Keep your hands off my heritage, part 1.
So, I'm half Korean and half Norwegian. And by "Norwegian" I do not mean white. Fairly white, but not 100% white. Norwegian in the sense that my Korean mother made codfish and lefse every Christmas dinner, after we had avvel skeevers for Christmas breakfast. I am half Korean in the sense that my mother came from Korea as an adult, about 30 years ago. What I do not mean is that I cling to some vague ideas about my ethnicity in order to feel all connected to my roots and show my "diversity" and all that shit. Fuck that. I am the purest bred half and half you can get.
I am uniquely qualified to be absolutely correct in making some comments about ethnicity.
First of all, I am sick of white people and their obsession with diversity/culture/heritage/ethnicity.
White people are white, Black people are black, Asian people are Asian, and then there are some people who kind of fall in between the traditional red and yellow, black and white categories. What this means is that if you are white, and you are living in the United States, no one cares that you are 1/512th Shawnee Indian. You are not a "mutt" with French, German, and Italian, and some Greek on your father's side. You are white. News flash, everyone in the US, with the exception of actual American Indians, came to this country within the last 200 years.
The new Absolutely Correct rule is that if more than 50% of your family's life happened in the United States before 1900 and/or involves Europe, you are white, just white. Stop trying to be all ethnic. It is not remotely interesting and it pisses real ethnic people off.
Furthermore, stop honoring diversity. It's annoying. I hate going into Safeway (or wherever) and seeing these "We honor diversity" posters with a Black guy, Asian girl, and Hispanic guy on them, with about 100 white workers milling around. It's bullshit and it's vaguely insulting.
People are not diverse because the color of their skin is different and they eat spicy food. Furthermore, white people cannot make themselves more diverse by eating spicy food and getting kanji tattoos. Fucking gapers. Don't even get me started on anime.
I'm also fucking sick of people telling me how they shape their lives based on some vague attachment to their imagined cultural history. "Oh, the real FRENCH pronunciation of my last name is Bouquet, but it got changed when they came over." No, your family name is Bucket, and it's been that way for a hundred years. Stop trying to be so special. "Oh, I really love bratwurst, it's my German heritage." No it's not, it's sausage.
I'm half Korean and I don't drive a Hyundai. I drive a Volkswagen. A nice Nazi car from Germany, assembled in Mexico. My first name and last name are bland and boring and I have no compulsion to change them or explain them. I don't need to cling to something just because it vaguely corresponds to my "roots" and neither should you.
Just be white. Get your identity from your actual personality, if you have one. If you don't, try to make one up, preferably without looking to a pop star for inspiration. All this standing around trying to be something you're not makes you into that kid who hung around outside the group of cool people in highschool, basking in reflected glory.
I am uniquely qualified to be absolutely correct in making some comments about ethnicity.
First of all, I am sick of white people and their obsession with diversity/culture/heritage/ethnicity.
White people are white, Black people are black, Asian people are Asian, and then there are some people who kind of fall in between the traditional red and yellow, black and white categories. What this means is that if you are white, and you are living in the United States, no one cares that you are 1/512th Shawnee Indian. You are not a "mutt" with French, German, and Italian, and some Greek on your father's side. You are white. News flash, everyone in the US, with the exception of actual American Indians, came to this country within the last 200 years.
The new Absolutely Correct rule is that if more than 50% of your family's life happened in the United States before 1900 and/or involves Europe, you are white, just white. Stop trying to be all ethnic. It is not remotely interesting and it pisses real ethnic people off.
Furthermore, stop honoring diversity. It's annoying. I hate going into Safeway (or wherever) and seeing these "We honor diversity" posters with a Black guy, Asian girl, and Hispanic guy on them, with about 100 white workers milling around. It's bullshit and it's vaguely insulting.
People are not diverse because the color of their skin is different and they eat spicy food. Furthermore, white people cannot make themselves more diverse by eating spicy food and getting kanji tattoos. Fucking gapers. Don't even get me started on anime.
I'm also fucking sick of people telling me how they shape their lives based on some vague attachment to their imagined cultural history. "Oh, the real FRENCH pronunciation of my last name is Bouquet, but it got changed when they came over." No, your family name is Bucket, and it's been that way for a hundred years. Stop trying to be so special. "Oh, I really love bratwurst, it's my German heritage." No it's not, it's sausage.
I'm half Korean and I don't drive a Hyundai. I drive a Volkswagen. A nice Nazi car from Germany, assembled in Mexico. My first name and last name are bland and boring and I have no compulsion to change them or explain them. I don't need to cling to something just because it vaguely corresponds to my "roots" and neither should you.
Just be white. Get your identity from your actual personality, if you have one. If you don't, try to make one up, preferably without looking to a pop star for inspiration. All this standing around trying to be something you're not makes you into that kid who hung around outside the group of cool people in highschool, basking in reflected glory.
posted by bucketgirl at 11:03 PM
1 Comments:
k... there is really too much here to respond to. Ada and I have gone around and around about this. One's identity does come IN PART from who "created" them and who created those people and so forth and so on. I'm sorry, but you CANNOT check a whole section of this world off as being "white". That there are millions of people out there with nothing of culuture or background or any interesting family stories. Nothing that makes them special or unique. White people are many different cultures and backgrounds... one could say that they are the first multiculturalists, more so American "whites". If someone doesn't want to claim a part of their background, then they have every right to divorce themselves from it. And if somone finds out for a fact that they have a little bit of something in their blood, then that's ok too. What must not be lost sight of is the fact that we are all human... frail and fantastic... good and evil... and that what we are made of is not the sum of who we are.
Don't blame whites for a lack of diversity. Blame an ignorant manager or fearful HR director. Individuals are responsible... groups of people are not. Multiculturalists do take it too far... that their *intentions* good enough. I'm sorry sometimes there just aren't enough *qualified* individuals of other races to fullfill jobs. Just means that each one of us has to do our best to look past differences and find commonality... and stop blaming the culturally void, generic "whitey". Stop caring about what people think of your background... and start acting like how you want to be perceived. Being offended is a waste of time... and nothing good comes of it.
k, time for bed...
-Ayric
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