Gen Y and the Colorblind Lie
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Saaret E. Yoseph, The Root, July 22, 2008
{snip}
“Why,” he had to wonder, “can’t I say the word ‘nigga’?”
Before you judge, consider the confusion, the people and the times. He, the semi-down white boy and me, the weary black chick restricting language deemed suitable by the three other black folks in the room. We are both products of our generation—Generation Y.
The situation was definitely awkward. Yet, the fact that the two of us, from different cultural backgrounds, were even interacting would likely be seen as a triumph by our elders, especially those who struggled to make it happen. Casual chit-chat between a young black woman and her white male counterpart might have been the gleam in King’s eye as he conceived his “I Have a Dream” speech, and it was probably the distant hope of Thurgood Marshall as he argued Brown v. Board of Education. {snip}
Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least. It sprang to life and run amok. Lyrics, lawsuits, lynchings, boycotts, bombings, preferential treatment, superiority complexes, inferiority complexes and inhumane acts based solely on skin tone and misconceptions.
Millennials like myself are often steeped just as deep in the troubles of race as generations before us. This isn’t to say that advancements haven’t been made. Civil rights, career options for minorities and intercultural dynamics have no doubt improved in America since my parents’ day. But progress in regard to race is not linear—it never has been and never will be. Every generation has different ways of dealing with the rainbow-colored elephant in the room; influenced, no doubt, by previous eras, but distinct in its own right.
We Gen Y’ers, born between 1978-1997, handle race with our own brand of complexity. {snip} Famed news anchor Tom Brokaw [says] that today’s youth, unlike their parents’ generation, are simply not bothered by race; that, by and large, youngsters are “colorblind.” He echoed these remarks the next morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, mentioning encounters he had with parents—across party lines—who told him that their children “don’t see skin color.”
{snip}
Somebody needs to get the facts straight. I’m sorry to break it to Mr. Brokaw and to all others above my age bracket, but my peers and I are by no means colorblind.
What may be fueling this concept of the raceless Millennials is the extent to which we’re intermixing. There are more interracial couples, more biracial children and an expansion of the definitions of ethnicity, but all of that has done little to help us understand each other better. {snip}
{snip}
{snip} Gen Y’ers often deal with race in an overt, in-your-face manner through jokes, stereotypical references and cultural tourism. {snip}
Note: Knowing every line of a Lil’ Wayne song does not mean you know the black experience. The black experience cannot be defined one-dimensionally, especially not in the lyrics of a single track. Neither can the Latino experience, or the Asian experience or the white experience. Yet, somehow my peers and I feel more comfortable skimming the surface rather than sitting down for an honest discussion about race.
{snip}
Considering all that you went through, how can you expect so much from Gen Y? You ask us to look beyond skin while demanding, again and again, that we check boxes to define our identity. You emphasize diversity and allow our classrooms to be monochromatic. You’ve told us to hold hands and love each other’s differences, but we grew up watching you draw lines and hold up picket signs (think O.J Simpson, Rodney King, The Bell Curve controversy, etc.). Understandably, our wires have gotten crossed.
{snip}
Yes, white kids listen to hip-hop and black boys rock Polo shirts, but race has not yet reached the point of being a non-issue. The elephant is still very much in the room. It certainly was for me when I made a request to ban one boy from simply speaking his mind. N-bomb notwithstanding, I understand his position and can only hope he understands mine. . . .
So, please {snip} stop dubbing us as the colorblind generation. We see race. We may reference it more without truly understanding it. We may color outside the lines. But we do see. Our eyes are open, and our vision is clear. It’s us that is blurry.
(Posted on July 25, 2008)
Comments
I’m a Y, and one thing the author of this article does is confuse the “Millennial” generation with the Ys. Other than the Ys not being colorblind, I don’t get this writer’s point. That’s so typically Gen Y as to ramble on without any substance. It’s like, you know. Like, you know, like…
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:17 PM on July 25
“Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least.”
Few would disagree. Because race is merely a social construct, for all the proponents of this “enlightened theory” know, the White people of America could be Albino African Pygmies. I hope they join with us in our efforts to get our fair share of the reparations.
