racial (over??)-sensitivity

[The Big Ben]

You're asking a question many ask and will continue to ask.

Certain names are rooted to specific times and places. I think the the use of "Colored" in NAACP reflects the years in which it was founded and the struggles they faced. The use of Negro in 'United Negro College Fund" also reflects the long heritage of support for the schools blacks attended because they were not allowed to attend any others. The use of Negro as in "The Negro Leagues" of baseball also reflects a particular time and place when those leagues were the only place to showcase fine black baseball talent.

As a white dude, I can see the desire of blacks to not be called 'Colored'. One look at a picture of a sign saying "Colored Only" would elicit that reaction. Using the word 'colored' to refer to a black person is not a sin but something that shouldn't be done. I don't think it is really necessary to scrutinize whatever comes out of Lindsay Lohan's mouth because she is a marginal actress and has gained much of her notoriety through drunken behavior and getting in and out of cars sans underwear. She's a ditz and wouldn't understand if it all was explained to her.

MLK wished that someday his children "would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". The language that it is used and the context in which it is used can be a reflection of one's "content of character"

Jeff "From Washington State where racism is much more subtle than other places" Benedict

[THE TUBA]

Personally, I have a problem with our society's (and by society, I mean the media and government) obsession with labels and classifications, especially dealing with people. Our world is gray, but race is still treated in black and white notation. Every person has their own individual heritage that may or may not correspond with people who happen to look similar.

Personally, I like to describe my ethnicity as "American." The genetic differences between races are minuscule at best- the only real difference is appearance. Ethnicity, in my opinion, should be based on culture, not the way one looks.

I do not think we need nomenclature for each group of people with similar physical characteristics. Why can't all people just be of the same race, the human race?

[windshieldbug]

Ethnicity, in my opinion, should be based on culture, not the way one looks.

And if there's any "us" or "them", it should be normal persons vs. repair people (RP's)!

[tbn.al]

IMHO there are two major divisions of humans on this planet. Those whom I like and those whom I dislike. Race plays not a part in the distinction. There are people who irritate me by the way they talk, act, live or look. Those are in tubenet jargon, my foes. My friends are those whose looks, actions, lives and speech I actually would like to emultate. I can drive 30 minutes from my house and find a host of people whom are definitely foes. Most are of a different skin color than I, but that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. The fact that they would like nothing better than to stick a knife in me and take my wallet is what defines my attitude.

[Donn]

... but would entertain posts from anyone.

I'd like to take advantage of your gracious offer there! But let me pose a sort of hypothetical question - let's say you're in the local grocery store, and in conversation with several people it occurs to you that it's time liberate yourself and everyone else from the tyranny of political correctness, and you choose to refer to a young black man there, in his presence, as a "colored boy", and subsequently detect a hint of displeasure with this designation.

Would this really be a mystery, to you? That phrase always reminds me of another instrument repairman, a fairly well known one but not a brass guy, who used it when speaking about a well known musician whom he had done business with. To this day I wonder if I really heard him right, and wonder where that came from.

OK, I loaded it - it's a more obvious why this phrase would be a problem, than just the color adjective - but that's why I did it, want to be real obvious here. You can't use that phrase without evoking the way it has been used in the past, by people who look like you. Meaning isn't attached to words by Webster's, or by the speaker, but by experience.

When we have solved the race problem in our country, we'll find that words for race don't so often have unpleasant meanings.

[MaryAnn]

Well, some people are idiots and some people are aggressively idiotic. And of course there are the rest of us, who just sort of stumble along, doing idiotic things at random.

A band director whom I play under must spend his spare time trying to think of ways to put his foot in his mouth. When he talks about people, the *only* ones he identifies by race are "black" people. (his term.) Well, we have one "black" guy in our otherwise Caucasian but amply Hispanic-represented band, and I cringe whenever the director opens mouth and inserts foot. I suppose my own little point of pique is that someone who is any part recognizably "black," is identified as such, instead of the converse, in which someone who is any part recognizably "white," would be identified as such.

I'm sure that if we all take our DNA back far enough, we won't be any modernly recognizable race at all.

MA

[TubaRay]

I don't think it is really necessary to scrutinize whatever comes out of Lindsay Lohan's mouth because she is a marginal actress and has gained much of her notoriety through drunken behavior and getting in and out of cars sans underwear. She's a ditz and wouldn't understand if it all was explained to her.

I would hope you have found something all of us TubeNetters can agree on. I can only wonder why anyone cares what she has to say.

[oldbandnerd]

I used to have a neighbor who insisted I refer to him as " African-American" and not black. He was very well educated and very intelligent and every bit as conservative as me . I had the whole " I don't call myself Anglo-American or Euro-American" conversation with him once. Even after it was said and done he still politely asked me to to use African-American when speaking to him. I figured "what do I care?" . I don't see the sense of the label but if that's what he wanted to be called so be it.

[MartyNeilan]

I am a fast talking New York / New Jersey Yankee living in The South. There is always going to be some kind of discrimination or hatred no matter who or what you are. I have learned in some places it is much better just to nod or grunt than to open my mouth.
Had genders on my relative's sides been swapped my last name would have been Trignano or Covino. It is highly doubtful I would have been able to have gotten a job in many areas as Marty Trignano or Marty Covino.

[Tubman]

I agree with the whole, "using a certain phrase brings up all the negativity that came with it in the past," but the whole African American thing I find kind of absurd. I have many Negroid friends, have had a Negroid girl friend (me being Caucasian) and only 2 of them were actually born in Africa or had a recent generation of their family that lived in Africa. In fact most of the people I know that were born in Africa and that are true African Americans are, in fact, Caucasian. If you're born in Africa and become an American citizen, that's one thing, but if you're born in America, YOU ARE AN AMERICAN...straight up.

