US The Coddling of the American Mind
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Wolfie
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I do believe Mischief brought it up first. Saying the question is different if your white versus not.
You still don't get it.
You yourself said that you have a NY accent, and that you were asked where you are from in areas where people do not have a NY accent.
You were not asked "where are you from" because the questioner thought you looked "different"*, but because your accent showed that you were from a different part of the country.
*Unless you can point me to an area of the U.S. where no white people live?
No.
White Americans don't ask white people or African American people where they are from, unless they have an accent that is different from the questioner's. (Or unless they live in an exclusively/almost exclusively white area of the country. For example, in rural central Illinois, white people will ask African Americans where they are from, assuming that it's either Chicago or Detroit.) White people (and maybe some African Americans) will ask people with a Latino or Asian appearance "where are you from."
I definitely think the neighbourhood kid in my street I mentioned who came up to me and asked me if I spoke English was saying it out of prejudice, even though it was not racial as he and I were both white. I assumed he thought I was a person who had moved here from Europe. I wonder what he would have said to me if I had been from another country and replied to him with an accent. I think it stems from anti-immigrant feeling in the UK and an unwelcoming attitude some have to anyone they feel doesn't belong here. This was a few years ago the incident happened and I think the xenophobia in the UK is worse now. Depressing.
OP
OP
Accents are typically the driver for someone to ask another person where they are from, not skin color.
Can you point me to an area of the U.S. where no people if color live? (excluding extremely isolated areas)
:headbang:
Did you watch the film clip earlier in the thread? Did you read Freesia's posts? What do you think we've been talking about?!?!
Sure. Large swathes of the Midwest, for example, outside of large metropolitan areas and college towns. I grew up two hours south of Chicago, and I did not see an African American person in the flesh until I went to college. The same for Asians. I did see Latinos - migrant workers from Mexico, who lived in a local farmer's chicken houses every year for the season, because no one would rent to them.
In the 1990's, a black cardiologist from Uganda came to work at the hospital in the county seat. He and his family were black. In the past decade, two Chinese families settled in the county and opened two Chinese restaurants. The only Latinos are still migrant workers.
The town where I went to school still has zero non-white residents. There is one black man who lives a few miles outside of town now, and he has a son. They are referred to, even by their closest neighbors, as "the black guy" and "the black kid", because they are the only ones who fit that description.
Freesia
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As I said, I never felt the asker was racist, and I was never offended by it.
But it is something that can compound my feelings of alienation in my own home town if other things are not working out very well. This is the reason I have tried to spend more time overseas than where I live. I do get a little sick of it all.
Agreed. As I said much earlier in the thread, as an immigrant, I find other immigrant's stories interesting.
However, I also understand that even someone with an accent can get tired of being constantly questioned about it, so I don't. (Just like I constantly get questioned about how many animals I have when I go to Costco to get cat and dog food. I now alternate between giving the questioner a glassy smile or responding with a comment about the contents of their own carts - "My, what a lot of meat/cereal/whatever you're buying - you must have a huuuge family!")
The young son of a co-worker of mine died suddenly on Mother's Day years ago. That set me to thinking about how hard each and every Mother's Day was going to be for her, for the rest of her life.
Unless I know the circumstances of someone's life, I never wish them a happy Father's Day or Mother's Day. They too may have lost a child, or have been unable to have children despite wanting them badly.
I understand that some people may not have thought that far.
What I don't understand is when something has been pointed out to someone as being potentially harmful or hurtful, that person still argues that his/her right to say something that is to him/her trivial, trumps everyone else's feelings.
Unless I know the circumstances of someone's life, I never wish them a happy Father's Day or Mother's Day. They too may have lost a child, or have been unable to have children despite wanting them badly.
I understand that some people may not have thought that far.
What I don't understand is when something has been pointed out to someone as being potentially harmful or hurtful, that person still argues that his/her right to say something that is to him/her trivial, trumps everyone else's feelings.
