Racist Experience at the White House

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

At 4 in the morning I don't think I've ever laughed so hard even when I watched it during the movie the first time.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Right. The security guy could have misspoke too or she misheard things based on her perception of what was happening. We only get to hear one side.

I haven't read her other stuff but I'm uncomfortable with what she wrote in her article with using the phrase, "white entitlement". I haven't really heard that phrase being thrown around until this year and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about that.

On one hand I empathize with those who feel discriminated against. On the other hand it goes both ways. I've felt it myself when phrases like "white entitlement" are thrown around and I realize that's maybe it's not the person's intention.

For example last Ramadan I joined my husband in fasting for the first time and also went to the Islamic center for the first time with him. The women meet in a separate area and when I entered they greeted me and we introduced ourselves. They asked me who I was or who I knew there and I said my husband. They asked who he was and I told them his name and they knew who he was and they gave each other looks. Then they said to me, "so you're the mysterious white western wife" of the new Egyptian doctor that goes here. They called me that. It was in their own words the description of me and I paused myself wondering how I should take that. I looked around knowing some being from Egypt themselves. Some from Indonesia. Some from Pakistan. Some from Yemen. Some from Algeria. I don't think they meant to be racist about it and it's true I was white. I thought rather that they may be teasing me since I was new to them, and I'd never been to the Islamic center before, and they knew nothing about me other than my husband went there, is a doctor from Egypt, and married to an american woman that none of them have ever met, heard much about or seen in the year that we'd been living in our newly adopted city.

Another time there was an Islamic meet-up and my husband told me to look for the American convert wife as she will be there and has three children. The women all gathered around the grill cooking and the men went to sit at the tables and chat while the children played on the park toys. So I looked around and by process of elimination of people I'd met prior there was only one person there that I didn't know. She happened to be white with three small children. So I asked her if she was the American convert. She said no that she was from Lebanon. The other women jumped on this and accused me of assuming she was American based on the color of her skin, but that wasn't the case at all, and I was so embarrassed because it certainly wasn't my intention to come off that way to people I was just getting to know. Then they made jokes about people assuming they're Egyptian because they're brown. True they were Egyptian and they were brown but the topic took such a skewed point I just didn't know what to say to them. I tried to explain it wasn't because she was white that I thought she was the American convert but that my husband told me to look for a women with three kids and she happened to be the only one there I hadn't met and had three kids with her. Also true I could have avoid the embarrassing situation if I'd introduced myself first and asked a more general question like where are you from thus avoiding the embarrassing situation.

Their sensitivity to discrimination made me feel sensitive about being seen as discriminatory when I'm not, nor intend to be. If they'd asked me to explain instead of assumed what I meant it may have gone better. Anyways it was a teaching moment for myself as well.

The part about this doctor assuming the security guy is racist because he's letting white women who say they were issued tickets (meaning that they themselves are journalist and not wives) but they didn't have the actual ticket on them to show security, while the doctor admittedly said she was a wife of a journalist knowing that security knows spouses aren't issued tickets to the dinner doesn't sit well with me as an issue of "white entitlement".

It's not an issue of white wife vs. (what is her ethnicity?) wife. It's an issue of Journalists who happen to be white and are permitted into the event vs. her who happens to be a wife of a journalist and isn't permitted into the event. Journalist are often known by face and name, especially when invited to a high profile event. Was she assuming the women were wives somehow getting in when she wasn't because women can't be journalists? She had a cell phone on her she could have taken a video of the racist accusation, and of the people they were admitting while they weren't admitting her, and she could have confronted them on video of being discriminatory towards her. Otherwise it's just her word against theirs.

White entitlement does exist. Now I don't know how the situation went down since we only have her side of the story and none of us was there, but I know these type of things do happen with more frequency than most folks would care to admit.

