(02-07-2019, 02:17 AM)classicdrogn Wrote: I wouldn't be bent out of shape about, say, a black kid using pale makeup to sing a Frank Sinatra tune in a talent show, and I don't see why it should be different for a white kid singing something by Micheal Jackson.
So this is something that the Twitterati would say "check you privilege" to. But I'll call it something else: innocent cruelty. The point this argument misses is that white people can't really be the victim of racism in modern society. We can be stereotyped, we can be joked about, but nothing that has any effect on our well-being. Minstrel shows perpetuated harmful stereotypes for decades. And actual harm, as the social standing affected jobs, education, health care. It's different because it's different. You can't afford to be colorblind because the world is not colorblind.
Someone once told me that I can't have sympathy for people of color. Only empathy. Because I have not lived a single day as as a black person, I cannot possibly have the same emotions, I can only identify and support. And thus you can't tell someone what they're feeling is wrong. It took me a while to get it. But it's all too deconstructionist for me, you know? And we're mostly writers here. Forging sympathy is what we do, when we're doing our craft well.
I'm being careful not to pick a side on this one, there's no option to being involved. I just want to remind people that every once in a while, the fulcrum of fate rests on a single voter, and to never take their civic duty lightly.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto