Has anyone noticed that evolutionists portray those creatures supposedly
predating US as of a greatly darker skin color than we whites? Blacks as well as whites allow this to be perpetuated in our children’s textbooks and pay for
this politically incorrect inference with tax money.

Has anyone noticed that in India, many wives are rejected because they have been described as of lighter skin than they are? Or that in our TV ads no black man has a wife or girl friend as dark as himself.
I don’t intend to justify intentional words or actions with the intent to degrade others. It’just quite complex. I appreciate the discussions.

If it had been the ‘N’ word, even I would have been upset.

But there was no insult. A lot of the problem is the fact that no people are raised to think that if someone says one word about the color of another’s skin then it’s racist… but it’s not. If someone came up to me and started all this stuff about, ‘Cracker’ and ‘snowflake’ I could care less. Because, I -am- white. That is the pigment of my skin.

It’s blatantly obvious that there was no insult intended. If there had been, you really think they would have added, ‘Lovely’?

Even African Americans use the word ‘colored’… And ‘negro’… and ‘nigga’… With that being said, you are basically saying that black people are racists against other blacks… Which of course is not true…

I really wish people like you could look past skin color and focus more on people’s souls…

I think they only thing that you should feel guilty of is stuff that you have actually done. There is nothing I can do about the sins of my fathers except learn from them and not repeat them.

If you could see my family tree it runs the gamut from heros to villains, but while I cannot take credit for the heroic deeds, I also cannot take the guilt for the horrors.

What is problematic, IMHO, is that most of us have learned that overt racism/sexism/heterosexim/[insert other unhealthy attitudes here] is wrong, but don’t want to admit that we might have unhealthy attitudes buried underneath (sometimes not too deeply at all), so we:

* Dismiss political correctness because it makes us feel uneasy and defensive about the concept that we might have any privilege

* Make huge assumptions about what the Other will necessarily find offensive without asking because a) we’re not comfy enough with them to just ask, and b) it doesn’t occur to us to check because our assumption is that we’re right – our attitudes must be the default setting.

The big thing is to learn to actually set aside our stuff while we listen to others and allow ourselves to admit the possibility that we might be mistaken in some of our thinking – not so that we can live driven by guilt, but so that we can all be that but free-er.

Of course I want to make a difference. I would regardless of any other circumstances. But I think what I think of as guilt is important. I will always remember what my ancestors did to your ancestors and try to make amends for that history. It’s very important to me.

I’m not saying this is the only thing driving me. I’m not just trying to make myself feel better. But it’s a part of the effed up jumble of my activism that I will always honor.

As for Disney, I would never completely dismiss them. Two of my favorite movies are Pocahontas and Mulan.

It’s interesting how people view Disney. Yes, the company has been throughout the years guilty of wrongdoings, based on today’s standards, I won’t debate that. But to flat out call Walt Disney racist is one of the craziest things I have ever heard. Walt Disney campaigned for James Bassett to be given an Academy Awards for his portrayal of Uncle Remus, whom Disney is quoted as saying devised the characterization of Remus himself and worked almost solely without direction. Because of Disney, James Bassett was the first black man to receive an Academy Award (1948), albeit not a competitive one, but that was due to the fact that animation films were not considered by the Academy.

I find it funny that you do these things because you feel the guilt of your families prosperity, and it spurs you on to take on racism in order to build a better tomorrow. I do a ton of charity work, and work with underprivileged children and teens and none of it has anything to do with guilt. I do in order to make a difference.

If the guilt weighs on you so heavily, maybe you should sell everything that could have it’s origins from that time and give it to a charity. Have you calculated to today’s standards the what the labor would have cost to build you families fortune, and begun making reparations to the African village that you family’s slaves were stolen or sold from? I going to go out on a limb and say probably not. While I’m out on this limb I’m going to guess you haven’t found the families of those people and given them the equivalent of 40 acres and mule either.

I don’t say this to be mean, but if you want to make a difference you shouldn’t be doing it because guilt is spurring you.

As for context not being an excuse I have to disagree. Context is very much the deciding factor.

My friend who is British finds it highly amusing to be called African American when he’s not American, especially once someone has heard his very pronounced accent. When people refer to him as him African American are they intending to be insulting to his heritage? Probably not. So should he be insulted every time someone does refer to him in the way that they have been told is the PC way to describe black people?

I think you are over simplifying the difference between her calling me colored and her calling me slave. When she was growing up calling people colored was the polite term. Less than ten years ago it was okay to call people black, but now we use African American, which to Dominican, Haitian, Jamaican or any number of black people who are neither African nor American might be insulting.

A great deal of the verbiage used in today’s society is a matter of context and perception. There are a number of words that society says are okay to use but I find highly insulting.

How about when women use the term bitch or slut, or when black people use the N word, to refer to each other? When I was growing up the use of any of these terms would have been “fighting words”. By today’s standards it is alright by some people to use these because taking them back is empowering.

So by your logic I should just be “young enough” to learn their new usage and not be insulted. Should I also now be promiscuous because Sex and the City has deemed it acceptable and empowering, even though I was raised differently? So should I now be insulted or not when someone uses a term like bootylicious that society says, and the Oxford dictionary say is acceptable, although I find it extremely derogatory.

I wonder in ten years what terms will no longer be considered politically correct and incorrect.

Will we then remove all those terms and situations from past films, books, and music, and look down upon the people that use them today as being uneducated and racist?

I happen to be a white person who constantly concerned with the problem of racism. I try to battle it whenever I can. And yes, it is because I feel guilty. I feel guilty that my life and my family’s prosperity is built upon the bones and pain of African slaves. This is my reclamation of white guilt, making it my own. I feel this guilt constantly, and you can’t convince me that this is wrong. It spurs me onward, to do whatever I can to make tomorrow better than yesterday. But I’m not just doing this for myself. it is because I understand that a league of people have been wronged, and the only right course of action is to fix it.