*Sigh*

[silverthorne]

Okay. Tolerance is a good thing. Cultural diversity is a good thing. Letting people keep their traditions is a good thing.

...I just received a 200-page-thick workbook for the nurses in post partum.

It is pages and pages of how to deal with people from different cultures. Everything except how to deal with white people.

Thing is, most of it? Is common sense and general ettiquette that even the dreaded 'white people' know. Or at least it was at some point. Lord knows I was raised that way, because most of what I read was 'no shit, I knew that already'. The rest of it, if you listen to your patient in the first place and work with them (and the patient communicates and just doesn't get all closed-mouthed), should come easy enough.

The nurses though will have to go to classes for this. Memorize it all. Take tests. Get certificates for it or do it all over again.

Just so someone's toes don't get stepped on.

I'm all for being polite and meeting people in the social middle.

But this? Shit like this, when it's required reading because if we don't do it, some numbnut somewhere will take exception to the way you bow your head to them or something else which should be pretty damned trivial in the face of trying to take care of a sick patient, will sue the crap out of the hospital for racial discrimination.

The fact that we even need books like this just make me want to hide from everyone on the fucking planet until they remove cranial mass from rectum area.

This is when I start losing faith and losing willingess to listen to 'white people are horrible' things. This right here.

Everyone has got to bend a little, or we will all break.

Comments

[skalja.livejournal.com]

Well, like I said, I think fewer people would be disagreeing with you if you'd couched your argument like that in the first place, instead of a) being fairly contemptuous of the idea of white privilege, which doesn't leave people coming from my perspective predisposed to cut you much slack, and b) appearing to genuinely make the argument that because there are non-white people who are racist, white people are being unfairly scapegoated for racial problems in American culture today. Which comes across to me as a fairly self-serving argument. I sympathize, because I can't say that white liberal guilt is a whole lotta fun (and I only have a half-dose), but even so.

Also, you are severely underinformed if you don't know that minority activist groups aren't fully aware that they have to promote inter-minority friendliness as well as combating institutionalized racism.

Common sense is culturally bound. What seems common to you is unfathomable to someone else. College is only a good place to learn cultural sensitivity if there's a basic level of cultural diversity on campus in the first place; you're conflating book-learning with culture-learning.

I'm not saying that you haven't been wronged because you're white; if I've understood the situation correctly, you have been. Where we disagree is that you seem to think because of a bunch of (almost certainly white!) hospital executives making a boneheaded move, that the whole premise is flawed. Consider, in addition, that your non-white colleagues have been wronged as well - they're being deprived of the opportunity to educate themselves because those executives assumed that only white people would need the manual.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmn. oops on me for being human, then. That's about all I can say to that first part. Mea culpa?

And actually, yeah I do think whites get the most shit. Even when looking for a different perspective, I rarely find it. By the same token, if you have places I cna go to look, I'd be happy to add that to the education I have.

to ne honest, I don't tink things like 'be polite, ask if you;re not sure if you're doing the right thing by a person from another culture (or volunteer some if you are that other person), and treating people like human beings is all that different between cultures. The particulars are, but there are just as many flying dicks as there are people who will sit down with you and explain what's what...if people bother. That doesn't need a classroom--just the willingness to sit down and talk to each other.

Consider, in addition, that your non-white colleagues have been wronged as well - they're being deprived of the opportunity to educate themselves because those executives assumed that only white people would need the manual.

...I think I did, in one of the other responses. Like I said, I think everyone should have to take the class...just like if they're going to cover other races, they should at least cover some sort of cultural differences for white folks. Again, I don't disagree with educating folks...just that it should be everyone and not just certain folks. Equality and equal and respectful treatment (which is supposedly what this would be for) doesn't work if it isn't done for everyone.

Anyway, thank you for being polite, by the way. ^^ I may or may not be out of my mind for how I feel (and how well or badly I put things), but thank you for truly being polite.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

Specify your words very carefully. When you say, "Whites get the most shit," do you mean the most shit about how they shouldn't be racist, or the most race-based crap in general? The first I would call technically correct but willfully blind, the second actively deluded. Sorry, but I don't know how to couch that in more polite terms.

You may find some benefit in this (http://www.ipoaa.com/tim_wise.htm) essay, written by a white American for white Americans. Your comments don't seem to distinguish very well between institutionalized racism and peer-to-peer racism, and frankly, the distinction makes all the difference in the world in understanding why "everyone always seems to expect the white people to stop being racist, first." Naturally - because, at least until the very recent past, if that, white racism had the most power behind it and was the most dangerous. Overcompensation is regrettable, frustrating, and potentially worth contacting the ACLU over; it's not really what I'd call oppression, though.

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't hear 'they shouldn't be racist', but I do hear, constantly, that 'they are racist'. Or deluded, which gets equated to the same thing.

I guess it depends on where you live then. And that I will give you. Experiences do shape a person's perception of the world. But so does looking past them.

I will read the essay, promise and thank you.

