this generous impulse, poorly articulated, may be where distortions have crept in until some of those stories or movies turned into the trope where White Hero Rescues Poor Native Peoples
Sometimes it's a generous impulse. But like the difference between cloudy Wednesdays and rainy Fridays, sometimes the story is also a rationalization. I mean, when you realize on some inner level that you're really just trampling all over someone -- and who wants to admit, deep down, that they're a bad guy? -- you rewrite the narrative to make yourself a good guy. The result: white (or male, or straight, or whatever) hero rescues less-privileged, twisting the story into something palatable for the person doing the trompling. The irony is that I have used that narrative to my own ends, to manipulate* some seriously extreme privilege-weenies into creating applications with better accessibility/usability. One of those cases where I justify the ends as over means, I guess.
*as in, stroke the teeny-brained ego into believing he's getting to play the "hero" role.
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Date: 12 Jun 2011 07:26 am (UTC)Sometimes it's a generous impulse. But like the difference between cloudy Wednesdays and rainy Fridays, sometimes the story is also a rationalization. I mean, when you realize on some inner level that you're really just trampling all over someone -- and who wants to admit, deep down, that they're a bad guy? -- you rewrite the narrative to make yourself a good guy. The result: white (or male, or straight, or whatever) hero rescues less-privileged, twisting the story into something palatable for the person doing the trompling. The irony is that I have used that narrative to my own ends, to manipulate* some seriously extreme privilege-weenies into creating applications with better accessibility/usability. One of those cases where I justify the ends as over means, I guess.
*as in, stroke the teeny-brained ego into believing he's getting to play the "hero" role.