Racism in the US

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tox

Factory Girl
Bettysnake said:
http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/11/you_are_a_black_man_-_you_have_to_leave.html

A really depressing story from San Francisco.... Especially given what Ngugi has lived through.
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Very sad.

Strangely my Dad has experienced two events very similar to this whilst visiting the United States over the last ten years. Personally I've only been to NYC and Houston TX and seen no such problems, but it's a facet of racism I'm personally not aware of even existing here in the UK.

I'd be interested to hear from some US Dissensians on this subject though, as obviously I only hear about the most extreme cases of racism and hence have no idea what the extent of the actual problem is.

My girl's currently studying over in CA, and having lived all her life in one of the UK's biggest and most culturally mixed cities, is finding the extent of segregation quite staggering.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
And California is supposed to be univocally "liberal" if you ask Fox News, Tox.

I'm, sadly, not surprised to hear about your girlfriend's experience. At the college where I got my BA, this was the hot topic on campus every year around student gov election time: kids being stopped for their IDs and harrassed by campus security for the grievous sin of "walking while black." What makes this more interesting is that 1) these students were mostly Caribbean or African international students, not at all "thugged out" or menacing in their appearance according to white standards for such things, and 2) most of the security guards doing this were black themselves.
 
T

the undisputed truth

Banned
never liked seinfeld or friends and never watched a complete episode...

...simply because of the lack of black people in them

always figured if they were sooooooooooooooo fucking cool, how come they never had any black friends ???
 
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nomadologist

Guest
ta, you're funny. if they'd only had a black and a gay friend or maybe a gaysian friend, they could've been in a benetton ad
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
the undisputed truth said:
always figured if they were sooooooooooooooo fucking cool, how come they never had any black friends ???
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Because black people define cool, right? :)

I seem to remember some eps where there was a black character and the whities were all stiff and awkward, i.e. playing up how sheltered white people don't know how to act around blacks. "Its a black person! Do I have to say yo?" kind of thing...

Growing up in Palmerston North - the town was practically segregated. I played with Maori/PI kids in primary school, but by high school it was 98% stratified by race/class.
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
charlie said:
Term:

English:
Code: 
Illegal Immigrant
American:


If thats not alienation (no pun intend; im being serious), i dont know what is!
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It is!

I cannot for the life of me understand how people unreflectingly can use such a term when it so obviously paints the immigrants in a grim light.

The story about the ill-treatment of the professor was distressing.
 
T

the undisputed truth

Banned
bleep said:
Because black people define cool, right? :)
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of course :D

bleep said:
I seem to remember some eps where there was a black character and the whities were all stiff and awkward, i.e. playing up how sheltered white people don't know how to act around blacks. "Its a black person! Do I have to say yo?" kind of thing...
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oooh er... that sounds a bit racialist

bleep said:
Growing up in Palmerston North - the town was practically segregated. I played with Maori/PI kids in primary school, but by high school it was 98% stratified by race/class.
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hahaha u grew up in palmy. I'm so sorry for you. I grew up in Sth Otago. Of course being halfcaste samoan I got shit from both sides.

Growing up with that does give one a warped sense of humour. Sometimes you just got to laugh eh nomadologist ???
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
oh yes. the only way i can deal with being 25% Italian 25% Danish 25% Ashkenazi/German, some amount "Gypsy" and assorted British Isles somewhere down the line is to laugh at all of them.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
kinda. in the US ethnicity and race and class are a big mushy mess.

EDIT: by "them" i meant laugh at myself, my own component ethnicities and how they form my identity, or how i imagine they do
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
Do you think Americans really think that much about class? There's a lot of discourse around race in the American mainstream media, though mostly banal, more-liberal-than-thou posing. But I don't hear a lot of talk about class, which is weird considering how much of a threat globalistion poses to their working/lower middle classes.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
The hard part about that is how race and class tend to be the same thing, especialyl in urban environs.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
Just back to the Michael Richards thing for a moment. Seinfeld will be on Letterman tonight, presumably making some sort of comment. I've just read too that the comedy club actually had Richards back the following night.
 
P

polystyle

Well-known member
Back to the original post , this was an appalling incident and something that happens more then it ever should be it here in the US or anyplace on the planet (as it surely does).
I am curious though , the account on the blog post never identifies the race of the hotel employee ...
Is that known ?
 
P

petergunn

plywood violin
nomadologist said:
The hard part about that is how race and class tend to be the same thing, especialyl in urban environs.
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class NEEDS to be represented more in the US, but it isn't.... partly because everyone sees themselves as Middle Class... plus the complete blurring of the lines of blue and white collar and their respective tradional class idenities muddies things further (i.e. is a teacher who makes 35,000 a year less working class than a landscaper who makes 55,000?)

it depends where you are, as well...

i have a friend from East Boston, a working class Italian neighborhood in Boston, who got a scholarship to go to high school in D.C. and he said the first thing he noticed was that the town was divided into basically:

rich whites
poor blacks

wheras Boston, has PLENTY of poor whites in South Boston, Dorchester, Charlestown, etc etc etc...

(which is why the whole busing thing in the 70's was so horrible... poor whites from southies fighting with poor blacks from roxbury and it's not as if either of them had a pot to piss in...)

but, towns like boston, philly (kensington, yo), there are large working class (and working poor) white neighborhoods...

when i lived san diego, for every working class black or latin neighborhood, there was a white equivilant (remember, this is where Steinbeck's Oakie's ended up... good town to buy C&W records!)...

so, i wouldn't say the race/class thing is THAT hard fast of a rule... which i always thought was the problem with affirmitive action, i feel like it should have done on an economic, rather than a racial basis... i grew with a latin girl whose father was an astronaut and it bugs me to think she would get a slot in life somewhere quicker than the irish kid who's dad was an alcoholic truck driver... as i believe Jim Goad once said, the problem with affirmitive action is it punishes the children of the white share croppers rather than the children of the slave owners...

edit: decent explaination of southie busing riots, for brits and other non-bostonians:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~fup/password/southboston.html
 
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