Privilege & Passive Racism

Yeah, I think we need to take the word "passive" out of the thread name. Unless our definition of "passive" means we're not actually shooting anyone.

Wow. Industrialized, outsourced racial lynching. They should just rename the app to be a branch KKK thing and be done with it.

LarryC wrote:

Good lord. How is that still passive?

"We're not racist, we're just concerned about the safety of our neighborhood."

:l Not passive really, no. But seemed appropriate for here after "Diet Racism".

Also a bit of an argument for why active anti-racism is important, and it's not enough to just "address it when you see it". How easy is it to not see things like this happening, if you don't live in those neighborhoods, if you don't read about this stuff happening. How hard is it to fix this sort of racism without going taking pro-active measures to prevent or dismantle it.

LarryC wrote:

Wow. Industrialized, outsourced racial lynching. They should just rename the app to be a branch KKK thing and be done with it.

It's the neighbors, not the app. I use Nextdoor occasionally and in my neighborhood it's mostly just people selling their junk, looking for lost pets, and organizing community events.

Hypatian wrote:

Also a bit of an argument for why active anti-racism is important, and it's not enough to just "address it when you see it". How easy is it to not see things like this happening, if you don't live in those neighborhoods, if you don't read about this stuff happening. How hard is it to fix this sort of racism without going taking pro-active measures to prevent or dismantle it.

This is so very, very important, and it is frustrating how many people (including me up until just a few years ago) don't understand this.

Farscry wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Also a bit of an argument for why active anti-racism is important, and it's not enough to just "address it when you see it". How easy is it to not see things like this happening, if you don't live in those neighborhoods, if you don't read about this stuff happening. How hard is it to fix this sort of racism without going taking pro-active measures to prevent or dismantle it.

This is so very, very important, and it is frustrating how many people (including me up until just a few years ago) don't understand this. :(

every entitled asswipe ever wrote:

But that is "reverse racism".

Seriously. I am ashamed I ever bought into that sh*t.

Farscry wrote:

Seriously. I am ashamed I ever bought into that sh*t. :(

Don't beat yourself up too hard. It is REALLY hard to see past privilege. Camels and eyes of needles and all.

We live in a racist society.
I'm still racist man. Its the way it is. Getting there tho.

People with "black-sounding" names more likely to be seen as large and violent.

But in neutral scenarios, people linked the black-sounding names (Jamal, DeShawn, or Darnell) with aggression, while the white-sounding names (Connor, Wyatt, or Garrett) received more leniency. In fact, people associated black-sounding names with neutral backgrounds as equally dangerous to white-sounding names with a criminal record.

That's some messed-up bullcrap right there.

RE: Nextdoor.com

Yup. I've seen the threads for my neighbourhood and a few of us always call out the idiots who are racially profiling. It sucks.

Haven't used Nextdoor but it sounds like a smaller scale Craigslist. I was just watching a youtube video on it. They say each group is private for only the members of that neighborhood. What is stopping someone from creating a account to a neighborhood they don't live in?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Haven't used Nextdoor but it sounds like a smaller scale Craigslist. I was just watching a youtube video on it. They say each group is private for only the members of that neighborhood. What is stopping someone from creating a account to a neighborhood they don't live in?

When you sign up they send you a postcard with an activation code through the rl mail and you can only see posts near the address you provided.

sometimesdee wrote:

People with "black-sounding" names more likely to be seen as large and violent.

But in neutral scenarios, people linked the black-sounding names (Jamal, DeShawn, or Darnell) with aggression, while the white-sounding names (Connor, Wyatt, or Garrett) received more leniency. In fact, people associated black-sounding names with neutral backgrounds as equally dangerous to white-sounding names with a criminal record.

That's some messed-up bullcrap right there.

This is awful -- and to add on (linked from that story) -- apparently, white people think black people are magical.

In a series of five studies, some involving so-called implicit association tests in which words are flashed on a screen quickly enough to "prime" a subject with their meaning but not for them to consciously understand what they have seen, the researchers showed that whites are quicker to associate blacks than whites with superhuman words like ghost, paranormal, and spirit; are more likely to think a black person as opposed to a white person has certain superhuman abilities; and that the more they think blacks are superhuman, the less they view black people as having a capacity to feel pain.

Which is weird. You'd think that viewing Black people as having less pain capacity would be seeing them as subhuman, instead of superhuman.

My neighborhood is on nextdoor and I haven't seen any racial profiling on it here, thankfully. (Maybe because my neighborhood is more mixed and it is normal to see people of all races out and about?) Yes, I had to sign up through a postcard with my address. I don't know how it handles people who move and are no longer at an address, but people can't just randomly sign up with any information. One thing I really like about it is that the
Town is also on it, so I am finally able to keep up with all of the town events without having to go out of my way to read twitter, facebook, or remember to visit the webpage. It all just comes to me in an email. The current conversation is about kids and trick or treating.

Paleocon wrote:
Farscry wrote:

Seriously. I am ashamed I ever bought into that sh*t. :(

Don't beat yourself up too hard. It is REALLY hard to see past privilege. Camels and eyes of needles and all.

Don't forget rocks and glass houses:

http://www.tmz.com/2015/10/09/raven-...

"The View" co-host admitted on Thursday she discriminates when it comes to people with names like "Watermelondrea" ... and would not hire someone with such a unique name.

