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Jim_Scan's avatar

I read all that you write and appreciate it so much that I have a hard time expressing it. I’ll keep it simple and thank you for all that you do when you put pen to paper. (Or finger to keyboard)

Mahalo,

Jim

PS, I would normally ask one to ‘keep up the good work’ but in your case I know it is a given.

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ken taylor's avatar

This is not a dispute. It is something of a surprise to me when you say "European-Americans don't hyphenate themselves". Upon reflection, every application etc. we fill out, be it for the government, for employment, or for money or credit asks the race of the applicant, but European'-American are all "caucasian". Being the perverse person, I am, I mark all except caucasian. Once it was remarked that I didn't look any of those races and appeared to be white. I replied that white was not a race at all, but a color.. I (had) blonde hair and my face looked pale, but I assure the parts of my body that were exposed to the sun were darker than 2/3 of the so-called black people in America. What color am I, or of what origin am I? Well my origin is European-American and Europeans are a mixed result ofpeople that originated elsewhere. Africans that immigrated ((mostly via moving eastward and then westward,) Eoropeans genealogy included those conquerors who moved from the eastern plains. I don't really know if I have any original Americans (nice phrase), but then I am sure I must have many allelles in common with them. But I don't how many alleles from the Caucasus Mountains. Probably do, though, but I wouldn't say I'm Caucasian , I haven't genes in common with all races, but I have no (known) relationship with the Caucasus.

But you are absolutely right, where else do white Americans come from but Europe.?Oh Australia? Canada? South Africa? Well where did they come from? Of course white Americans are European-Americans? My surprise is I never actually realized they avoid hyphenating themselves. Damn Tarrio is darker than most African-Americans and is a white supremacist? Tim Scott is a very dark American and almost expresses white supremacy. What the hell.

We can't be "colorblind" as last May's affirmative action court decision says because we can see the shades of a person' skin. But we can become "colorless" by making it illegal to use an adjective of color to describe a person. Presidents, judges, anyone who says "black person" "white person "brown person", six months under house arrest and forced to eat gruel. Damn I would willingly suffer that fate myself if I had never had to use such an adjective again. I would much rather rite about unadjectivized oppression, but too often it is white (European) oppression of other colors of other descents, who as you noted are all-hyphenated. People have varying shades, but people are not colors, and I think you wrote a column or two on that point.. I imagine every single skin cell of any person anywhere is all the same exact shade uniformly across their entire visible body.

It is and remains nonsense, if the European conquerors had not felt superior to those they conquered, well that's the issue, and that's what "white" means when they use it.

Superiority can only come to those who recognized the importance of others to themselves, not out of the inferiority of needing to be superior. I fight with my father to be accepted as having some ideas that might be superior. But I realize now, that like my genes, and my shade, it's all borrowed from generations of thought before me and that primarily we are a hodgepodge of experience.and defining colors or labels of origin as if there is some relevance to that method of definition.

My longtime friend Andrea Lewis ,once told me I hate white people too much but am unable to experience what blacks experience everyday in American society, therefore I am dooming myself to being unacceptable to both.

I've learned she was mostly correct.

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