Linda, I’m so baffled by this. Forget what? What is it you want to convince me of? What would you like to hear me say? What’s really at the root of all this for you?
I don’t “just want to argue”, I just don’t agree with you. And I don’t understand why you’re so invested in what is, at least to me, purely a semantic disagreement.
This isn't remotely semantics for me. Something you said yesterday stuck, "It's as if you see racism as some sort of club that you're being denied entry to." Perhaps I've been upside down in explaining who I am. That is a very interesting observation about a Krajina Serb. Let's see why we might feel that way. What we have been through is as bad as it gets, anywhere, ever. Do you know anything about us?
For several generations we endured psychological destruction of identity and self-worth. I surmise the AH empire decided it would be expedient for their subjects in Croatia to be western-identified, as opposed to eastern-identified.
Behind that, cultural genocide became colonial policy. Then there was all that physical butchery, many think the most sadistic exterminations of WWII, one in four of us murdered. Then came the terrorism of the Nineties that was essentially the last 150 years of the black American experience, (uncanny similarity in plot points) in reverse, in a few years' time, that resulted in our expulsion. We're now far too small and scattered for the culture and identity to survive. The culture that produced Tesla no longer exists. There are just old people left in the land we are largely aboriginal to, dying off.
There's nothing semantical about the analogies I have felt, not thought, felt about the fine details of our experience mirrored in the black American experience, precious clues on a quest I didn't even know I was on, since childhood. Those feelings are at the bottom of why I even know who I am. My own family's identity was destroyed in that first phase. My grandmother was too ashamed of who she was to even tell us. We had no explanation whatsoever for the overwhelming contempt we held ourselves in, that we were punishing each other with daily. My father, a Krajina Serb who thought he was an American bigot, confoundedly raised me to be the opposite. What's the opposite of an American bigot? A Krajina Serb.
I had no idea why, but the conversation about racism and identity that the airwaves were full of since my childhood in the Sixties was the most interesting conversation in the world to me. Especially the one about the recovery of a devastated identity.
Once of age, I spent a lifetime supporting a number of people in their re-emergence. Those are really the only people I could relate to or understand. I have lived on what America considers the 'wrong' side of the color line for a lifetime. That is NOT an easy position to occupy. You meet with constant shunning and shaming from the 'good' white folks, and far too often, scapegoating from the black folks around you, often at very close range from people you are depending on.
It was when I went to write a rant, almost ten years ago, about how difficult that life is and began researching my grandmother's line that I discovered who I really was. I recovered my birthright and completed the conversation about 'recovering a devastated identity.' That was never a semantic discussion, obviously, it ran to my core and was worth any difficulty I wound up paying for it. A fortune, actually. For my own goddamn birthright.
As I said, I spent a lifetime supporting any number of people on this issue. It has not been reciprocated. There is a truncated response nearly always. I've been struggling to understand and explain it. I'm sure that truncated response is at the core of the existing dysfunctions between black and white.
Meanwhile, I'm quite aware that the profoundly racist experience heaped upon my people is in no way perceived as such. We were characterized in the West as the invading genocidal maniacs. (A simple examination of the census proves otherwise. We're the only Balkan population in that conflict with a significant loss in numbers) In fact, we were largely aboriginal people subjected to an extreme genocidal pogrom for over a century. To say we would feel like people who've been denied entry to the racism club hits the nail on the head. It's not at all semantical. It's the core of our existential dilemma. And the lack of admission to that club has everything to do with why our story became as bad as it gets, ever, anywhere. Nobody supports us. Nobody.
“ Let's see why we might feel that way. What we have been through is as bad as it gets, anywhere, ever. Do you know anything about us?”
No, I don’t really, so I won’t comment on the experiences you describe here. But this is the same point we keep butting up against. Bigotry is not a competition. I’m not saying that the experience isn’t “as bad as it gets”. Nothing I’m saying is intended in any way to diminish your people’s suffering. Why can’t you understand this?!
It’s as if you think that if we call what your people experienced “racism” if we use that word instead of another, people will care more about what happened. But that’s not how language works.
Murder and sexual assault are both abhorrent. I wouldn’t try to say that one is worse than the other. But I can’t call murder rape. They describe two different things.
So yes, this is semantic. I’m not questioning the horror of what your people went through. As you say, I don’t know nearly enough, I just don’t think the word racism is the best descriptor for that horror.
Hmm. I was enjoying and learning from the interchange, which was disagreeing on some points but respectful - two people seeming to try to get a better grasp on the truth, through contrasting their perspectives.
