In watching the amazing race tonight, one man says something like "I can't dance and I have no rhythm; I am as white as can be."
This reminded me of a conversation we once had in class and really got me to wonder what it means to be "white." Is white generic? flareless?
Why is being white associated with lacking unique characteristics?
What are the positive and negative stereotypes of being white?
In thinking about what I know about white stereotypes the things that come to mind are:
white men can't jump
no rhythm
can't dance
preppy or "white trash"
not as athletic
What do you think it means to be white?
President Obama walks fine line on race, justice
11 years ago
I can't jump as high as some, but I can dance. I'm not preppy, nor white trash. I am athletic. Am I white? Yes. I don't think about it though. I rarely find myself in a situation where I wonder about my whiteness, and that may be a big part of being white. I don't have any reason to question my skin color. White privilege gives me the ability to go through the world blind to my own status. I hate to admit that kind of thing because I believe I work hard and make my own success or failure, and for someone to attribute anything about me to my own skin color irritates the hell out of me.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Tajreen for the most part. White (without any other classification) means well educated, preppy, privileged enough to play expensive sports (hockey, lacrosse, equestrian, golf, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe idea totally changes when you change the term from white to white trash: poor, uneducated, unhealthy, ill mannered, etc.
reading all these comments is making think, wait a minute, white to me, before this class and now means not Asian, Black or mixed race
ReplyDeletei was going to say pink skin, and am laughing at the thought ( i hope not to offend anyone) because obviously not, ther are some pretty fair skinned Asian, Black and mixed race people so much so that their skin looks 'pink' and you can argue that there is no such thing as pink skin
but that is what white means to me
this is because growing up, the classifications i had were skin color, hair texture and most of the other physical features we discussed and i never thought about it, but now there whole class, nationality and ethnicity aspects of race are hard to ignore because they are such an intergral part of it, as i said in class most of the white people i have seen have money, so i have associated white with wealth, but not always because i have seen exceptions
so white to me for the most part means not Indian, Black or mixed
because i have seen not all white people are wealthy, educated, can't dance, or any of these things
White, like we have mentioned a few times in class, means not having a cultural background. I told this story in class awhile ago but a friend of mine, who's bi-racial (Asian and White) says she feels she's more white than Asian because she doesn't practice any of the traditional values of what it means to be Asian. She says that she classifies herself as being more white because she doesn't do anything that relates back to a culturally rich background.
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