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Old 03-02-2017, 01:32 PM
 
Location: Chicago Area
12,688 posts, read 6,688,059 times
Reputation: 6593

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Quote:
Originally Posted by dsjj251 View Post
If you feel the article was boring and pointless, that should have been your statement the entire time, not claiming she was racist because you didn't understand fully what she was saying.
I wouldn't say that the article was boring. Just an ugly glimpse into the deeply felt prejudices of the author. She seems to have built here whole life around being black. Okay, no problem there. She finds out she's almost half white and she is clearly deeply troubled by it. She spends much of the article talking about how her lighter complexion had always been because of Native American blood. So being Native American is acceptable, but being white/European isn't? And she quite clearly wishes she was 100% black. The revelation that she's 31% white seems like the worst news she could have possibly gotten. If somebody told her, "We were wrong, you're actually 31% Chinese." then clearly she would be relieved.

So blacker is better. She said that, not me. Whiteness is apparently a contamination -- like a genetic disorder -- that a person would rather get rid of but has to learn to live with.

Yeah that's kinda racist actually. Rather than coming to terms with her whiteness, I think she needs to come to terms with her negative feelings about whites and whiteness.
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Old 03-02-2017, 01:50 PM
 
12,883 posts, read 13,897,317 times
Reputation: 18448
Quote:
Originally Posted by dsjj251 View Post
If you feel the article was boring and pointless, that should have been your statement the entire time, not claiming she was racist because you didnt understand fully what she was saying.
With all due respect, I don't know why you're assuming your interpretation of what she is saying is correct.

She started off by saying she felt "shame" when she first saw the results. "Shame" because her family was wrong? No, that's more likely be the "disorient" she said she felt simultaneously. Why would she feel "shame" that her family was incorrect? It's not shameful to be wrong about your family history, especially considering all they had apparently was word of mouth. Word of mouth, especially when it comes to claiming NA heritage, is notoriously wrong amongst many American families. Straight up, many who claim to be part NA simply aren't. At all.

She mentions "shame" second, after "disorient." Then she goes onto say, "Which brings me to the rationale behind the second emotion the results unexpectedly surfaced [the shame]: I found out I was White. Not just 13% White, my husband’s percentage when he too completed the ancestry composition report. Not just 25% White, since the average amount of DNA in an African American’s genome traced back to West Africa is about 75%. I was damn near 1/3 White. That’s significant."

She just connected "shame" to being white. She said it right there, posters here aren't assuming.

You may be right that, in the end, she isn't actually ashamed, because/but she completely contradicts herself at the end by saying, "While I’m no Rachel Dolezal, I must accept the fact I do have White ancestors. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but quite honestly, the road to acceptance will not be an easy one for me to travel."

As I just said, it's a huge contradiction. Because she just admitted that she felt shame finding out she's part white, and she finished that very sentence I bolded by saying "the road to acceptance will not be an easy one for me to travel." So clearly she isn't too happy to be part white. She makes this quite clear. She wants to "accept it," but the very need to "accept it" insinuates it's something she's not happy about.

And this statement - "As inappropriate (but honest) as it sounds, I’d discovered I had the so-called “superior” race running through my veins, and never before had I felt so inferior" - this literally is racism. This is the definition of racism - feeling one race is "superior" to others. She said it, not us.

I could be totally misinterpreting her, and you may be right, but I think your argument is far more of an uphill battle than mine (and others') given her words.
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Old 03-02-2017, 02:11 PM
 
Location: Missouri, USA
5,671 posts, read 4,328,731 times
Reputation: 2610
Quote:
Originally Posted by dsjj251 View Post
She did say all that later on in the article, which is again, why it looks like you didnt read it.






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRZoV8abnNk

If you feel the article was boring and pointless, that should have been your statement the entire time, not claiming she was racist because you didnt understand fully what she was saying.
If you want to argue that she's not racist, go for it...preferably with someone else because I don't know if she's racist or not. If you want to argue that lots of people won't wonder if she's racist...I'm the one you want to argue with. If her article was clear, I don't think we would have had this thread in the first place.
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