Last evening, I received an email from someone I know containing the tract on the right (click for larger version). Here is the response I sent to him and the other recipients:
Subject: Re: Fwd: I Am Proud To Be White~And I'm NOT A Racist....
From: xxxxxx
Date: 5/29/2008 9:49 PM
To: xxxxxx
Cc: xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx
Xxxxx,
We are all Americans, but if you want to qualify it by race or ancestry, you and I are European-Americans, not simply "Americans."
I have never heard a racial slur used against a white person except on TV. No racial slur, such as "cracker," has ever been used against me, and I don't plan on using one against anyone else. Life is too short. Why bother insulting anybody, for any reason?
Regarding, "You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you," depending on what "a lot" means, I have never heard any racial minority use this argument. I think most people understand that violent crime is largely intraracial, e.g., for the most part whites kill whites, Hispanics kill Hispanics, and blacks kill blacks.
There are no "Black-only Colleges" in the U.S.; however, there are historically black colleges and predominantly black colleges. All have non-black students.
Whites don't have days, months, organizations, TV stations, etc. that identify themselves as being "white" in some way because _all_ of our days, months, organizations, TV stations, etc. are essentially white. That's what it means to live in a culture dominated by our, the white race. I'm sure the same is true in other, non-white cultures. For example, I doubt whether Liberia has a Black History Month or the equivalent of the NAACP. It would make no sense. Think about it.
Nobody thinks that "only whites can be racists." That's absurd. Every race has members that are racist against other races.
The U.S. has had a "white"-dominated culture for the past few hundred years. (For several _thousand_ years before that, it had an exclusively Indian culture.) There are institutions, programs, and social graces that specifically benefit non-whites because these people have been trod upon for so long by our culture. There are certainly inexcusable excesses, but I think it's pretty easy to understand the motivation within our still-white-dominated society to accommodate these people in a few mostly symbolic ways. I mean, if you really feel threatened by Black History Month, you need to find a hobby. :-)
Xxxx
3 comments:
Well said, Plong. Very nicely done.
I stumbled across your blog while looking up bright yellow fungus/mold, which you'd previously mentioned.
Turns out it is called "dog vomit fungus" or mold; it's really a slimy mold. A small tree stump in my front yard which is gradually turning itself to mulch has suddenly been getting these bright yellow patches, especially after a heavy rain. It's called "dog vomit fungus" because it suddenly appears in people's yards and people suspect a neighbor dog...
Thank you for the compliment. It still gets me riled up when I think about it.
I looked into your identification of the "fungus," but I don't think mine is dog vomit fungus, which is usually kind of frothy. I found a few photos of flora similar to mine, but none included authoritative identification.
Good response to a document that is in fact racist.
I read an interesting article in "Discover" magazine (Nov 1994). The article was titled "Race: what is it good for?". You can read it starting with this blog entry (go to newer at the bottom for the text).
http://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2008/11/discovers-race-issue-1994.html
This is the first article:
http://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2008/11/race-without-color.html
I really like this series of articles. It makes the whole "proud to be white" argument silly.
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