STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

honey · Gucci

RE: Hillary Clinton in for 2008

squishy · Coach

honey, i have the dubious benefit of being asian, a transparent/invisible, 'non' minority, so i apologize if i have offended you. i don't doubt that i am prejudiced in ways i am consciously unaware of. that must be the great benefit of having been raised in america.

admittedly, there is no way to say this without coming off as a jackass, but what i was referring to wasn't the fact that jesse jackson is inarticulate, uneducated or hails from a ghetto. i was referring to the fact that people view him as wearing his race on his sleeve... i.e. he has based much of his political platform on appealing to primarily african americans. he champions causes that may be more universal (like civil rights, mandatory minimums, healthcare etc), but he tailors it to a very specific audience. obama, on the other hand, hasn't (yet) focused on one group specifically, and doesn't have said support from one specific group.

Hermes

honey wrote:

squishy wrote:

StellaStar wrote:
Also, how is it possible to fail to identify with African-American voters when he is an African-American by his own definition? Of course this ability to "identify" is solely based on the experience of being black in America as it would be impossible to identify with the experiences of all African-Americans given that all people are individuals
you answered your own question.

race and skin color aren't the largest common identity denominator, and race and skin color alone don't define a cultural experience. not all african americans will support obama, and not all women will support clinton. ideally, people will vote for what they want to happen in the next 4-8 years, not for what minority they do or don't want to place in office.

recgardless of significant evidence to the claim otherwise, people aren't necessarily swayed statistics. they're going to see that he's like condi: although they're both ethnically from africa, a large part of the popuation (whites and blacks) don't see them as culturally african american. obama was raised in hawaii and indonesia, which is a far cry from what we perceive to be the american experience. as stereotypical as this is going to sound, when you think african american, you don't think of obama; you think of someone more like rev. jesse jackson.

-- Edited by squishy at 12:18, 2007-02-16
as stereotypical as this is going to sound, when you think african american, you don't think of obama; you think of someone more like rev. jesse jackson.

i took this part out b/c i wanted to respond specifically to it. statments like this make me wonder question who exactly is doing the thinking, and what prejudices are at the root of their beliefs?

comments of this nature (and the ones D and ilovechoo made earlier) reek of prejudice, and offend me personally. i find it interesting that people who aren't black, are quick to say that a black person who defies stereotypes isn't "black" enough. i have very strong feelings on the notion of "blackness" that i won't really get into, but in general i think the statements reflect a limited knowledge of black people. we are (obviously) not a monolith that can be lumped into one category. more importantly there are many, many black people (myself included) who readily identify with obama and condeleeza.

at the heart of your statement lies the idea that most black people are un-educated, inarticulate, and not capable of rising above the ghetto mentality. i'm sure those who read this will say that's not what they meant, but think about the implications of the comment. condi and obama are the anti-thesis of these things. so what exactly makes them not black enough? it's obviously not their skin color or even their personal identity politics since the sheer fact that they self identify as black makes them part of black culture, and representative of that culture.

imo a lot of this uncle tom bs is stuff perpetuated by the media b/c it makes for a good story, and not at all rooted in the acutual beliefs of many black people. i'll even go out on a limb and say it's probably not based on the actual beliefs of a majority of black people. if anything, the fact that obama was recently on the cover of ebony (i want to say last month's cover) is indicative of the fact that many of the black people who will most likely end up voting in the election identify with obama.

yeah sidney portier made a dumb ass comment about condi and colin, but is no more the voice of "blackness" than bill cosby was when he decried hip-hop music and culture.

i don't disagree with the statement that obama will not identify with all black americans, no one can identify with everyone. but i just wanted to add my $0.02 b/c those statements really, really, really bothered me. and i also want to say that i don't speak for the other black people on the board. they may be totally fine with your comments, but i'm not.

-- Edited by honey at 14:16, 2007-02-16

honey - as you well know, it was not my intention to offend you. My friends of African American descent are very open in talking about the "cultural expectations" that other African Americans have of them.

As a matter of fact, I had lunch with my old geography professor yesterday, who is African American. He talks openly about how when he visits family he will speak differently around them as he would be perceived as pretentious if he was just being his regular self. He is aware of and talks openly about other African Americans and what their cultural expectations are of him to "fit in" to African American culture. He's one of the coolest people on the planet - very objective in his views. He's also in a wheel chair and jokes how he has two minority cards now. I guess I'm used to hanging out with people who discuss social/cultural observations openly.