Ronald
Posted by Ronald at 6:29 PM on July 25
“Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least.”
His whole article is based on a false premise - no need to read further.
Posted by Civilzied Neighbor at 6:42 PM on July 25
“Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a SOCIALLY CREATED CONCEPT, (…)”
vs
“but race has not yet reached the point of being a non-issue.”
vs
“We see race.”
no comment
Posted by at 7:14 PM on July 25
“Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least.”
If you told this young woman that the difference between a great Dane and a German shepherd was merely a “socially created concept,” she would immediately see that you were talking foolishness. But if you talked such nonsense about human beings, she would consider it self-evident truth that only a fool or a monster would dispute. Apparently, so far as this young woman and the many others like her are concerned, evolution stopped working on our species once we arrived at the hominid stage.
Posted by at 7:14 PM on July 25
What a preposterous article being a proud member of
generation y” I wonder if I could offer a rebuttal on “the root”?? I would probably try to hit on the following points:
A) The white “wigger” sterotype is pretty horribly out of date, Hip hop sales have tanked pretty hard in recent years and white kids dressing like black criminals peaked when I was in highschool in the late 1990s. No white people today listen to “Lil wayne” as the article claims. Indie Rock kids started getting more girls and the wigger allure faded pretty fast.
b) “What may be fueling this concept of the raceless Millennials is the extent to which WE’re intermixing”
Incorrect, even today nobody mixes with black girls like the author. They are simply not physically appealing to normal white males in any way. I have never had a friend or causal acquaintance who has ever been remotely involved with a black girl outside an amusing anecdote to a story involving hard drinking and a series of bad decisions.
c)”Neither can the Latino experience, or the Asian experience or the white experience”.
What the heck is this woman smoking? Have you ever heard a Korean kid berating anybody for not understanding the Asian experience? The white experience? What the heck is that? Working hard and going to a good college and getting a good job? What is she talking about??? She honestly thinks every other race is as self obsessed and conceited as blacks are?
Posted by at 9:00 PM on July 25
“They, and countless others, fought tirelessly to solve the problem of racial conflict.”
Too bad they were so far off base, because all they wanted was more black privileges, and to ignore anti-white black racism.
This same anti-white hatred still flourishes today and those like this misguided fool are too dimwitted to understand that it isn’t possible to achieve harmony if they impose race neutrality on one racial group while the other is steeped in hatred so evil and vicious they make their Christ figure black, and they blame whites for their own lack of intelligence and failures.
Wouldn’t it have been better to fight tirelessly for a ticket back to the old country, so they could stop whining?
Posted by ice at 9:27 PM on July 25
Blacks will not say race is a social construct, but you won’t be getting to deep in that direction intellectually, me thinks.
Posted by at 10:44 PM on July 25
“If you told this young woman that the difference between a great Dane and a German shepherd was merely a “socially created concept,” she would immediately see that you were talking foolishness.”
I’m a loyal AmRen reader but I don’t buy what you are selling here, because, as a dog lover, I’ve never bought into the notion that a dogs temperament and personality are dependant on the their breed. It’s something to have a conversation about, and to note differences, but as to the idea personality is dependant upon breed, I don’t buy into it. I much more believe there are personality differences in the races than I do the different breeds of dog. If there are differences, should we have different humanitarian laws, a different standard by which to treat dogs of different breeds?
Posted by I don't buy it at 12:33 AM on July 26
“Have you ever heard a Korean kid berating anybody for not understanding the Asian experience?”
I think, the virginia shooter?
Posted by at 12:35 AM on July 26
From the article:
“Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least.”
———————————————————————————————-
NOW, LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT, Bright eyes: There is NO difference whatever, between your toe-the-line, go with the current orthodoxy statement, and the following;
“Let’s get one thing straight, God exists, and Jesus is my personal savior. Angels protect me, and I know this to be true.”
It is simply stunning, truly amazing, to see how orthodoxy cows people into clinging to beliefs, hopes, whimsy, wishes and fantasies, in the absence of any evidence to verify those fancies.
I know PhDs who say the same stuff (they are the high priests-the pharisees, afterall). And your average Generation Y chick is likely to parrot that whimsy as well. Why?