I wasn't taking sides, but learning from each of your facets of the truth. I wasn't seeing the point being to "win", so much as to share differing opinions.
Then suddenly you seemed to end that interchange with Steve QJ and exit.
Was I misreading the tone and purpose of your initial writing? Or did something else just come up?
Sorry, never got notice of your comment. I didn't exit the conversation, he did. My comment ended with my near universal experience of a truncated response from the black folks around me, some in my own family, when I share the racism my people have experienced. I don't receive a satisfying reciprocation of the caring attention and supported I've lavished on them for a lifetime. I sense an instinct to react to my statements as a competition and dismissal, which is the racist tradition since 1680, at the close of Bacon's Rebellion.
I expected a truncated response to what I'd shared. That's what happened, isn't it? No surprise. I've had to move on with the understanding that will never happen. It will always grieve me, but I must live with it.
It has certainly frequently happened that someone who insists on this definition of racism purely delineated by appearance, has dismissed me and mine, often even turning on me, it being obvious that they cannot hear me, they are hearing Karen. They are hearing what they expect to hear, as per their stereotypes. There is absolutely every bit as much Implicit Bias in black American heads as white in the reverse. I notice this bias more than others since all those adjectives presumed about white American negate me 100%. Culturally genocided people really hate being negated. I mean, REALLY hate it.
Nothing gets the ghetto in the Serb going more than being associated with supremacists. Nobody's had more trouble with those mf's than we have, for refusing to join up with them, and to have it blithely assumed we're associated with them when we get here is a major reason we despise the notion of having to come here.
“I didn't exit the conversation, he did. My comment ended with my near universal experience of a truncated response from the black folks around me”
I thought very seriously about ignoring this comment. Not only is it very obviously untrue, my reply is right there, written months ago, with no response from you, so no, I didn’t exit the conversation.
But also, I find it fascinating that this “near universal response” you get from black people doesn’t make you wonder if you’re the one missing something. You just keep doing the same thing with new black people and demanding different results.
You haven’t “lavished” caring attention on me. The “black community” doesn’t get together and share notes on who we have an obligation to because of some kindness to another “them.”
I’ve never dismissed what you’ve said, I’ve sympathised with the suffering you’ve described over and over again. I simply disagree with you about what word to use to describe it.
Oh forget it. You just want to argue.
Linda, I’m so baffled by this. Forget what? What is it you want to convince me of? What would you like to hear me say? What’s really at the root of all this for you?
I don’t “just want to argue”, I just don’t agree with you. And I don’t understand why you’re so invested in what is, at least to me, purely a semantic disagreement.
This isn't remotely semantics for me. Something you said yesterday stuck, "It's as if you see racism as some sort of club that you're being denied entry to." Perhaps I've been upside down in explaining who I am. That is a very interesting observation about a Krajina Serb. Let's see why we might feel that way. What we have been through is as bad as it gets, anywhere, ever. Do you know anything about us?
For several generations we endured psychological destruction of identity and self-worth. I surmise the AH empire decided it would be expedient for their subjects in Croatia to be western-identified, as opposed to eastern-identified.
Behind that, cultural genocide became colonial policy. Then there was all that physical butchery, many think the most sadistic exterminations of WWII, one in four of us murdered. Then came the terrorism of the Nineties that was essentially the last 150 years of the black American experience, (uncanny similarity in plot points) in reverse, in a few years' time, that resulted in our expulsion. We're now far too small and scattered for the culture and identity to survive. The culture that produced Tesla no longer exists. There are just old people left in the land we are largely aboriginal to, dying off.
There's nothing semantical about the analogies I have felt, not thought, felt about the fine details of our experience mirrored in the black American experience, precious clues on a quest I didn't even know I was on, since childhood. Those feelings are at the bottom of why I even know who I am. My own family's identity was destroyed in that first phase. My grandmother was too ashamed of who she was to even tell us. We had no explanation whatsoever for the overwhelming contempt we held ourselves in, that we were punishing each other with daily. My father, a Krajina Serb who thought he was an American bigot, confoundedly raised me to be the opposite. What's the opposite of an American bigot? A Krajina Serb.
I had no idea why, but the conversation about racism and identity that the airwaves were full of since my childhood in the Sixties was the most interesting conversation in the world to me. Especially the one about the recovery of a devastated identity.
Once of age, I spent a lifetime supporting a number of people in their re-emergence. Those are really the only people I could relate to or understand. I have lived on what America considers the 'wrong' side of the color line for a lifetime. That is NOT an easy position to occupy. You meet with constant shunning and shaming from the 'good' white folks, and far too often, scapegoating from the black folks around you, often at very close range from people you are depending on.