A black lesbian named Raven with a fuschia Mohawk talking about not hiring someone with a "black" sounding name.

nel e nel wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Farscry wrote:

Seriously. I am ashamed I ever bought into that sh*t. :(

Don't beat yourself up too hard. It is REALLY hard to see past privilege. Camels and eyes of needles and all.

Don't forget rocks and glass houses:

http://www.tmz.com/2015/10/09/raven-...

"The View" co-host admitted on Thursday she discriminates when it comes to people with names like "Watermelondrea" ... and would not hire someone with such a unique name.

A black lesbian named Symoné with a fuschia Mohawk talking about not hiring someone with a "black" sounding name.

FTFY.

She's also said her ancestry is from "every continent in Africa except one."

Also: see my sig

Back to the kids in DUMBO (Brooklyn):

The Evidence That White Children Benefit From Integrated Schools

Everybody wins!

Tanglebones wrote:

Seasonally appropriate essay:
Why Halloween Season Can Be a Downer for Black Cosplayers

Yeah, I get that. I wanted to cosplay as an Asian anime character once. My so-called friend at the time said, "but you're not Asian." I don't recall him ever having that issue with White cosplayers.

So often Black cosplayers are relegated to a scant few dark-skinned characters, or non-human characters. Oh they could be like me and try to get punny. I once cosplayed as "Black Lady" from Sailor Moon. Correction, the Black "Black Lady." I hated Chibiusa in all her incarnations, but I figured it would be a relatively creative way to use my Blackness to my advantage.

sometimesdee wrote:

Back to the kids in DUMBO (Brooklyn):

The Evidence That White Children Benefit From Integrated Schools

Everybody wins!

Tanglebones wrote:

Seasonally appropriate essay:
Why Halloween Season Can Be a Downer for Black Cosplayers

Yeah, I get that. I wanted to cosplay as an Asian anime character once. My so-called friend at the time said, "but you're not Asian." I don't recall him ever having that issue with White cosplayers.

So often Black cosplayers are relegated to a scant few dark-skinned characters, or non-human characters. Oh they could be like me and try to get punny. I once cosplayed as "Black Lady" from Sailor Moon. Correction, the Black "Black Lady." I hated Chibiusa in all her incarnations, but I figured it would be a relatively creative way to use my Blackness to my advantage.

Why does this make me think of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where Titus Andromedon is treated better as a werewolf than as a black man?

Paleocon wrote:

Why does this make me think of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where Titus Andromedon is treated better as a werewolf than as a black man?

Because Tina Fey is on-point, as usual.

I can't find a vid of the moment from Community when Chevy Chase tells Donald Glover he shouldn't let society limit "his people" and he can be "Shaft or Dolemite or Leroy Brown."

Anyway, To The Best of Our Knowledge had philosopher Naomi Zack share her misgivings with conversations about privilege, at least, as she says, as undertaken by white people. The unseemliness of "Criming While White" springs to mind.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I can't find a vid of the moment from Community when Chevy Chase tells Donald Glover he shouldn't let society limit "his people" and he can be "Shaft or Dolemite or Leroy Brown."

Anyway, To The Best of Our Knowledge had philosopher Naomi Zack share her misgivings with conversations about privilege, at least, as she says, as undertaken by white people. The unseemliness of "Criming While White" springs to mind.

I have a buddy who owns a bunch of properties around NC State (he is a large black man) and says he often brings a well dressed, skinny blonde woman with him when he visits his properties as "harassment insurance".

Paleocon wrote:

I have a buddy who owns a bunch of properties around NC State (he is a large black man) and says he often brings a well dressed, skinny blonde woman with him when he visits his properties as "harassment insurance".

Sad, isn't it? I'd think that it would backfire, and people might think the skinny blonde woman was a victim of some sort.

My father used to use my voice as "swindler insurance" when getting estimates over the phone, because I "sound White," and a lot of people think Black people are dumb enough to fall for scams or pay exorbitant prices.

So, some of the folks at Howlround have posited making the theater season of 2020 the Jubilee season. As explained by Howlround, "We plan to celebrate this vision with a Jubilee year in 2020, in which every theatre in the United States of America produces only works by women, people of color, artists of varied physical and cognitive ability, and/or LGBTQA artists."

All well and good, but man oh man are some straight white dudes complaining. I've been locked in a thread battle on Facebook with an entitled white guy who can't seem to grasp that there's nothing illegal about this, and that he isn't being discriminated against. A theater company (like Lincoln Center) that opts to choose an all straight white guy season is fine and dandy, but a company that signs up for Jubilee is "breaking the law" and "banning" straight white men.

It is in discussions like this that I start to feel like no amount of rationality, patience, or logic can accomplish anything.

Tanglebones wrote:

Seasonally appropriate essay:
Why Halloween Season Can Be a Downer for Black Cosplayers

Guy Roz was speaking on an NPR panel about geekery, and perhaps because of his surname pronounced "cosplay" as "Coz-play."

One's mind fairly does not know where to go.

I'm pretty sure the dominant pronunciation is with a "z" sound.

Jayhawker wrote:

I'm pretty sure the dominant pronunciation is with a "z" sound.

I can't help but think that if it's pronounced with a Z sound, it's about dressing up like Bill Cosby.