"Paw-Paw,

Thank you for sharing your viewpoint on the U.S. history and the current reality of black people and other cultural minorities. I wholeheartedly disagree with you on most parts, but I respect your right to your own beliefs. I hope you acknowledge that neither of us should occupy a position of subjugation in our dialogue. I recognize that conflicting worldviews and actions exist in a world and a period of life that belongs to both of us equally. However, please do not carry an inherent assumption that only your views are right, and that at the end of the day, I'm going to see it your way.

I am well educated on the history of Civil War, and I am aware of what went on in the North and South in terms of economy and politics. I have read the Emancipation Proclamation myself. I have read stories written by slaves and slave owners. Obviously, I see the history through completely different lens from yours. I am not interested in what the oppressors have to say, or what their reasons for oppressing marginalized groups were. I’m interested in learning from the oppressed groups, and how resilience had helped them survive through those times.

As a white person, I often am blinded by my unearned privileges, just like how right-handed people are often unaware of how school desks are set up for right-handed people, baseball mitts are designed for right-handed people, guns are designed for right-handers to shoot, and appliances open to the right, making it easy for right-handers to open, while left-handed people have a harder time with those things. This is a small example of how we all have different forms of privileges that we often overlook. Those privileges may unintentionally or intentionally make our lives a bit easier.

Because of this, I often make a point to check in with the minority group, be it Black, Latino, Women, Deaf, Homosexual, Blind, or Left-handed people when talking about their history and current issues. When I want to know what misogyny is, I don’t ask a man. When I want to know what racism is, I don’t ask a white person. When I want to know what homophobia is, I don’t ask a heterosexual person. The definitions of oppression are best articulated by the oppressed.

I know I have benefits of being a white person in this society. I’m a racist. Being a racist doesn’t means I hate black people. Racism is not simply a series of random, isolated, overt acts by individuals. It is an institutionalized system of reality that infects every action and thought and requires conscious action to combat and reject. Like most right-handed people, I recognize that I am unaware of AND benefit from my privileges as a right-handed person. Like most white people, I am unable to see things from the oppressed's perspective whilst black people live it, breath it, and see it every day. Most people think being called a "racist" is a personal attack, and some people use this term to attack others. I can understand why white people like myself can get defensive when this happens and say, "No! I'm not a racist! I just don't see it the way you do!" BUT the reason why we don't see it the way people of color do is because we are ALSO victims of the racist system. We DO say, think, and do racist things without realizing it. So when someone points this out to us, I do hope that we, white people, are able to examine our position of power and privilege. I always believe and support the oppressed group, even if I can't see "it".

Here is a checklist of white privilege: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsap.mit.edu%2Fcontent%2Fpdf%2Fwhite_privilege_checklist.pdf

I know you don’t hate people of color, but you do have a patronizing perception of them. “I have black friends, I grew up around black people, my ancestors treated black slaves well” do not, and should not mean anything. You have white friends, you grew up around white people, your ancestors treated white people well too. Why should black people be any different? You did the right thing by treating everyone with equal respect and dignity.

The difference is that the majority of black people continue to experience discrimination, not by you perhaps, but by many other white people who perceive them as dangerous, uneducated, and inferior. I even had this perception myself while growing up due to the media’s negative portrayal of black people, due to many black people living in the poor areas, and due to the amount of black people in jail. Now, I realize that the reason why they are poor is because the system (set up by white people) does not work in their favor, just like the reason why many Deaf people are uneducated, because the system (set up by hearing people) had failed to provide the education that we needed.

Here is a concrete example of how people of color are being discriminated against in our country. In 2009, NYPD stopped 575,000 New Yorkers. Of those stopped, around 490,000 were black or latino. Even though nine times as many people of color were stopped, the NYPD found that of all people stopped, white people were most likely to be carrying illegal drugs and illegal weapons. Black people receive 60% longer sentences for same crimes as white people.

This is just one example among many I’ve been reading from the people of color community. We cannot deny that injustice exists in our country. I’m trying to be more aware and educated on this topic so I will not contribute to the problem by being colorblind and ignorant of what most marginalized groups experience in U.S.