It’s a simple question you can’t ask anyone you don’t want to offend: Let me repeat it:
“Why do you insist that race is a mere idea? What evidence is there to support this statement, and, more importantly, what evidence is there that refutes the opposite idea, that race is a term we assign, in order to describe real, observable, differences between human populations?
I guess that if I lived in the middle ages in Europe, I’d be saying (privately)”why do so many ostensibly intelligent people swear that their beliefs and wishes are irrefutable fact, and try so hard to suppress argument or even mention of positions that threaten their cherished wishes? Why do people insist that we are governed by a spirit world that we cannot hear, see, smell, taste or touch?
If I were living in the African bush, I would be the sort of person that says “all this spirit stuff, I don’t know; There’s what we see and touch, and there’s what we imagine, and what we’re told to believe, but I believe in what I can sense and VERIFY…not in all this mumbo jumbo.”
I guess I’m just weird like that…you know, not given to blindly accepting and defending grandiose ideas that fly in the face of much simpler concepts which actually do a decent job of explaing our world.
Delusion and backwardness…superstition and groupthink are as alive as ever. People may have largely disposed with Gods, but they yet cling to cozy fantasies that make them feel slightly secure…so long as they keep repeating their little mantras.
No wonder the world continually goes to hell. People are just plain afraid to embrace unpleasant truths.
Hint, mz author: if we can breed a daschund and a dalmation, which not only act differently, but display different abilities and forms /levels of intelligence, are they not different? Can you not see it? I am not saying they are not also quite simmilar, but that they are different. Without the threat that I’d use your response to refute your monoracial dogma, you’d very quickly admit that dogs vary a great deal…they’re not all the same.
But when the same comparisons are applied to people, you will reduce, deconstruct, render relevant, and contort every term, concept or piece of evidence you need to, simply in order to maintain the convention that people are, and must be, the same (whnever this is convenient, of course).
It is absurd to the point of delusion. What a fantastic price human beings pay, to maintain indefensible whimsy. What a toll it takes on the mind, the sense of reality, one’s trust in one’s self. What is it like to know you’re living a lie, because you can’t face the uncertainty of reality?
Posted by at 4:37 AM on July 26
“Let’s get one thing straight: Race is a socially created concept, and since its inception it has been a socially fed nuisance, to say the least.”
I tried to leave a comment at The Root, pointing out that, if race is a Social Construct™, then why does it breed true, i.e., why don’t white couples occasionally produce black children, with all the typical black physical characteristics, if race is simply a subjective illusion.
Posted by Alan Andrews at 9:32 AM on July 26
“I much more believe there are personality differences in the races than I do the different breeds of dog.”
OK, now we’ve entered The Twilight Zone. I’ll tell you what ‘I don’t buy it’, e-mail me the next time you see an Irish Setter sniffing airport luggage, or a Bloodhound racing on a Miami dog track.
Posted by at 1:51 PM on July 26
If race is a social construct, then one would think it would be easier to get rid of. The fact that it hasn’t disappeared is prove that something more substantial, more biological, backs it up.
Posted by at 2:17 PM on July 26
I tried to leave a comment on the Root too, saying “Race is most definitely NOT a social construct…”, but when I found out you had to register to post on the site, well that with the almost certain fact that my post would be moderated into oblivion, I gave up.
Posted by at 2:25 PM on July 26
All you have to do is attend some dance clubs and check out dating sites and you will see that interracial dating, sex and mixing in general is happening pretty regularly amongthe younger corwd.
Posted by Stephen at 2:48 PM on July 26
The recent notion that “race is a socially created construct,” is but more evidence (as if more were needed) that the “science” of sociology has been reduced to increasingly convoluted and absurd attempts to deny what is totally obvious and not exactly hiding in plain sight.
To stake out such a position is to identify oneself as a psycho-babbling idiot who should be subjected to well-deserved derision every time he or she voices this drivel.
Posted by john at 2:49 PM on July 26
“It’s us that is blurry.”
Oh, yo’ sho’ is!
Fix - It’s we who are blurry.
The dumbing down evident in this example alone reflects the Gen Y dumbdown in total. That is the only reason they are “blurred.”
