I Don't Talk About Race With White People

[frenchbreadbuilds]

Just saying what I've been taught. I never really thought anything of it.
In elementary we didn't put wigs on, just the hat.
Throughout my entire life I haven't met one black person, or any person in general really, who doesn't partake in the holiday or thinks it's racist.

Black skin, textured hair, bright red lips. Looks like every single black person depicted in the old cartoons.

Wikipedia says he's a black moor
View media item 1802403

 

[Belgium]

Black skin, textured hair, bright red lips. Looks like every single black person depicted in the old cartoons.

Which is why I find it more than reasonable that the holiday received some backlash.

I agree to some extent, the stereotypical features should be removed because as kids we were taught that they're white people who become black by climbing down the chimney. Those features are conflicting with the story we were taught.

Thus leaving no reason for those features to remain, but I guess that's leftovers from the traditional holiday where the helpers were in fact black people.

It's a holiday for kids in elementary school so the kids wouldn't care about some small features being removed. I'd be in favor of that.

For the record I never said racism towards black people is somehow gone here in Belgium. It'll never be gone, I just said that I have seen a lot of improvement over the past decade based on my experiences with white and black people. It's certainly much better than the US.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

the OG Black Pete was a chained black demon then later a chained Moor [emoji]128064[/emoji]

 

[hand2handking]

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...ent-group-no-politically-correct-intimidation

[h1]  Princeton Student Group: We Stand for Academic Freedom and Open Dialogue[/h1]
by PRINCETON OPEN CAMPUS COALITION November 24, 2015 12:50 PM

Editor’s Note: The Princeton Open Campus Coalition is a student group at Princeton University formed to push back against the recent wave of politically correct suppression of open academic discourse on campus. The following letter was originally published at the Coalition’s Facebook page.

Dear President Eisgruber,

We write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition to request a meeting with you so that we may present our perspectives on the events of recent weeks. We are concerned mainly with the importance of preserving an intellectual culture in which all members of the Princeton community feel free to engage in civil discussion and to express their convictions without fear of being subjected to intimidation or abuse.

Thanks to recent polls, surveys, and petitions, we have reason to believe that our concerns are shared by a majority of our fellow Princeton undergraduates.

Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton.

This dialogue is necessary because many students have shared with us that they are afraid to state publicly their opinions on recent events for fear of being vilified, slandered, and subjected to hatred, either by fellow students or faculty. Many who questioned the protest were labeled racist, and black students who expressed disagreement with the protesters were called “white sympathizers” and were told they were “not black.” We, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, refuse to let our peers be intimidated or bullied into silence on these — or any — important matters.

First, we wish to discuss with you the methods employed by protesters. Across the ideological spectrum on campus, many people found the invasion of your office and refusal to leave to be troubling. Admittedly, civil disobedience (and even law-breaking) can sometimes be justified. However, they cannot be justified when channels of advocacy, through fair procedures of decision-making, are fully open, as they are at our university.

To adopt these tactics while such procedures for debate and reform are in place is to come dangerously close to the line dividing demonstration from intimidation. It is also a way of seeking an unfair advantage over people with different viewpoints who refuse to resort to such tactics for fear of damaging this institution that they love.

We worry that the proposed distribution requirement will contribute to the politicization of the university and facilitate groupthink. However, we, too, are concerned about diversity in the classroom and offer our own solution to this problem. While we do not wish to impose additional distribution requirements on students for fear of stifling academic exploration, we believe that all students should be encouraged to take courses taught by professors who will challenge their preconceived mindsets.

To this end, the university should make every effort to attract outstanding faculty representing a wider range of viewpoints — even controversial viewpoints — across all departments. Princeton needs more Peter Singers, more Cornel Wests, and more Robert Georges. Similarly, we believe that requiring cultural competency training for faculty threatens to impose orthodoxies on issues about which people of good faith often disagree. As Professor Sergiu Klainerman has observed, it reeks of the reeducation programs to which people in his native Romania were subjected under Communist rule.
 

We firmly believe that there should be no space at a university in which any member of the community, student or faculty, is “safe” from having his or her most cherished and even identity-forming values challenged. It is the very mission of the university to seek truth by subjecting all beliefs to critical, rational scrutiny. While students with a shared interest in studying certain cultures are certainly welcome to live together, we reject university-sponsored separatism in housing. We are all members of the Princeton community. We denounce the notion that our basic interactions with each other should be defined by demographic traits.

We hope that you will agree to meet with us. We will be happy to make ourselves available to meet in your office at your earliest convenience. We are also requesting a meeting with the Board of Trustees. For reasons you have articulated in your recent message to the community, there is no time to waste in having these discussions. Unlike their counterparts at other universities, Princeton undergraduates opposed to the curtailment of academic freedom refuse to remain silent out of fear of being slandered. We will not stop fighting for what we believe in.

