Prometheus 6

Mister (or Mrs.) Prometheus 6,

On my blog I've responded to what I believe to be your unfair quotation of
my entry. Let me know what you think. And please, don't bother using the
handle, I can deal with the blade. If you forgot, the link is
properwinston.blogspot.com.

Best,

Grant.

Friends,

A blogger dubbing himself (or herself) Prometheus 6 took offense to my sentence: "Both stories reveal, regardless of what the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become 'white people in black skin.' For whatever reason, Mister Prometheus failed to understand my usage of quotation marks. A common assumption among readers of the English language is that quotation marks can note a change in tone. Clearly, when surrounding the "white people in black skin" statement with quotation marks, I intended to make apparent my distaste for such a statement. With any form of communication, however, sometimes a recipient fails to understand the writer's intent. If this is the case, let me clarify why quotation marks stand next to white and skin.

Under the assimilation model, people from non-Teutonic (sarcasm intended) regions of the world are considered "white" people with different exteriors. From this, the original (original European-Americans) and the assimilated peoples of America attempt to mold the new immigrants (or old ones in the case of African-Americans) into "white" Americans, as opposed to allowing the new immigrants to keep their previous cultures, languages, and nationalisms. One's judgment of the assimilation model depends, of course, on one's judgment of America as a whole. A person enamored by everything American would tend to believe that changing other peoples in "Americans" would be a good thing, and vice-versa.

Either way, one should be careful to avoid treating all peoples within America as "white people in X skin." For one, this line of thought limits genuine understanding of non-"white" cultures within America. Like it or not, African-Americans, Latinos (as if such a monolith exists), Jewish-Americans, etc. have different lifestyles. Many government programs fail because they lack the necessary cultural nuances to influence a certain group's actions. Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other. While I support the basics of the assimilation model, I also like the idea of other cultures modifying (this implies a preservation of the core American values) the concept "American."

Mister Prometheus 6 proves himself (or herself) to eager to de-contextualize my comment in order to pervert its intended meaning (now is not the time to talk about the death of authorial meaning). If he (or she) intends to hurl any criticisms at me about my "racist" tendencies in his (or her) upcoming essay about my statement, he (or she) should know that the quote comes from an African-American political scientist, Antonio Brown. Is not it sad that one's identity should have anything to do with one's arguments? Let us see if Mister Prometheus responds to my rejoinder.

Curious,

Grant.

Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other.