Senate "Race" Relations (was "U.S. Society and Black Men")

I once got into an argument with a guy who was spouting bigotry about Roma and guess assumed I would be alright with it. It was really weird to experience that in southern California. Thankfully I am rarely alone with fellow white people I don't already know well enough; this being Orange County I'm sure I would get stereotypical Carolina-level bigotry from some people. It's bad enough how openly hateful so many people are regarding the homeless and how the "problem" is only that we have to be exposed to them.

 

My grandmother was incredibly racist. This is the same grandma who never told people her heritage--she always claimed to be "an American." She once told me that if I dated a black man, she'd disown me--hard for me to accept that this was a member of my family.

 

The babies mollified and stupefied with rum on the Paris metro is pretty full on.

I'm not sure if that was ever brought up, but, yes.

 

Mine's 99 and a half years ago, and has that adorable "soft" racism that someone of that vintage would have as a normal set of views. "He's the best doctor you know, incredibly bright, head of his unit at the hospital. And Indian", as if the former is somehow more remarkable by the fact of the latter. Or "She's a lovely nurse, really is. Very dark, but quite lovely."

 

My grandma still calls black people "colored". Sigh. And feels the need to mention if any person in her stories is such. "The colored girl behind the counter scheduled me for another appointment on the 7th." Just... What? Why? Old people are weird.

 

They're products of their time and space. If I wasn't getting a smaller comfort zone as I stared down 40; or, if I didn't realise that literally 90% of us here would have probably held some sort of casual racist belief if we lived a century ago, I'd be more offended by them.

 

Yeah, I feel the same. I just find some of the ways it plays out to be weird.

 

Americentrism +1,250

 

So I've been trying to organize my thoughts sufficiently to express them on this whole Elizabeth Warren thing and I just really can't distance myself from it sufficiently or something. Let me just say like a few things.

EDIT: Actually, I really went off . . . sorry for such a long, passionate post. I don't want to be obnoxious. I now return you to the original unedited post.

My best guess is that Warren had no idea about how complex the systems surrounding Native American ancestry and legality were when she made the claim that she had Native ancestry. That hardly makes her stupid as the system is complicated and deeply flawed. The DNA test indicates that she has some Native ancestry as countless people do; that backs up her story that she genuinely believed that she had Native ancestry when she claimed she did, but, at the end of the day, she shouldn't have claimed it without knowing what she was talking about and no one with half a brain thinks that, based on the DNA results she's shown, she should in some way qualify as "being" Native.

Trump, I think, pushed her into doing something about this issue because he and his cronies will not stop harping on this, despite being huge racists themselves. Trump himself once also claimed to have Native American heritage and in fact said that he had more than most of the Natives that lived on reservations. That's right; Trump accused Native Americans with legally verified Native status of fraud and claimed that he was, not just Native himself, but more Native than most of the Natives receiving government benefits. But he's suddenly really offended by what Warren did? Give me a ******* break. Warren was ignorant; Trump is straight up racist and he's done far, far, far worse when it comes to the Indigenous people of the United States than, well, just about anybody since Andrew Jackson who, by the way, Trump loves. And check out Brett Kavanaugh's thoughts on Natives too. Native American voter suppression in North Dakota is in play that will potentially keep thousands of Natives from being able to vote specifically because they live on reservations. The government has shown utter disregard to the treatment of Native Americans when it comes to environmental issues, like with Standing Rock and countless other places. A ton of Native Americans live in grinding poverty, essentially third-world country conditions on a lot of reservations. Trump couldn't give a **** about any of that . . . but Elizabeth Warren once said she was Native when, basically, she isn't and he's just scandalized about it. Give. Me. A. Break.

This just makes a lot of the criticism of Warren ring really false to me. Even some Natives are saying that she's dangerously undermined the legal structure and system surrounding Native American ethnicity. But she's done nothing nearly as bad as Trump even if you just limit it to the times that each of them claimed to be Native American without any evidence. Others are calling the DNA test a stunt or that she should have just backed down. She was pushed into doing this test by Trump and his supporters who have kept up a steady barrage of fake outrage over this for YEARS now. The fact, by the way, that this continues to be the worst thing anyone has been able to dig up on Warren kind of speaks for itself. That said, I think Trump could make this into a win for himself, but he won't, of course. All he has to do is roll his eyes and let the rest of us see for ourselves that Warren's "ancestry" is, you know, nothing but a tiny technicality and then go ahead and give a million dollars to charity. He wins everything that way. But he's not going to do that, of course. He's going to kick up the "Pocahontas" name-calling and keep harping on it every chance he gets.

Why does this all matter? Well, it kind of doesn't except that it is exposing a lot of hypocrisy and ignorance. Let me give you a handful of things everyone should know about Native Americans, but almost no one does. Native Americans legally had none of the rights or protections of U.S. Citizens until 1924. Native Americans were not considered "persons" under US law until 1879. Natives lead the nation in the following per capita categories: teen suicide, teen pregnancy, high-school drop-out & lowest income. 1 in 4 Natives lives below the poverty line. Unemployment in recent decades has been as high as 69%. 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped or be the victim of attempted rape; in 80% of those cases, the rapist is non-Native.