Freesia
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I honestly thought I was mistaken and they were like me mixed but were talking about their experiences in their home countries...
but yeah I dont really expect people to know what I am talking about unless they have experienced it themselves. Maybe I am jaded.
but yeah I dont really expect people to know what I am talking about unless they have experienced it themselves. Maybe I am jaded.
Also, with respect to the OP and the disdain for trigger warnings:
I find it particularly interesting on a vegetarian board, where so many make an effort to not be subjected to images of abused animals and/or graphic descriptions of abuse inflicted on animals.
I know I don't want to, and don't need to, see more of such images/read more such graphic descriptions. I have enough of them burned into my brain, and, frankly, such things make my depression harder to manage.
I have never been raped, nor was I sexually abused as a child, but I don't find it difficult to imagine how graphic descriptions of such things can trigger adverse reactions in individuals who have been raped, abused, etc.
After all, I know the impact of a photo of an abused animal on me, and I haven't even been an abused animal.
I find it particularly interesting on a vegetarian board, where so many make an effort to not be subjected to images of abused animals and/or graphic descriptions of abuse inflicted on animals.
I know I don't want to, and don't need to, see more of such images/read more such graphic descriptions. I have enough of them burned into my brain, and, frankly, such things make my depression harder to manage.
I have never been raped, nor was I sexually abused as a child, but I don't find it difficult to imagine how graphic descriptions of such things can trigger adverse reactions in individuals who have been raped, abused, etc.
After all, I know the impact of a photo of an abused animal on me, and I haven't even been an abused animal.
I think some people have sufficient imagination/empathy to get it, and some people just don't.
I have to say I never fully realized how debilitating general anxiety attacks can be until I experienced a few myself, even though I understood phobias, since I had only to imagine being locked into a small confined space with a cobra in order to comprehend an acquaintance's cat phobia.
I don't know what it is like to have experienced what you have, but I know what it is like to have experienced prejudice due to being a woman and being bisexual so I can empathise. I think some people are just ignorant rather than trying to be deliberately rude, well, I hope so! I'm sure I say the wrong words or use the wrong terms and offend people sometimes. I try not to, but I'm sure I do.
I remember reading some literature about what not to say to someone who has been bereaved and I cringed as I'm sure I had said some of them during my life.
Same here. Especially being single, middle aged/senior citizen and a woman. It happened twice during the course of the week with a neighbour ( I was with another s,ma friend who is female) plus the man that came to tow my car away. He was very rude to me because he assumed that he was going to get away with it.
Joe
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Some of you might find this article interesting.
One Year Later, Erika Christakis Breaks Her Silence on Yale Halloween Controversy - FIRE
One Year Later, Erika Christakis Breaks Her Silence on Yale Halloween Controversy - FIRE
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Joe
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And then you have fans attending a college football game in costumes depicting Trump holding a noose around Obama's neck: College addresses football fans' Obama-in-noose costume
The surrounding fans (all white, with one exception that I can see) seemed not at all disturbed by this display. The university continues to defend their refusal to ask these people to leave (they were merely asked to remove the noose).
The surrounding fans (all white, with one exception that I can see) seemed not at all disturbed by this display. The university continues to defend their refusal to ask these people to leave (they were merely asked to remove the noose).
OP
OP
Once the noose (and the implication of violence) was removed, it just became two people in costumes.
Sure.
My point is that the reaction is not proportionate to the offense. By your reasoning, I could unfurl a sign in a stadium or other venue that says "Lynch the n******" or "Gas the Jew", wave it around and get it on TV, and then simply agree to put it down on the ground when asked to do so. Rinse, repeat as often as I like, because I can make my point with no consequences whatsoever.
That takes care of it, right?!
I don't think so. People who do things like this need to be removed from the venue. They should at least have the consequence of not continuing to enjoy the game/concert/meal/whatever.
When I was in grad school, someone used a marker to write really vile racist crap all over the door of an African student two doors down from me one night. It was someone on our floor (the doors at the end of each hall automatically locked, and only we who lived there had the key), and if that person had been caught, the appropriate remedy would have been expulsion, not merely having the student in question clean the door. (As it was, a couple of us cleaned and painted the door.)
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