Response to a Dimwit
Email from a Southern farmer...objecting to Afro-American social groups (we don't have whites-only groups)...to their use of derogatory terms like "honkie" and "cracker"...writes about crime in the ghetto...he's proud to be white...and American!
It was sent to me by a friend, so I emailed this to my friend and others on her email list:
Throughout history, white people have oppressed people of color. (With the exception of England-Ireland. The Irish were more white, in skin color, than the English.)
In the US, elite country clubs, the halls of Congress, the banking industry, Fortune 500 countries are still dominated by whites -- meaning white Anglo-Saxon Protestant MEN.
Proud to be white? Russian white? English? Irish? Jewish? Estonian? German? French? Spanish? Italian? Scottish? All these nationalities are cateogrized as white. It's so broad a group that who can rationally take pride in being "white"?
What do white people--all white people--have to be proud of? That they arent black?
I'm not proud of that.
But I recognize that...I am so lucky to be white! If my skin had been black, and if I had NOT grown up in the good old USA, I would probably--based on my inative intelligence and skills and facing real competition--be cleaning toilets in a local Wal-Mart.
Anyway, it is really DUMB to criticize blacks for introducing the terms "honkie" and such. They are recent additions to the language. Negative terms for blacks go way, way back. How dare they turn the tables on us? ("Cracker, by the way, is a pejorative term that we Northerners use to characterize poor white SOUTHERN trash.)
And anyway, every ethnic group has its own social networks. There are Jewish groups, Italian groups, German groups, Chinese groups, Roman Catholic groups, Greek groups, and so forth. WASPs don't have one--apart from dominating the corridors of power.
As for the violence in black ghettos, people living in relative poverty have always been more prone to violence.
And I was once proud of being an American, too--the America of George Washington, Ben Franklin, JFK, FDR, Truman.
I am not proud of being an American in the time of George W. Bush.
It was sent to me by a friend, so I emailed this to my friend and others on her email list:
Throughout history, white people have oppressed people of color. (With the exception of England-Ireland. The Irish were more white, in skin color, than the English.)
In the US, elite country clubs, the halls of Congress, the banking industry, Fortune 500 countries are still dominated by whites -- meaning white Anglo-Saxon Protestant MEN.
Proud to be white? Russian white? English? Irish? Jewish? Estonian? German? French? Spanish? Italian? Scottish? All these nationalities are cateogrized as white. It's so broad a group that who can rationally take pride in being "white"?
What do white people--all white people--have to be proud of? That they arent black?
I'm not proud of that.
But I recognize that...I am so lucky to be white! If my skin had been black, and if I had NOT grown up in the good old USA, I would probably--based on my inative intelligence and skills and facing real competition--be cleaning toilets in a local Wal-Mart.
Anyway, it is really DUMB to criticize blacks for introducing the terms "honkie" and such. They are recent additions to the language. Negative terms for blacks go way, way back. How dare they turn the tables on us? ("Cracker, by the way, is a pejorative term that we Northerners use to characterize poor white SOUTHERN trash.)
And anyway, every ethnic group has its own social networks. There are Jewish groups, Italian groups, German groups, Chinese groups, Roman Catholic groups, Greek groups, and so forth. WASPs don't have one--apart from dominating the corridors of power.
As for the violence in black ghettos, people living in relative poverty have always been more prone to violence.
And I was once proud of being an American, too--the America of George Washington, Ben Franklin, JFK, FDR, Truman.
I am not proud of being an American in the time of George W. Bush.
posted by WarrenBoroson at 8:21 AM
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