ok need imput please

[Sasha]

I am currently writing a 7 page paper for my Racial Relations course at Purdue, and need some input. Ok so heres the question(s):


How do you identify yourself racially? Do you identify with your ancestors and their heritages? Does any type of ethnic culture help shape or form your life and if so how? and have you ever been the victim of any type of racism (gender or color) in any form? Please use discretion answering. :)

[Vlad]

First I'd start by spelling "input" correctly :D

[Sasha]

oh shut up vlad, thats my sloppy typing dont crucify me for it. but thanks for your IMPUT

[CDSaint]

vladdy are you IMPUTing that everyone has to be at your level of intelligence? hehehe i had to do it!



impute by definition is to insinuate btw...
;) :evil:

[=DBA=Ronin]

Those are some tough questions to stretch out Sasha, but thankfully for your behalf, there is no wrong answer. You need to just elaborate on things in your life that might be relative to the matter. Think of events you have participated in that celebrate your heritage, or even family traditions from the hollidays that were "passed" down from one generation to the next. Think of the people you know and how youve always percieved them before and after they told you what their ethnic backgrounds are(if they did). Elaborate on your emotions when youve heard about racial indifferances, wether or not they were somehow directly related to you.

Im sure if you really look at your surrounding you could find enough stuff your involved in to write a whole book out of this. Im 1/2 German and could probablly write a couple chapters on saurkraut in my families cooking alone.

[Artis]

i know this thread was started a while back but i got to typing and i didnt want to waste what i wrote so here goes.

well i have ancestors that owned slaves. and i have an ancestor that fought for the confederacy during the civil war.

i of course do not identify with them regarding slavery or racisim. however, i relate to them in regard to being from the south. and as a recent college graduate with a history major and a serious reading addiction i have an above agerage knowledge of the civil war, etc.

also, my grandparents always talk about their past and where they came from. its actually a very interesting story. my grandmother was working for NATO in belgium and my grandfather was working for general dynamics
(now lockheed martin) and they met at a bar listening to my 13 yr old dad playing on stage. turns out they are from the same small hometown in texas. weatherford, texas has grown up quite a bit since then and they constantly talk about landmarks and what used to be where and what is there now. this is very interesting to me. my grandfather actually grew up a little further west but weatherford is the closest pseudo-city and going out in the country with him where he grew up is always great. the schoolhouse where we went to school is still standing although overgrown with weeds and such.

i have done lots of community service (by choice) and interacted with way more black people than i would normally interact with, most of them are empoverished. this has given me a much better understanding of life and poverty and the perpetuation of poverty and how skin color really doesnt mean anything other than racism. in our country racism is so ingrained most people dont even recognize it. it is in everything from bus
drivers to employers to the judicial system to southern racism that runs rampant. my grandparents are not racist at all. but that town of weatherford has seen its share of KKK rallies and members. i am 22 yrs old and i have witnessed one. this is a mere 20 miles west of dallas/fort worth where i live.

also i went to college in shreveport, louisiana where the majority of people are black not white. when i first got there it was quite a shock. going to the grocery store was interesting. for the
first few months every time i saw a black person driving a really nice car i grew suspicious as if they were doing something illegal to make that kind of money. its not something i am proud of but it happened and i wont run for it. i dont consider myself a racist person but i do recognize my ingrained prejudices.
so i guess my 'heritage' shines though there.

one last thing and then ill shut up is living in fort worth, tx there are quite a few hispanic people here. sort of like shreveport, la is but hispanic people. i played baseball all my life and a little in college and one team i played for was an inner city team that asked me to play. it is VERY interesting to be on a baseball field with everyone speaking spanish around you. this too gave me a better understanding of different people and cultures.

ill shut up now. :)

[Beo]

I don't know how old this post is either, and BTW FU Artis for writing that novel.

I just want to answer to hear myself speak:

Racially, I am 50% Caucasian, and 50% Asian. I have difficulty with identifying with one more than the other, and it pisses me off when asked on forms and such to select one box that best suits me.

I grew up in Hawaii where white people are the minority. For those of you that have been there (not as a tourist) but on the residential level, you will note that there is reverse racism there. When I say reverse, I mean that white people are HATED. The people of Hawaii still hold a HUGE grudge for the 'white man taking over their land'. White people are beat up, isolated, called stupid 'haoles' (term for white person) and picked on constantly. I've seen tourists get mugged for no other reason and are told 'go back to where you came from you stupid fucking haole'. If you're white and you so dare to make even eye contact with a 'local' you get beaten up.