[Boiler 45,516]

Welsh woman fined for 'racist' insult after calling father's mistress an 'English cow'

• Elen Humphreys, 25, told Angela Payne to 'leave well alone, you English cow'
• Prestatyn magistrates ordered Humphreys to pay £50 in compensation
• Last week, an English tourist was fined £150 for calling security guards 'sheep shaggers' at a Welsh holiday camp

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316955/Welsh-woman-fined-racist-insult-calling-fathers-mistress-English-cow.html

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Welsh woman fined for 'racist' insult after calling father's mistress an 'English cow'

• Elen Humphreys, 25, told Angela Payne to 'leave well alone, you English cow'
• Prestatyn magistrates ordered Humphreys to pay £50 in compensation
• Last week, an English tourist was fined £150 for calling security guards 'sheep shaggers' at a Welsh holiday camp

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316955/Welsh-woman-fined-racist-insult-calling-fathers-mistress-English-cow.html

sheep shaggers

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

White entitlement does exist. Now I don't know how the situation went down since we only have her side of the story and none of us was there, but I know these type of things do happen with more frequency than most folks would care to admit.

I'm not denying it doesn't exist. However, I feel uncomfortable when it's thrown in the faces of people as accusatory when that's not really the case because of a person's own perception and assumption of someone based on them being white. YKWIM?

Something about the hypocrisy of the situation troubles me deeply, and I'll try to broach this subject with sensitivity and respect as I'm still try to understand the issue myself. I've seen situations where a black man will call another black man #######' and this is considered a term of endearment as if they called them brotha'. This is often openly exchanged freely. Yet if a man that is white calls a man that is black #######' as a term of endearment in the way he's seen displayed publicly between them it is seen by them as offensive because he is white. So they are insinuating he's a racist when they themselves are perpetuating racism.

I've even see it even go so far as when a man that is white who adopts the black culture as his own speaking the way they speak, dressing the way they dress, listening to the music they listen to, eating the way they eat, dating black women as a preference being denigrated for this by the men that are black and sometimes even the women that are black calling the man that is black a wigger. Which is slang for a wanna be ####### or they use terms like cracker again because of the color of his skin being white like a saltine, and possibly a play on word crazy for thinking he's black when he's white.

Then there is the open separation by black empowerment communities. The implication is all whites today are guilty because of the US history of slavery. That the blacks need to honor their ancestors and return the hate to today's whites for what their ancestors did to their black ancestors. The confusion for me is when I see the blacks separating themselves today from the whites when during the civil rights movement the blacks fought against being separated, and seen as different, and for equal rights, human love, peace and living in harmony together.

And it's not just among the black community that I see this going on. I've experienced it among the Arab and the Muslim community as I described in a previous example I gave. I've even experienced it on here to some degree in years past. I know it's also happening among other groups as well but I don't want to get too into depth here because it will be as if we went down that rabbit hole to explore where we perhaps should not because it may seem all strange and crazy depending on who you encounter and talk to.

Throughout history people inherently pick on each other for being different or for perceived weaknesses or threats. The past several years I've watched it laminated online in not just this virtual community, and even seen it in this thread, but through-out various virtual communities, and comment sections in online news articles. The vitriol is astounding and frankly embarrassing if this is how we are to be entombed in the digital archives of zeros and ones recording all what we write and say in silicon published and recorded for as long as that lasts.

In our US history it's been a land sought after and oceans crossed by a people seeking the freedom from the discrimination for their religious beliefs. Then it became discrimination against the Native Americans because we wanted this land and they were considered savages. Then it was against black people in Africa because they were seen as human labor used as slaves for the color of their skin. Then the discrimination in the oriental wars because we were fighting them in Wars so we had to see them as less than human. Then the Mexican illegal immigrants on our boarders, or the intelligent minds coming in the Asian invasion taking away American jobs and threatening our livelihoods Now it's the "Arab" and the "Muslim" terrorists who want to destroy our way of life because we've been invading their lands and occupying their territories and fighting for their natural resources. Beyond our land at it's foundation it was fighting with the British, the French, the Spanish in a land grab and now in other countries it's the Ugly Americans, and their Imperialism, caring only about themselves, and having no respect for others way of life and culture, and so forth.

But really we're all part of the same small planet, living the human experience, under the same sky, breathing the same air, drinking the same water. It's all connected. It's all one world.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

I'm not denying it doesn't exist. However, I feel uncomfortable when it's thrown in the faces of people as accusatory when that's not really the case because of a person's own perception and assumption of someone based on them being white. YKWIM?

