06-23-2012, 01:44 PM
Warning: this is a long post and some of it about me. Enough is enough with the "racist" and "bigot" and "white liberal" namecalling.
The prevailing advice around here is to ignore the bullies and they will quit. I have not posted on this topic for six days, yet today there is another round of attacks from the same two guys with agenda who will latch onto any opening to go after me.
Oink brought up the "my friends are black" fallacy to discredit me, but you don't see him saying that to Afwjam when he says he gets along well with locals. And rightly so, because if you read that link, it is about people who point to token friends from minorities to excuse a racist position.
oink posted another link about white liberal colorblindness. As if I haven't been working with and through that baggage for decades. I credit an African-American woman friend for opening my eyes to bigotry amongst the so called love generation. I didn't want to believe it was so, but she taught me that liberal white colorblindness isn't the true condition of our society. She taught me not to feel complacent that the world had changed and racism was dead. I wanted to believe it was no longer an issue, but she was right. It's a racist society and none of us are immune from absorbing those toxic prejudices, consciously or unconsciously. Self-examination has to be ongoing.
It is one thing to say, oh I have friends who are X and aren't like the stereotypes, so I am not racist. It is another to truly seek out integration and bonds with people of different backgrounds, and to live a life that is full of diverse relationships. I am not some white liberal progressive living a show of liberality from my ivory castle. I am someone who genuinely enjoys friendship with all sorts of people
I have always, from childhood, sought out friends of different cultural backgrounds than myself. I have always known how it feels to be different and a minority. I was raised the only person of Hindu faith in an almost entirely Christian public school. I was constantly ridiculed about my "weird" diet, and asked over and over if I thought eating a hamburger would be eating my grandmother had something to do with it.
I am not a WASP either, not that I would automatically fit your stereotype if I were, but I'm not. I'm part Native American (Miwok), part Irish, part Welsh, part Italian. Both my husbands are at least a quarter Native American -- the first Sioux and Cherokee, the second Shoshone. My DIL is Native American (California), so my grandson is as well. Saying that I have a prejudice against indigenous peoples couldn't be more wrong.
Of my European descent, much of my background is people who were persecuted for who they were or their beliefs. The Irish and the Welsh know what it is to be kicked around by prejudice.
Am I a liberal who likes to talk the talk but doesn't live it? No. When I was nine, racial steering was alive and well in Los Angeles County real estate. When an African-American family managed to buy into the neighborhood where I lived, I saw some truly ugly behavior against them. The police officer who lived next to them built a wall on his side of the property that was well beyond code height, as a statement that they might live next door, but he would have nothing to do with them.
The word went out around the block, very openly, not to talk to them, not to play with the kids. My parents were infuriated. I was the ONLY kid who went and knocked on the newcomers' door and said hi, and for that I was ostracized by all my pre-existing friends. The new girl became my best friend, and our mothers became friends who still correspond 50 years later. No one patted me on the head for being a good little white liberal. My reward came in the friendship I made and in learning that bigots weren't people I needed to cry over losing as friends.
In junior high (another neighborhood), my best friend was the Japanese-American girl, because I liked her, and she was interesting. In high school, of my circle of five tight friends, 2 were half-Cherokee, 1 was Mayan-Mexican, and two were "white Christians" whom I liked in spite of their church because they were cool people. As far as being consciously "tolerant" -- I admit I was, of the Christians, because that is not my faith. That's where I had to make an effort, not with ethnic minorities.
I lived for a year in an essentially all-black neighborhood (next to Ford Ord). My kids went to all-black pre-school. In Yuma I lived in the barrio. In New Mexico, I have lived in the heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, and also in Oakland (Fruitvale). At Berkeley I lived in the grad student village that housed many international students, and was located in a poor section of Albany (mostly black neighborhood).
It might surprise oink and afwjam, but I have even hung out with heavy duty biker clubs. You have no clue about my past. You think I dislike Texans, but my part-Shoshone, part French-Irish husband was raised mostly in Texas (and East LA), so why did I fall in love with him if I'm stuck on the white liberal model as you think? He likes fishing, hunting, guns, but is also an artist. You make so many ignorant assumptions.
