Quote:
Originally Posted by NYer23
Race also matters. I use to wonder how white women can be so courage as to move into the ghetto by herself and walk around at night. That was until I heard the story of a male person of color in the neighborhood say "when I see a white women, I cross the street because I am scared if she screams by my presence near her the police will shoot me". People of color are targeted for more violent crimes, because the media and police are more likely to turn a blind eye towards it.
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I honestly feel like that sentiment is false and totally made up.
Why, just over the summer, there was an NYT essay by some black guy whining about how non-blacks move out of his way on the sidewalk! If no one had, this Second-Coming-of-Jason-Blair would have penned something on how he's an invisible man and people just walk into him....
And I remember a Time magazine article back from '89 or so, right around the Clarence Thomas hearings, by a Mr. White on, I kid you not, "Clarence Thomas and the Pain of Being Black" (that's the exact title; it seemed strange then and I've remembered it all these years because it was just so odd)....
Oh my Lordy Jesus...!
It's so sad...African-Americans are always complaining about something or other...not enough cops in the hood? "They don't care about us"...lotsa cops in the hood? "Oh we're being occupied!"
Blacks shooting other blacks and selling drugs to destroy the community? "Lock 'em up!" Lock up the dealers and killers and it's "oh they're imprisoning our fathers/brothers/sons!"
Hardly any shops to serve them? "Oh they scared of us!" Open up shops and it's "it ain't for us anyway"....
Siiiigh...on the one hand, the community is obviously suffering from inter-generational trauma (a kind of PTSD in the Jungian "collective unconscious")...on the other, whining about every little thing actually reinforces stereotypes!
At the homeless shelter, I see a very concentrated form of this excuse-making...normal guys, young and decently healthy despite their cigarettes, liquor, and other drugs, who just won't do for themselves...I've read about similar behavior patterns out in "Forgotten America" -- white rural and suburban America -- in various WaPo articles this year...yet the tribe that runs and owns much of the media (certainly way out of all proportion to their numbers in the population) is always highlighting how tough blacks have it (honestly,
no one has it nearly as bad as Native-Americans but somehow the tribe of scribes
loves harping on how "tough" it is "being black in America," boo hoo hooey).
I'm not sure that's helpful at all.
It's like how the infantry is now open to females...while certainly being female presents its own very real challenges WRT the infantry, how would constantly reminding these females about their challenges help them?? It wouldn't, of course, which is why the Army (and, I imagine, the Marines) don't do it and treat them just as if they were "one of the guys"....
I just don't get it. Don't people realize that by constantly talking about how hard blacks have it, how they can't do this or can't do that because of "racism" -- don't folks realize that this just reinforces the very stereotype of blacks
not doing -- anything (for whatever reason)???
It's like (a kind of reversal of) what Anthony Swafford had noted in his
Jarhead: you can't really make an anti-war movie because any depiction of combat necessarily glorifies -- and thus promotes -- warfare.
All of us know as adults now that it was necessary for us to get over ourselves and stop blaming our parents for our imperfect upbringing in order to grow up and become adults...I submit that once the black community decides to just get on with life instead of constantly whining about racism, it will finally be accepted as a mature community like any other instead of being regarded as the equivalent of a self-absorbed teenager entranced by his/her own illusory angst.
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