Something about the hypocrisy of the situation troubles me deeply, and I'll try to broach this subject with sensitivity and respect as I'm still try to understand the issue myself. I've seen situations where a black man will call another black man #######' and this is considered a term of endearment as if they called them brotha'. This is often openly exchanged freely. Yet if a man that is white calls a man that is black #######' as a term of endearment in the way he's seen displayed publicly between them it is seen by them as offensive because he is white. So they are insinuating he's a racist when they themselves are perpetuating racism.

I've even see it even go so far as when a man that is white who adopts the black culture as his own speaking the way they speak, dressing the way they dress, listening to the music they listen to, eating the way they eat, dating black women as a preference being denigrated for this by the men that are black and sometimes even the women that are black calling the man that is black a wigger. Which is slang for a wanna be ####### or they use terms like cracker again because of the color of his skin being white like a saltine, and possibly a play on word crazy for thinking he's black when he's white.

Then there is the open separation by black empowerment communities. The implication is all whites today are guilty because of the US history of slavery. That the blacks need to honor their ancestors and return the hate to today's whites for what their ancestors did to their black ancestors. The confusion for me is when I see the blacks separating themselves today from the whites when during the civil rights movement the blacks fought against being separated, and seen as different, and for equal rights, human love, peace and living in harmony together.

And it's not just among the black community that I see this going on. I've experienced it among the Arab and the Muslim community as I described in a previous example I gave. I've even experienced it on here to some degree in years past. I know it's also happening among other groups as well but I don't want to get too into depth here because it will be as if we went down that rabbit hole to explore where we perhaps should not because it may seem all strange and crazy depending on who you encounter and talk to.

Throughout history people inherently pick on each other for being different or for perceived weaknesses or threats. The past several years I've watched it laminated online in not just this virtual community, and even seen it in this thread, but through-out various virtual communities, and comment sections in online news articles. The vitriol is astounding and frankly embarrassing if this is how we are to be entombed in the digital archives of zeros and ones recording all what we write and say in silicon published and recorded for as long as that lasts.

In our US history it's been a land sought after and oceans crossed by a people seeking the freedom from the discrimination for their religious beliefs. Then it became discrimination against the Native Americans because we wanted this land and they were considered savages. Then it was against black people in Africa because they were seen as human labor used as slaves for the color of their skin. Then the discrimination in the oriental wars because we were fighting them in Wars so we had to see them as less than human. Then the Mexican illegal immigrants on our boarders, or the intelligent minds coming in the Asian invasion taking away American jobs and threatening our livelihoods Now it's the "Arab" and the "Muslim" terrorists who want to destroy our way of life because we've been invading their lands and occupying their territories and fighting for their natural resources. Beyond our land at it's foundation it was fighting with the British, the French, the Spanish in a land grab and now in other countries it's the Ugly Americans, and their Imperialism, caring only about themselves, and having no respect for others way of life and culture, and so forth.

But really we're all part of the same small planet, living the human experience, under the same sky, breathing the same air, drinking the same water. It's all connected. It's all one world.

No problem, I've attacked this a few times in the past so I will try to do so again:

The problem is ignorance. I have stated many times before, and I will keep doing it until the day I die, that word is wrong, doesn't matter who says it, no one gets a pass in my book. I've had guys and gals at work that were black say it to me and I jump on them about it. I say, how can you get mad when a white person says it, but you say it it's ok? What sense does that make? Our parents, grandparents, and ancestors went through hell on earth to make us equal, yet we drag them down with our eagerness to be stupid.

The wigger aspect came from whites who want to act black. It goes back to the 1920's when white people played black music or adopted the dress code. Same rules apply, you won't hear me or anyone around me say it.

I personally don't hold anyone accountable for my actions except me. White people don't owe me a thing, I owe it to myself to make good with my life, we don't have the same roadblocks we did back then, we can go to school, we can get jobs, we can be what we want to be if we work hard enough.

But, there is still racism abound, and situations like the one I posted happens all too often here, could be something else or it could be just that.