When I moved to the Bay Area to go to design school, my new best friends were diverse, mostly Asian. My guy friends were gay (yes it is actually true that most guys who go to fashion design college in San Francisco are gay). It was definitely a multicultural world there.
Some people like to imagine that U.C. Berkeley is some bastion of white liberal ideology. In the 80's and 90's, when I attended, the student population was predominantly non-white. I loved the diversity.
When I got into the MA program, my "core" working group had one other Caucasian in it. My seven best friends and peers were AA-Jewish, Colombian (gay), Filipina-Chinese, Jewish, Hispanic-Dutch (bixexual), AA-Native American, and the southern girl from Virginia. I was blessed with the chance to hear about their perspectives on the world, their backgrounds. I was never in some bubble of white liberals.
When I moved over here, we didn't look for a white transplant community, started in a newer community and moved because it didn't have enough soul to it (although it was not a white enclave by any means).
Within a couple years, I was living in a former cane mill community in Papa'ikou. Same in North Kohala. After that, a Japanese-Hawaiian-Korean neighborhood in Hilo. Now back in the local old camp neighborhood. This is what I like.
I'm not considering moving to a local family type neighborhood like afwjam, I've been living that life for eight years, and happily so.
Now back to my so-called racist remarks -- first, the rule in English is when you put two sentences in list form, not in a paragraph, you aren't supposed to jam them together and make assumptions that they are connected (which coppercoin did).
Second, I said nothing whatsoever about Native Hawaiians. coppercoin pulled that assumption out of her lack of knowledge of the idiom here.
I wasn't making a point about ethnicity, but rather the culture gap between people who have roots here and those who are just moving here. In general, I think the deficiency that needs work is on the part of the newbies, not the locals.
It says more about the readers who misread me than about me that my words were taken as a warning to avoid local culture because it's bad in some way. My warning was that people with strong roots and ohana here might not welcome YOU. I guess that is an upsetting idea to those who want to immigrate here all idealistically, but it is just a fact that you have to earn your acceptance here.
When we moved to Waiakea, our neighbor came over and said very bluntly, that they hoped we would be better haoles than the last ones who owned our house -- but added, grudgingly, that even mainland haoles were better than the Tongan tenants before that because they gave huge parties and ran the place down. Was that a bigoted outlook on his part? You could say so or you could say that's how things are looked at here by some. Anyway, we were put on notice that we were being evaluated, and I guess we did all right with most of the neighbors.
Hawai'i culture isn't colorblind. It's very much noted what your background is and people aren't afraid to say so.
I give everyone here the benefit of the doubt and assume that you come here eager to have new experiences and to mingle with locals. I would never warn someone away from embracing that. I would warn someone away from the few pockets where the general sentiment towards the newcomer might be on the hostile side, places where the neighbors would rather see a member of their ohana buy the place than a mainland malihini.
I actually don't judge that desire because I understand it. It's human nature to prefer the old neighborhood to stay the same, full of families you know. There are a few people in my neighborhood who hate haoles and blame them for every evil, but only a few. If there were a lot of people holding that opinion, it would be hard for me to live here. Luckily for me there are many more who welcoming who will give a person a chance.
As a SEPARATE issue, the statement I made about domestic violence --I have been told by someone born and raised Ainaloa, that there were a lot of problems there. He didn't like it. He hung out with my family and feared his family. They abused him. I believed him. That is not bigotry, to believe his story. There have been some horrendous stories coming out of Ainaloa. To notice that one subdivision tends to produce more violence and abuse than some others is NOT an indictment of "local style" community, only a recognition that certain areas are troubled.
Why are they troubled? Socioeconomic issues, poverty, broken homes -- not because they are local, rather because of unemployment, lack of prospects, poor education, poor parenting examples, substance abuse, and other factors, similar to what creates a run down neighborhood wherever you go.
