. I'm non-religious. I believe in a fraction of truth of all religions. I am SPIRITUAL.
My family is guilty of stereotyping. Alot of people are. I know alot of religious people will assume if they meet another person that they are Christian, if they are Christian themselves. Unless! They are an Arabic person. Then they assume they are Muslim. We have family reunions as a weekend event. Friday, short dinner. Saturday, picnic at a park and an evening at a hotel. Sunday always scheduled at a church that the majority are going to.
Now stereotyping isn't a purposeful thing in some situations. It's natural, like I said. When white directors make movies, they hire mostly white extras. When they schedule a scene, they put their choices where the light will shine. Take a look at TV, don't look at it as white if you are, don't look at it as a hateful thing if you're black or other race.
Look at Nick for instance. The Ni Hao show. The grandfather looks straight up asian, but the girl has an anime look to her. The grandfather looks stereotypically asian I mean.
Then there's the Doodlebops show, the only black person on that show is the Jazz woman. Everyone else is white, the doodles are white totally. Though Moe has a somewhat black element with his breakdancing.
The Power Rangers. There are always three, or four white Power Rangers and then the other two are asian, black, or spanish.
If there is a majority of total showout of a black character, it is a now black show. If it's a normal show, it is just a SHOW. Yo Gaba Gaba. The black character on there has to be a DJ with hip hop tunes.
Ghetto, ignorant black people look at me and assume I'm one of them. I love hip hop music, I call other people nigga and act the same that they do.
Do not get me confused, I am not a stereotypical angry black man screaming out taking it to The Man. Or fighting The Power.
Which in essence I sort of am, but instead of trying to force a society that sometimes subconsciously does these sort of things.. I'm trying to get my fellow people to see the error of their ways.
Where a black person wouldn't make heads turn walking into a rock concert (Boy did I get some looks when I went to see Devil Driver and Otep)
Where a black person won't get pulled over and assume he has a weapon or is up to no good.
Where a spanish person won't be called a border hopper, or be assumed that they have no right to be here.
Where an arab person will not be assumed to be a terrorist.
Of course, this world is fictitious and can never exist. Now, we can fight this sort of thing all we want, but stereotyping is prominent.
I once asked a chick who had known me for some months but never seen me what she thought I looked like:
"Hmm.. Maybe 5'8 - 5'9. Very pale. Long black or brown here. Maybe green eyes. Black nail polish. Goth or punk dressed."
LOL!
My friend Reaper had an old ex-girlfriend. She would insist I wasn't black, I was white. My mother has friends who talk about her to other friends and then introduce her. They are all always SHOCKED to find out that we are black. They hear about our exceptional daycare and are always SHOCKED to find out that we are black.
They assume. They stereotype that because we're black, our facilities must be the fails and we be running some horrible operation.
Please do not be dense people.
Now, as I stated with my other columns. I'm not attacking anyone. I'm just saying who it always seems to come from. And it's not just in reference to black people, just others.
I've had five people between last and this month who've seen me are taken aback, "I thought you were white. You don't act black."
What is black acting, I ask you? Like I said, do you expect me to be ignorant? That is how you view my people?
We have a parent here. She sent Mother a text one day saying that she was getting ready to break down and start dating black men.
Now, we need kids to attend here, but not THAT bad. But that statement offended the shit out of me. Are you saying that we're the bottom of the barrel to you? That since you can't find anyone else, you are downgrading to a man of lesser quality?
Of course, people who have the smartest attitudes about my word will approach me with, America is improving. We've only recently elected a black president.
Who do you think is going to sit around these days waiting for things to be made fair? We're all (and not just black people, but mostly us) forced to sit around and wait for opportunities to be fed to us?
I recently blogged about video games. The thing is.. Totally white washed. Old term, I know.. But it is. All of the latest games have featured white pro/antagonists. Left 4 Dead, 3 white people, one black guy.
Gears of War: 3 white guys, one black guy. GoW2: I think he was a hawaiian, that same black guy, the rest were white
God of War: Kratos starts out looking black, then becomes the palest man on the planet (And oh man if you could read the hilarious ass forums when the video game director said he wanted Djimon Hounsou for the role! "KRATOS IS NOT FUCKING BLACK!" LOL)
Army of Two : Two white guys (One is ironically voiced by a black guy. I for one would not let them make my character white if I'm black.)
