October 25, 2004
What the....?
I was checking out my stats and saw this ad at the top. It's by Ad Council, and it calls statements like this 'prejudice'. Sorry, I totally don't get it. The statement is not 'that Mexican guy is pretty smart and that's surprising.' It's just 'that Mexican guy is pretty smart.' What's wrong with that? In fact, it does no 'pre-judging' at all. The speaker seems to have met the Mexican and decided he was pretty smart.
I hate this oversensitivity to race. It just makes us all uncomfortable to talk about it, and instead we try to pretend that we don't notice that people come in different colors with different backgrounds. And, that feeling of being uncomfortable does nothing to better race relations, in fact makes them worse because people are always afraid to say the wrong thing.
I love the high school that I went to. It was a small school so we basically had one or two of every type. Two black people, a few Greeks, an Arab, a couple of Russians, some Italians, etc. Conversations would go 'I'm going to lunch with the Greek. You coming, you Jew?' It just made things so much less tense when you acknowledge that you're not identical to everyone else, that we will have differences and that's just fine.
I don't mean to be preachy. That ad just annoys me. It just feels that those that want to make race relations better actually make it worse by preaching the walking on egg shells that this ad promotes.
Posted by Karol at October 25, 2004 01:30 AM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags:
I agree. I've heard those ads and several more in that vein, and they do seem overly sensitive to race and religion.
The one that burns me is the one where a Latino, an African-American, an Arab and a WASP all call asking about the same apartment, with only the WASP being told it was still available. Unfair, yes, but if I owned an apartment complex, I probably wouldn't want to gamble on the stereotypes not being true. I should be allowed to sell or rent to whomever I choose.
That said, if I did own an apartment complex, I'd probably price each apartment in the upper-middle class range, which is a better indicator of class and culture anyway.
(Ooooooooh, I can just hear the hate-mail coming my way now.) :)
Posted by: Charles at October 25, 2004 02:43 AMOh yea, well I hate this oversensitivity to laziness :)
http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/001943.html
I also believe you should be able to rent to whomever you want but making that judgement based on race (as opposed to, say, bank statements) can really backfire. Dawn Summers is black and makes a ton of money while I'm white and make very little.
Posted by: Karol at October 25, 2004 02:57 AMThis brings up one of my pet peeves-diversity programs. Programs in companies and schools that educate us to celebrate our diversity-celebrate our differences.
Such programs have driven us father apart and has made the problem worse. I don’t need to be told that an Asian, a Hispanic or a woman is different than me. I can see it with my own eyes.
We need education on how we are alike. That we have the same goals, dreams and aspirations. How we are all Americans and what it means to be an American.
Diversity programs have made everyone hypersensitive to our differences. We need anti-diversity programs to make us concentrate on our commonality.
Posted by: Jake at October 25, 2004 10:36 AMI talk among my friends the same way you do Karol, so I also get frustrated at the PC police. Counterproductive and mostly tin-eared.
On the other hand, the problem with a statement like "That Mexican guy..." is that if all you can be bothered to remember about a person is their race (not their name, not their job, not the reason you happened to come into contact with them), and you make a statement like "...is pretty smart," the unspoken coda sounds like "Imagine that!"
Posted by: ugarte at October 25, 2004 10:52 AMAlso, I thought I should make it clear that I'm not the Charles with a taste for discrimination.
Posted by: ugarte at October 25, 2004 10:53 AMI don't know. You meet a guy at a bar. You exchange pleasantries but not names. The talk turns to astrophysics. Boy, that guy sure knows a lot. I feel like I've heard/used similar expressions and don't see what's racist about it. Would it be racist if you said 'that British guy is pretty smart' or 'that German guy is real intelligent'? I'm trying to find the post I had about a conversation with Dawn where she was imitating all these accents and kept saying 'give me another one' and I'd say 'French' and then she'd do it and I'd say 'Irish' and then she'd do it. Then I said 'Chinese' and she said 'oh no, that would be racist.' Kind of ridiculous, no?
Posted by: Karol at October 25, 2004 11:03 AMKarol, a good point. Maybe I should wait until the credit report comes in.
I'm just saying that the government shouldn't have any say over who I do and do not do business with.
Posted by: Charles at October 25, 2004 10:29 PM