Don't ever accuse me of lumping all "local" or all "Hawaiian" into one group or one stereotype. That is so far from how I look at people!
In my own community, which is as I said largely old sugar cane camp territory, I was invited to serve on the board of my community association. The board is elected/volunteer and composed of folks with generations of roots in my district and a few transplants like myself. I feel honored that they asked me to be part of the group. It is not a group that tries to run anything or change things or judge things. It is all about giving back.
The group looks for good causes and programs to help the community, sponsors benefits for kids and seniors, hosts gardening classes for raising food, works to build community connections, hosts candidate forums, promotes and respects Hawaiian culture and language, and the legacy of the plantation era, promotes getting involved in one's community.
That is the kind of person I am. No one who knows me here IRL calls me a white liberal transplant with an attitude of fake progressiveness. I seriously resent this ridiculous pile-on by the same old group -- in this case, oink, afwjam, Obie.
What this incident has reminded me of here is that you'd better write each post and scrutinize it for any possible misinterpretation, because people don't assume the best and certain people want to see the worst because of their pre-existing bias.
Folks, it's a message board. People write posts in all kinds of states. Sometimes they write something short, like I did, while preoccupied with other thoughts. We don't always read and reread to check if we might be opening up some can of worms.
If someone makes a post that gets misinterpreted, then give the person a chance to say where he/she stands, and give the benefit of the doubt that there is sincerity. That didn't happen here. My second post got attacked as damage control/backpedaling.
In closing, I have to confess that I do have prejudices. I really am prejudiced against assholes, bullies, fundamentalists who push their beliefs, white supremacists, homophobes, nazis, ice-heads, wife beaters (the guys, not the shirts), drunk drivers, and financiers who break the economy out of pure greed. I admit that I have those prejudices. However, if you fit into one of those categories I will still give you a chance to prove you can act like a decent human being.
OK, I'm out of here. I'm going to be late to the Bon dance because the ignorance and bias of a few overwhelmed my Saturday. Thanks a lot guys, hope you feel better for what you did today.
The prevailing advice around here is to ignore the bullies and they will quit. I have not posted on this topic for six days, yet today there is another round of attacks from the same two guys with agenda who will latch onto any opening to go after me.
Oink brought up the "my friends are black" fallacy to discredit me, but you don't see him saying that to Afwjam when he says he gets along well with locals. And rightly so, because if you read that link, it is about people who point to token friends from minorities to excuse a racist position.
oink posted another link about white liberal colorblindness. As if I haven't been working with and through that baggage for decades. I credit an African-American woman friend for opening my eyes to bigotry amongst the so called love generation. I didn't want to believe it was so, but she taught me that liberal white colorblindness isn't the true condition of our society. She taught me not to feel complacent that the world had changed and racism was dead. I wanted to believe it was no longer an issue, but she was right. It's a racist society and none of us are immune from absorbing those toxic prejudices, consciously or unconsciously. Self-examination has to be ongoing.
It is one thing to say, oh I have friends who are X and aren't like the stereotypes, so I am not racist. It is another to truly seek out integration and bonds with people of different backgrounds, and to live a life that is full of diverse relationships. I am not some white liberal progressive living a show of liberality from my ivory castle. I am someone who genuinely enjoys friendship with all sorts of people
I have always, from childhood, sought out friends of different cultural backgrounds than myself. I have always known how it feels to be different and a minority. I was raised the only person of Hindu faith in an almost entirely Christian public school. I was constantly ridiculed about my "weird" diet, and asked over and over if I thought eating a hamburger would be eating my grandmother had something to do with it.
I am not a WASP either, not that I would automatically fit your stereotype if I were, but I'm not. I'm part Native American (Miwok), part Irish, part Welsh, part Italian. Both my husbands are at least a quarter Native American -- the first Sioux and Cherokee, the second Shoshone. My DIL is Native American (California), so my grandson is as well. Saying that I have a prejudice against indigenous peoples couldn't be more wrong.