I'm someone that doesn't see color. If I don't like you, it's not because I'm racist (which I have been accused of before). It's because I don't like you as a person.

Another thing that gets my blood boiling is when the word "racism" is used in the wrong context. In fact, I'd liken a Caucasian person that isn't racist being called one to a Negroid being called the "N" word. It brings up a whole chapter of our history that should remain just that...history. I'm not saying we should forget it, I'm saying it's about time to forgive and move on. I think an overwhelming majority of America, including myself, voting Obama into office is enough to prove that racists are a dying breed. I was once called a racist for trying to save a seat for one of my friends on the school bus when I was in elementary school, and that stuck with me like a scar from a knife fight. I was just trying to save a seat for a friend so I'd have somebody to talk to on the bus ride home, yet it was misinterpreted as "the white devil trying to hold the black man down."

The world of music, on the contrary, seems to be the most accepting community on this big blue marble. We judge people by what they have to offer, and just about everyone has something to offer regardless of the color of their skin or which God they worship, what name they use for Him, or what denomination therein they practice. As long as you have something to offer the world of music, or if you just love listening, too, you are a member of the world of music. I wish politicians would just learn from us. If they did, most of this stuff wouldn't be happening, and the world would be a better place, and MLK's dream would be given new life.

[TubaRay]

I'd liken a Caucasian person that isn't racist being called one to a Negroid being called the "N" word. It brings up a whole chapter of our history that should remain just that...history.

What an excellent point! This side of the issue is not often brought out.

[Dylan King]

"Hyphenated Americanism" Speech - Excerpts
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, October 12, 1915, in an address to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, NYC.

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

Americanization

The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population - no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is to not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

One America

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind."

[Dylan King]

You're welcome.

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Another thought-provoking thread from Bloke, and another intriguing discussion. Please accept my thanks as well, Dylan, for that quotation...I wish that were standard fare on the evening news and opinion programs.

I, for one, hope that this nonsense of hyper-sensitivity about race issues will pass within my lifetime. It is my fervent hope that someday the people of this world will understand what Dr. King was hinting at when he suggested that a man or woman should be judged by their accomplishments and the content of their character...not the color of their skin.

Since I can only control myself in such things, I can only work toward that goal by trying to educate my own children and those I come into contact with. I have found, though, that my kids don't need much help...at age 7 and age 6 they have been shielded from much of the bigoted aspects of human society and have a natural propensity to befriend children of all shapes, sizes, and colors. It would seem from their example that the natural human condition, when free of hateful influences, is one of universal acceptance.

I wonder how we will know when/if the goal is finally achieved?

[pierre]

The terms "Negroid", "Caucaian" & "Mongoloid" came from cutting edge scientific research in the 1780's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Fri ... Blumenbach

Scientists have since replaced those terms with a much longer Wikipedia entry that I don't have the time and/or attention span to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(clas ... an_beings)

[Uncle Buck]

This is slightly off-topic, but a former teacher of mine made a statement on race/sex/sexual orientation/etc. that really rang true to me.

Individuals who claim to have no prejudices whatsoever are simply fooling themselves, and living in denial. The key is to recognize our prejudices, then honestly look at what we need to do about them.

[TubaRay]

I just try to stay at home…

That should solve the problem!

[TMurphy]

When my girlfriend was in grad school, studying counseling, she had to take a course in racial and ethnic sensitivity. At first, I thought it was a bunch of nonsense, until she said to me, "how am I supposed to counsel people from different cultural backgrounds if I don't recognize those differences?" One of the big things they talked about in her class was that not seeing color was not always a good thing, at least as a counselor. People of different races and from different cultures experience the world differently, being "color blind" to that can actually create more problems than it can help, sometimes.

The main trouble with the term "African-American" is that it universally applied to all blacks. I've known a few people of Jamaican descent who take great exception to it...they do not identify themselves with Africa, ethnically, racially, or culturally. They're Jamaican. I've also met people from Africa who have a problem with it...they aren't African-American, they're African.

If a group of people are offended by a certain term, for whatever reason, why continue using that term just because you believe it to be "scientifically" correct??

My given first name is Timothy. I do not like that name, for whatever reason. I much prefer to be called Tim, and introduce myself to people as such. When somebody uses my full first name, they are immediately (and politely) corrected, even though they are not technically wrong...that is the name on my birth certificate. I would find it very rude, and a show of disrespect, for someone to continue using my full name after having asked them not to. It's the same thing with ethnic/racial labels. If the majority opinion amongst blacks is that the word "Negro" has an offensive connotation, why continue to use it??? Just to make a point???

It's easy for those of us who are white (or caucasian, if you must), to stand back and say people are being over sensitive about this stuff...we aren't the ones who have been dealing with racism for generation after generation. Is racism is major decline in this country??? I definitely think so. But I think we can forgive most minorities for being a bit sensitive about the subject...it's been something they've been fighting against for many years.

[tubatooter1940]

This subject is too often talked to death.
Take people one at a time and give them the respect or disrespect they deserve.

[TMurphy]

Barack Hussein Obama, who is REALLY not African American but Arabic-American, if indeed he's American

The man's father was born in Kenya. Which, last time I looked at a map, is in Africa.

His mother was from Kansas. Yep, map says that's in America.

He was born in Hawaii. Yep, also America.

I'd say that makes him pretty solidly African-American, if anyone is.

What, other than the middle name Hussein, is your basis for saying he is Arabic??? By your definition, would Muhammad Ali (born and raised in Louisville, KY) be Arabic as well???