The only time that I ever felt sick to my stomach because of a racial comment was when I was in a college web design class amongst well educated peers doing a group web project. Some guy there started talking about his Vietnamese neighbors. He went on and on how the Vietnamese were disgusting, smelly, ate black dog, were out right vile, had no class...etc. etc. Now if you've ever seen what I look like, you wouldn't be able to tell that I'm half Vietnamese. The sad part is that I just sat there while he berated my race and didn't say a damned thing. I never felt more insulted and disgusted and at the same time useless for in essence, not sticking up for myself. (Except for the one and only time I was made to feel inferior as a woman when I went to a car dealership, but that's a whole other story).

[Artis]

if you had mentioned that to me in a class beo i would gladly have kicked the living shit out of the guy for you.

regarding this "haole" term. is it like a-hole cause when i try and say it thats what it sounds like. as in YOU BIG HAOLE. or is the e on the end pronounced like haoleeee. great word. those crazy hawaiian fuckers.

[Beo]

LOL Arty.

It's pronounced how-lee. :)


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=haole

[Sasha]

Wow thats awful Beoth, and thanks for replying guys, I actually have already written the paper and did get an A! w00t

[GRAAAAAA!!]

sasha sorry i didnt reply earlier :\ my bad

Well for me Im brazilian and russian. I dont think i I dentify with either. When i moved here to the USA from brazil i was really young and was taught english and basicly lost what i had learned of the protuguese language. My mother never really felt the need for me to continue with learning portuguese. I think i identify more with my brazilian side. I would like to take the time to relearn protuguese, so i can visit where i was born.

When i was growing up i lived in or around the hunters point area in san francisco for like 11 years of my life. It was a tough neghborhood. I was hanging out with a lot of african americans. I think i took in alot from the african american culture in that area. I would have to say i identify alot more with this culture. Although lately I have been more open to alot of other cultures. I listen to alot more alternative music then i ever have. I was forced to listen to live 105 at werk and i have been hooked ever since.

As for being a victim of racism. There was more then a few times in the hunters point area that i was wrongfully stoped by the PO and harrased for no apperent reason. I would have to say it was because of my race or skin color. One time i was even frisked by 2 white cops. they didnt find anything on me. I dont see what i did to deserve this. I was going to the store, on my bike at 7pm at night for some milk and cookies. IT was really emberresing because it was right when i was going into the store. Another moment of racism was when I was in 5th grade and one of my black friends had a fight with one of my white friends. They both had knives. Guess which kid got suspended from school? yes the my black friend . I was so schocked when i heard about that shit. although my black friend had a bigger knife, the fact of the matter is they both had knives in school. That incident didnt really involve me but it derectly effected me as he was my best friend at the time.

[GRAAAAAA!!]

Originally posted by Beotch

The only time that I ever felt sick to my stomach because of a racial comment was when I was in a college web design class amongst well educated peers doing a group web project. Some guy there started talking about his Vietnamese neighbors. He went on and on how the Vietnamese were disgusting, smelly, ate black dog, were out right vile, had no class...etc. etc. Now if you've ever seen what I look like, you wouldn't be able to tell that I'm half Vietnamese. The sad part is that I just sat there while he berated my race and didn't say a damned thing. I never felt more insulted and disgusted and at the same time useless for in essence, not sticking up for myself.


? wtf thats just wrong , im with artist :P I would have fucked this guy up! Did that guy pass the class? Probably not. Atlest i hope not because thats so ignorant. Thats like something a kid would say in grade school.

[Ganja John]

Well, I am half Polish and half Iranian..
with that said, I've had my fair share of Polish jokes. But that doesn't bother me, the best ones are told amongst Poles.

Never really ran into trouble for my Persian side, I really don't look like the average arab. One incident did occur after 9-11-01..
We're at my favorite bar with my close friends and one of my friends shows up with one of her boy-toys ( a total tool ). We all drank and left the bar. Somehow I mention that I'm Iranian, and this fool mouths off that I or my people bombed the WTC..

