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speaking of our biracial president…
first lady love
I didn’t think it was possible for my Michelle Obama love to increase. I was wrong. I know it’s silly, because it is a known fact, but the fact that she said “biracial” made me really happy. I love the the sentiment of the whole speech….
First Lady Michelle Obama told Washington Math Science Technical (WMST) High School’s graduating class that they are “more than ready” for the challenges ahead and to ignore “the doubters.”
…Mrs. Obama spoke about her own upbringing and her struggle to get to – and then through – the Ivy League amidst “voices of people sowing doubts in my head.” She said that although she was always confident, “there was a part of me that started to believe the doubters.”
…Mrs. Obama talked about other figures who have overcome hardship, including her own husband. “This biracial kid with a funny name from hawaii, of all places,” she laughed, “who was taught that anything is possible.”
http://www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkend0712810377jun01,0,2983687.story
not a stereotype, just a fact
I really do. It makes me so happy. So happy in fact that people have commented on the watermelon joy they witness on my face. When I was three I had a great Christmas. Santa was REALLY good to me. My favorite gift though, was a watermelon. I wish I had the picture scanned into my computer so that I could post it here. I do have this picture scanned in though:
This is me and my mom in Kyoto, Japan. I am eating watermelon. Look at that smile. It’s so big that I almost look Japanese.
don’t i know it
hope vs optimism
excerpts from Prisoners of Hope by Cornel West
Over 30 years after the cowardly murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., black America sits on the brink of collective disaster. Yet most of our fellow citizens deny this black despair, downplay this black rage and blind themselves to the omens in our midst. So now, as in the past, we prisoners of hope in desperate times must try to speak our fallible truths, expose the vicious lies and bear our imperfect witness….
…The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. This is true at the personal level. But there’s also a political version, which has to do with what you see when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are simply wasting your time on the planet or spending it in an enriching manner. We need a moral prophetic minority of all colors who muster the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, hoping to land on something. That’s the history of black folks in the past and present, and of those of us who value history and struggle. Our courage rests on a deep democratic vision of a better world that lures us and a blood-drenched hope that sustains us.
This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown, and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane – and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.
white privilege
I would’ve thought that I’d first be quoting Tim Wise when discussing white privilege on this blog because I really, really like him, but I stumbled on this very insightful blog post and couldn’t resist posting it here. It’s so succinct and personal and well written.
http://blindprivilege.com/white-trash-blues-class-privilege-v-white-privilege/
“If you blog about white privilege, you’re probably sick to death of people playing the “white trash” card in your comments. Their argument usually goes something like this:
- “Being white didn’t give me all these privileges you’re talking about.”
- “I know plenty of [minority] people who are better off than I am.”
- And the advanced version, which I’m guilty of using myself: “It’s really more about class than it’s about race.”
I am “poor white trash”. I can relate to all of the statements above. I grew up looking the part of Average White Girl, but middle class white people always pegged me as “different”. This left me vulnerable to losing opportunities and even jobs to white people who “fit in” better. Also, after my family made its great escape from White Trash Hell into Middle Class Purgatory, I learned to my surprise that there were black kids in the world who’d grown up with more money than I ever had. And so on, and so forth.
Here’s where the confusion comes in. Yes, I have a legitimate grievance against the system. Yes, I’ve lost out on things because I didn’t have the $20 to invest or know the magic social password that would have marked me “normal” (read: “middle class, preferably white”). And yes, it hurts when you don’t fit in with your own race because of your class, and you don’t fit in with your class because of your race. It’s hard to see privilege around that stuff, but the examples are out there.
Wealth gets you a ticket, but it doesn’t guarantee you a seat
One of the black kids I went to school with whose family was richer than mine? We discovered we’d given identical answers on a test, and she’d gotten some of them marked wrong while I got 100%. When we examined her other papers, we realized the teacher had been doing this for some time: “giving” the black girl a lesser grade. And one of the Jewish girls I knew whose family was richer than mine? When she was absent for a Jewish holiday and missed a test, one of her teachers decided to teach her a lesson by refusing to let her make up that test anytime but on a Saturday – the Jewish sabbath. The teacher offered truly pathetic excuses why after school, during lunch and during the girl’s study period wouldn’t work. Sunday wouldn’t work because it was the teacher’s Christian sabbath! The girl’s mother had to call the principal and threaten to bring the ACLU into it before she got a proper time slot to retake the test.
I’ve never been pulled over for “looking like you’re out of your neighborhood” (unless you count the time I was lost in a snotty part of Beverly Hills in an American car, gasp!). I’m not nearly as likely to get pulled over for traffic violations as black or Latino people, even if they grew up with more money than I did. Taking things a step further, I’ve never felt pressured to join a gang just to survive. I’ve never worried I’m going to get shot in my own neighborhood (and I’ve lived in some neighborhoods the white middle class considers “bad”).”
That white skin would get you a seat, if only you had a ticket
My approach is to look at all the types of privilege that affect an individual. Take me, for example. I have white privilege and heterosexual privilege and able-bodied privilege working for me; I have class privilege and male privilege working against me. In the case of poor whites, the class privilege often takes more from them than the white privilege gives them (i.e., the college admissions board prefer my skin color, but if I can’t somehow pay tuition, I’m not getting in). In my personal experience, white privilege may be a total bust, and I have the right to feel that way: I do not have the right to muddy a discussion of white privilege with all my anti-privileges. But before I learned to separate the types of privilege, I’m afraid I probably did that once or twice. Not in the “minorities have it so easy” tone that marks one type of troll; I just couldn’t figure out which part of this stuff I wasn’t getting.”
mulatto diaries 