• radixius
    +5

    John Stewart, the Green Lantern?

    I dislike this article, the premise is sound but the execution is so balls to the wall acrimonious and frustrating that it kind of makes my blood boil. It turns large groups of people into a monolith. You're not going to start any meaningful conversations by saying "all Caucasians are this, everyone else is the other." It's not conducive when you talk disparagingly and judgmentally to people, it never works. Browbeating and hectoring your audience sucks, and I hope this kind of stuff dies off soon, because it's getting to be a bit too common on left-leaning websites and blogs.

    This might be myopic, but It's never been difficult for me to just see people as people, regardless of their race. The biggest issue I have with these race relation pieces is when people put too much importance on the color of their skin and start to segregate themselves. Hell, even the term "people of color" kind of skeeves me out because it's just adding more barriers between people.

    • moottranslation
      +3

      I was raised with a European background, thanks to my dad, and I definitely have never seen people of different races as one large group with stereotypes. My dad says that in Europe everyone is pretty equal, and there's not a lot of racial tension. So, I don't care if someone's black or white. Doesn't matter to me. It does bother me when we hate each other, and write rambling pieces about the unhelpfulness on either side.

      • rosellem
        +3

        My dad says that in Europe everyone is pretty equal, and there's not a lot of racial tension.

        Europe has enormous issues with race. I'm not even sure where to begin listing the problems.

        • moottranslation (edited 8 years ago)
          +1

          Maybe my family is just chill. We're from Belgium. And we haven't lived there since '94. Idk. I just have a hard time with this whole topic because to me, it's a non-issue. That's all. Just background from my point of view.

      • radixius
        +2

        Fuck. Yes. Dude.

    • eightbitsamurai (edited 8 years ago)
      +2

      The biggest issue I have with these race relation pieces is when people put too much importance on the color of their skin

      I kinda get where you're coming from, but part of the problem is that we put too much importance on the cover of our skin because other people do so first.

      I had the same viewpoint as you for a very long time. I was a black kid in a primarily white school, and I didn't see any differences between me and everyone else.

      Eventually though, those differences start to be made whether I want them to or not. Being told "I'm not that black", getting stopped while walking in a nice neighborhood because of a "disturbance"... the point I'm getting to is that it's very hard not to put importance on my own skin color when it's the first thing I'm immediately judged by.

      "Let's stop seeing color" is a nice thought, but it doesn't work in practice. Instead, recognizing that it's okay to be a different color, and that I'm not more likely to be a criminal because of my color, would be super awesome. And you you might get that, but there are many, many people that don't, whether the article demonstrates that well or not.

      Edit: Also, Hyperdimension Hype, I just started Rebirth1 on the Vita and I'm tearing through it.

      • radixius
        +2

        "Let's stop seeing color" is a nice thought, but it doesn't work in practice. Instead, recognizing that it's okay to be a different color, and that I'm not more likely to be a criminal because of my color, would be super awesome. And you you might get that, but there are many, many people that don't, whether the article demonstrates that well or not.

        My wife's mixed race, so she got it from everybody, from within and without. Everyone can be a total dickwad, regardless the color of their skin. It seems obvious that the corollary is true, as well. It's just that telling racists they're racist isn't going to do anything, they know it's wrong to do what they're doing, but something about their brain wiring is fucked and they do it anyway.

        All I'm saying is that chastising white people, labeling them all as racists because of what some hypothetical schmuck in Alabama does isn't going to help. It's going to push more folks away from whatever these people are trying to do.