And, as always, there's this ******* guy:



But wait! He will no longer appear on official Indians memorabilia starting in 2019! Chalk this one up as a win. Try not to notice that 62% of people in Cleveland and surrounding areas say that they're still "proud" of Chief Wahoo and want him to continue to be the mascot.

You know, I used to not identify as strongly as Native in terms of societal issues and that kind of thing. I was raised in an interracial marriage in a mostly white community and I faced little in the way of hardship in growing up. I never intended to care so much or talk so much or be so pushy about Native American issues. Wish to God I didn't have to. Oppression doth make activists of us all. At least if we're paying attention.

 

Basically. I think it just goes to show how set in our ways of thinking we are by the time we are adults. My grandma was 35 when MLK was killed. By that age, most people already have a set opinion.

And I would say my grandma's racism is on the mild end for people her age. She just feels the need to point out when black people are around. I've never ever heard her say something like the n-word, which I can't say is true for all older family members.

For instance, when we first went to Zambia, my grandma wondered why on Earth we'd want to go to Africa. In her mind it was just a dangerous place filled with poor and/or undesirable people.

On the bright side, when some of my mom's students (who've become my friends) from Zambia came to visit, my grandma met them and it turned her around. She thought they were all very nice young men and says she gets why we loved Africa, and that it wasn't just the neat animals. We made genuine friends there and enjoy exchanging our cultures.

So I don't know. On the one hand, most people don't change their opinions or viewpoints much once they're set. And that's scary. But on the other, even a mildly racist old lady can come to see someone she's prejudiced against as a good human being and worthy of equal footing and friendship.

But I do think it goes to show that the best way to change attitudes ultimately isn't even great speeches or amazing figures like MLK who you might only see on TV. Usually the best way for people to accept diversity is just to be exposed to it.

Which gets back to why diversity in schools, the workplace, your neighborhood, and everywhere else is so vitally important.

 

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to respond to Stephen. First off, thank you for your thoughts, they're super valuable in general but especially on this topic where we don't have tons of Native Americans to weigh in.

Since I was the one who brought up the Warren topic, I want to be clear even though I've said this before here: in no way is my criticism of Warren an absolution for Trump. He is a racist ******* and bully who will continue as such no matter what the facts are. Warren could have turned out to be 100% Native and he'd still find a way to spin it as a negative in the minds of his supporters. They're a lost cause.

The reason I criticized Warren is because I do think, as you said, she was ignorant. No I don't think she's caused irreparable harm or anything. But I think she perpetuated a narrative that Native ancestry is just some cool acessory you can sprinkle onto your otherwise boring white persona. I don't think it was malicious. I don't care if it ever benefitted her.

But see, when I vote for politicians, especially executives, I tend to feel I'm voting more for a person and their character than for policy positions. Because after all the executives don't make the laws. But they do have to have judgement to apppoint others to interpret them. They have to have good judgement day to day, on a huge variety of topics.

For me, this whole scenario is a mark against her judgement abilities. I'm not saying it's the end of the world. But it doesn't make me that confident in her.

Because to me, a real leader with good judgement would have just backed off. Been the bigger person and said "you know what, my family always said we have some Native ancestry, and maybe we do. But I was wrong to suggest in any way that this makes me Native. I'm not, and I am not taking a blood test about this. Instead, let's use this focus on them, however brief, to talk about things Native Americans care about...." Then SHE could donate and start a drive to get others to donate to a charity for Native healthcare or education or any of the many other things she wants Trump to donate to. Why put the power in his hands? Yet that's what she's done.

Instead she let Trump use Native identity as a political hand grenade. One rigged to go off only when she is holding it, no matter what. It was badly handled and it makes me disappointed in her poor judgement. If she wants to be President, she's going to have to deal with foes in a more intelligent way. You think Trump is media savvy, wait until you have to deal with Putin.


All of this is a very long way of saying... I'm more disappointed in Warren for her handling of the situation than for the actual ancestry claims she made.

 

I'm afraid, on the contrary, that they had already been taught things and had learned them as well as was expected of them. It's not a problem of learning, but one of being sufficiently challenged to unlearn. People don't change their ways and beliefs easily, if at all.

 

I've actually made this point before that every single one of us is happily doing something today that in 100 years from now, 2118's social justice warriors will be decrying us for. We don't even know what behavior that will be because we can't predict what college students in the future will be mad about. That doesn't make us bad people.

 

Makes the Woke twits who live for callout culture look a bit silly when you put it that way

 

A long lasting lesson from my Parents was that all humans were same in terms of their skin colour or whatever ethnicity they were from.

Course science bears this out too but now is a time where unfortunately still people choose to be bigoted or at the least prejudiced towards those who are different to them in these ways.

Sad but true that the societal evolution is not past this already.

 

- how we dealt with minorities
- how we dealt with the environment
- how we dealt with cheap foreign labour
- that dictator that stood up in the US after Trump destroyed the system

 

Sickening.

School suspends, calls police on girl who was called the N-word.

 

-Same sex marriage was legal
-Mixed race marriage was legal
-Abortion was legal
-Non-Christians were allowed to roam free instead being kept in camps

 

I'm going to give an example at how new knowledge doesn't sink in even given five years: which country has the strongest economy in the world today?

 

I said "happily" doing. As in you and I, not J-Rod.