I know some successful black people too, but it does not invalidate that there is a functional racism in the country on a larger scale (this form of discrimination also exists for women, Gay people, Deaf people, and other marginalized groups)

I do not expect you to agree with me, and that is completely okay. However, I do hope you understand the lens I see the world with.

I know your viewpoint, and now you know mine. I know the kind of person you are, and now you know who I am. I am not interested in continuing this dialogue any further if the goal is to change one or the other’s mind. But if the goal is to get us to know each other better, then I’m comfortable with this.

Cheers,

Leala"

"Hi Leala,

Your thinking is so bent that you are not aware of the extremely high number of blacks that commit crime as compared to whites.  As usual you are offended by the truth.  If the TRUTH makes me racist, then so be it. I am racist and proud of it, although none of my black or white friends would call me a racist. Even they are offended by the overt actions by the crimimal blacks. No matter horrendous the offences of blacks against all races you still make excuses for them. What does that make you, a Socialist?  You even twist my innocent and heart felt words and use them against me by calling me "racist."  That is extremely cruel to an old man simply trying to help a wayward granddaughter see just a little truth.  I have come to the conclusion that you do not recognize even simple basic truth. I have heard that Liberalism is not so much a political ideology as it is a mental disorder.  You appear to be trying SOOOOOOOOO to prove that.

I will continue to pray for your eyes to be opened.

In Christ,

Love,

Paw Paw"

"I would not want to associate myself with an overtly racist grandpa who promotes prejudice, hate and superficial lies about other minority groups. Good bye.

Leala"

"Men are not unmindful of the rape problem. To the contrary, their paternalistic laws reserve the harshest penalties for a violation of their property (women). They approach rape as an illegal enroachment by an unlicensed intruder, a stranger come into their midst, the advice they gave (and still try to give) was all of one piece: a set of rules and regulations designed to keep their property penned in, much as a sheepherder might try to keep his flock protected from an outlaw rustler by taking precautions against their straying too far from the fold. By seeing the rapist always as a stranger, never as one of their own, and by viewing the female as a careless creature with an unfortunate tendency to stray, they exhorted, admonished and warned the female to hide herself from male eyes as much as possible.

In short, they told her not to claim the privileges they reserved for themselves. Such advice - well intentioned, solicitous and genuinely concerned - succeeded only in further aggravating the problem, for the message they gave was to live a life of fear, and to it they appended the dire warning that the woman who did not follow the rules must be held responsible for her own violation.

What the rules tell us implicitly and explicitly is:

1) A woman alone probably won't be able to defend herself. Another woman who might possibly come to her aid will of no use whatsoever.

2) Despite the fact that it is men who are the rapists, a woman's ultimate security lies in being accompanied by men at all times.

3) A woman who claims to value her sexual integrity cannot expect the same amount of freedom and independence that men routinely enjoy. Even a small pleasure like taking a spin in an automobile with the windows open is dangerous, reckless behavior.

4) In the exercise of rational caution, a woman should engage in an amazing amount of pretense. She should function on a sustained level of suspicion that approaches a clinical definition of paranoia.

A woman who follows this sort of special cautionary advice and thinks she is acting in society's interest - or even in her own personal interest - is deluding herself rather sadly. This does not diminish the number of potential rapists on the loose, and the ultimate effect of rape upon the woman's mental and emotional health has been accomplished even without the act.

To accept a special burden of self-protection is to reinforce the concept that women must live and move about in fear and can never expect to achieve the personal freedom, independence, and self-assurance of men.

That's what rape is all about, isn't it? A possible deep-down reason why even the best of our concerned, well-meaning men run to stereotypic warnings when they seek to grapple with the problem of rape deterrence is that they prefer to see rape as woman's problem, rather than as a societal problem resulting from a distorted masculine philosophy of aggression."

-Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

"Once we accept as basic truth that rape is not a crime of irrational, impulsive, uncontrollable lust, but is a deliberate, hostile, violent act of degradation of possession on the part of a would-be conqueror, designed to intimidate and inspire fear, we must look toward those elements in our culture that promote and propagandize these attitudes, which offer men, and in particular, impressionable, adolescent males, who form the potential raping population, the ideology and psychological encouragement to commit their acts of aggression without awareness, for the most part, that they have committed a punishable crime, let alone a moral wrong.