Now, with my professor, he would be the first to say that Obama may be too Uncle Tom for a lot of African American voters - it's just an observation. Uncle Tom is just a common expression. And I want to say this and not offend, but it's seems like it's ok for him to say that because he's African American, and I shouldn't because I am caucasian? I was just being open, and I guess I should explain why I am open like I am in talking about stuff like this.

Again - no intention to offend, and sorry if I did.

honey · Gucci

D -- understood your point was (and is) not to offend.

my issue is not with the use of the term...could care less about it. offend is a strong word, but i wanted to make my point. my intent was not to make you feel like you couldn't be open with me. i raised the point in the interest of open communication, b/c i wanted to express how i felt about the issue.

as i said in my original post, i have a lot of issues with the whole idea of "blackness." it's a social construct, but then again almost all the culture identities are. the current depictions of black culture are very limited, and imo also very negative. terms like sell out and uncle tom bother me (regardless of who is using them, but in this case it was in a specific context) b/c they affirm the notion that black people have a homogenous identity.

to do a quick compare and contrast, you hardly hear anyone being accused of not being white enough. why? imo the cultural identity associated with "whiteness" is much more fluid. you can be a punk rocker, or a socialite, or a soccer mom, and no one questions your authenticity as a white person. but if you're black and don't uphold certain stereotypes (don't dance well, speak proper english, etc.) your authenticity as a black person is immediately brought into question.

-- Edited by honey at 20:59, 2007-02-17

Hermes

honey wrote:

D -- understood your point was (and is) not to offend.

my issue is not with the use of the term...could care less about it. offend is a strong word, but i wanted to make my point. my intent was not to make you feel like you couldn't be open with me. i raised the point in the interest of open communication, b/c i wanted to express how i felt about the issue.

as i said in my original post, i have a lot of issues with the whole idea of "blackness." it's a social construct, but then again almost all the culture identities are. the current depictions of black culture are very limited, and imo also very negative. terms like sell out and uncle tom bother me (regardless of who is using them, but in this case it was in a specific context) b/c they affirm the notion that black people have a homogenous identity.

to do a quick compare and contrast, you hardly hear anyone being accused of not being white enough. why? imo the cultural identity associated with "whiteness" is much more fluid. you can be a punk rocker, or a socialite, or a soccer mom, and no one questions your authenticity as a white person. but if you're black and don't uphold certain stereotypes (don't dance well, speak proper english, etc.) your authenticity as a black person is immediately brought into question.

-- Edited by honey at 20:59, 2007-02-17

when I think of the term uncle tom, I think of it in more of an african american (AA) cultural thing, vs. an education level thing.

I found the following description in wikipedia, which also aligns with my interpretation of the term:

"Uncle Tom is a pejorative for an African American who is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to White American authority figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary accommodation. The term Uncle Tom comes from the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, although there is debate over whether the character himself is deserving of the pejorative attributed to him."

again, more reflective of cultural differences vs. reflective of a negative stereotype in regard to socio-economic or educational level. living in the Detroit area with a high AA population, I am used to this being a commonly used term/issue.

in regard to someone not being white enough - this too exists. But i don't really think of it in terms of not being white enough, but more that one is heavily influenced by a culture. Marshall Mathers (M&M) for example. He is a caucasion that is heavily immersed in AA culture.

the term may not be pretty, but it's a reality.

-- Edited by D at 11:49, 2007-02-19

scarlett · Marc Jacobs

I understand that no one intended to offend anyone else here, but I am bothered by this idea of Obama being too "Uncle Tom." Going by the definition of above, how does that apply to Barack Obama? Why should Barack Obama be viewed as pandering to white interests through "unncessary accomodation"? Why can't he have an opinion on something and not have it seen as a pandering move?

I think when we have a minority running for office, be it a woman like Hillary Clinton or an African-American like Barack Obama, they are weighed down with much heavier expectations of who they can satisfy than other candidates are. Their candidacies are so much more loaded and the balancing act they have to execute that much more complicated. It saddens me to see this happening already. Maybe in a few more years when there are more minority candidates it won't be this way.

honey · Gucci

D wrote:

honey wrote:

D -- understood your point was (and is) not to offend.

my issue is not with the use of the term...could care less about it. offend is a strong word, but i wanted to make my point. my intent was not to make you feel like you couldn't be open with me. i raised the point in the interest of open communication, b/c i wanted to express how i felt about the issue.

as i said in my original post, i have a lot of issues with the whole idea of "blackness." it's a social construct, but then again almost all the culture identities are. the current depictions of black culture are very limited, and imo also very negative. terms like sell out and uncle tom bother me (regardless of who is using them, but in this case it was in a specific context) b/c they affirm the notion that black people have a homogenous identity.

to do a quick compare and contrast, you hardly hear anyone being accused of not being white enough. why? imo the cultural identity associated with "whiteness" is much more fluid. you can be a punk rocker, or a socialite, or a soccer mom, and no one questions your authenticity as a white person. but if you're black and don't uphold certain stereotypes (don't dance well, speak proper english, etc.) your authenticity as a black person is immediately brought into question.

