What to do when friend is revealed as racist?

[mshel]

Both you and mshel should gently and respectfully educate your elders that although it is difficult, they must cease using such an offensive word, because the modern and correct term is "people of flava."

Oh my!!!

Caxe....above you said 'carried over from her times'...that's exactly what my parents told us when we gently corrected them. THey were absolutely stunned that it was disrespectful. I think they're so sheltered from reality society. My husband and I physically react though...drives us crazy! But...they're aware now..

 

[mshel]

Caxe and shimma...I can't believe anyone actually read my entire post! Awards to you both for enduring the bore.

 

[Aslan]

Please relax. When you share things about your personal life on a discussion board, people are going to comment, sometimes in ways that you don't like or agree with. This is just the internet. Close the browser window or switch to the next thread.

Only you know the details of your personal life, and you know the truth. Don't get all bent out of shape because of a stranger's opinion.

 

[lara0112]

^ hm, the comment was a bit OTT, regardless.

me_love_purse, I hope you will feel better! I understand you got upset, but I am sure the comment was based on the bit of info given! the whole picture looks of course different, and only you know the truth!

 

[ShimmaPuff]

Did anyone read the link I posted from an interview w/Maya Angelou on this very topic?

I missed the link, could you post it again? Or even better, could you just post the interview, or your favorite bits at least, with the link?

In a thread like this, with lots of posts coming fast, and some of them being mine, which are all incomprehensible rants 9000 words long, it's easy to miss something of actual value. Like a link to an interview with Maya Angelou.

Nothing like a little legalese from Harvard regarding: "An online test of unconscious preferences between racial groups, etc..."

Which reminds me that I haven't posted the link to http://www.alllooksame.com/ in this thread yet. I am sorry they started making people register, but if you have not seen the site or taken the test, it is worth it.

..my husband...HE DEFENDS ME.

I am very relieved to hear that, I'm glad you posted again to clarify. Please reassure him that The Sunshine Committee Militant Vigilante Breakaway Splinter Group has called off the planned operation which is also a good thing for us because there was a scheduling conflict with our manicures, at one point, we thought maybe we could combine the two, and force him to submit to a non-consensual pink-and-white, and hell yes toes too.

 

[bagnshoofetish]

just visiting. and reminding everyone to take a moment every few posts for a group hug...

 

[mshel]

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ang0int-4

Love her...the entire interview is great (of course)

Here it is. The entire page is good...and then some...

Maya A.

 

[SPOILEDkiwi]

And Gujrat would be named Goodlinshire and be populated by mocha creme freckled people named Patelington.

LMAOOO at Patelington, esp. b/c I just came back from grocery shopping at Patel Brothers

 

[chag]

Which reminds me that I haven't posted the link to http://www.alllooksame.com/ in this thread yet. I am sorry they started making people register, but if you have not seen the site or taken the test, it is worth it.


^^ Is there a purpose for this site? I got a very bad score because I can't tell the difference. Does this mean I am a racist? Or is it just blondness?

 

[dallas]

Here it is. The entire page is good...and then some...

Maya A.

Thank you for the link. If only there were more people like Maya Angelou in the world. Love her.

 

[alvie223]

I think its none of your concern and or business. while it changes how you see this person imho nothing positive will be accomplished by confronting this person

 

[ShimmaPuff]

Here are some of my favorite bits from the Maya Angelou interview.

The substance is the issue which most moves you. If it is a love for civil rights, then that is the substance. How you get it over -- You should be able to change style the same way you change your jackets. That is to say, in one circumstance, you might need to preach. In another circumstance, to get your idea over, you may have to tell a joke. In another, you may have to sing some long, lonesome blues. But you should be able to change that and be intelligent enough to know where to put what, so that you don't try to swim on the stove.

How old were you when you finally realized your talents?


Maya Angelou: I still have not realized my talents.

My grandmother was very religious and didn't believe in the movies, but once she allowed me and my brother -- every now and again. We went up to get a ticket. And the girl took my dime, and she wouldn't put her hand on it. I put it down. She had a cigar box, and she took a card and raked my dime into the cigar box. Now, the white kids got tickets. She took their money, and she gave them little stubs. She didn't give us anything. She just motioned, which meant that we had to go up the side steps, outside steps, and crawl through a really crummy little door, and sit perched on these three or four benches to watch the movie. And all because I was black. And I thought, "Well, I don't think I'll be going to the movies a lot." So I decided to boycott the movies.

When you've had that childhood experience of discrimination, how do you get past it? How do you get rid of it?