The myth of the heroic rapist that permeates false notions of masculinity, from the successful seduced to the man who "takes what he wants when he wants it," is inculcated in young boys from the time they first become aware that being male means access to certain rites and privileges."

-Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

"The most bitter irony of rape, I think, has been the historic masculine fear of false accusation, a fear that has found expression in male folklore since the Biblical days, which has formed the crux of the legal defense against a rape charge, aided and abetted by that special set of evidentiary standards (consent, resistance, chastity, corroboration) designed with one collective purpose in mind: to protect the male against a scheming, lying, vindictive woman.

Fear of false accusation is not entirely without merit in any criminal case, as is the problem of misidentification, an honest mistake, but the irony, of course, is that while men successfully convinced each other and us that women cry rape with ease and glee, the reality of rape is that victimized women have always been reluctant to report the crime and seek legal justice - because of the shame of public exposure, because of that complex double standard that makes a female feel culpable, even responsible, for any act of sexual aggression committed against her, because of possible retribution from the assailant (once a woman has been raped, the threat of a return engagement understandably looms large), and because women have been presented with sufficient evidence to come to the realistic conclusion that their accounts are received with a harsh cynicism that forms the first line of male defense.

FBI's Uniform Crime Reports noted that 15% of all rape reports were determined by investigation to be untrue. A 15% figure for false accusations is undeniable high, yet when New Your City instituted a special sex crimes analysis squad and put policewomen (instead of men) in charge of interviewing complainants, the number of false charges dropped dramatically to 2%, a figure that corresponded exactly to the rate of false reports for other violent crimes.

The lesson in the mystery of the vanishing statistic is obvious. Women believe the word of other women. Men do not."

-Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

"Handing over money at knife point, or dipping into one's wallet to assuage a weaponless but menacing figure on a dark, deserted street, may be financially painful or emotionally distressing, but it hardly compares to the massive insult to one's self-determination that is sustained during a sexual assault.

In a sexual assault, physical harm is much more than a threat; it is a reality because violence is an integral part of the act. Yet, the nature of the crime as it is practiced does bear robbery a close resemblance, because the sexual goal for the rapist resembles the monetary goal of the robber.

Under the rules of law, victims of robbery and assault are not required to prove they resisted, or that they didn't consent, or that the act was accomplished with sufficient force, or sufficient threat of force, to overcome their will, because the law presumes it highly unlikely that a person willingly gives away money, except to a charity or to a favorite cause, and the law presumes that no person willingly submits to a brutal beating and the infliction of bodily harm and permanent damage. But victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault do need to prove these evidentiary requirements - that they resisted, that they didn't consent, that their will was overcome by overwhelming force and fear - because the law has never been able to satisfactorily distinguish an act of mutually desired sexual union from an act of forced, criminal sexual aggression.

The real reason for the law's everlasting confusion as to what constitutes an act of rape and what constitutes an act of mutual intercourse is the underlying cultural assumption that it is the natural masculine role to proceed aggressively toward the stated goal, while the natural feminine role is to "resist" or "submit." And so to protect male interests, the law seeks to gauge the victim's behavior during the offending act in the belief that force or the threat of force is not conclusive in and of itself.

Since terror is a psychological reaction and not an objective standard that can be read on a behavior meter six months later in court, current employed standards of resistance or threat of force have neve been able to accurately gauge a victim's terror. For this reason, feminists have argued that the burden of proof that devolves on a rape victim, that she resisted "within reason," that her eventual compliance was no indication of tacit "consent," is unfair, since such standards are not applied in court to the behavior of victims in other kinds of violent crime.

A jury should be permitted to weigh the word of a victimized complainant at face value, no more or less a right that is granted to other victims under the law."

-Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

Just in case you needed a refresher course: Racism isn't defined by exceptions. It is defined by history, institutions, common practices, and perceptions, among other things. That is why it is ENTIRELY possible for a nation as racist as America to elect a biracial president who identifies as African American. -Son of Baldwin 


https://www.facebook.com/sonofbaldwinfb