MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
I'd like to hear what 'my doors are open" has to say
Um... OK sure. I always got the sense that Affirmative Action was supposed to be more of a jumpstart than a long-term crutch. It's there to build up a critical mass of nonwhite Americans in areas of achievement and influence, in order to get a trend going in this general direction. It's not so much a handout as much as a helping hand up.
Once the statistics shows that Black Americans are closing the achievement gap, which as I said, I think they eventually will, this program will likely be phased out.
The bottom line on race relations, that I can see, is this:
1. Do your part to make 'the buck stop here'. If someone treats you badly because your ethnic background isn't the same as theirs, show them that you won't let them get you down. Let them know that even if they have a problem with you, you DON'T have a problem with THEM, and you'll be damned if you're going to let their small-minded attitude keep you from getting what you want out of life.
2. Ignore people's ethnic backgrounds and just judge individuals on an individual basis. If someone is not a good person, call them out on it. But conclude that THAT person sucks, not "that's the problem with you people". Because what good does taking that attitude accomplish for either of you?
Blaming other people, or groups of people, for what's wrong with the world, is just an excuse for not getting out and living your life and doing something about the problems that concern you.
If we're talking about xenophobia, rather than racism, then yes, I do think one can legitimately conclude that Culture X has a set of core values that are fundamentally incompatible with one's own principles. That's a whole other can of worms that I don't have the time to get into right now, but again, it becomes a matter of minimizing adversarial encounters and coming to recognize a foreign people's shared humanity with yourself, even if the best show of compassion you can muster is to minimize encounters with them at all.
But black and white Americans are one culture. Having lived in some very different cultures than my own, AND in majority-black areas of the US as a white man, I can say with confidence that any cultural value differences between black and white America are negligible compared to, say, American and Chinese people. In fact, I'd say all people born and raised in America, to at least one parent/guardian who was also born and raised in America, belong to a single culture, regardless of their background any further back.
P.S. People who'll try to exploit you come in all shades and colors. That's life. If you learn how not to put yourself in situations where you're an easy mark, then you won't have heaps of negative experiences from which to make massive judgements about whole races of people.