(September 16, 2015 at 5:16 pm)BrokenQuill92 Wrote:

(September 16, 2015 at 5:09 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: You have some pretty eyes. Lovely. Don't ever complain about your bouncy hair. Mine curls up so thick and tight that Moses couldn't part it. Pharaoh would have caught the children of Israel if Moses had been trying to part my hair

Surely it can't be all that bad! Try a detangler comb and curl pudding

Did I say it is bad? No, I love my hair. If I didn't love mine, I couldn't love yours. I made a decision 10 years ago to stop waging chemical warfare against my hair. Straight hair looks delicious on people who have naturally straight hair, but I am happy to be nappy. I was nappy when nappy wasn't cool.

(September 16, 2015 at 6:50 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: You and Alex K are right on point. It’s possible that the difference between racist and non-racist is a matter of degree. Just like the difference between poison and medicine is a matter of quantity not substance.

Sometimes people say things and it’s hard to know how to respond. We can’t have the same response to everything that sounds like it might be racist. I was listening to this White woman talking to another White woman. I wasn’t eves dropping. I was just there. Apparently some Black guy had been fired because he did not have the proper license to do his job. When the White woman talked to him he said, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re the same color as the boss.” She got mad and told him, “Look, if you want to play the race card then you go get somebody from the NAACP and I’ll get somebody from the KKK and meet you down at the courthouse.”  I wasn’t sure how to feel about this because I know this woman and she loves herself some Rhonda. I also know that this same company fired a White man who was over charging customers.  Who was the racist here?

I'm just not sure how she can compare the NAACP to the KKK. The only thing they have in common is that there's not a black person in sight in either...

No Rachel, getting a fake tan and a curly weave doesn't count.

(September 16, 2015 at 7:04 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:

(September 16, 2015 at 5:16 pm)BrokenQuill92 Wrote: Surely it can't be all that bad! Try a detangler comb and curl pudding

Did I say it is bad? No, I love my hair. If I didn't love mine, I couldn't love yours. I made a decision 10 years ago to stop waging chemical warfare against my hair. Straight hair looks delicious on people who have naturally straight hair, but I am happy to be nappy. I was nappy when nappy wasn't cool.

I'm transitioning yet again so I keep it braided most of the time. I should be all natural by the end of the year. When I am, I'm not going to straighten it again.

(September 16, 2015 at 7:36 pm)BrokenQuill92 Wrote:

(September 16, 2015 at 7:04 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: Did I say it is bad? No, I love my hair. If I didn't love mine, I couldn't love yours. I made a decision 10 years ago to stop waging chemical warfare against my hair. Straight hair looks delicious on people who have naturally straight hair, but I am happy to be nappy. I was nappy when nappy wasn't cool.

I'm transitioning yet again so I keep it braided most of the time. I should be all natural by the end of the year. When I am, I'm not going to straighten it again.

One girl described it like this: When she wore her hair straight, guys were like, "Hey shorty, toll me some of them digits, girl." But when she wore it natural guys were like, "My sister, will you please accompany me to the poetry slam?"

You may want to get a hold of the book "No Lye" by Tulani Kinard. It's available at amazon.com. Click here

No more lye
No more roots
No more pain
And think about what you will be able to buy with the money you save on beauticians.

(September 16, 2015 at 3:15 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: I think everyone has some racism in them. It's not just white people, your Asian friend, who has also been raised in a society which has undertones of white supremacy, will also have racist views. People are products of their environment. I think when you're born and raised in a country like America, where the notion of "race" and white supremacy is so deeply woven into the fabric of the country, it's downright impossible not to have some racist views. That doesn't mean you're inherently a bad person, it just means you've been indoctrinated with a lot of shitty conditioning you need to unlearn.

I think most people (especially white people but not exclusively) don't see themselves as racist just because they agree that slavery, genocide, segregation and lynching are bad. That's all we see as "racism", when people are "really" being hurt, we see the more subtle manifestations as harmless and petty when people complain.

I'm white and I do think "white fragility" is a thing, there are a lot of white people who act like being told they said something a bit backwards is somehow worse than experiencing racism. Sure, I think there comes a point where people definitely can say prejudiced, fucked up, hell I'll even say racist things about white people, but being told "be careful, that sounded problematic because..." is not racism.

I think is enhanced by confirmation bias and the tendency to prefer those who look like us. Most marriages are between people of the same race and social/economic class - Meaning that if you're white and middle class, you're more likely to marry a white middle class person - Particularly because most people we grow up with are also part of the same social class and share the same culture, therefore we feel compelled and attracted by them. I think race certainly doesn't exist scientifically, but neither do countries but it's still a useful concept in our everyday lives. What separates races the most is culture and culture is probably the strongest cause of racism - I.E. The reason why whites thought blacks were inferior wasn't just beacuse they were darker, but because of how they organized and acted/behaved. It's curious to see how racial dynamics may vary - My girlfriend is part gypsy and she fucking hates gypsies because she despises the culture.

If we are going to use race as a useful social construct to discuss power dynamics, sovereignty of territories, etc, we might as well admit that white people are a race as well, just like black people, and we are divided into sub-groups as well (i.e. Spanish and Italians are darker than Brits and Germans, but it also depends on the person).

(September 16, 2015 at 9:06 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:

(September 16, 2015 at 7:36 pm)BrokenQuill92 Wrote: I'm transitioning yet again so I keep it braided most of the time. I should be all natural by the end of the year. When I am, I'm not going to straighten it again.

