The Cellar - University to students: 'All whites are racist'

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- - University to students: 'All whites are racist' (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=15855)

Dana is pointing out here, that she is English, and I am Irish.
Well-played!!
No Irish, No Dogs!! N.I.N.A.

lol!

Ali- I was making a remark directed along the lines of: even though you are white married to a black person, you are still a racist. (According to this new definiton of racists)

I think that would be very insulting. Especially since the new policy is: Racist if white, no matter what.....

What if you are half -white? Are you half-racist? This is ridiculous. I need to get out of this thread.
uuugh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45 (Post 404078)

Black, Hispanic, Gay pride was started because society told these groups that they should be ashamed of who they are and then the pride movement was reactionary to that.

Can you say "backlash?"

I don't know about you, but I've been pretty well told that everything in history is someway my fault, even though I wasn't there.

i'm a 33 year old straight, white male. sometimes when i look at how hard i've worked to scrape by and then get to where i am now, i think "wow, how did i have time to do that while i was busy holding back and oppressing blacks, mexicans, women, and gays?"

A one panel cartoon I saw once read "I don't know who has been oppressing you for 300 years but they must be much older than I am."

Ah ha, I see. Now we know who the oppressed really are...

I'm not oppressed, except for me oppressing myself. And this town I live in is oppressive, but it's not limited to a particular race, sex, or religion. ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 405410)

Can you say "backlash?"

I don't know about you, but I've been pretty well told that everything in history is someway my fault, even though I wasn't there.

Well it is your fault...aren't you a woman?!?
lol!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 405360)

I'm not particularly proud of being white. I am proud of my northern heritage though. The reason I am proud of my northern heritage is tied up with northern culture and the sense of class pride which that usualy encompasses. Pride in your home town (as evidenced by people's tendency to support their home town in sports even if they're not a sports fan) is something which every community tries to engender in its citizens. Pride in, love of, one's home town helps to promote civic responsibility and a sense of belonging. What colour you are, to me, is irrelevant. Where you were born is not irrelevant, it speaks of where you have come from. Where you live is not irrelevant, it speaks to who you are. I identify very strongly with the town I was raised in and the town in which I now live. I identify very strongly with the class I was born into and the culture that prevailed within that class. I idenitify very strongly with my region, possibly to an even larger extent to my identification with my country. That said I identify very strongly with my country (England) and also Europe. All these things matter to me because they dictate the culture in which I was raised.

I also feel a strong sense of 'pride' in my heritage, my family's past, my class's past, my gender's past. All these things matter to me. I feel a sense of pride in the women who fought so hard so that women of my generation would be able to take part in our democratic institutions. I feel a sense of pride in those working class lads and lasses who made it possible, through their struggle, for me to have an education and access to healthcare and employment rights.

To me, class and gender are of much greater importance than skin colour...but then again the battles in my country were primarily based on class and gender, not skin colour. Although skin colour has been an issue in my country (Rivers of Blood speech and all that) and continues to be, it has never been as wide an issue as that of class. Perhaps in a country where colour was the major dividing line, those descendents of colour will look to the battles their grandparents fought and see pride in their achievements, in much the same way I look at the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the General Trades Union in my history.

A little under a thousand years ago, William the Conqueror razed the North to the bare soil. Remembered to posterity as The Harrowing of the North, the destruction was such that twenty years later, most of Yorkshire was still counted as 'Waste'. Well over 100,000 people were slaughtered, many more died of starvation. Animals, crops, villages, towns, all suffered. Like the Anglo-saxon kings before him, William based himself in the South. That's where the money flowed. Even when King Cotton strode the Pennines in the 18th and 19th centuries, the work may have been done in the North, but the finance flowed South. We still have something known as the North-South divide. The North is significantly poorer than the South. Opportunities for wealth creation are fewer in the North and the culture of the North is primarily working-class. I identify myself as a Northerner. These things are important to me.

Are you proud of the raising of Atlanta, the slaughter of civilians and the scorched earth campaigns of the North as well as the killing of black confederate pows by the north instead of treating them the same as whites?
If you are proud of the positives that you had nothing to do with you must also be of the negatives, correct, or is this similar to theism where you only associate with the truths you like and disassociate with those that you do not wish to acknowledge?
It is just not logical.
You did not do any of these things.
I can see enjoying a sense of community, history, etc, but "pride", when you actually did nothing?
Makes no sense to me.
I associate with the Southern way of thinking, but in no way am proud of what the south did, nor the north. The US is comprised of both and see no sense in claiming either as my own, I was not there though my family did participate on both sides.
I do not think of myself as white, Cherokee, apache, black, Caribbean, welsh, Scottish, Irish, or anything else that I may be that I am unaware of, these are the only that I know of.
I am proud of my education, the work that I have done, relationships that I build and maintain, art that I do and have done, decisions I make, actions.
Again, please, anyone... make being proud of something other than an accomplishment logical.
Accidents are nothing to be proud of, IMO.

Pride is not always a bad thing, its a source of identity. It is just when people go over the top with pride and nationalism or have pride in pointless traits do we start to get problems.

I think you and I have two different definitions of pride, perhaps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

If you are proud of the positives that you had nothing to do with you must also be of the negatives, correct, or is this similar to theism where you only associate with the truths you like and disassociate with those that you do not wish to acknowledge?

Possibly one could feel shame associated with the negatives in one's history instead, as long as the personal connection is roughly of equal strength as the pride in the positive aspects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clodfobble (Post 405487)

Possibly one could feel shame associated with the negatives in one's history instead, as long as the personal connection is roughly of equal strength as the pride in the positive aspects.

No one should carry around "shame" for historical acts unless you were directly responsible in some way.

I agree, I'm just pointing out that his statement that DanaC must be "proud" of negative aspects of her history is not accurate (leaving aside the fact that he has her heritage on the wrong continent in his examples.)

Not personal "shame," anyway. But society as a whole should be aware of historical acts, and recognize which ones shouldn't be repeated, and maybe even need to be corrected...to help the present eventually become better history, hopefully.

Even though none of us are individually responsible for what happened in history (good and bad), it's still part of what we are, because we came from it.

There are different types of pride. A parent can feel great pride in their children's achievements. Part of that will be born of their part in creating the child and raising it to make those achievements. But part of it will be a pride born of love or close association. That is a different source of pride to the personal pride one takes in one's own achievements.

The pride I feel in my heritage is born of *thinks* associating into, identifying with that heritage. What is important to me about that heritage is not connected with skin colour, but rather with cultural associations and a sense of my place in the chain. My world is not just made up of what is, but also of what has been.