Yes, they are indeed the most recent example. My question though is this; how does expecting whites to be 'first' rectify the problem? Wouldn't it make more sense, if we, as the human race, really wanted racism to stop...to just stop, regardless of your race? Why wait for someone else, even you enemy? When has that ever worked? That's like the two kids joshing on each other to go first. If no one takes the first step, it never happens. And if you continue to wait for the other guy to do it before you...it might never happen.

Proactive action. If you gotta wait for the other guy because 'they did it first' or even 'they did it last'...you're just going to go in circles with that argument. And nothing changes at that point. Just repeats.

...I never mentioned the word 'oppression'. Inequality and inequal treatment yes, but that's not the same thing. The first is actively undermining other peoples attempts on a consistant basis and silencing them, the second is exclusion from the same treatment as other people are getting, but not necessarily shutting them up.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

Or, possibly when one automatically equates terms like "deluded" or "doesn't know what they're talking about" with "racist," then what appears is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for your why-should-we-go-first argument, perhaps I should clarify that I mean "most vitally" rather than "first in time." Furthermore, your reasoning is - oh, you're not going to like this - from a privileged viewpoint, to be blunt about it. It's easy to say, "Well, we should just all decide to be equal together, now, and forget about this race stuff," when you have largely escaped from the worst damages of racism and can afford to be trusting like that.

But honestly, you answered your own question:

If no one takes the first step, it never happens.

Exactly.

Maybe "oppression" is the wrong word, but the way in which you blame minorities and immigrants for a bureaucratic snafu which, however race-based, was probably caused by other white people gave me the distinct impression that you feel threatened.

[derek-bliss.livejournal.com]

ooookay. We've gone from polite to 'you could never understand because you're white' in three seconds flat. Wow.

By 'priviledged', do you mean because I'm white (yes), middle classed (lower-classed here, I average 21,000 a year in pay at best), will automatically win arguments based on race (nope), or some other definition of the word I don't know about?

Anyway...yeah. I see your point, and it's exactly the one I see whether I say anything or watch people just toss all of this about.

Wait, I didn't blame minorities for that book. I didn't actually *blame* a specific person for that book...but that's where we're going, isn't it?

Actually, I don't feel threatened. What I feel is sad, because what is getting thrown at me at this point is the same shit that my ancestors (them, not me), threw at others.

Which again, adds fuel to the fire rather than solve or fix or correct anything.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

Um ... what? Where did I ever say that? Please note: I am close enough to white for the distinction not to matter in the context of this discussion, so it would be downright nonsensical for me to say such a thing.

By "privileged" I mean this (http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html). One can also refer to other forms of privilege, e.g. male privilege, class privilege, etc. Having privilege in this context does not mean that the privileged person is on easy street, but that of two otherwise identical people, one privileged and one not, the privileged person is likely to have had an easier time of it in our society. Maybe a small difference, maybe a large.

Wait, I didn't blame minorities for that book. I didn't actually *blame* a specific person for that book... / Actually, I don't feel threatened.

Sorry, but that's how you're coming across by directing your ire and frustration at those ____ people who shirked at work and didn't get punished for it rather than discussing, first and foremost, the confused and ignorant bureaucrats who let them shirk and who tossed that manual at you.

Anyway...yeah. I see your point, and it's exactly the one I see whether I say anything or watch people just toss all of this about.

Has it occurred to you that maybe this is because you

What I feel is sad, because what is getting thrown at me at this point is the same shit that my ancestors (them, not me), threw at others.

Okay, we're done. That you could actually compare this discussion to historical acts of hatred and violence with an apparently straight face shows that we have nothing more to say to each other.

Clarification

[skalja.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, I can see how you misunderstood my first phrase - what I really meant was something like, "Well, if every time you see phrases like 'deluded' or, guessing what other people might have said, 'don't know what you're talking about' to 'racist,' then yeah, you're going to see a bunch of people calling you racist. But that's not what those words mean.' In my frustration I worded things very, very clumsily, and I do apologize for that.

None of this changes how mindbogglingly self-centered and willfully callous I find it to compare an internet discussion, however heated (please note: it's really not), to murder, torture, rape, forced relocation, and economic suppression - just for starters.

Re: Clarification

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

...except I'm not the one comparing our discussion to rape, torture, murder, forced relocation, etc. It seems, from my POV, that you keep reading into what I say and just keep pissing yourself off over it, in which case, yeah, we really do not have anything more to say to each other. As soon as it starts getting into personal judgment calls on any discussion, it's ceased to be a discussion and more of a 'look here, you idiot, listen to me and admit I'm right'.

...which is not really all that conducive to any discussion.

Re: Clarification

[skalja.livejournal.com]

To quote you:

What I feel is sad, because what is getting thrown at me at this point is the same shit that my ancestors (them, not me), threw at others.

Admittedly, I don't know exactly what your ancestors did or did not do (neither, for that matter, do you), but you are nevertheless comparing your treatment in this discussion to racist behavior of the past. Which is an incredibly provocative statement even referring only to the most minor incidents that black, Indian, Asian descent, and immigrants both white and non-white have had to deal with in the last half of the last century. And dude, you didn't specify that far, so yes, whatever you were thinking in your head, your actual words implicitly compared your treatment in a mildly heated internet discussion to the victims of hate crimes.

I'm not pissed off so much as dumbfounded.