One girl described it like this: When she wore her hair straight, guys were like, "Hey shorty, toll me some of them digits, girl." But when she wore it natural guys were like, "My sister, will you please accompany me to the poetry slam?"

You may want to get a hold of the book "No Lye" by Tulani Kinard. It's available at amazon.com. Click here

No more lye
No more roots
No more pain
And think about what you will be able to buy with the money you save on beauticians.

I don't date humans that refer to me as shorty.

I'm still wondering why no one is touching the ties between race and economic status. That is where "privilege" -- i.e., endemic racism -- is sourced.

Poverty means unequal access to the legal system. Minorities are more prone to poverty in part because poor neighborhoods have less property tax to fund the schools in the area, and in part because they earn less for the same job done.

Unequal access to the legal system means that a higher proportion of minorities are incarcerated, usually for longer terms, and that too feeds back into the economics of racism in America.

(September 16, 2015 at 5:57 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: I'm not clear about the Cajun/Creole connection. But I'd be more than happy to learn.  

A white man who can pass for Black. That shows you these classifications aren't based on anything scientific.

I knew Lee was fighting out of loyalty to his state, but I didn't know he was an abolitionist.  Based on what I know about why the North was fighting the South, I've often wondered if what Lincoln did to the Southern states was any different from what Russia did to the Slavic states. We've has several threads about the Civil War but never from that angle.

Lee was a "lower-case-letter" abolitionist, in that he thought it was morally reprehensible, but not an upper-case Abolitionist, as in, part of organized opposition to the practice. Nevertheless, he made his opposition known, which was no small thing for a professional military officer from the Deep South.

Okay... you asked for it!

We are originally French peasants who fled the fighting around La Rochelle on the central-west Atlantic coast of France, in 1604, and formed one of the first communities on the east coast, at the same time Jamestown was being founded. "Cajun" comes from an Americanized pronunciation of "L'Acadienne" (lah-kah-djinn), meaning "an Acadian", from Acadia (Anglicized), or as we called it, Acadie. We had peaceful and prosperous cordial relations with the native tribe, so "Acadie" was our adoption of the Mi'kmaq natives' name for the area where we settled, starting in 1604, in what would become the Canadian province of Nova Scotia after the Brits took it over (mainly for its excellent naval harbor at Halifax). We lived there as peaceful farmers and ranchers, going back and forth between French and British rulership (and wanting nothing to do with either... we left feudal France for a reason!) despite assimilation attempts by both nations, until the Seven Years War began to brew up, in 1755. The Brits tried one last time to get us to violate our policy of peaceful neutrality, and then tricked us into coming in for a vote at each town's church, where they locked the doors and then deported each town's population onto prison ships, where disease in the squalid living conditions killed many of us, and the rickety old prison ships would often sink in the passage to whatever distant colony they tried shipping us off to.

We call this Le Grand Dérangement. As a result, thousands died; thousands more were deported and scattered, destroying a community that had persisted in peace for 150 years. Finally, a leader among us (whom I can count as my direct ancestor) Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, managed to round up most of the groups that had managed to stay together, and got permission from Spain (who then owned Louisiana) for us to settle in that colony. When the Spanish tried to get/force us to fight against the British-Americans, we retreated into the swamplands we call the Bayous, and forged our unique culture into a new one (most "Cajun" foods come about from our use of French cooking techniques with Native American recipes and spices). We managed to resist assimilation, and remained Catholic, poor, and dedicated to the principles of peace and the equality of all peoples.

The Creoles, on the other hand, vary in race, and are frequently of mixed racial heritage (in fact, the word creole means "a mixture"), being made up of the various cultures that blended in the French colonial islands of the Caribbean, and who were the predominant landowners in the busy port of New Orleans, Louisiana, especially after they took it over from the Spanish. Their culture wound up being very similar to the Cajun culture, in Louisiana, but it has more Afro-Caribbean roots than ours does, and both the cuisine and their version of French reflects the difference. It is considered deeply insulting to call a Cajun a Creole because of the divide between their landowning wealth and our refugee poverty, stemming back to the way we felt they treated us upon arrival in Louisiana. Ironically, the roles were somewhat reversed after the United States purchased Louisiana, and suddenly the dark-skinned Creoles were largely stripped of their wealth and social position. We Cajuns had no part in that, and wanted no part, and so we became even more isolated, as much as we could... even in 1972, when my mother introduced my father to her father, he referred to my dad as "The American".

My particular family went even further than the rest of the Cajuns did, in reaction to the racist society they felt imposed on their idealism, and moved past the swamps into the marshy flatlands of southwestern Louisiana, where they live to this day, near Lake Arthur, Crowley, Jennings, and Lake Charles. Other than myself, my mother is the "northernmost" of the family, a profesor at LSU-Alexandria, in the dead center of the state.

If you are interested in learning more about our history, click here. Or here.

Edited to Add: The Wiki article gets a few things wrong, such as the reason it was called Acadie, claiming it's related to the Greek "Arcadia". But it's still a decent summary, and I'm sure everyone here has GoogleFu skills at least as good as my own.

(September 16, 2015 at 9:20 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote: I'm still wondering why no one is touching the ties between race and economic status. That is where "privilege" -- i.e., endemic racism -- is sourced.

Poverty means unequal access to the legal system. Minorities are more prone to poverty in part because poor neighborhoods have less property tax to fund the schools in the area, and in part because they earn less for the same job done.

Unequal access to the legal system means that a higher proportion of minorities are incarcerated, usually for longer terms, and that too feeds back into the economics of racism in America.

Um yeah duh

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/fact...ver-think/