Thank you very much for your consideration. We look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

The Legislative Committee of Princeton Open Campus Coalition

Allie Burton ’17

Evan Draim ’16

Josh Freeman ’18

Sofia Gallo ’17

Solveig Gold ’17

Andy Loo ’16

Sebastian Marotta ’16

Devon Naftzger ’16

Beni Snow ’19

Josh Zuckerman ’16

 

[RustyShackleford]

the OG Black Pete was a chained black demon then later a chained Moor [emoji]128064[/emoji]

I remember reading someone trying to describe the holiday on Reddit.

All they could come up with is: imagined Django Unchained, but Pete ain't married and instead of killing white folk, they hand out gifts to their kids

-But yeah, I read a lil about this holiday, and instead of admitting how insulting the whole tradition is and letting it die; folk just keep trying to make the story more PC as time goes by.

Denial is a helluva drug

 

[ASE]

I was with it for a second until the pics got posted.

It's CLEARLY blackface. changing the official story of the holiday does not excuse the clearly racist depiction still beIng used.

 

[Nouss]

I was with it for a second until the pics got posted.

It's CLEARLY blackface. changing the official story of the holiday does not excuse the clearly racist depiction still beIng used.

Yup, I was skeptical until the I saw the pics. Black face resembling soot...big bright red lips....I mean just look at the wigs

evident red flags everywhere.

 

[hand2handking]

'Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race' Is A Call To Action

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/14/5637...o-white-people-about-race-is-a-call-to-action

The provocative title is hard to ignore, and so is the book's cover. Seen from afar, it appears to be calledWhy I'm No Longer Talking About Race, which is intriguing enough on its own. You have to look closer to see To White People hiding underneath it in debossed letters. It's a striking visual representation of white people's blindness to everyday, structural racism — one of the central ideas that British journalist and feminist Reni Eddo-Lodge presents in her debut collection of essays.

"Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" is also the title of a blog post she wrote back in February of 2014. In that post, Eddo-Lodge wasn't trying to remove white people from the conversation or take them on a guilt trip; rather, she was simply saying that she'd had enough. It was an act of self-preservation. She was done with talking to white people who'd never had to think about what it meant to be white, or who showed a deep emotional disconnect when she told them about her experience as a black woman, or who — instead of listening while she spoke — were almost instinctively preparing trite counter-arguments in their heads, waiting for her to finish just to tell her that she was wrong — situations that will sound only too familiar to many people of color.

Facebook and Twitter to address the situation, apologizing to those who couldn't get in — and pointing out her frustration at being underestimated. The whole incident, she wrote, spoke to "many of the issues I've written about in my book."
In this collection of seven essays, Eddo-Lodge delves into topics like structural racism, class and feminism. But she begins with a crash course in black British history. Despite growing up in London, in school she studied black history through the lens of the American civil rights movement. It wasn't until she went to university that she learned more about her country's brutal and extensive participation in the slave trade — which inspired her to learn more about what it was like to be black in post-slavery Britain. She writes about this history with the clarity and approachability of a curious learner sharing what she's discovered, giving necessary context for everything she's going to discuss in the rest of the book. And although Why I'm No Longer Talking centers on events in Britain, it's still accessible to readers of black American history.

That's the case throughout the book, as Eddo-Lodge touches on themes that are sure to resonate with people of color everywhere. This is especially evident in her exploration of white privilege, which she defines as "an absence of the consequences of racism" — an eloquent explanation paired with real-world examples of what happens when white privilege seeps into the conversation about race, whether it's an informal chat with a new acquaintance or a wider national discussion around a racially motivated murder.

The impact of that blog post back in 2014 was a clear sign that people — both white and black — were hungry for more meaningful discussions about race. This collection of essays is Eddo-Lodge's contribution to keeping the conversation going. But she takes it a step further and makes a call to action. That call is muted at the beginning: "I hope you use it as a tool," she writes in the preface, but by the end, Eddo-Lodge is unapologetic in calling racism a white problem: "It reveals the anxieties, hypocrisies and double standards of whiteness. It is a problem in the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve."

It's that boldness, that straight talk which makes this book memorable. Eddo-Lodge pushes readers to recognize that racism is a systemic problem that needs to be tackled by those who run the system.

 

[hand2handking]

White Women: We Need To Talk About Race

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leliag...ut-race-even-if-its-not-perfect/#7e0d640f260c

“White women like me” is a phrase you hear often when you talk with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.

Rowe-Finkbeiner is the cofounder, executive director and CEO of MomsRising.org – a grassroots organizing nonprofit that takes on “the most critical issues facing women, mothers, and families by educating the public and mobilizing massive grassroots actions.”

