Another racial issues discussion-looking for input *especially* from fellow blacks. (prison, news)

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by pretty in black

I agree. Alot of black men will say "I like it when black women wear their natural hair" but, as soon as you do wear it, they will dislike it and call it nappy if it does not have a looser curl pattern. Even when said men have the same texture growing out of their scalps, they will not like a woman who has a kinkier hair texture. Sad. It wasn't like this back in the day. Sometimes, I watch old soul train episodes from the 70s and everyone is so beautiful and wearing their afros proudly. WTF happened?

You are not in Kansas any more. Things really have changed. I remember in the black culture, when I was growing up, you could not find to many girls, and certainly not women (unless they were tricking), who would do certain acts. We all thought you had to get white girls for that type of stuff (stereotype). Now it seems like such acts are standard operating procedures when you date. I am sorry....I am 50 and I aint eating no coochie. If the women wants to do that......I am fine with it .....but I don't owe her one. I just could not see myself wifing a women who is proficient in all those things. We have changed a lot as a culture over the last 40 years.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

One of my great grandmother's brothers passed for white and I never knew about him at all until I started doing genealogical research. He did so in order to rise in his career.

I have some Creole ancestry, so I wonder if any relatives of mine have ever passed for White.

What is odd about him, is that he did not do like Ralph mentioned - not talking to family/disengaging/disappearing, etc. He still communicated with his mother and his sisters and father. FWIW this whole line of my family looks white. My 2nd great grandmother was only 1/4 black and her husband was VERY racially mixed and from an old "tri-racial" Ohio community that conducted the Underground Railroad in a location of SW Ohio. He looked similar to Anatole Broyard.

It was mentioned that in a way, "passing" could be like a form of exile. Having little contact with the family, having to live in a new identity, at least as this country new it.

This great uncle of mine just never came to family functions. I had never seen a picture of him and thought he had died as a child like my great grandmother's other brothers. I knew all her sisters and they all looked like white women, as did my great grandmother. She was probably the most "black" looking due to having more African-esque features but most people thought she was white as well.

Race is not as simple as so many make it out to be. The one drop rule basically created "passing". It meant having to hide one's heritage. It makes me wonder who might have African ancestry, and not know it.

She told me she was shocked when she first got her job with our city when she was a young woman and hearing the horrible things her co-workers used to say about black people. She never told them she was black because back then they didn't ask her via application or anything. They just wouldn't let black people work there lol. But she looked white and they didn't know she was black until she brought my great grandfather - who was dark skinned, to a department picnic. Even then they thought she was jut "scandalous" to be a white woman with a black man. That is when she told them she was black. This was over 5 years after she started working there and she said she heard lots and lots of racist things and got into many heated discussions with her co-workers over race.

This would make me wonder what I might hear if I ever were White, or light enough to pass. With race relations, many things are hidden under the surface. Some will not say certain things in from of certain people.

Her brother married a white woman and has white children/grandchildren and I've met one of his grandchildren. They didn't know they were "part black" until they took an AncestryDNA test because they never knew any of the extended family. Today they are mad that their dad never told them. His mother lived to be 105 years old and they never met her. She died 20 years after their dad! All his sisters, including my great grandmother also lived to nearly 100 years old. This particular cousin didn't take the test and start researching their ancestry until 2010. My great grandmother was the last person left of her generation and she died in 2008. So the cousin was very upset to never have met their family.

This is alot how Bliss Broyard felt. She felt cheated out of meeting her father's family. There is a flip side as well. I think some people would freak out and feel ashamed of having African ancestry.

That said, I understand why my great uncle did what he did. He definitely would not have been able to be employed where he worked if he had not "passed." I wonder how difficult it was for him to not have much communication with his family. My grandmother said he didn't come around because the extended family was "too black." Most of us are rather light skinned but we are noticeably "black American." He didn't want his kids to talk about being black around his co-workers kids.

Passing wasn't as simple as "check the box" or "fill in the blank". There was a cost to it. For many it meant estrangement from their families. For some, passing for White meant having a quality of life they would not have if it was found they were Black. Anatole Broyard's father did this.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by pandorafan5687

Dave Chappelle did have a point of that given that many white Americans today are rebelling against what was probably instilled in them by their grandparents. That said, there's still some of them our age who have that same mindset as their ancestors. Perhaps the further north one goes, it fades away? Is it more prevalent in the south? How about the Northeast?

One can also credit parenting. There are those parents who taught their kids "it's wrong to be a racist". I see this with a childhood friend of mine. My childhood friend was taught as a child not to be a racist. He often speaks out against it.

