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Posted on 11/10/2015 2:00:14 PM PST by ScottWalkerForPresident2016
The first time I saw a friend wearing blackface I was a freshman in college. I was stunned. I was hurt. I was enraged. But more than anything, I was confused. He thought it was funny, albeit controversial. But to me it wasn’t a joke; it was pointed mockery. I imagined him laughing and joking as his friends painted his skin. I couldn’t understand why he would so callously and easily disrespect me and those like me, for fun.
Now I have come to expect such acts, and the conversations that surround them, as routine displays of disrespect and cultural cluelessness.
The events at Yale over the past weeks have provoked a great deal of conversation, but little effort to understand or acknowledge the cultural and institutional biases at play. In their responses, many have made the same mistake that my friend did, assuming that individual actions can be divorced from their broader context, or from the larger and more troubling legacy of racial discrimination in America. But they can’t.
When Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent around an email suggesting that students, “Take the time to consider their costumes and the impact it may have,†it was asking students to be thoughtful about the choices they made, to think before acting, and to ask themselves whether what they saw as a fun or funny joke might make others feel hurt, offended, or even threatened. For students who already feel excluded at Yale, as at similar schools, the email from the Intercultural Affairs Committee likely felt like a small, but likely appreciated acknowledgement that everyone should feel safe and included on campus.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Let’s talk about cultural cluelessness...no, I don’t think you want to.
And...the irony of all ironies...Gillian’s last name is White.
Dear Parents of Color,
Keep your little sootflakes in the hood,
where they will be safe, sound, and unable
to integrate into the larger society.
It’s for their own good.
Wow. That makeup is heavy duty.
It goes a long way towards explaining
why on the morning after the first
night together, the guy rolls over
and says, “Who the hell are you?”
Upset over face paint? not upset over head wrappers murdering normal people?
.
.
Ding, ding, ding - we have a thread winnah!
There's your problem.
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