Posted by Whiteplight at 2:55 PM on July 26
“…It certainly was for me when I made a request to ban one boy from simply speaking his mind…”
Written by a smug, self-righteous, know-it-all steeped in false Marxist clap-trap—when one doesn’t have the faculties, knowledge or life experience to debate those with whom one disagrees—do everything you can to ‘ban’ him for ‘simply speaking his mind’—or better yet, shout him down, showing that you are taking a stance against The Man.
I’m sure in the author’s mind this makes her look smart, educated, sophisticated and superior to Whites—ALL of whom are racists either openly or closeted.
Yeah, as always with blacks, diversity at the expense of Whites—except diversity of ideas.
First Amendment be damned. Not that I would expect the author of this article to have one inkling as to what the First Amendment means—and WHY the Founding Fathers ( Useless Dead White Men, I’m sure to the author) knew it is one of THE tenants of liberty.
“…Race is a socially created concept…”
Why is ANYONE still spouting this nonsense when there is so much evidence to the contrary; the theories of Franz Boas having long been disproved.
If race were merely a ‘social construct’ why does it take government force— and a heavy dose of it—to integrate the races? Why do people self-sort themselves by neighborhoods, the same way children do in school cafeterias? Why was busing so universally reviled, segregating city housing patterns further that they had been before busing?
If integration is so wonderful why aren’t people rushing toward it instead of sacrificing everything they have to escape from it?
Could it be the Occam’s Razor explanation? That Whites do not want to live around blacks?
Yes, of course, we see race: We understand clearly that blacks target us for robbery, rape and murder and insist on privileges for themselves that they vehemently deny for us.
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 6:32 PM on July 27
“I’m a loyal AmRen reader but I don’t buy what you are selling here, because, as a dog lover, I’ve never bought into the notion that a dogs temperament and personality are dependant on the their breed.”
When you look at dog breeds, there are differences. German shepherds, poodles and pit bulls not only look different, but have different temperments and abilities overall. You don’t see police officers using poodles as police dogs and you don’t see poodles attacking like you do pit bulls.
Posted by kc at 7:42 AM on July 28
In this part of California, you see a few White males with Hispanic females. This has been going on for a really long time in California.
Increasingly, you see thuggish gangsterish Hispanic males with White females. Never used to see that.
The other day, I saw a gangsterish Hispanic male with a ghettoish Black girl. Now THAT is unusual.
You see a few gangsterish Black males with White females, but not many.
NO Black males with Hispanic females. I think these women don’t want anything to do with them.
Rarely, you see a White males with a Black female, but that is quite rare.
There is a certain amount of *interracial mixing*, friendship-wise, but for the most part, the truth is that *dating* is pretty much done within racial lines, even here in a 67% Hispanic, 27% White, 4% Black town. Strange, with all this panmixia, the ethnic groups still pretty much date their own.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 8:51 AM on July 28
race is a biological reality which in the bringing together of the races has bequeathed to us the social problems with which we now wrestle.
it is a social construct in that sense.
Posted by o'banion at 4:25 PM on July 28
I live in Mamphis , Tennessee. I wa doing laundry at the local laundromat .There were about 5 other peole in the place, including one Black female.
About 10 minutes later, this 5’10 , well built Asian guy (I am not joking)walks in and gives her a big kiss on the lips!
It threw me for a loop. I did not let mey reaction be known, but inside my mind I was shocked.
This would not have been the case 20 years ago.
Posted by Michael at 1:01 PM on July 29
“…All you have to do is attend some dance clubs and check out dating sites and you will see that interracial dating, sex and mixing in general is happening pretty regularly amongthe younger corwd….”
Because they’re taught by the schools, government, and the MSM that if they don’t, dey be RACISSSSS, and the White parents don’t bother to raise their kids properly by removing that ridiculous Marxist notion from their mushy little heads on a daily basis…
Posted by at 5:33 PM on July 29
This whole article is blurry… : :)
Posted by at 5:40 PM on July 29
Whites can inter-marry with blacks and think nothing of it, but, as an employer who has to choose who I give an opportunity to, I see mixed kids as less desirable, and I’d hire a white kid first.
Posted by at 7:32 PM on July 29