http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw4UQFtndeM
"Racial Repertoire"



Garland Jefferies, worth a listen

Dancer

The only thing that means anything, is where the spirit will
spend eternity..........JABBER I AGREE wholehartidlie that that the onlie thing ultimatlie important. While we are heer i lik seeing how me you and the rest of the world tick.

DJ UK CLASS is also about customes, expectasions world views etc. you can be totalie broke and be aristrockriscy....but also broke and upper middle class lol becouse of parenting and cultures. Its catigorised so readilie her becouse of income becouse its one of the signifiers that MIGHT ddetermine class lol consenses caan't satisticalie catigorise the exeptions, so its prettie flued heer too.

recent earning capacities have changed and mobilitie in and out of some classes catigories is now happening like never before. 100 years ago a maid would have a doughter who be a made too. Now a maid could have a daughter go to universitie and gety a profession. So educasion is a biggie for class destinctions but also more blurred becouse of the shiften paterns of whom gets educated
MOUNTAIN ASH should be heer for this type of chat. shes a scot and knows loads about class.

dancer i one of the uncles who is a almost styrobarie blond, i am auburn or was lol my sister as black haired as maybee you described as dark as can be possible. Sister browen eyes and mine and my sons blue. yaraaaa we don't even look alick or have consitent clolerring so i agree with the mut explinasion.

one big distinction between north south italions is in terms of humer whats consider funnie or even in how one insultes another, the whole thing makes me giggle.

DJ thats for the histroical perspectiv as in how why north became more powerfull area of the countrie, i also think it helps put things into perspectife.

DANCER you get the maffia jokes and jobes my familie dose too, thinks its onlie consitent way non italions relate in some part to wealthie ones, or its no joke and they are seriouse and just testing water for connections.

oh we also get "italion", then you must have ice-cream shops, such a stereoptype but its also true in some of my familie. Half became and continue to have their owen bissnesses the other half got educated and professional.

two avalibale routes for imagrant families in other countries, and back to track thats the pont of the choices left to people who have racial stuff tied to them (i think)
Our familie gatherings are a laugh as its self employed..whatever the diverse buissness is, acuteacts, enginers and teachers. I am the first psychologist :)Within the familie

Ther is that pride and whom is better than whom BUT they still all get on and to a big part stick or band together, as familie should (should't they)so conversasion and topic of chat is diverse at weddings, funerals and the odd christmass visites around them all lol.

I enjoy their diffrenses and get to feel comphortable enough as i can, with my familie, in whomevers house.

Think the divesitie allowed me to not fear, be jelouse of, or strange around others of others classes becouse of the people in my familie, for that i am gratfull and can't go the "them" "us" distinctions so easilie, as id be pointing at another part of my familie unlimatlie.

thanks for posting the link to the song dancer

i was just wonderring whats peoples views that arn't from a race imulating the talck, speeach mannerisums of anotehr racial curture is it good or bad are they seen as fake or plastick?

like westwood uk trying to be exibie from pimp my ride usa...ie a wee white uk ade trying to take on a black rap star from usa?

Dancer -- I'm listening to Garland Jeffries now. Thanks for sharing it! I've heard many similar stories. A woman I know when she and her husband -- both professional and both black -- were shopping for engagement rings in a jewelry store, they were followed by security the whole time they were in the store. Another guy I know, an artist, talked about how it used to really bug him that white people (often clutching their purses tightly) would walk to the other side of the street if they saw him approaching on the same side. For a time he started to have fun with it, and when he saw a white person shivering with fear nearby he said "Boo!"

Some of this is a general fear of adolescent boys -- my own son and his friend had similar experiences.

celtic -- that's a good question. For my doctoral work, I attended a predominantly black university -- an "HBCU" [historically black college & university] and was clearly in the minority as a white person. (aside: I was in my late 40s and have blond hair. There was another white woman, about 28 years old, with long dark hair. Everyone used to get our names mixed up.)

Much of the stereotyped way of being "black" that you see in film and TV is urban, lower class fashion, often gang-related stuff. At my HBCU most students were middle and upper middle class, from the suburbs. Many were concerned and upset that they didn't "talk black" and because this was the department of Communication & Culture this was up for much discussion.

There was another white student who was sort of acting black, and some students and at least one professor were skeptical of him, wondering if he was a "wanna be" with varying degrees of positive feelings about whether he was trustworthy or not. Because usually, the "wanna-be's" grow out of it went it becomes unhelpful. In other words, maybe it helps you seem cool when you're an adolescent because seeming like a black gangster is tough and dangerous, but not when you go to work in the adult world.

The socio-linguistics professor believes that "ebonics" itself is dishonest, if seen as a separate language, like Spanish. The term began in the 1970s in California in response to a growing hispanic population which was starting to attend public schools and the schools couldn't cope with communicating with them in Spanish. They received federal money for bilingual classes. So predominantly black schools began to argue that black kids came from families that didn't speak standard English and created the term "ebonics" to apply to their speech and tried to also get federal money.

This professor grew up during the era of segregation in the 1940s and 50s, in an all black neighborhood in Washington, DC. He recalls it as a wonderful time, a close knit community where everyone knew everyone else's children and the kids respected and listened to their elders. All classes lived together, from the maids to the professionals. His point was that even then, there was the "talking proper" (which is now referred to as "talking white") vs. the way you talk at home and that everyone knew how to "code switch" meaning they were bilingual and spoke one way at home and another in the black world.