Of my European descent, much of my background is people who were persecuted for who they were or their beliefs. The Irish and the Welsh know what it is to be kicked around by prejudice.
Am I a liberal who likes to talk the talk but doesn't live it? No. When I was nine, racial steering was alive and well in Los Angeles County real estate. When an African-American family managed to buy into the neighborhood where I lived, I saw some truly ugly behavior against them. The police officer who lived next to them built a wall on his side of the property that was well beyond code height, as a statement that they might live next door, but he would have nothing to do with them.
The word went out around the block, very openly, not to talk to them, not to play with the kids. My parents were infuriated. I was the ONLY kid who went and knocked on the newcomers' door and said hi, and for that I was ostracized by all my pre-existing friends. The new girl became my best friend, and our mothers became friends who still correspond 50 years later. No one patted me on the head for being a good little white liberal. My reward came in the friendship I made and in learning that bigots weren't people I needed to cry over losing as friends.
In junior high (another neighborhood), my best friend was the Japanese-American girl, because I liked her, and she was interesting. In high school, of my circle of five tight friends, 2 were half-Cherokee, 1 was Mayan-Mexican, and two were "white Christians" whom I liked in spite of their church because they were cool people. As far as being consciously "tolerant" -- I admit I was, of the Christians, because that is not my faith. That's where I had to make an effort, not with ethnic minorities.
I lived for a year in an essentially all-black neighborhood (next to Ford Ord). My kids went to all-black pre-school. In Yuma I lived in the barrio. In New Mexico, I have lived in the heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, and also in Oakland (Fruitvale). At Berkeley I lived in the grad student village that housed many international students, and was located in a poor section of Albany (mostly black neighborhood).
It might surprise oink and afwjam, but I have even hung out with heavy duty biker clubs. You have no clue about my past. You think I dislike Texans, but my part-Shoshone, part French-Irish husband was raised mostly in Texas (and East LA), so why did I fall in love with him if I'm stuck on the white liberal model as you think? He likes fishing, hunting, guns, but is also an artist. You make so many ignorant assumptions.
When I moved to the Bay Area to go to design school, my new best friends were diverse, mostly Asian. My guy friends were gay (yes it is actually true that most guys who go to fashion design college in San Francisco are gay). It was definitely a multicultural world there.
Some people like to imagine that U.C. Berkeley is some bastion of white liberal ideology. In the 80's and 90's, when I attended, the student population was predominantly non-white. I loved the diversity.
When I got into the MA program, my "core" working group had one other Caucasian in it. My seven best friends and peers were AA-Jewish, Colombian (gay), Filipina-Chinese, Jewish, Hispanic-Dutch (bixexual), AA-Native American, and the southern girl from Virginia. I was blessed with the chance to hear about their perspectives on the world, their backgrounds. I was never in some bubble of white liberals.
When I moved over here, we didn't look for a white transplant community, started in a newer community and moved because it didn't have enough soul to it (although it was not a white enclave by any means).
Within a couple years, I was living in a former cane mill community in Papa'ikou. Same in North Kohala. After that, a Japanese-Hawaiian-Korean neighborhood in Hilo. Now back in the local old camp neighborhood. This is what I like.
I'm not considering moving to a local family type neighborhood like afwjam, I've been living that life for eight years, and happily so.
Now back to my so-called racist remarks -- first, the rule in English is when you put two sentences in list form, not in a paragraph, you aren't supposed to jam them together and make assumptions that they are connected (which coppercoin did).
Second, I said nothing whatsoever about Native Hawaiians. coppercoin pulled that assumption out of her lack of knowledge of the idiom here.
I wasn't making a point about ethnicity, but rather the culture gap between people who have roots here and those who are just moving here. In general, I think the deficiency that needs work is on the part of the newbies, not the locals.
It says more about the readers who misread me than about me that my words were taken as a warning to avoid local culture because it's bad in some way. My warning was that people with strong roots and ohana here might not welcome YOU. I guess that is an upsetting idea to those who want to immigrate here all idealistically, but it is just a fact that you have to earn your acceptance here.