It was when I went to write a rant, almost ten years ago, about how difficult that life is and began researching my grandmother's line that I discovered who I really was. I recovered my birthright and completed the conversation about 'recovering a devastated identity.' That was never a semantic discussion, obviously, it ran to my core and was worth any difficulty I wound up paying for it. A fortune, actually. For my own goddamn birthright.
As I said, I spent a lifetime supporting any number of people on this issue. It has not been reciprocated. There is a truncated response nearly always. I've been struggling to understand and explain it. I'm sure that truncated response is at the core of the existing dysfunctions between black and white.
Meanwhile, I'm quite aware that the profoundly racist experience heaped upon my people is in no way perceived as such. We were characterized in the West as the invading genocidal maniacs. (A simple examination of the census proves otherwise. We're the only Balkan population in that conflict with a significant loss in numbers) In fact, we were largely aboriginal people subjected to an extreme genocidal pogrom for over a century. To say we would feel like people who've been denied entry to the racism club hits the nail on the head. It's not at all semantical. It's the core of our existential dilemma. And the lack of admission to that club has everything to do with why our story became as bad as it gets, ever, anywhere. Nobody supports us. Nobody.
“ Let's see why we might feel that way. What we have been through is as bad as it gets, anywhere, ever. Do you know anything about us?”
No, I don’t really, so I won’t comment on the experiences you describe here. But this is the same point we keep butting up against. Bigotry is not a competition. I’m not saying that the experience isn’t “as bad as it gets”. Nothing I’m saying is intended in any way to diminish your people’s suffering. Why can’t you understand this?!
It’s as if you think that if we call what your people experienced “racism” if we use that word instead of another, people will care more about what happened. But that’s not how language works.
Murder and sexual assault are both abhorrent. I wouldn’t try to say that one is worse than the other. But I can’t call murder rape. They describe two different things.
So yes, this is semantic. I’m not questioning the horror of what your people went through. As you say, I don’t know nearly enough, I just don’t think the word racism is the best descriptor for that horror.
Hmm. I was enjoying and learning from the interchange, which was disagreeing on some points but respectful - two people seeming to try to get a better grasp on the truth, through contrasting their perspectives.
I wasn't taking sides, but learning from each of your facets of the truth. I wasn't seeing the point being to "win", so much as to share differing opinions.
Then suddenly you seemed to end that interchange with Steve QJ and exit.
Was I misreading the tone and purpose of your initial writing? Or did something else just come up?
Sorry, never got notice of your comment. I didn't exit the conversation, he did. My comment ended with my near universal experience of a truncated response from the black folks around me, some in my own family, when I share the racism my people have experienced. I don't receive a satisfying reciprocation of the caring attention and supported I've lavished on them for a lifetime. I sense an instinct to react to my statements as a competition and dismissal, which is the racist tradition since 1680, at the close of Bacon's Rebellion.
I expected a truncated response to what I'd shared. That's what happened, isn't it? No surprise. I've had to move on with the understanding that will never happen. It will always grieve me, but I must live with it.
It has certainly frequently happened that someone who insists on this definition of racism purely delineated by appearance, has dismissed me and mine, often even turning on me, it being obvious that they cannot hear me, they are hearing Karen. They are hearing what they expect to hear, as per their stereotypes. There is absolutely every bit as much Implicit Bias in black American heads as white in the reverse. I notice this bias more than others since all those adjectives presumed about white American negate me 100%. Culturally genocided people really hate being negated. I mean, REALLY hate it.
Nothing gets the ghetto in the Serb going more than being associated with supremacists. Nobody's had more trouble with those mf's than we have, for refusing to join up with them, and to have it blithely assumed we're associated with them when we get here is a major reason we despise the notion of having to come here.
“I didn't exit the conversation, he did. My comment ended with my near universal experience of a truncated response from the black folks around me”
I thought very seriously about ignoring this comment. Not only is it very obviously untrue, my reply is right there, written months ago, with no response from you, so no, I didn’t exit the conversation.
But also, I find it fascinating that this “near universal response” you get from black people doesn’t make you wonder if you’re the one missing something. You just keep doing the same thing with new black people and demanding different results.
You haven’t “lavished” caring attention on me. The “black community” doesn’t get together and share notes on who we have an obligation to because of some kindness to another “them.”
I’ve never dismissed what you’ve said, I’ve sympathised with the suffering you’ve described over and over again. I simply disagree with you about what word to use to describe it.