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November 20, 2007
A terrible instance of shirking your civic duty to not be an asshole or...
...yet another typical example of black youth? I suppose it depends on your point of view, doesn't it? A Filipina was beaten by a group of 13 black students for "looking Chinese". I am not bringing race into this story. It's already there. I am commenting on it.
First the obvious. If it were 13 white kids beating up on a black kid, or any non-black group for that matter, what would this be? Racism at the very least. A clear example of how America (or whatever) hates blacks. The black kids that did the beating would probably shout from the rooftops about how wrong it is (not that the person got beaten, but that they got beaten because they were black). Yet somehow it's all right that they can beat the crap out of some girl because she "looks Chinese". How did they get to the point where they think that this is justified? I strongly suspect that justification of their actions has nothing to do with it. You know, Jena 6 comes to mind.
These incidents piss me off because like it or not, black people need to act better than their peers because of the position that we are in in this society. Crap like this just sets us back and makes people justify their own bigotry.
What they do not realize is that their actions affect me, sometimes directly. Clarification: Even if they did realize, they certainly did not care. They were kids, but you cannot possibly tell me that they didn't know better. If they didn't, they shouldn't be walking around free, they should have been under strict supervision. Now, they should be in a detention center.
How does this affect me? When you are not fully part of the majority culture, everything other members of your group does reflects on you, personally, unless you are well known to some of the members of that culture. I get suspicious looks from certain store owners because of the actions of some people that look like me, even though even at a glance, I look nothing like the ones that get in the news for foolish reasons. This is why some say that I am "not like the others". This might be true, but it also means that the others, the ones that apparently represent black North Americans as a whole, the ones you see on TV, are undesirables. Let's look at that a little.
Even though there are somewhere around 350 million people in North America, there are still around 45 million black people. 45 million. And yet there are still millions of whites who have never seen (and may never see) a non-white person in real life. This means that every single notion of who I—ME—who I am comes from the news, sports or music. And you cannot tell me that that is supposed to represent me in any way. But I am not well-known, so it's entirely possible that when a white person sees me, they might assume that I am aggressive, not that smart and pretty physically endowed (in various ways).
The actions of these teens only screws things up for everyone else. They are ambassadors. It wouldn't surprise me if people close to them protested any punishment that came to them. I understand that there may be a collective black trauma going on, but it still does not explain what happened to this girl. And the level of blind hatred! Can't they see that this is exactly what lynchings are? Maybe they don't even know what that is and why it's important to them. I am told that the civil rights movement in the US is very much a distant memory, and nothing that young people need to care about. This could be part of the lack of responsibility that so many of them feel.
We don't need white people making and hanging nooses for us. We can do that on our own, thank you.
Posted by JonasParker at November 20, 2007 3:17 PM
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Comments
I often have the sense that racism is on the decline. But then major events like the OJ Simpson trial or Katrina show there is still a huge difference of opinion and perspective between blacks and whites.
It's sad to admit that Hollywood has so much power over the psyche of the country, but it's true that they need to stop making people out to be so one dimensional (good guy, bad buy) and stop using certain cultural or racial groups as their go-to bad guys. I've been very disheartened how Arabs are constantly used as the villians in movies nowadays. Come on guys, lets get a little more creative.
Posted by: Frank 
at November 21, 2007 10:03 AM
I would say that it is on the increase, Frank. Amongst pretty much all groups.
Posted by: Alston 
at November 22, 2007 7:38 AM
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