To say the least I was furious, this guy didn't know me from Adam, and he sittin' there cracking jokes like that. It didn't come to a fight, but I let this guy know that he was totally outta line. I served 5 years in the US navy, I am a reservist now, and I plan to be to retire from the service one day. By that standard I'm more patriotic than that fool.

[Artis]

a while back, right after 9/11 when they were selling the osama t-shirts that said wanted - dead or something on them a friend of mine who is indian (dots not feathers) went into a bar down the street. i was invited but didnt go and a drunk guy at the bar started harassing her saying basically the same stuff that was told to ganja john and she is indian for gawdsake. some people are so ignorant they dont deserve to live. my friend and the other girl she was with left right after that and the guy even followed them out to their car yelling at her. she was pretty shaken up about the whole thing. i wish i had been there to beat the guy's ass. then again if id been there i almost certainly would have gotten in a fight and then gotten arrested. :/

[Sasha]

It saddens me that people still treat each other like that. Its so sickening it makes my stomach turn. Racism in any form is a learned pattern of behavior. I try so hard to teach my girls not to judge a person by the color of their skin, but rather a persons actions. To exclude someone from your life simply becuase they are different means you possibly lose the chance to know someone great. The media certainly doesn't help with it protrayals of people with different racial backgrounds. I have to bust through those stereotypes with my kids all the time.

I live in an extremely prodominant white community but when I was 13 my mom took us out of school and put us in a private school that was very much the majority african american. I learned alot about myself and the way that I treated people, and tho I am far from perfect, and I hated that school( it was a religious school) , lol, but I learned alot from it.

[Artis]

two things:

the media portrays the young black man all the time on tv. if its a white guy, its the 23 yr old white male. around here they dont even always make the news, the black on black killings.

i went to a private school my last two years of high school. it was a really good school educationally but it was almost completely white. there were only about 5 black HS students. 3 of which were there on athletic scholarship. i was on scholarship as well but i wasnt black. there were also about 3 people of middle eastern descent. we had communion every wednesday and those of us that didnt want to participate still had to go we just didnt go up and take the bread and the wine but we had to go. if we didnt we got in serious trouble.

[Sasha]

Originally posted by Artis
if we didnt we got in serious trouble.


LOL Arti, I can identify, we had "chapel" every morning and if we didnt go we were in for a rough day. It was the worst! I wanted to curl up on those hard ass pews and go to sleep. hehe

[Artis]

haha, yup id be right there with you. i had to clean the bathroom walls in the guy's bathroom because i took a friend home to grab his algebra book during chapel and i took the fall for him. pretty harsh punishment for missing a half hr service i had no interest in attending anyway.

[Artis]

also the punishment for the rich kids that had gone to that school since kindergarten compared to the punishment for kids who were there on scholarship were completely disproportionate. take my bathroom cleaning experience. the student body president, capt of the football team and about 5 other popular long time students of this school (whose parents give loads of money to the school) all got multiple MIPs (minor in possession - some of whom this was the 4th time for receiving them) and they got minor suspensions and thats it. a girl on scholarship who got pregnant was kicked out of school (although the administration said she left of her and her parents own accord but everyone knew otherwise from actually talking to the girl and a few teachers). seems pretty disproportionate eh

[=DBA=Ronin]

The only time that I ever felt sick to my stomach because of a racial comment was when I was in a college web design class amongst well educated peers doing a group web project. Some guy there started talking about his Vietnamese neighbors. He went on and on how the Vietnamese were disgusting, smelly, ate black dog, were out right vile, had no class...etc. etc. Now if you've ever seen what I look like, you wouldn't be able to tell that I'm half Vietnamese. The sad part is that I just sat there while he berated my race and didn't say a damned thing. I never felt more insulted and disgusted and at the same time useless for in essence, not sticking up for myself.

Dont sweat it too much about not saying anything beo. While he might have made you feel belittled for that day, you can find some solice in knowing that he will be a jackass the rest of his life.

[DeSiMoLvi]

well I don't know if people know or not. I am a Pakistani. I never had any problems like people dicussed here.

Ofcourse I have been called few racial slurs, but in JUST. I have friends of different nationality/Religions. We always screw with each other, by using Sterotypes. Calling each other racial slurs, etc etc. Ofcourse its all good amongst friends.

haven't had a encounter wiht some1 who wasn't a friend calling racial slurs.