Celtic, a lot of middle class blacks are not happy that their suburban kids want to talk like gangsters. Before the primary election, a great number of black Americans were saying that Obama wasn't "black enough".

Obama's example is already changing the way Americans talk about and perceive race.

There was a fascinating TV show a few years ago that maybe you can find on line called Black/White where a black family with a son and a white family with a daughter underwent hours of make-up to change their hair and skin colors and live in the world of the opposite color and then talk about it. The experiment lasted many months, maybe a year.

IMO racism was more prevalent a couple decades ago. I was in
Italy in '95 and didn't notice what has been mentioned on this
thread. This has been a well developed, interesting subject. The high school I attended was extremely segmented into social classes. It was in a snooty, upperclass town. But life has proven those, then at the top, are now at the bottom, as far as what society classified as "successful". If you hang out at a nursing home long enough, it quickly becomes crystal clear that all of that "looking down the nose" stuff is insignificant.

there is conscious racism and unconscious rasicm. i think that when many people claim they aren't racist they are really saying, as far as they know they aren't racist. problem is, they don't understand their own priviledge or examine their thoughts when they see someone of another race . . . i mean this seems very simplistic, but i have been involved in a lot of diversity activities and it is par for the course for people to generally minimize the entire subject.

i think this is related to the fact that most people want and need to see themselves as "good" for the sake of their self image and it is threatening to that image (ego) to even think for one moment that (gasp) they might be racist.

or maybe they think of themselves as "educated" and think that their education has somehow magically made them unracist. i think for most people it takes a lot of work to even realize their mostly unconscious racism. i found this to be true for myself and witnessed many other people struggling with this issue.

my main prejudices at this point are against what i define as "stupidity" and i also have some lingering problems with spiritually oriented issues. people who are not in touch with their core spirituality bug me (how spiritual of me, i know!).

Seek, you make a good point: If we want to stop being racist, we must first confront our racism. ALL of us have bigotry within us towards someone, some race. It also could be toward gays, etc...

If we truely want to loose our racist tendencies, we must first confront them and admit them and then we must educate ourselves regarding the people we are racist against. Most of racism is fear, plain and simple. I tend to simplify things but this is my take.

I work in a multi-racial occupation, I am a singer and sing with Grammy winning musicians of all colors and mixes. I am not "seen" as "white," as I've said, at least not by the true "white suburbian," folk out there. Right now, it is romantic to them that I am Italian, it was not so when I was young.

For example: Where I work, (in an E.R.,) I am liked and respected but to the Italian speaking collegue I am "princess," and to the "white," or other wise, I am just myself. The Italain culture is played out where I work where there are several people I know that speak Italian or are from Italy. ( One, in fact, is black.) We speak Italian to each other and share a common bond while the "others," and I still have a mutual respect and admiration for each other. I am comfortable in both worlds but I am "special," to my race. I am "special," to the others because they know my career.

DJ. Garland Jefferies has a whole career of singing about his being mixed race. It left a mark on him that was deep and so most of his songs are about it. He has a song called "I was afraid of Malcolm," where the lyrics say, "I was afraid of Malcome, just like any white man." I'm glad you are listening to him, he has a cult following and is admired by those with musicianship. (This is where I am glad I was drawn to singing jazz, blues, and with those like WAR. These people never get old like pop music does.)

What do you think of his songs, DJ? How do they sit with you when he includes some confrontational lyrics?

Celtic, I agree with most all you say! Being Italian means being "checked," to see if you are mob connected andm many of us are. The Mafia is alive and well, especially in Sicily.

But, this is about Italians and there are SO many races who suffer the "non white," way.

My son studies India's history and has traveled back and forth doing so. I have learned a great deal about Indian people through him and find them refreshing and very interesting. I now can see why he chose to get a doctorate in that history instead of American.

His minor in Women and Gender studies looks at the abuses of women and those that are gay and transgender. It is all very interesting and these people are people in their own right being abused every day!

There is no end to bigotry, as I've spent my life fighting it but this is a good start for this forum. We, at least, are challanging ourselves and being as honest as we can regarding our predujices, (at least we should be in friendly company such as this.)

I'm glad for this thread and feel a need for it in the forum, and I think we've had a need for it for a very long time.

Dancer

ebonics really got under my skin. i try to understand the reasons for it, but it still really bugs me. and i have a problem with gangster culture being put on a pedestal. what bothers me most is that the non-white teens who adopt it, probably don't know the genesis of it (many teens probably are not aware that "sagging" is supposedly some kind of prison come-on . . . and in saying that, i realize i do not even know if that is true).

my main prejudices have to do with my perception that some groups (i.e., gangs, usually gangs of color, but any gangs would bother me) are dangerous. i want to live in a peaceful world.

i should be just as upset about the military industrial complex (and i am but not as much, i guess), and all of the individual and collective acts of violence against women and children done by men of all colors and ethnicities.

i prefer "nice" people and kumbaya. i will never forget when reagan was touring and actually said something to the effect of, "there are such nice white people here." i mean that is unconscious racism . . . but there was no exploration of the context on his part - no public reflection anyway about why he would have said such a thing. it would have been an interesting discourse.

i know as a mother, i would murder the next door neighbor if they attempted to hurt my family, so even the pacifist thing is not real. i understand people are territorial - not sure what can be done about that. tribes have always tried to conquer each other and claim more land. is that hard-wired into humans? i don't know.