And there are young people who have the bigoted mindset. I dealt with those kinds of people in high school.

I don't think it fades going north or south. With the Deep South, however, there is a different kind of prejudice. It tends to be more steeped in the Old South mentality of things.

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk

Or they may be. Culture is also relative to locale. Poor rural blacks are not culturally different from middle class rural blacks. Both are very different from urban blacks of any economic group.

I agree about the rural/urban difference.

I think the same thing about poor whites as well. I think because I grew up around a lot of urban poor white people, I just know they are not all that different from what people consider "ghetto" black people and that those poor urban whites skirt and cheat the system just as much as mainstream white America thinks blacks do, but yet they never say that "white culture" is to blame.

For lkmax, I think the issue people had with your post is simply the above and what I stated earlier - "white culture" is considered mainstream American culture. "Black culture" is considered to be impoverished, urban black people and their dysfunction.

The latter regarding black people is not true.

I could understand it if you said that "poor Americans" have a culture problem, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of black people are not poor nor do they live in the ghetto or in inner cities, yet you and others easily lump how those people live, and especially how they commit crimes and welfare fraud, to be a part of "black culture" when they are not. They are a part of poverty culture.

[Ralph_Kirk]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

I could understand it if you said that "poor Americans" have a culture problem, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of black people are not poor nor do they live in the ghetto or in inner cities,.

Although for someone on the outside looking in--making judgments by what they see black people doing and here black people saying in the media--it would seem that the majority of black people are poor and live in ghettos.


And you yourself have expressed the opinion in this thread that the black experience isn't genuine unless it's been poor and in the ghetto.

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk

Although for someone on the outside looking in--making judgments by what they see black people doing and here black people saying in the media--it would seem that the majority of black people are poor and live in ghettos.


And you yourself have expressed the opinion in this thread that the black experience isn't genuine unless it's been poor and in the ghetto.

When have I expressed this opinion?

I many times in this entire forum state the fact that there is no one particular "black experience." Also that being poor is not the entirety of "the black experience" and that I feel being "bourgeoisie" is much more of a characteristic of "black culture" than being "ghetto."

Also that most black people in poor neighborhoods are nothing like the stereotypes that are frequently spouted in the media and that I know this is a fact because I grew up poor in the ghetto.

The only thing I made a mention of in this thread that I remember is the fact that a majority of the black posters here admittedly did not grow up in the ghetto nor did they have a poverty upbringing like I did and due to them growing up in a more suburban and white area that they, as a result of not being around a lot of poor black people, are more apt to fall for the lie that all poor black people (or those who live in low income neighborhoods) are totally dysfunctional and lead stereotypical lives.

This is the same thing that many white Americans believe about not just poor black people (like the poster earlier mentioned) but all black people and that for black people to believe this sort of thing is a symptom that they are not knowledgeable about the black experience in the ghetto.

As stated earlier, I grew up in a very racially mixed area. The poor black people actually were not "worse" than other poor people. Most of them IMO were cleaner and much more family oriented than whites in particular and less likely to engage in a lot of dangerous, risky behaviors, like drug abuse, which is also the case today where I live. The poster earlier mentioned crack and I honestly do not know any black people, and especially younger black people who do crack. Crack is really not a "thing" anymore and hasn't been since the 1990s. However meth and heroin are a huge issue with the white population. Not to say that blacks don't do heroin but where I live most of the people who die from overdoses (and we have a lot every week) are white people and treatment facilities are mostly filled with white people. There is not a lot of hard drug use with the black population anymore. Now if you speak of weed/marijuana, I'd say that black people do that drug and drink just like whites but the hard stuff is not all that popular today and crack especially is not and that stereotype - that black people in the ghetto are majority crackheads, has never been true.

[residinghere2007]

On media, I think people should never take media for the absolute truth and should be able to easily use their minds to understand that those depictions are not true.

[8won6]

Did anybody see this week's episode of "Black-ish". They brought up the topic of "coons"...but did it a bit of a joking way but still serious enough that it really hit home for a lot of blacks. They talks about Stepin Fetchit and even called him a "c00n" on the show which kind of made my eyes get big...lol. Neven thought I'd here that word on a primetime sitcom. Worth checking out.

[pandorafan5687]

No I missed this weeks episode, do you know of anywhere I can catch it?

[pandorafan5687]

Originally Posted by dsjj251

"only" was a mistaken term.

But anyways, the point is that it is a school, closing it down just because it was HBCU at some point makes no sense.I completely agree, these campuses are landmarks now.

Response in blue