Saturday, April 22, 2006

I'm starting a blog series: Black People I Hate.

The Internalized Racist:

Who S/He Is: S/He's already gotten hirs. S/He is disconnected from the youth. S/He also adheres to the contours of popular white conceptions about race in America. Basically, that black people are solely to blame for any problems they may have, and that racism is over and most white people would totally support us, if we only stop talking about race.

Why I Hate Him: Well, I'm not fond of the internalized racism, but this point of view is mostly classist, with a bit of sexism thrown in. Basically, what happens is that middle class blacks cobble together a bunch of stereotypes about poor youth(and also women) and blame every problem that our race has on them. So if our schools are inadequate, instead of demanding teachers who can actually teach, they talk about kids being teased in school. If they want to talk about the unfair war on drugs which targets our black men, they talk about the single mothers who are ruining our community(in Scandinavia, there are also high levels of single mothers, and basically, I think it's the poverty, not the single momness that gets us). The thing that annoys me is that well, by using other blacks as scapegoats, they not only reinforce white racist views, they also aren't very effective in fixing the problems. For example, I'm worried about AIDs in the black community. I could talk about the supposed sluttiness of our gay men, or I could help with a campaign to teach people about condoms and needle sharing programs if they are an injection drug user. I mean for every soft step shuffle they take, they should be looking up Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Instead of telling other blacks to be more moral, you be moral your own self.

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