Quote from: LukasGabriel on November 24, 2010, 04:45:50 PM
Generally I can't because it means that I've come from said country or my family has come from said place recently. I'd get funny looks if I started to call myself that instead of American or white.
I can't see why anyone of any color should get some "special" name when they might never have even visited the country that you're putting in their description. I say "black" or "white" or "yellow" or whatever because of what I've said above and because I can't see why some people get so uppity about people describing the color of their skin.
Topics flow into other topics, each good as the other. So I don't mind quickly being on the other track:
And totally not an attack, or even to belittle or anything dude. I like you and think you're just as valid in thought as anyone else, but I'm just going to help let you see from other viewpoints. :3 <3
I guess since I live in such a diverse place- it's the correct term. I mean, sure I agree we should probably just drop labels all together and just be... well people. Unfortunately, the human mind doesn't work like that, and even if one isn't such, the chemical and thought pattern from being brought up as such still remains.
The color of the skin is because of how in the past white people, or even in the present now, use it as a degrading type of term. They use it to poke out that they are different and should be lesser. It's also a cultural thing. People grow up knowing these terms are bad and inappropriate. Think about how using the word "
>-bleeped-<" "
>-bleeped-<" "damn" all that can get you into SO much trouble, but they are just words right? It's all the feeling behind the words. Think about how "bloody" isn't that bad of a word here in America, but sure enough if you say it in Britain and England, it's almost as bad as saying the f-bomb.
(And uppity is a bad word to have used. I think you don't know that it means "to put someone in their social place; put someone back into their inferior state" but probably used it meaning to get all riled up and angry. )
And I'm Italian/Sicilian-American. It's got cultural values in the name. My parents DID come from Italy/Sicily, and I was raised with a very Italian view on gender... with some taste of New York Ghetto Italian as well. I hate being called white, because, well I'm not. I always was treated different and wasn't given the same as a "white" person even though now I do because my skin paled from not being in the sun. I don't understand alot of the "norms" with gender and how British dominant American thought is. In Italy, there's alot more metrosexuality in males, and women are very strong, at least during my parents' time and their parents' time as well.
American also in large, when someone says it, they think a European white person. It's why they ran those campaigns a while back with all these different Americans saying they were American. America is such a melting pot of PLENTY of cultures. Remember, the true "Americans" are Native American people... so even European-Americans still are entitled to the hyphen because there IS still different cultural values that are learned.
Plenty of people around here say European, Irish, British, German , etc - American, and NOONE gets a funny look. It's probably just the culture norms that are around you and how everything thinks that makes it different. I'm in a place where their is mostly Asian and Middleeastern descents so white people are in the minority here.
I guess I'm just super sensitive about it and understand everything due to taking Gender, Intercultural and Interpersonal classes. Words are a troublesome thing, and always will be.