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Date: 12 Jan 2011 10:44 am (UTC)
taithe: (Default)
From: [personal profile] taithe
Because, y'see, I know when it comes to Othering my social background, it's okay. I'm not PoC, I'm not a (recent or even in the last century) immigrant, I'm not a protected group. Hell, I'm even privileged! Which I am, in many ways; I'm just privileged in a way that also means I have to swallow my fury whenever I get used as the example of "someone who comes from a really racist place". Or as someone who can't be who I am because I have all my teeth. Or someone who must just be hiding any relatives who married other family-members.

I'm privileged, but with a side-order of scapegoating... and along with that comes a whole passel of cultural connotations about food. It just gets tiresome, because it's pervasive, to the point that I've even had newly-immigrated coworkers repeat cultural assumptions about Southerners. It never occurs to them that it's not okay, because USian pop culture makes it apparent in tons of ways, from movies down to stupid beer commercials, that it's a safe target. So I get: grits are what poor people eat.


I hope you don't mind that I take your post and think about it from an academic perspective. Currently in one of my classes I'm studying the concept of Otherness from a philosophical-anthropological slant. The points you raise here about being placed in a category of "Other" yet being unable to complain due to perceived "privilege" is rather fascinating and also extremely dismaying.

I'm tempted to use your experiences as a starting board for my paper on creating Otherness and the mythos behind the "wild, uncivilized country-dweller". I'm currently reading a book called The Idea of Africa by V.Y. Mudimbe and some of the theories he works out relate to the pervasive narratives present about the South because similar (although distinctly different) narratives are insidiously present within the concept of Africa. He articulates possible explanations for why the idea of Africa is rationalized and used commonly by Westerners (although I'd argue based on my cultural experiences that it isn't just the West that maintains this idea). Both the "South" and "Africa" are kind of lumped into monolithic mythologies and I would like to study how this myth-making began regarding Southerners.

If you feel offended at the thought of me using your post as a beginning for an academic concept paper, especially regarding a topic that is extremely personal, please let me know. I will not use any of your anecdotal information, but I may vaguely refer to your post as a source of inspiration if given your permission.

~*

As a first generation immigrant, I was surprised how easily everyone in school (especially teachers) sort of slotted Southerners together into the caricatures that you see in the likes to Avatar. Even the history books portrayed the South with images of big bad slave states and backward conservatism. What was disturbing was the implied condoning of certain acts during the Civil War since, obviously, the North was trying to free the slaves and were the good guys. The rather blasé attitude toward Sherman's March to Sea made me go wtf as a kid. I had read about Stalin's policies before arriving to that particular section in my 10th grade history and wondered why no one else in class was disturbed by the scorched earth concept. I ended up delving into literature, particularly African American literature later that year, which illustrated that no, the northern states weren't as progressive and more accepting of minorities as you'd think and the aftermath of the Civil War had been pretty fucking bad.

Also in regards to oppression olympics -- what an unusual term. I'm a bit puzzled as to why people would hijack a commentary relating toward a specific type of cultural oppression by using the "others have it worse" rationalization. I get a bit of this whenever racism is discussed. Arguing about severity or whose oppression was worse seems rather missing the point. I remember trying to explain to my mother the historical oppression of blacks in the United States and her interjecting that Asian immigrants had just as horrible treatment from white folk and even worse once black people starting attacking East Asians. :| It makes it difficult to establish any kind of constructive discourse. I see this "you can't talk about being marginalized because you're privileged" attitude being the same kind of Missing the Point only the recipient has additional shame and guilt. It just doesn't make sense to me why it's appropriate to ever say that.

I wish it was possible that people would feel more comfortable discussing this sort of thing. The intensity of your post and the comments above indicate that this is a kind of issue that needs to be talked about because really, it's not okay to belittle or patronize other people based on X trait. I'm wondering if your friends who made those jokes could be made aware of how hurt you were?

Honestly, I don't see any goodness about having Southerners as scape-goats. Rather than blowing off steam, it seems to allow more discrete forms of racist or narrow-minded thinking even among people who consider themselves educated and tolerant.

tl;dr excellent post. You've opened up some interesting points of discussion.
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