Discrimination Against White People

In South Africa, a company Vodacom only lets black people buy shares in their company. At the start of the company, both white and black people could buy shares in the company. White people were the majority of shareholders because they were the only ones who could afford to buy the shares. Then, the company took a new direction and required that only black people could buy shares. This outraged the white population because they are the ones mostly supporting the company. The black south african see this as a way to regain what was already theirs that white people cam and took over. I definitely see this as discrimination against white people.

Names?

Let me start off by saying I work in a very racist environment, I usually ignore things I hear mostly because I’m so busy and occasionally I voice my opinion if something needs to be said.  The other day everyone was talking about how you can tell what race a person is by their name before you look at them. Really? “Blacks girls got all the crazy names and asian people names all sound the same”. Interesting…my friend Alexa doesn’t exactly have an Asian-exclusive name even though she’s Asian. I know four different Davids…two are black, one is white and one is hispanic.  I brought this up and someone said “yea, but most of the time, you can tell…I’m  not saying all people have names that reflect their race, I’m saying if someone’s name is Latisha, you know she’s a black girl”…I told this employee that she can’t just assume someone’s race because of their name and before I could continue, she said “girl, I’m black, don’t try to act like I’m being racist”. So now not only can you tell someone’s race by their name, but apparently if you’re black and you made such a statement you couldn’t possibly be being racist.

Stereotypes

For one reason or another, we did a questionnaire the other day in class that asked me what my identity was (white, male, 20’s), how people inaccurately perceive me, which groups I perceive a particular way, etc. When we got to the question about stereotypes of our OWN group, none of  us knew what to say so we started asking one another.  I was actually shocked at how honest people were with one another, how funny everything seemed to be and how light and loose the conversation was even though we were talking about something that’s normally uncomfortable and kept quiet.  This guy who sits next to me is a black male and a basketball player and when it was his turn to talk (he was asked what people  think of him), he said people assume he’s a dumb jock, he steals things because he’s black, he has no future,  loves fried chicken and will end up in jail in the next 10 years. Everything was laughing like it was hilarious… But the thing was, in this class, everything just talked about it like it was funny and no big deal.  Unfortunately, it IS  a big deal, I felt like no one really wanted to talk about the uncomfortable part of it.

segregation? oops.

I volunteer at Rawlings elementary here in Gainesville. Every week we do activities with the kids. These activities are meant to be constructive and educational. The picture I posted on here was one I was tagged in on Facebook. The banner/poster we’re holding up is a crayon box, symbolic of how it takes many colors to make a box complete, much like how it takes people of every race and color to make the world go round. One of my friends saw this picture on Facebook and immediately sent me a message in all caps that said “SEGREGATION,” with a link to this picture. At first I was confused, and then I realized that there are white people on one side of the poster and black people on the other. I couldn’t help but laugh at this because it was completely unintentional. It was very ironic, however, that we were segregated by the poster representing -blindness. It’s a perfect depiction of our society and how we claim to believe one thing and do another. Just as no one thought anything of this picture and the obvious segregation, many people think nothing of the segregation in our neighborhoods and in society in general.

Just an Education?

Is all education the same at every university? HBC’s compared to regular schools, is there a difference? Who would get hired first out of a candidate from each school?

Is an education just an education, I mean excluding top schools such as Yale, Harvard and etc?

 I was on the bus one day headed to class I had on my black college reunion shirt. As I took my seat this white guy looked at my shirt and laughed. Under his breath he mumbles, “what a joke.” What do I say to that? In my opinion he doesn’t take black colleges seriously. I have one question for him though, why is it that white colleges should be taken seriously but HBC’s shouldn’t? Morehouse, Spellman, and Standford and others are outstanding great schools that are taken seriously. And they are predominantly black colleges.

Racism or Politics?

This morning I was watching Good Morning America and there was a segment on the Republicans Conference in Washington D.C. and the way they feel about Barack Obama. The remarks that they made toward our president are just remarkable disgusting. Former vice president Dick Cheney publicly announced that Barack Obama would be a one term president. Not only were Cheney and his daughter reported rejoicing the fact that they are conservatives, but also many of the current leaders holding positions in our senate. A potential senator from Florida stated that “we are witnessing the single greatest political push back in history.” All of these comments and the huge uproar has me wondering if all of this is because Barack Obama is black or do they really disagree with the democratic party and all it stands for. I mean we have had democratic presidents in the past and some were extremely successful. Also, I don’t remember there being such a disparity when those other democrats were placed in office.

This is the link to Good Morning America’s website, not directly to the video, but the video is titled Republicans Rising: GOP in D.C.

comments about “Racism without Racists”

I noticed that the people I thought would get mad about the book actually did and the people that understood where the author was coming from didn’t get mad. I honestly liked the book because I felt as if it actaully stood up for African-Americans. I honestly don’t think that he meant to offend any white individual. He, in the chapter we didn’t read,  talks about white progressives who actually agreed with affirmative action, etc. the things that he mentioned in the book are what black people see everyday so we understand where he’s coming from.