When we moved to Waiakea, our neighbor came over and said very bluntly, that they hoped we would be better haoles than the last ones who owned our house -- but added, grudgingly, that even mainland haoles were better than the Tongan tenants before that because they gave huge parties and ran the place down. Was that a bigoted outlook on his part? You could say so or you could say that's how things are looked at here by some. Anyway, we were put on notice that we were being evaluated, and I guess we did all right with most of the neighbors.
Hawai'i culture isn't colorblind. It's very much noted what your background is and people aren't afraid to say so.
I give everyone here the benefit of the doubt and assume that you come here eager to have new experiences and to mingle with locals. I would never warn someone away from embracing that. I would warn someone away from the few pockets where the general sentiment towards the newcomer might be on the hostile side, places where the neighbors would rather see a member of their ohana buy the place than a mainland malihini.
I actually don't judge that desire because I understand it. It's human nature to prefer the old neighborhood to stay the same, full of families you know. There are a few people in my neighborhood who hate haoles and blame them for every evil, but only a few. If there were a lot of people holding that opinion, it would be hard for me to live here. Luckily for me there are many more who welcoming who will give a person a chance.
As a SEPARATE issue, the statement I made about domestic violence --I have been told by someone born and raised Ainaloa, that there were a lot of problems there. He didn't like it. He hung out with my family and feared his family. They abused him. I believed him. That is not bigotry, to believe his story. There have been some horrendous stories coming out of Ainaloa. To notice that one subdivision tends to produce more violence and abuse than some others is NOT an indictment of "local style" community, only a recognition that certain areas are troubled.
Why are they troubled? Socioeconomic issues, poverty, broken homes -- not because they are local, rather because of unemployment, lack of prospects, poor education, poor parenting examples, substance abuse, and other factors, similar to what creates a run down neighborhood wherever you go.
Don't ever accuse me of lumping all "local" or all "Hawaiian" into one group or one stereotype. That is so far from how I look at people!
In my own community, which is as I said largely old sugar cane camp territory, I was invited to serve on the board of my community association. The board is elected/volunteer and composed of folks with generations of roots in my district and a few transplants like myself. I feel honored that they asked me to be part of the group. It is not a group that tries to run anything or change things or judge things. It is all about giving back.
The group looks for good causes and programs to help the community, sponsors benefits for kids and seniors, hosts gardening classes for raising food, works to build community connections, hosts candidate forums, promotes and respects Hawaiian culture and language, and the legacy of the plantation era, promotes getting involved in one's community.
That is the kind of person I am. No one who knows me here IRL calls me a white liberal transplant with an attitude of fake progressiveness. I seriously resent this ridiculous pile-on by the same old group -- in this case, oink, afwjam, Obie.
What this incident has reminded me of here is that you'd better write each post and scrutinize it for any possible misinterpretation, because people don't assume the best and certain people want to see the worst because of their pre-existing bias.
Folks, it's a message board. People write posts in all kinds of states. Sometimes they write something short, like I did, while preoccupied with other thoughts. We don't always read and reread to check if we might be opening up some can of worms.
If someone makes a post that gets misinterpreted, then give the person a chance to say where he/she stands, and give the benefit of the doubt that there is sincerity. That didn't happen here. My second post got attacked as damage control/backpedaling.
In closing, I have to confess that I do have prejudices. I really am prejudiced against assholes, bullies, fundamentalists who push their beliefs, white supremacists, homophobes, nazis, ice-heads, wife beaters (the guys, not the shirts), drunk drivers, and financiers who break the economy out of pure greed. I admit that I have those prejudices. However, if you fit into one of those categories I will still give you a chance to prove you can act like a decent human being.
OK, I'm out of here. I'm going to be late to the Bon dance because the ignorance and bias of a few overwhelmed my Saturday. Thanks a lot guys, hope you feel better for what you did today.
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