Prometheus 6   

Something I just noticed

I'm sitting here converting the text and comments from the Racism and Reparations discussions into permanent pages. I decided to do this a week or so ago because I felt it would be good to have such nice, productive conversations laying around handy. And maybe its because I still have my draws in a bunch over that hung jury out in California but I noticed a couple of things that have me kind of wondering.

When I have these sorts of discussions it's not at all unusual for a white person to start the conversation by attempting to correct me on some triviality then suggesting a book or two that I should read to come up to speed. Now, I expect some dispute and I know the tactics used in the agora so the trivial corrections don't bother me much. But the books tend to. I mean, what makes any white person think they know more about race than any Black person? Truthfully, I find the level of ignorance on both sides to be abominable. But we's all having this siditty debate and I just feel it would be a good thing to find out what I know before trying to educate me, especially if you know you're posturing…which if you are, you do.

Mark, the books you suggested are specifically excluded from this rant.

And another thing. Why am I supposed to be fair all the time? I remember years ago I got called a racist; it was said that I use disparaging terms for white people. I'm like, "Give me an example," and I was told "You capitalize 'Black' but you don't capitalize 'white'!" All I could say was, "Well, just damn!" This woman said, "Well, to be fair, you have to capitalize neither or both," and I'm like, "No, I don't. To be fair I have to not lie on you."

Okay, I'm going back to work on those pages. I just needed to get that off my chest.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/30/2003 09:54:11 PM |