(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Contrary to the stereotype, welfare moms in 1996 averaged two children per family, not six, and in surveys always expressed a desire to work, should child care become available. Incidentally, only a minority of them were African-American.

As for the black youth who so exercise Cosby, their pregnancy rates aren't "soaring," as he reportedly claimed; in fact, they're lower than they've been in decades. Ditto with crime rates. And if Cosby's worried about poor grammar and so forth, why isn't he ranting about the Bush 2005 budget, which would end a slew of programs for dropout prevention, recreation and school counseling?

Or, if he's looking for tantrum fodder, what about the fact that a black baby has a 40 percent chance of being born into poverty? You can blame adults for their poverty — if you're mean-spirited enough — but you cannot blame babies, and that's, in effect, what we're talking about here.

As the sociologist Michael Males, who monitors youth-bashing outbreaks, told me: "Younger black America today is struggling admirably against massive disinvestments in schools, terrible unemployment, harsh policing and degrading prejudices, and they're succeeding amazingly well. They deserve respect, not grown-up tantrums."

But it must be fun to beat up on people too young and too poor to fight back, or the elderly rich wouldn't do it.

The New Cosby Kids

Comments

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

Thank you.
Its just like privileged women with college educations who who bitch about feminism and how wrong it is to "blame men" - women should just stop whining and make their lives work better! (In spite of lower pay for the same work, higher likelihood of being abused by parents or spouses/boyfriends, the glass ceiling, vanishing welfare, unequal insurance coverage, etc.)
The privilged classes love it when a token successful member of the oppressed class blames the rest of his or her oppressed class for their oppression. It lets them off the hook, it reaffirms their prejudices. See, if one of them is saying the same thing, it can't be racist/sexist/ethnocentric to feel the same way!
Thus white people smile when they hear about Cosby's tirade; thus, when a friend of mine bashed feminists in her journal a few weeks ago, (despite having exercised every freedom feminism has won for her) she got lots of assent and hurrahs from lots of men on her friends list for standing up to those man-hating bitches (one wonders if she noticed not a single female friend said anything at all?); thus, every news channel, when doing a human interest story about Iraq, feels compelled to find an Iraqi who sucks up to Americans by saying "Oh it is much better since they came here!"

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get mad at people like Phyllis Schlafly. But I also get mad at Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, too. Feminism can't seem to catch a break.

It's true that there's a general sense that people of a certain race have more of a right to speak about racism. When I was in college, there was an incident that involved The Gum, our campus rag that poked fun at certain topics. They happened to do a piece on A.S.I.A., which was the Asian & Asian-American group. Immediately people were up in arms, tore the offending page from the magazine and wrote RACIST on it in big orange letters and pasted them all over campus. Huge uproar. I took the time to write a fairly lengthy letter to the editor of our campus newspaper. In that letter, I stated that I was black and I didn't see how this was a race issue. In fact, if the supporters of A.S.I.A.'s misguided outrage were to "win" (they called for the editors of The Gum to resign), then freedom of speech would be curtailed. Satire has always been a protected form of speech, and that's what that feature was. I don't think I won any respect from the minority groups on campus, but I did get several letters of thanks, one from one of the Gum editors, and one from a professor whose class I flunked two years prior.

If I were white, my argument would have been--offensive. But because I was black, I could use my race to advance my argument. Not a great situation all the way around, but it does stand to reason that someone of a minority group would be able to spot racism when s/he saw it.

On a completely different topic, I'd like to take this opportunity to admit that I do harbor some racist attitudes. When I'm in my neighborhood, I stay away from black men I don't know. Since I was 17, I've dated Caucasian men exclusively. I identify with mainstream (read: white) culture much more so than I do with whatever passes as African-American culture these days. When people ask me my race (like, say, when I apply for jobs), I tend to not self-identify. I recognize this about myself and can trace back pretty much when these attitudes began to form. But I do see how it's hypocritical for me to despair that when people first see me, I'm a "black person" to them (even though I don't identify as that culturally), yet I do the same to other black people. I assume we wouldn't have much in common beyond our skin color.

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

That is interesting. I know I find a lot of internalized sexism within myself. I hate that about myself and can't seem to get rid of it. Mainly it comes in the form of being harder on women for making mistakes than I would be on a man who made a similar mistake, particularly in situations involving relationships. Most of my friends are men, as well.
I dislike Andrea Dworkin and disagree with her writings. But I find it interesting she gets dragged out into every anti-feminist tirade as if she were speaking for all feminists. Every group has its extremists and I consider her to be an extremist. But if I tell someone I am a feminist they will assume I am like her rather than like the vast majority of feminists I know who just want equal pay and other fair treatment. The disinformation campaign is intense. We are bombarded with images of who is good and who is bad from childhood on and we all internalize it to some degree. I guess all you can do is try to be aware of your own sub-programming and counter it when possible.