Maya Angelou: The truth is, you cannot get rid of it. It is there. What you can do is put positive things in there along with the negative. But it's a given that you will remember that the rest of your life.

People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant. And so, because they are guilty, they can't just say, "Listen, I feel guilty about your past. I feel guilty that you have lived this life of slavery, and blah-blah, and this. I feel guilty." So what they do is they say, "I'm going to smash your face. I'm going to trip you when you start running down the hill. I'm going to keep you out of my neighborhood. Because I can't come face-to-face with my guilt." In many cases, that's what's operating underneath.

In evil times, the only place for a moral person is on the ramparts, in jail or in exile. And so, certainly, when other human beings' rights are being denied, Dr. King -- and I would add Malcolm X, and I would add Medgar Evers, and certainly some of the most active of the Kennedys and a number of other people, Fannie Lou Hamer and others -- would be marching or whatever would be effective at this time. Marching might not be the thing for 1993. There might be a necessity to devise a new and other way to deal with inequities in our society, but I am sure that Reverend King would be doing whatever was necessary and whatever would be effective.

If a person -- any human being -- is told often enough, "You are nothing. You are nothing. You account for nothing. You count for nothing. You are less than a human being... the person finally begins to believe it, and not only believe it, to say, "You think I'm nothing? I will show you where nothing is," and become even lower than he or she is accused of being. It is very, very hard for a young, black man anywhere to sit in his home -- in his home, in his place of living -- in the street, sometimes -- and believe that this country cares about him. It is very hard. So if the country doesn't care, if his peers are going down the hole, then he says, "Well, they look just like me. They're nothing. So that proves I'm nothing. In that case, their lives are worth nothing. And I can not only take their lives, I can allow them to take mine."

The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history. However sad, however mordant, however terrible, we must know it. The only way out of something is all the way through it. You must see it, read it, study it, and then you can pass through it, you see? It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history. You should know that the Asians built these railroads, that they were brought here, as Maxine Hong Kingston said, to Gold Mountain in the 1850s, in the 1840s, unable legally to bring their mates for eight decades. It's important that you know that, otherwise how can you make friends? Only equals make friends, you see?

Just create yourself. Have enough courage to invent yourself.

Read ceaselessly. Read. Go into a library and just make yourself a list. Say, "I will read from A to BR." Read. All knowledge, my dear young woman -- all knowledge -- is spendable currency, depending upon the market. Read. Put it in the old bean. You'll be amazed how it will serve you.

 

[Blair Waldorf]

^ Thanks for doing that, shimma. What a fantastic woman. Maya Angelou, too .

 

[caxe]

Both you and mshel should gently and respectfully educate your elders that although it is difficult, they must cease using such an offensive word, because the modern and correct term is "people of flava."

LMAO Shimma!

 

[ldq31]

(Quote) This thread is just making me laugh now. I'm fully convinced that some of you have more hate in your hearts for someone that lets slip an accidental racist remark, maybe one in their lifetime and aside from that they are a good and moral person, than the accused person has hate in their heart against a minority. It's the most ridiculous conversation I've ever witnessed in a while, lol. Someone here is even coming across like Caucasians are the enemy to minorities. Like white people never get poor treatment, that makes me laugh, the number of times I've been criticized by another ethnicity, but whoooa no, our numbers here in America ***** yours therefore we shouldn't be pitied and our verbal attackers are excused and sometimes even justified by others. Some of you sound so hateful against other people when it's hate that you're fighting in the first place! I don't like racism anymore than you do, but geez I'm not that raging and vehement about it. I'm not going to be raging angry because one ignorant person said something stupid, hell I'll probably say something right back. But I'm not going to carry hate with me, AHEM.

I was verbally tormented in middle school only by a single minority group, and it sucked, but I grew up and realized I had a lot going for me and I wasn't going to carry hate for them or their race, because it's ridiculous. Sure I told them I didn't like what they were saying about me, but they had their own opinion and what I had to say didn't change them. They have a right to dislike me or my race, as long as they don't get physical about it.

SpoiledKiwi and Merika, I agree with the both of you.
(Quote)

You have implicated yourself. A group of miniriites were mean to you so now you excuse people who are racists? My two biracial children and my own mixed race self have encountered racisim for all kind sof people. i don't excuse when it is someone of my own race or of another race. In my mind when I am pissed off at someone I uses words that aren't nice but I NEVER BRING SOMEONE RACE into it. Merika if you tihnk we live in a "just" justice sysyem. Google the NYPD and their crimes pf brutality. Look up the statistics on minoriites stopped by cops as opposed to caucasians in NEw York. And we are the liberals.