Ok, pissed off now

[oyceter]

Yup, this is public; I am that pissed off.

I wasn't going to get involved, I swear I wasn't.

And then...

http://liviapenn.livejournal.com/473180.html?thread=6512732#t6512732

Because what the fucking fuck? Don't fucking throw the RAPE OF NANKING in my face when I am talking about white privilege. I just. I cannot type because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! My grandfather was in the Chinese Navy then, fighting against the Japanese. I have friends with relatives who grew up not speaking Taiwanese because of the occupation. My family left the fucking country and moved to Taiwan because of that war. Don't throw that in my face as a counter to white privilege and just fucking assume I haven't heard of it for some reason; you have no fucking idea.

Comments by people not on my flist are screened; everyone else feel free to comment, but please note I am REALLY FUCKING PISSED OFF about this. Don't be stupid. I will repost asshattery under a filter and mock, and I don't fucking care if you somehow think that's unfair.

Comments

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I never understand (white) people's obsession with how racist East asians are.

Anytime I mention wanting to go to China/Japan/S. Korea/E.Asia it's the same reaction. No! You'll be two feet taller than everyone else and/or they're incredibly racist!

I love it when white people think they can tell you all there is to know about racism. Because racism is such an alien concept to me, having died out in the UK sometime in 1973.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I never understand (white) people's obsession with how racist East asians are.

"They do it too, so it's not so bad when we do it." And I think the travel reaction is also part of the same sort of fear comes with homophobia-- not wanting to be treated the way you've treated people as a matter of course.

Following links and found this, hope you don't mind, oyceter.

[oyceter]

Not at all!

And I think the travel reaction is also part of the same sort of fear comes with homophobia-- not wanting to be treated the way you've treated people as a matter of course.

*snort* Yes! Back in college, I overheard two friends talking, one white, one black. The white guy was talking about how he could never go to Africa, oh no, he'd stand out so much and feel so awkward. All this without even connecting back to his friend's experience as a POC every.single.day.

My eyes roll forever, as they did when my white male friends complained about feeling out of place when we did homestay in Japan. Yeah, I'm sorry you feel homesick. On the other hand, the larger part of me wants to rub your noses in it because you discount my experiences of feeling left out all the time and tell me I'm oversensitive! I'm so sorry you have to rescind your white male privilege for two months, whatever will you do?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Eeeesh. That's one of the reasons why you travel - to know a little bit of what it's like to be the Other, and to expand your experience. Although as a US citizen, he'd still be privileged, no matter how out-of-place he felt (not that I need to tell you that).

That's one of the things I remember from our years in Africa - my family and the other researchers may have been in the minority numerically, but we, even on graduate-student and teacher salaries, were still far wealthier than the average Tanzanian living in the area, and had more opportunity financially and educationally.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. It was the same for me in India. And even when I was a very little kid, and despite the fact that my life completely sucked and a large part of the reason for that was the local kids' xenophobia... I was, at the time, also very aware of the priveleges that being American brought you. Such as the option to pack up and leave. (Unfortunately only available to adults, but still.) It was an ironic kind of privelege in that it didn't actually improve my situation as long as I was there, but it did exist and I was aware of it, though mostly in a "Oh, the irony!" sense.

Also, as I am pretty sure I mentioned in Fishes, the teachers at Holy Wounds were actually less abusive to me than they were to the other kids, solely because I was an American and there was the sense that if they did any serious physical damage to me, they might catch the Wrath of America.

That sort of privelege is something I always have in mind when traveling in India now, and it gives me a sense of exactly how risky any given situation actually is: odds of getting your pocket picked are high, as it's a minor crime and the consequences to the thief will be low. Odds of getting raped, murdered, or assaulted are lower than if I was an Indian woman, as far as I can tell, because a serious crime directed at an American tourist might cause an international incident, and the perpetrator would be way more likely to be caught and punished-- and I am pretty sure they would know that.

This reminds me of Maggie Helwig's excellent Where She Was Standing, in which the murder of a Canadian tourist in East Timor provides an unexpected opportunity for the human rights workers to call attention to the situation there in general-- an opportunity that the deaths of hundreds of East Timorese people could not provide.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Speaking of crime, I suspect that's probably why our burglary* was never brought to trial when we lived there. Dad would trek up to the town where the court was held every six weeks or so when the circuit judge was holding session, to cool his heels all day while not being called to trial, and then come home. We suspect that the case was quietly dropped after we left the country. It was the sort of crime where nobody could really prove any real sort of damage, and we were rightly not going to get much sympathy from the locals, and it wasn't going to cause any sort of international incident like murder would.


* For anyone reading this who doesn't read my LJ, when we lived in the Serengeti, our house was burglarized when we were in Arusha buying supplies. The thief/thieves took everything we didn't need: they left the stuff Dad needed for his research alone, they took the dirty towels and sheets and left one set of sheets for each bed and one towel for each person, they took some of the clothes we had, and they took the beer but left a bottle each for Mom and Dad. You can't really feel too badly about that sort of thoughtful thief, and it's been long enough now that the sense of being invaded is gone and it's completely hilarious to us. The police arrested the guy who brought wood for the water heater, because they found a note to him from Dad, telling him not to bring wood since we were gone, on the bathroom floor, but he was never brought to trial.

[oyceter]

Wow. They took the dirty laundry!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yes! You can't ask for better service than that!

[oyceter]

I really need to get my hands on the Helwig. And thanks for the comments on your experiences in India.

[oyceter]

I know. I so wanted to go over there and thwap him or yell, "Do you hear what you're saying? And see who you're saying it to?"

[oyceter]

Seriously! I think I am writing up a post tomorrow about the Japan Fallacy so I can reference it any time someone attempts to excuse their own racism by pointing to Japan.

I am so fucking pissed off at that guy -- not only does he co-opt some of my history to deflect attention from white privilege, he does it in the most condescending way possible. I'm just glad he didn't reply to me, because I probably would have just lost it in Livia's comments.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I don't want to take away from your personal experience, but this is part of why the anthropologist community is pissing me off at the moment. There are seriously such a bunch of arseholes over there.

[oyceter]

Ugh! I don't go there usually, but gah, that sounds incredibly enraging.

What Lady Ganesh said

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

Find somebody else you can hold up as as bad as you, or worse, and then pat yourself on the back about how this shows you're saints.

I noticed the same thing, even back when I was still an indoctrinated Christian conservative kid - there was a tremendous amount of energy that went into "proving" that 1) liberals were the real sexists against women, 2) liberals were the real racists for supporting affirmative action because that meant they were saying that blacks couldn't bootstrap themselves up! 3) Africans were worse racists than whites because they sold their own people into slavery, 4) the Nazis were gay! = See, we're not really sexist/racist/fascist, *you* are!