Two epiphanies I had today

[sqbr]

First, a rant:
I came across a post today with white americans whining about having no culture, because they're a bunch of immigrants with mixed backgrounds, a dark history they feel ambivalent about, and an emphasis on both conformity and individuality and consumerism. Other cultures, on the other hand, are distinct and uniform and well defined and have a wholly positive effect on people's lives.

Now as someone from a culture with similar issues who finds american culture distinct and rather alien (in an interesting, sometimes cool sort of way) I find this annoying (Australians may whine about not having any culture too, but we don't tend to act like it's a Special Unique Pain Noone Else Understands)
It's like the question of "How do non-white/non-American people feel about their cultures, and what does it have in common with how we feel?" doesn't even register.

For a start, afaict pretty much every non-American in the world has angst about the difficulty of being "modern" without becoming American, of defining ourselves without relying on rigid outdated jingoism. And no culture is an unchanging monolith, everyone has to balance tradition and change, personal preferences with accepted social mores, multiculturalism with flattening and uniformity. Every choice along those continuums has both benefits and costs. And pretty much every culture has dark patches in their past, unethical social practices(*), and just plain unappealing expectations that make it difficult for a lot of people to embrace their "people" unselfconsciously and without caveats. Afaict being a POC makes this more complicated, not less, since you have external and internalised racism to contend with telling you your culture is worthless.

The second is a bit advanced, and is only really annoying (to me!) when I see it from, say, feminist bloggers who should know better. Or myself :)
Hopefully a lot of people have gotten their head around the fact that only people who experience Xism are qualified to say if something is Xist or not. But a lot of people who get that have trouble understanding that even if you do notice something someone did is Xist all by yourself that doesn't mean you get to judge whether or not they apologised well enough for it. On seeing an apology for Xism of a sort you don't experience but still found personally offensive, your first priority should not be "Do I think this is good enough given how offensive I found their behaviour?" but "What do the people who experience Xism and were hurt in the first place think?".

And now I feel better :)

(*)According to ones own personal ethics, whatever they may be

Comments

[v01d3d.livejournal.com]

Hopefully a lot of people have gotten their head around the fact that only people who experience Xism are qualified to say if something is Xist or not.

Having actually convinced women who were convinced that something was sexist that it wasn't I disagree. Broadly speaking if someone is discriminatory towards someone else because of X that is Xist and sure there are some cases in which a person with more experience as X or with Xism can say something is or isn't but I think if someone says "you are dumb because you're a woman" even though I'm a man I can say that that is sexist. Speaking as someone who has experienced racism I disagree If someone who has not can explain to me why something I took offence to is not offensive in a rational way then I can be conviced this is the case. I think people are too willing to let people use their emotions as an arguement.


"What do the people who experience Xism and were hurt in the first place think?".
What because they all will have the same response? I think not.

[alias_sqbr]

So I disagree with your opinion that I get to disagree with you about your opinion of racism.

Which..um...*falls into deep paradox*

I guess like with any generalisation there are exceptions? Mm. *is still figuring out exactly what I think*