Both her activism at MomsRising.org and her latest book, Keep Marching: How Every Woman Can Change Our World, focus on the idea that we can meaningfully fight sexism only when we also fight racism and economic inequality.

Have the conversation, even if it's uncomfortable.PIXABAY

In this book, she calls on white women to engage in difficult conversations with one another and to become change agents to dismantle racism in America. Keep Marching is a how-to guide for doing just that.

From the outset, Rowe-Finkbeiner explores the feminist movement’s legacy of prioritizing the experience of white, cisgender, middle-class women above all others. In the book and throughout her work, she uses her own identity and experience to engage other white women in a conversation about race and class that prioritizes the experiences of women of color, of low-income women, of trans and gender-nonbinary people.

It’s 7 A.M. at Rowe-Finkbeiner’s home in Washington state when we begin our first interview. She warmly apologizes for having lost her voice, telling me her daughter’s high school graduation was the night before. Despite the initial raspiness in her voice, she is full of energy and passion for the topic at hand – her book and white women’s responsibility to work to end racism.|

A few minutes into our conversation, I ask about the perfectionist instinct that many white women (myself included) struggle with and how it might affect our ability to engage in meaningful conversation around race. Personally, I’ve grappled with a tension between not wanting to offend and the need to just start having the conversations.

Have the conversation, even if it's difficult.ROOTS AND SHOOTS

Rowe-Finkbeiner says that whenever she fears, “Oh my gosh, I’m not going to get this right,” she reminds herself to do three things:

1. Get a sense of scale.

Rowe-Finkbeiner says, “There’s a concept that’s important for white women – and this definitely includes me – to hold closely: the feeling of fear that you’re going to mess up is nothing compared to the fear of death.” She continues, “Young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police [than their white counterparts]. That fear of socially messing up is nothing compared to the fear of losing a child or of being intentionally separated from your child – like is being done across our nation right now.”

If white women consider scale, if we weigh the actual impact of an uncomfortable social encounter against the relative harm to the people of color, we’ll be more likely to take action. She wants white women to recognize that we are walking around with such privilege every day, that “the harm that comes to me from having a difficult conversation is nothing compared to the harm whole communities often experience from us not having those conversations.”

2. Remember, this isn’t supposed to be easy.

If this were an easy issue to address, Rowe-Finkbeiner says our nation wouldn’t have such rampant inequality. She wants white women to remind one another that it’s inevitably awkward and difficult, but keep trying.

“Don’t be afraid of your internal implicit biases, be in conversation with them,” she says, “We haven’t flexed or even found the muscles. It’s going to be inelegant.” This discomfort doesn’t mean we’re actually harmed as white women. Again, it comes back to scale.

Furthermore, because implicit bias is integrated fully into everything we experience within the US, into our very culture, she acknowledges that it isn’t something you fix once, “It’s a work in progress.”

3. Take responsibility.

At the end of the conversation, she adds something that came up throughout our interview: essentially, that we’re going to make mistakes, and it’s imperative that we own our mistakes when we do.

Rowe-Finkbeiner brings up the concept of white tears. As she describes it, it’s the idea that when white women find themselves in difficult conversations, instead of meaningful work, we often end up with white tears. These tears are seen as an act of manipulation, a way to both garner unearned sympathy and to avoid meaningful discourse when it gets hard or we face criticism.

Again, scale. Those white tears “pale in comparison to the life and death matters that many communities are facing each day.”

We each have blinders that impact our experience of the world – we see it through our own lens. When we inevitably miss something as a result or have made a mistake, Rowe-Finkbeiner says, “Have a conversation with yourself.”

Instead of feeling defensive and insulted or bursting into tears, Rowe-Finkbeiner encourages white women to feel gratitude if someone lets us know about our unintended impacts. “Someone took time out of their busy life to open your eyes to something that was happening outside of you,” she says.

As a white woman myself, I’ve been deeply inspired and energized by talking with Rowe-Finkbeiner and following her work.

It reminds me of a conversation I had about workplace harassment with Celeste Kidd, who has since been honored as a Time Magazine 2017 Person of the Year through role as one of the “Silence Breakers” surrounding sexual harassment. She told me rather than, “I don’t have the answers, so I don’t want to talk about it,” her approach is “No one has the answers, so we have to talk about it.” What was true for Kidd prior to the onset of the MeToo movement is true for talking about race and all manner of difficult conversations.

To both Kidd and Rowe-Finkbeiner, not having the answers is an opportunity. Whether sexual harassment or racism, we can and must get creative to develop meaningful new solutions. And as Kidd said, “The key to making things better is talking about it.”

Rowe-Finkbeiner is out there doing the work, having the conversations, and encouraging others to do the same.