Prototype: White guy
Infamous: White guy
Halo: White people everywhere. Master Chief is white (They try to say he has no classification, but in the books, they clearly say that he is completely a pasty, pale WHITE male)
World of Warcraft, we were talking about the lack of black characters. The villains are white, the heroes are white. There is a black section I suppose.. The trolls.. Or maybe the Orcs.. They both have "black traits". The Trolls are like ancient African society. Shamanism (It's cleverly referred to as voodoo) and start out in primal kilts and have voodoo masks all over their village. They do a capoeira/breakdance for their movie and speak in a Jamaican accent.
Orcs act somewhat black and their women have a black look to them. And we all know how long they've been trying to call black people monkeys. Orcs look like gorillas.
Now of course, I'd lie if I said these were all Americans. There are people who pass as American:
English
Russian
German
Irish
They can all pass, just an alter in the voice. These are used when in roles too, but in the eyes of the public, unless they speak.. THEY ARE STILL WHITE.
There's some beat box show that comes on Nick. It has a bunch of black people, but if you watch it. You'll notice they put one or two black people in the front, the rest or white and a mix of every other ethnicity is in the background. The asians and spanish have it worse than us, there's only one or two of them in the whole audience.
I went off on someone the other day who didn't deserve it because I thought they were slightly stereotyping (in a humorous way trying to test the water if you know what I mean).
Now, I know people. Have met alot of them, like I said. They changed. They assume. I was never that kind of guy. I've totally been turned off to that lifestyle my whole life. I was watching some children earlier, our normal kids. But my mother's friend's daughter was over. Her whole demeanor at her young age was COMPLETELY different than anything we'd seen. She slanged all of her words and generally behaved in a verbally aggressive manner.
That was very sad. The girl is only 9 or 10, but already she's being turned straight into a stereotypical black person.
Kids grow up obsessed with shows like BET, thinking they can be like the gangsta rappers on TV. Being ignorant, slurring words and acting in a completely ridiculous manner.
It's like religion IMO, religion is a learned behavior, breeded in from birth. Few people have religious experiences or beliefs and things they experience may or may not be valid enough for them to believe, but they are raised to believe.
That's why I say racism and stereotyping will never die. It's human nature to stereotype, classify and assume. And racism is passed on as a learned behavior.
Where is the end to this? Is there one? Can there be one?
That brings a text to mind, fictional of course. It's called The Giver. In this movie, racism is dead, but mostly is free will. Memories of the life before skin color are all washed away.
That society is somewhat dead, but it sort of works.
This world is broken, those wiling to change slowly will repair it. I don't mean as a whole, I mean the human world. Not the planet. The planet is its own entity. Society it could be called.
--More to come -- (my mind suddenly decided to take a cosmic journey)
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I'm making this a new comment because AP isn't letting me reply
Killer.
I don't like the term negroid either but it is the correct one. It's the, what do you call it? sciency name of the "black" race. You know at least Negroid doesn't rhyme with cock like white people's race name. Though I think that little rhetorical trick was on purpose.
and as for Lucian (
) The American country is still classified as a white country, despite the increase in other ethnic races. And last I checked it was still the most predominant one. The people who run the Corporations that produce the movies are usually white, most of the predominant media is. Hell even our congress is predominantly infested with crabby old white christian men who think themselves the greatest thing since bleached white bread.
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Maybe Afro something.. I'm not sure. I hate the term negroid because then that labels me as a negro. Which is something I am not. That's a term that we used to describe ourselves as opposed to being a "nigger".
"Nigger."
"I am a negro."
I'm cool with black
Negroid I detest. -
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Afroid?
I like black better too. But you realize that by making a deal of the words you give them power, right? -
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It gives me an excuse to kick people's ass who are ignorant.
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you mean it gives you an excuse to make people who do not use the words negatively or for harm uncomfortable and guilty and to pick fights that don't need to be picked??
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It's like. We called ourselves Nubians. Then we are taken to another world and we are niggers to them. Then we're classified as negros. Then we become coloreds. Now we're black. All terms that we've attempted to take and make into a positive because we are trying to be forced to conform to labels that other people make for us.
Oh and I was born in Africa, not here. -
Of course not. But I'm not going to be reduced from a nubian to a negro simply because that is the agreed upon term for my people.
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you just got +10 sexy points.
and it's not because they were agreed upon terms that I use words like negroid or anything like that but because it's the one in the dictionary. I mean no offense nor ever had.
There are very few words I wont say that are taboo. Like the curse words, I say because they're just words but I will never say er... the really bad "N" word. because it offends me.
I do use slurs but never in a malicious way. Like I called my god father a domesticated porch monkey cause he lived in my backyard for a while.
By the way you should read Lies My Teacher Told Me; it'll give you fuel for your fire about them white crackers.