-- Edited by honey at 20:59, 2007-02-17
when I think of the term uncle tom, I think of it in more of an african american (AA) cultural thing, vs. an education level thing.

I found the following description in wikipedia, which also aligns with my interpretation of the term:

"Uncle Tom is a pejorative for an African American who is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to White American authority figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary accommodation. The term Uncle Tom comes from the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, although there is debate over whether the character himself is deserving of the pejorative attributed to him."

again, more reflective of cultural differences vs. reflective of a negative stereotype in regard to socio-economic or educational level. living in the Detroit area with a high AA population, I am used to this being a commonly used term/issue.

in regard to someone not being white enough - this too exists. But i don't really think of it in terms of not being white enough, but more that one is heavily influenced by a culture. Marshall Mathers (M&M) for example. He is a caucasion that is heavily immersed in AA culture.

the term may not be pretty, but it's a reality.

-- Edited by D at 11:49, 2007-02-19

squishy -- see where you're coming from, but i think it also helps to compare the historical context. jackson was very active in the civil rights movement, and shaped by growing up during a time when blacks and whites were very visibly unequal. obama and condi are of a different generation, and while race still matters, they don't deal with it in the same way as jackson does.

d -- i think it's interesting that in your first post, you kind of hinted that i'm not open to talking about race. i responded to the comments b/c it seemed to be a one sided conversation. while i'm not going to enumerate the reasons, i've always been open to holding an intelligent conversation about race when other people are open to listening.

in this context i think you're splitting hairs. i stand by the original question what exactly about obama, or someone like condi makes them culturally unable to identify with black culture? there's nothing about them that is inherently not black, except that fact that they're not on tv eating fried chicken & watermelon, or to align with more modern stereotypes popping christal and all blinged out? the only gap i see is between them, and a lot of the bs stereotypes that abound.

and in a lot of ways using eminen as an example of someone who is not white enough just bolsters my point. he's a homophobic misogynist who raps about violence, even more important he's not heavily immersed in black culture, he's heavily immersed in hip-hop culture -- two different things.

Hermes

honey wrote:

d -- i think it's interesting that in your first post, you kind of hinted that i'm not open to talking about race.

I never hinted at this nor intended to - this was your interpretation of what I wrote.

i responded to the comments b/c it seemed to be a one sided conversation. while i'm not going to enumerate the reasons, i've always been open to holding an intelligent conversation about race when other people are open to listening.

I was listening, but simply voicing the other side of the argument - as were you.

in this context i think you're splitting hairs. i stand by the original question what exactly about obama, or someone like condi makes them culturally unable to identify with black culture? there's nothing about them that is inherently not black, except that fact that they're not on tv eating fried chicken & watermelon, or to align with more modern stereotypes popping christal and all blinged out? the only gap i see is between them, and a lot of the bs stereotypes that abound.

I don't think I'm splitting hairs - you brought up points, I "listened" to them, and responded.

the remainder of what you say in the preceding paragraph is true. I'm not saying that the stereotypes are not wrong - I'm simply voicing an observation that is a reality regardless of whether we agree with it or like it.

and in a lot of ways using eminen as an example of someone who is not white enough just bolsters my point. he's a homophobic misogynist who raps about violence, even more important he's not heavily immersed in black culture, he's heavily immersed in hip-hop culture -- two different things.

hip hop culture is heavily African American and originated as an African American music moment - you cannot deny that. homophobia and misogyny know no race - I was not saying that homophobia and misogyny in M&M are reflective of African American culture. I'm saying his involvement in a movement/culture that is predominately African American could place him in this perception of "not being white enough" in a way that an African American person could be construed as "not being African American enough."

You're reading too much into what I'm saying.

We are obviously not not seeing eye to eye in this conversation, and I don't want to beat this to death.

Bottom line is that I like you for the fabulous woman you are. I personally have friends of all races and take people for who they are and not what group they may be stereotyped into. I really hate that race has to be a factor in any facet of our lives.