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Be Careful Now, I ,A White Person, Am About to Speak.
Okay, I'm going to try to not be offensive but really, there's no way I can't be so whatever.
First I'd like to point out the whole people-being-surprised-you're-not-white thing. You live in a predominantly white society (we fuckers breed fast) and most people, without realizing it, usually assume someone is the same as them. Everyone does this. They assume that because you get along or have similar tastes that you fall into the same category as them entirely. The second assumption that's usually made is by what you "sound" like. Because, let's not lie to ourselves, every race has a different culture and that culture creates idiosyncrasies that are, for the most part, unique to that culture. White people generally refers to that semi-middle-American-Anglo-saxon-Christian. Black people generally refers to those Americans from "Afro-centric decent" Now a lot of people say Hispanic is people from Latino decent and it goes on and on for other races too. People do this stereotyping for a reason, you know. It's not just ignorance or racism or anything like that. It's just the way people's brain's work. We like to categorize things into safe little files so that we can try to predict what might happen, it makes it easier to function without worrying what so and so might do or what this is... etc. It's just human nature to put things into categories. Kids do it. I knew a little kid who had just learned what a horse was and we were watching t.v. together and the kid yells "HORSEY!" at a giraffe. I asked him why he said horse he said because it has a long face, a "funny paint brush tail" and hooves. He was just trying to fit the new concept of giraffe into his previous information. It's not a race thing and it's not a cultural thing humans naturally like putting things into categories.
As for you being African, technically, you're not. You were not born in Africa, You do not live there, nor are you a national of any African country. You are of African decent but you are as African as I am Irish or English.
People are never perfect, everyone disappoints everyone, just what happens. The silliest part, I think is that you stereotyped in this. Which is OK, you know, somethings are true. Like the fact that negroid people have smaller heads (though, that's not really a bad thing, recent studies have proven that the bigger the brain the more mental deficiencies are likely
)
And as for media, well, it's also a predominately white area because again, America is predominately white. Reason you don't see many of the other ethnicities is because there aren't as many of them in the country. Things like this cater to the largest group, not the smallest. It's how they make money.
As for people saying that Black people are ignorant? You know the only time I hear that now is when a black person is saying it. In fact the only time I actually hear of people talking of what they think a race is like is when that race is talking about themselves.
The bottom of the barrel? Black people? Far from it. But every race generally prefers their race over another. Just how it works. White people usually pair up with white people, Asian people with Asians...
But the part that really got me was when you mentioned the Giver.
The point of that book was to point out that a society like the one in the book could Never actually work. Those people were only happy because they were ignorant. Because they knew no better way of life, because they had no choice. That book wasn't about race or creed or anything like that. It was about going for what you wanted, for being free. I mean, do you remember the ending? Or the context. Life is dull, meaningless in that book. It's more harsh and cruel and unforgiving than even ours. It was a terrible, terrible place to be. That society was not somewhat dead but entirely dead. And it didn't work.
You break a lot of preconceptions about black people, that's fantastic for you. And I congratulate you on writing a piece that lacked terribly connotative words. -
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America is not majority white it hasn't been since the early 70's when we started to let Mexicans to immigrate to the us seasonally and then they decided to stay America is majority Mexican and it has been for many many years
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Oh and just for the record. Please do not say Negroid. I hate that term
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Awesome. Tesk
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Wow
I agree that people should no stereotype based on race, religion, sex, looks or anything, and you did a very good job in verbalizing this without being offensive, at leaset in my opinion. You are very intelligent, and regardless of race, I respect you. I don't care if your white black purple red, whatever, you are a good person, and good people are hard to find these days. -
oh wow 0-o.....
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some one else say the n word ?
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lol nope
It just came to mind the other night and I had to say it
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What a brilliant mind, and quite apt for writing such columns, however, i must disagree with you, my well-esteemed colleague, for I do not believe that Yo-Gabba-Gabba implies any culturist or racist points. The only person in the show is black, and I think that's only a coincidence.
Besides, I love the show. c: -
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I do like Yo Gabba Gabba too. But I'd be a rock DJ myself
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Wise words. But stereotyping is just based on skin colour.
Example:
I used to wear a long, black leather coat, with new rock boots, combats, random coloured hair (One time, I had blue, red and blonde all together in my hair) and band t-shirts.
People had the tendency of stereotyping me as a Goth that worships Satan and self-harms. -
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I know how you feel.
I have a friend who is into the Goth culture (almost complete cliche). And we have friends of my mother who are terrified of him because they automatically assumed he was a satanist.
It is sad how quick people are to judge.
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Damnit, I love you.
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